A bit, especially after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1978. The same sense of US impotence abroad with inflation raging at home. Carter wasn’t senile but he was a joke. In the midterm elections of 1978 the Republicans gained three seats in the Senate and fifteen in the House, and that was at a time when the Republican party was much weaker than it is now.
We didn’t have the same cultural craziness that we do today, but with abortion, feminism and homosexuality it was clear what was coming. No big tech censorship, but the three networks marched in lockstep and were pro-Democrat. Talk radio was local and tended to be nonpolitical. Newspapers were still of importance.
Until the year of the three Popes in 1978, the ongoing disaster that was the aftermath of Vatican II raged unabated.
I was twenty-three in 1980 and there was a great feeling that the wheels were coming off the country, which directly led to Reagan’s landslide victory in the fall. Bad enough to live through that period in my twenties, but having to do it again in my sixties, seems to be unwarranted in one life. May we have another Reagan to set things right again.
Go here to read the comments from the original twitter thread.
We did. The insanity escalated as could have been expected. It’s like pushing back against a bad prosecutor. What next? God is a wise Judge. He shall prevail. Somehow.
I was in my 49’s and life didn’t seem all that bad. Much better than now, in fact. One good thing (not perceived as such at the time) high interest rates made bond investments very profitable.
49–>40
I was 19 -remember Carter and having to drive 55, argh.. made me a Republican.
https://youtu.be/RvV3nn_de2k
Dr. Kurland is correct. Now is worse. I was under-30 and starting a career and family. And. all my family were with me. Now, they’re in Heaven.
Despite very high interest rates, if you had money in one of the new [at the time] bank insured deposit products, you earned a positive real [interest paid minus inflation] return. For many years now [from 2009 with a two year Get-Trump bump up 2017 and 2018] the Fed [financial fascism/repression] has kept rigged-market interest rates at near-zero.
Ergo, if you have money in a bank today you have a negative real return of 7%. In five years your bank deposit dollar would be worth $0.70.
In light of the coming DEPRESSION, keep your money in your mattress may be a way to go.
I was long out way before Carter. After VN and Carter, the Army’s morale was lower than whale excrement.
Plus, for Iran, the hugest World terrorist organization, you can thank Carter.
Carter’s parrots didn’t tell people driving 15 year old cars that can’t afford inflated gas to buy $60 EVs.
Don’t forget the Iranian hostage crisis, which was the icing on the crap filled cake of the Carter years. I was in high school for most of his term and remember gas reaching the unconscionably high price of $1 a gallon….
Not to mention the failed hostage rescue mission in April 1980 – that probably sealed his fate as far as reelection was concerned. The “America Held Hostage, Day X” countdown was as all pervasive as Ukraine war news is now.
My memory is that the entire decade felt as if every aspect of American society were falling apart. My mother (and contemporaries of my older siblings) identified 1966 as the year they began to have that feeling.
Carter himself was a tiresome and demoralizing figure and it was under his aegis that the currency erosion got notably worse. His policy instincts, however, were in quality well above the median of the Democratic Party of the time and in regard to microeconomic questions better than Nixon’s or Ford’s.
Carter was clean as a hound’s tooth and his sons were technicians employed by commercial companies and kept their names out of the papers and their snouts out of the graft trough (though it wouldn’t surprise me to discover employing them was advantageous to landing government contracts); the most embarrassing thing about them is the number of divorce proceedings they’ve been through over the years (at least three, I think). Carter’s brother was a PR problem who allowed himself to be used by influence peddlers; it’s indicative of the spirit of that age that his activities provoked an inquiry by congressional committees controlled by Democrats and that Jimmy Carter’s attorney-general told the President nothing about the legal trouble his brother was courting.
Carter dithered for four years about the inflation, eventually appointing the capable and sensible Paul Volcker to run the Federal Reserve, then insisting he not do anything to actually attack the problem. Reagan met with Volcker on taking office and told him he had free rein.
Right now, the behavior of Jerome Powell and the other Trump appointees on the Federal Reserve Board is most puzzling.
