Teddy Tosses His Hat in the Ring

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Through much of American history, if a sitting president wanted to be nominated for another term, it was his. Incumbent presidents have seldom been challenged from within their own party, no matter how much of a mess they may have made of things.

But, for awhile there in the latter part of the 20th century, an incumbent president could not depend on that.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson faced an insurgent challenge from Sen. Eugene McCarthy. Primaries were not the place where most delegates were won in 1968, but McCarthy did far better than expected against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, and Johnson announced shortly thereafter that he would not seek another four years in the White House.

In 1976, President Gerald Ford was challenged by former Gov. Ronald Reagan in a down–to–the–wire fight for the GOP nomination that wasn't resolved until the party's convention that summer.

And four years later, President Jimmy Carter faced a challenge from Sen. Ted Kennedy that began — officially — in Boston's famed Faneuil Hall on this day in 1979.

It was a moment that most, if not all, political observers never expected to witness after the Chappaquiddick tragedy 10 years earlier. In the 13 months following Bobby Kennedy's assassination, nearly every pundit of the time expected Teddy to pick up his brothers' dropped torch and seek the presidency, but he was seldom mentioned in connection with the presidency after Chappaquiddick.

Even before Kennedy jumped into the race, I wondered why he was doing it. He hadn't really seemed to desire the presidency earlier in his political career. He seemed content to leave that to his brothers. But his brothers were gone, and I believe Ted felt obligated to seek the presidency on their behalf. He never seemed to take any joy from the campaign.

And, frankly, I sensed something of relief on his part when it became official that he would not be the party's nominee. He acted disappointed in his public posturings, but I suspect that, privately, he was relieved. He had given it a shot, and he had fallen short.

He had done his duty, and he never sought the presidency again — even though his speech to the delegates at the Democratic convention left the door open for another run sometime in the future.

The Beginning of the Iranian Hostage Crisis

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Today is Election Day in the United States.

It is also the 35th anniversary of an event that had a tremendous influence on the election that was held the next year, in 1980, and many elections to come. It still influences thoughts and acts in the 21st century.

I'm speaking of the takeover of the American embassy in Iran on Nov. 4, 1979.

By comparison, I guess the world of 1979 seems quaint when stacked up against the world of today. In today's world, an American diplomat can be killed in an attack on a U.S. embassy, and many Americans won't even bat an eye. But, in 1979, the takeover of an American embassy was a shock to complacent Americans.

The only real interaction Americans had had with the Middle East was over the price of oil. Now, they were faced with political Islam, and they had no idea what to do.

Not unlike Barack Obama's experience with Benghazi, the Jimmy Carter administration was warned by the embassy in Tehran that radical Islamists would attack it. This warning came only weeks before the actual takeover. In the wake of the Islamic takeover, the American–supported shah of Iran fled to Mexico, where it was discovered that he was suffering from cancer. It was recommended that he be allowed into the United States for treatment.

The embassy warned Washington that it would be overrun by radical Islamists if the shah was allowed into the United States. Carter permitted the shah to be allowed into the country, and the embassy was taken over.

We may not know how Obama reacted to Benghazi until after he leaves office and writes his memoirs — if then. According to Carter, he agonized over the hostage crisis. "I would walk in the White House gardens early in the morning," Carter wrote in his memoirs, "and lie awake at night, trying to think of additional steps to gain their freedom without sacrificing the honor and security of our nation."

Carter did mention the warning in his memoirs, observing that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance told him in early October that diplomat Bruce Laingen was reporting that "local hostility toward the shah continues and that the augmented influence of the clerics might mean an even worse reaction than would have been the case a few months ago if we were to admit the shah — even for humanitarian reasons."

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One by one, Carter wrote, his foreign policy advisers sided with allowing the shah into the United States for medical treatment. "I was the lone holdout," Carter wrote. Eventually, though, he relented, permitting the shah into the country. Less than two weeks later, a group of Iranian students, believing that the move was part of a plot to restore the shah to power, stormed the U.S. embassy.

Nov. 4, 1979, was "a date I will never forget," Carter wrote. "The first week of November 1979 marked the beginning of the most difficult period of my life. The safety and well–being of the American hostages became a constant concern for me, no matter what other duties I was performing as president."

Nevertheless, he believed initially that "the Iranians would soon remove the attackers from the embassy compound and release our people. We and other nations had faced this kind of attack many times in the past but never, so far as we knew, had a host government failed to attempt to protect threatened diplomats."

Things were different this time, though. The hostages were held through the next year's presidential election and were not released until after Ronald Reagan, Carter's successor, had been sworn in. Iran insisted the captors had treated them well, and many Americans took solace in the belief that their countrymen did not suffer needlessly — but stories of beatings and torture eventually emerged.

Carter probably will be forever linked in the public's memory to the Iranian hostage crisis, just as Richard Nixon is linked to Watergate and Lyndon Johnson is linked to Vietnam. For many Americans, it summed up the feeling of powerlessness with which they were all too familiar.

