the oldest president in history who buried Watergate and crashed in Iraq

Even as a young governor of Georgia, Carter demonstrated the charm of the southern candidate within the northern party, a combination that rarely goes wrong. After a vain attempt to accompany the ticket election to McGovern in the 1972 election, he not only won the nomination as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, but he did so just as the Republican Party was collapsing resoundingly.

Suffice it to say in this regard that his rival in the 1976 election, President Gerald Ford, was still Richard Nixon’s vice president, the living image of political perversion, the man who had to resign mid-term after being cornered by his own lies. To most Americans, Ford represented the darkest of the 1970s: a decade of corruptionof excess of power, internal espionage thanks to Edgar Hoover’s FBI and strange maneuvers abroad, thanks to Henry Kissinger.

A decade that not only saw the worst of American politics in the form of wiretapping at the Watergate complex, but also It was the scene of the worst economic crisis since the post-war period.of galloping inflation which coincided with stagnation in GDP growth and a crazy rise in insecurity. If the sixties had been the decade of love and hope in the United States and the West, the seventies represented violence, cynicism and every man for himself.

In this context, the idealistic Carter could not lose. He was the man expected to lead the Democratic Party to the White House for the first time since the days of Lyndon B. Johnson. At 50, and after the recent deaths of Johnson himself and Harry Truman, he had every chance of becoming the only living president of his party, which in principle meant a government without ties or pressure. When it was confirmed that the Democrats had won in Texas, for the last time, everything was doomed: Carter had not swept (a million and a half more votes than Ford, barely 2% of the popular vote), but it began with sufficient legitimacy to offer a new beginning for the United States.

Carter’s problem was that, too often, His kingdom did not seem to be of this world. The new president had his own agenda outside the party and the politics of Washington, a symbolic city for which he had a particular aversion as a good southerner. Carter was a non-conformist and sometimes he liked it and sometimes he didn’t, but either way it left him too exposed. He did not have a party behind him dedicated to his protection, he did not have a press which systematically supported him and He did not have a Congress that wholeheartedly supported his laws.

However, Carter’s tenure lives up to expectations…or at least that was the case for the first two years. He successfully defended gay rights against attacks from Senator Briggs, he played a key role in mediating between Egyptians and Israelis in the 1978 Camp David Accords, he brought closer positions with China – he even renounced recognition of Taiwan’s sovereignty – to further isolate itself from the Soviet Union, crime rates fell and, although inflation problems persistwere at least accompanied by GDP growth of around 5% after several years of recession.

Proof of Carter’s strength and his good esteem among the electorate is that in November 1978, The Democrats renewed their majorities both in the Senate and the House of Representatives, which is extremely unusual when one party occupies the White House. In fact, it has only happened one more time since then, when the Republicans renewed their majority in 2004 and re-elected George W. Bush as president. Carter, an ever-smiling guy, a rural businessman, a peanut farmer, was quickly approaching his four-year term in office in the 1980 election until, suddenly, 1979 crosses his path.

The hostage crisis

If there is a dark year par excellence for an American president – ​​crimes aside – it is 1979 and that president is Jimmy Carter. The year started with a 50% acceptance among citizens and after six months it had already fallen to 28%. Inflation reached historic highs (13.3% per year), crime soared, the charismatic figure of Ronald Reagan began to emerge after a failed attempt in 1976 and, above all, the global energy crisis took its toll. on the United States, which would cause a crisis. new recession in 1980 and the loss of millions of jobs.

Could Carter, with his popular and anti-establishment speech, have overcome all these setbacks? Maybe. What ultimately doomed him was the Iran hostage crisis. and its erratic management. Carter, who had already greeted the Ayatollahs’ revolution with hostility and who had strongly condemned the Soviet Union’s skirmishes in Afghanistan before the final invasion of the country in December 1979, found himself facing a conflict that was completely beyond him.

On November 4, several “students” stormed the American embassy in Iran, taking 52 hostages. At first, the foreign crisis boosted Carter’s image, as is usual in such cases, returning him to the pre-energy crisis level of acceptance. However, its inability to reach an agreement with the Tehran regime and repatriate diplomats and other embassy employees ultimately eroded its mandate: the United States could not count on a man systematically humiliated by a band of radicals.

Images of Walter Cronkite, at the time one of the most popular journalists in the country, ending his CBS report with a countdown of the hostages’ days of imprisonment, alongside the constant failure of any diplomatic initiative, It was too much for Carter’s reputation. The president attempted several military rescue operations, almost in desperation, but they all failed. Ironically, the complete liberation of the embassy did not take place, thanks to Canada’s collaboration, until January 1981, when Ronald Reagan had just taken office.

Forty years dedicated to mediation

Because yes, obviously Reagan beat Carter in 1980. humiliating defeat, In addition: eight and a half million votes less than his rival and only 49 electoral votes – Carter He only won seven states.including at least his native Georgia – in what was the worst outcome for a sitting president since Herbert Hoover fell to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the midst of the Great Depression.

This defeat and these last two years in power have completely eclipsed the previous two. Since then, Carter has been remembered as the man Reagan was not: who failed to redress the country’s economic trajectory and that he did not know how to be tough enough in international politics. It is no coincidence that it took the Democrats twelve years to return to the White House, thanks, precisely, to another man from the South, Bill Clinton, also smiling and friendly, but with a the political ambition that Carter always lacked.

Forgotten by American politics, where Washington never forgave him for his distrust, Carter above all devoted the last forty years of his life to mediate in foreign conflictsfrom North Korea to the Great Lakes of Africa, without ever forgetting the Middle East. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his diplomatic activity and unhesitatingly defended his social agenda, opposing the death penalty and violation of human rights to Guantanamo prisoners. He also vehemently opposed the Iraq War, being the only former US president to do so.

Carter, who openly criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after warning for years of the dangers that Putin’s imperialism could bring –”a man similar to Brezhnev”, according to his words in 2014, when he demanded the return of Crimea to the Ukrainians, today he lives in Georgia, where he years fighting the after-effects of a brain tumor who had him operated on in 2019.