PRESIDENCY OF JIMMY CARTER

1
PRESIDENCY OF JIMMY CARTER

• The outsider confronts the insiders ineffectual
  leadership style
• Economic problems inflation, high interest
  rates, growing energy costs, gas shortages,
  general uncertainty, decline of manufacturing
• Goals include reduced energy use (the moral
  equivalent of war), energy independence for the
  US reducing role of corporations in American
  politics
• International issues instability in the Middle
  East
• Introducing Americans to the Age of Limits

2
PRESIDENCY OF JIMMY CARTER ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

• By the end of the 1970s, interest rates on homes
  at 17 (cost of a 30-year 100,000 mortgage up
  from 421 in the 1950s to 1,425 per month)
• High oil prices, but US passenger cars averaged
  only 13.4 mpg oil crisis of 1979 led to
  shortages, lines at gas stations. Carter urged
  conservation, talked about an Age of Limits.
  Americans did not want to hear it.

3
THE FOREIGN POLICY OF PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER

• Major goals ending US support for repressive
  regimes, seeking international stability (some
  critics found these goals incompatible, so did
  Carter at times)
• Seeking peace the Camp David Peace Accords
• The first major confrontation with militant
  Islam the Iranian hostage crisis

4
CAMP DAVID PEACE ACCORDS

• Carter wants a systematic agreement between all
  Muslim leaders in the Middle East, including the
  PLO, and Israel
• Barriers Israel wont deal with the PLO unless
  it renounces its commitment to the destruction of
  Israel all involved, including the US, have
  domestic political concerns question of Israels
  boundaries and its settlements program

5
CAMP DAVID PEACE ACCORDS

• Some favor open diplomacy (esp. Carter) and
  others the secret diplomacy associated with Henry
  Kissinger
• Key players in 1978 meeting at Camp David
  President Anwar Sadat (Egypt), Prime Minister
  Menachem Begin (Israel), Carter
• Led to Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt, but
  many issues were unresolved (no solution for the
  Palestinians, other Arab nations and PLO would
  not agree to it)

6
HISTORY OF RELATIONS BETWEEN US AND IRAN

• US installs Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in power,
  1953
• Shahs regime repressive, closely tied to the
  west, secular, committed to modernization
• US reliant on Iran for oil and support for its
  Middle Eastern goals
• Shahs repression of Islamic leaders, who ask US
  for help in 1974, no response from US
• Carter supports the Shah, who is overthrown in
  1979 US allows Shah to come to US

7
IRANIAN HOSTAGE CRISIS

• Iranian rebels took the US Embassy and held 66
  people hostage (14 would be released later),
  November 1979
• Plan was to occupy the Embassy for a few days as
  a symbolic gesture
• American media hyped the taking of Embassy
  personnel Walter Cronkite and his count of the
  days
• Extremely nationalistic response of the American
  people unease with government powerlessness
  yellow ribbons

8
IRANIAN HOSTAGE CRISIS

• Carters efforts to negotiate, enforce the
  release of the hostages
• Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made a forceful
  response to Iran seem more imperative
• Failed rescue effort, April, 1980
• US used Algeria to facilitate negotiations,
  agreed not to overthrow the new regime in Iran,
  hostages released just after Reagans oath of
  office (report by Gary Sick that Reagan had made
  a deal with the Iranians to do so never
  confirmed)