President Carter — by that time former President Carter — flew to Germany to greet the hostages, who had been released within minutes of Ronald Reagan being sworn in as Carter's successor. Apparently, the hostages were divided over whether they held Carter responsible for their ordeal. When he greeted them, Carter hugged each one, and some let their arms hang at their sides, refusing to return Carter's hug.

It reminded me of the scene at the Democrats' convention the previous summer, when Carter brought everyone of note in the Democrat Party to the podium and shook each one's hand, even the ones with whom he had clashed, in a show of party unity. But Carter had to chase Ted Kennedy, the man who had challenged him in the primaries, around in a fruitless pursuit of the handshake he desired the most, the one that might reconcile him with disaffected Democrats.

All that was still in the future on this day in 1979. As I recall, the takeover of the embassy didn't really cause that much of a stir initially in the United States. Maybe that was because Americans just hadn't dealt with this kind of thing very much. Maybe they figured it was simply a matter of negotiating with the students who had taken over the embassy and that the hostages would be released in a day or two. That was how it usually worked out.

Not this time.

Why Do You Want to Be President?

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It was a very simple question, the kind of thing that is the very least that voters should know about anyone who seeks to lead the United States. Any voter can ask that question, and every voter deserves an answer to it. But Ted Kennedy, when asked that question on this day in 1979, stumbled through an obviously off–the–cuff response to the one question for which he should have had a definitive answer.

"Why do you want to be president?"

If there is such a thing as a softball question in presidential politics, that is it. After all, it didn't suggest that Kennedy should not have run — although I think the results from the 1980 Democrat primaries indicate that quite clearly (Carter received 51.13% of the vote in the primaries while Kennedy carried 37.58%). It was an uphill battle from the start. Incumbent presidents are seldom challenged for their party's renomination, and they usually prevail whether the challenge is serious or not. To succeed, Kennedy needed to be able to articulate a vision the way many Americans remembered his brother doing 20 years earlier.

Kennedy swung wildly when CBS' Roger Mudd asked him that question in an interview that was broadcast on this night in 1979 — and he missed with a rambling recitation of loosely linked talking points.

It inspired one of my favorite Doonesbury comic strips — in which an exchange between Kennedy and reporters was depicted. I don't remember now if the Kennedy of the comic strip was asked why he wanted to be president, or if he was asked about a more specific topic, but the answer was another rambling recitation. By the fourth frame of the strip, one of the reporters impatiently blurted out, "A verb, senator! We need a verb!"

There was more to it than the rambling answer, though. Kennedy had that kind of deer–caught–in–the–headlights look when Mudd asked him that question. How could he possibly have failed to prepare an answer for it? After all, he hadn't been asked to defend a bad, possibly embarrassing vote he cast in the Senate or some poor or reckless decision he had made, either professionally or personally. He hadn't even been asked about Chappaquiddick. He was merely asked why he wanted to be president. What did he want to accomplish? What was his vision for the nation?

If that isn't a softball pitch, what is?

It was an invitation to summon forth the Kennedy charisma, the soaring eloquence of "Ask not what your country can do for you." In hindsight, I believe that was the kind of thing Americans yearned for in 1979 and 1980. The country sought inspiration in 1980. Mudd's question tried to coax it from Kennedy.

It didn't even summon forth a grammatically correct sentence.

Attempting to Address a 'Crisis of Confidence'

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"I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

"The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence."

Jimmy Carter
July 15, 1979

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Sometimes it is difficult to ignore Mark Twain's still–relevant observation that history doesn't repeat itself — but it does rhyme.

Recently, Josh Lederman of the Associated Press compared Barack Obama's presidency to Jimmy Carter's when he delivered his famous "malaise" speech 35 years ago tomorrow.

As I observed five years ago, Carter never used the word malaise when he addressed the nation from the Oval Office. He spoke of a "crisis of confidence."

The Republicans used the word malaise, and it stuck. When I heard people speak of malaise, it sounded like they were describing the Carter administration, not the American people. That was an interesting spin, given that many people complained that Carter was blaming them for what was wrong.

People sneered at Carter as if he were spinning his wheels in a muddy ditch. I really got the impression that summer that the voters were concluding that they had to make a change in the White House in 1980. The guy who was in there didn't seem to get it.

And, with Obama, it is hard not to see parallels when, as Lederman writes, "both parties have essentially written off prospects for any major legislation for the remainder of Obama's presidency. Obama's attempts to circumvent Congress to get things done have drawn rebukes from the Supreme Court and a threatened lawsuit from the House, casting a bright light on the state of Washington dysfunction."

As Yogi Berra said, "It's like deja vu all over again."

This is what I think happened in 1979: Democrats couldn't believe the country would turn things over to the Republicans in the next election — less than six years after Nixon's resignation. Besides, the Republican front–runner, Ronald Reagan, would be nearly 70 by the time of the next election. Democrats either assumed — or persuaded themselves — that they would survive the 1980 elections. Many, including Carter, did not.