One big difference is the military leadership and its civilian auxilliary. Neither Harold Brown nor the two men who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs were trying to wreck the military. As for the diplomats, Blinken, Sullivan, and Malley strike me as sinister in a way Cyrus Vance, Zbigneiw Brzezinski, and Robert Pastor never did.
Note, the police and the courts and the prison system seemed quite hopeless at the time. I don’t recall that liberals were using them as a political weapon.
One other thing. The 1970s may have been the time in our history when vote fraud was least prevalent and least significant. Mayor Daley was running cleaner elections than we have now.
No big tech censorship, but the three networks marched in lockstep and were pro-Democrat.
Mostly through story selection and the presentation of alternatives. Note, liberal journalists of that era had some critical distance from the Democratic Party and a residual sense of professionalism. Also, you had prominent journalists who weren’t aligned with either party – Mike Wallace, Ted Koppel, Robert MacNeill, and Jim Lehrer.
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/03/11/amendments-by-acclamation-democrats-move-to-simply-declare-the-equal-rights-amendment-as-ratified/
Another leftover from the Carter era. When Democrats lose, they rewrite the rules post-hoc. This is what you get when intellectual life is conducted in a matrix bereft of integrity. The Archivist is an Obama appointee and was employed at Duke, so suspect; it would be agreeable if, like Prof. Turley, he’s old school enough to tell Carolyn Moloney to pound sand.
One other problem. Excess public sector borrowing was a problem during the 1970s, but a modest problem compared to what it is today. Carter was more resistant to budget deficits than was the Democratic caucus in Congress. As we speak, all segments of the Democratic Party and the business careerist segment of the Republican Party have cast aside restraints. Trump was a problem in re fiscal policy as well.
Note, public sector borrowing was running at 4.8% of gdp during the last quarter of 2019 and was running at 9.6% the 3d quarter of 2021. The first datum was inexcusable given the context and the latter is horrifying, the sort of figure you should see during a general mobilization or a banking crisis. Note, state and local politicians do not behave this way. Our central government is run by figures who are just gross and are doing horrible things to the political economy.
Yeah, it’s the 70s all over again,
….except we had good music then.
As others pojnt out, times were better anyway.
JC appeared to have actually been elected. He was not thought to be a pedophile. He didn’t have drug addicted kids. He was a war vet. He didn’t have dementia. He didn’t plagiarize speeches. He did not perform homo weddings.
Amazing how the bar can always go lower.
Am I the only one not buying this “Jimmy Carter was just a bad president but a good man” schtick? How could he have not known that his policies he made no effort to reverse were harming the country? How can a president who does what Carter did be called a good man? You hear this same claptrap being spewed about Biden by republicans! After what Biden did to Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork!
Am I the only one not buying this “Jimmy Carter was just a bad president but a good man” schtick?
I have always thought Carter is a petty little mean man. A good man can have bad polities as an elected leader, but Carter has always embraced the role of the Pharisee, chastising those who did not hail him as some sort of great leader.
Art Deco is right,
Only this time the oil shock is self-inflicted.
One of the many Xerox images of the ’70’s is the regime’s Shaggy [Jamaica reggae fusion singer] act on inflation: “It wasn’t me!”
One of the 1970’s Fed capos, Wm. McChesney Martin, blamed everything except monetary excesses for 1970’s inflation. The real causes were low rates, easy money, and [for that era] massive government spending. Same same now.
You’d think they’d try to be more creative in the fabrications.
The people that brought on this mess don’t know how to, or will not, fix it.
Carter appointed Volcker Fed Chair who beat 1970’s inflation over years with very high rates and two recessions.
According to Rick Atkinson’s last WWII ETO book, WWII cost $4 trillion in 2012 dollars. Since March 2020, the US added $6.8 trillion to the national debt and $4.5 trillion in Fed money printing. That’s $11 trillion in less than two years. Fun fact. Economists talk about multipliers. Since Feb 2020 US GDP rose $2.5 trillion; the national debt rose $6.8 trillion.
And, they insist, “It wasn’t me!”