I've been observing American politics most of my life, and I don't fully understand the ebbs and flows of presidential popularity. It is truly a bewildering (yet fascinating) dynamic, this relationship the American people have with their presidents.

Initially, Carter's speech was a hit with the public. His message of austerity in energy consumption appeared to resonate at first, but public approval came crashing down within a few days after pundits sliced and diced it. Clearly, there was a backlash — but was it genuine or had it been manufactured?

Carter's speech, of course, was given long before the internet, even before cable was present in most American homes. There were no all–news networks and relatively few radio stations that carried straight news, let alone programs hosted by left– or right–wing ideologues. Many of the things that shape and direct the course of public opinion today did not exist in 1979.

I didn't pick up on it at the time, but many people who watched the speech seemed to feel Carter was blaming them for the energy crisis instead of trying to resolve the problem. I guess it didn't help when Carter said things like "In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close–knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self–indulgence and consumption."

That does seem a bit preachy, huh? I mean, he might as well have said, "You're greedy and self–centered." In many ways, I guess that was true, in some ways I guess it still is, but it's a truth that requires delicacy in the telling.

When I was growing up, I heard people who were there tell of the spirit of generosity and sacrifice that permeated Americans in the 1930s and 1940s. Maybe that's true, or maybe it was a case of folks remembering things the way they wanted to remember them and not the way they were; but if even a fraction of it was true, the Americans of that time were more generous than the Americans of the '70s and '80s — or, for that matter, the Americans of the 21st century.

Carter told people a harsh truth that many probably did not want to hear — that a way of life was at the heart of the problem — and Carter wasn't as diplomatic as he fancied himself to be. "We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose," Carter said.

It wasn't really surprising that, when Carter wrote his presidential memoirs a few years later, he focused most of his attention on his foreign policy record in office. Other than the 14 months–plus that he spent trying to get the hostages back from Iran, his foreign policy performance included triumphs like the Camp David Accords whereas his domestic influence was summed up in the public mind by the "malaise speech."

In the long run, it might not have been any better if people had remembered it as the "crisis of confidence." Neither that nor "malaise" is a rousing endorsement of a president's stewardship.

Thoughts on 'Malaise'

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Today is the 30th anniversary of the so–called "Malaise Speech" given by President Carter on July 15, 1979.

With unemployment approaching double digits nationally, there is probably no better time to revisit that speech.

It was ridiculed at the time by the Republicans, many of whom were still bitter over the justifiable impeachment proceedings that had forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency five years earlier. They dubbed it the "Malaise Speech," even though Carter never used the word "malaise." He spoke of a "crisis of confidence."

Gordon Stewart, Carter's deputy chief speechwriter at the time, reflects on that speech in today's New York Times.

He speaks from a perspective that Carter's critics never had, and he speaks the truth when he writes, "Speaking with rare force, with inflections flowing from meanings he felt deeply, Jimmy Carter called for the 'most massive peacetime commitment' in our history to develop alternative fuels."

I have to wonder — if the American people had listened to what he had to say, that the American way of life was setting us up for severe energy problems in the future and that we needed to start conserving and developing alternative energy sources, is there any doubt that we would be in a better position today?

Stewart writes that "[c]ontrary to later spin, the speech was extremely popular. The White House was flooded with positive calls. Viewers polled while watching found that the speech inspired them as it unfolded."

Yet, a year later, Carter had to fight Ted Kennedy for his party's nomination, then fought a losing battle with Ronald Reagan for the presidency itself.

"To this day, I don't entirely know why the speech came to be derided for a word that was in the air, but never once appeared in the text," Stewart writes. "Still, the 'malaise' label stuck: maybe because President Carter's cabinet shake–up a few days later wasted the political energy that had been focused on our energy problems; maybe because the administration's opponents attached it to the speech relentlessly; maybe because it was just too hard to compete with Ronald Reagan and his banner of limitless American consumption."

The years have proven President Carter to be correct. Instead of driving fuel–efficient vehicles, Americans started buying gas guzzlers again under Reagan and didn't stop until gas reached the $4/gallon level last summer. It wasn't entirely their fault. They went for "limitless American consumption" when it was offered as an alternative to sacrifice. They chose what appeared to be the easy way over the hard way.

American automakers saw a lot of easy profit potential in SUVs and monster trucks whereas fuel efficiency required a lot of long–term investment and deferred profits. So they promoted the sales of the SUVs and the monster trucks and treated fuel efficiency as an option instead of a necessity.

Now, if American automakers want to survive, they must double, triple, quadruple their research and development efforts. They must put fuel efficiency at the top of their list — ahead of creature comforts, oversized tires and cup holders.

And today, Americans really do face malaise — and it is far more severe than anything that was imagined by Carter's critics.

Astonishingly, there are people who still do not get it. They seem to feel that there is a limitless supply of fossil fuels beneath our feet or off our shores. And, if it isn't limitless, there is enough to last for their lifetimes, and that is all they care about.

Perhaps Jimmy Carter was the only one who foresaw the tragedy that awaited the American economy three decades later. More's the pity.