How Jimmy Carter won election
Ron Faucheux
When Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for president, he was viewed as such a long shot that his home state’s major newspaper headlined the story, “Jimmy Carter is running for WHAT?”
While the deeply religious Carter is remembered as a great humanitarian for the good works of his lengthy 42-year post-presidency, the brilliance of his 1976 presidential campaign is largely forgotten. The reform impulse of his White House tenure is also often discounted. Carter’s big reelection defeat in 1980 (he was the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose a second term), and the troubles he faced as president, have overwhelmed memory of these efforts.
Few remember that Carter’s first campaign for president was a masterpiece of messaging and image-building. He understood the public mood and knew how to play on the bitter discontent stirred by Vietnam and Watergate. He offered the nation a breath of fresh air. The former Georgia governor positioned himself as a peanut farmer, far removed from Washington corruption and imperiousness. He “knows what it’s like to make a living,” his ads said. He even highlighted that he was not a lawyer. His platform was reform. He stressed competence, making government open, efficient, and economical.
Carter proposed a Sunshine Law, zero-based budgeting, welfare reform, and reducing federal agencies from 1,900 to 200. Civil service overhaul, something few modern presidents have done much about, would be a centerpiece of his agenda. He hit the right populist tone and reform notes, promising to make government “as good as the American people.”
The 1976 campaign had a long roster of Democratic candidates. Carter’s lucky break — most winning candidates have one — was that better-known Democrats, from Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts to New York Mayor John Lindsay to Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie, decided not to run.
Early polls showed Carter with a measly 2%. Nevertheless, he persisted.
In the crucial Florida primary, he defeated Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace. It was a turning point for the Democratic Party. Wallace’s “Send them a message” slogan lost out to Carter’s “Send them a president.” Carter’s win brought an end to Dixiecrat politics; it also made him the nomination front-runner.
Carter nabbed the Democratic nomination and went on to defeat Republican President Gerald Ford in November. He carried every Southern state except Virginia, winning strong support from white evangelicals as well as black Democrats. He was the last Democrat to carry a majority of the nation’s counties.
To show how politics have changed, Carter lost California, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont — states now solidly in the Democratic camp.
As president, Carter called for “government by partnership” instead of “government by partisanship.” He was the first Democratic president since the New Deal to question the size and scope of the federal government; he was also the first president since Grover Cleveland to make reform his mission.
But Carter’s reform agenda was sidetracked by pressing issues such as the energy crisis, rising interest rates, negotiating peace in the Middle East, countering Soviet expansion, and passing the Panama Canal Treaty. During his last year, he pushed a major defense buildup and managed the long, draining Iranian hostage crisis.
He was often blocked by members of his own party. Despite Carter’s support of education and healthcare programs, his righteous reluctance to champion more government activism infuriated Democratic liberals. It led to Ted Kennedy’s injurious opposition in the 1980 primaries.
This brings up a personal story.
When I was a state legislator, I had the chance to ride with President Carter from downtown New Orleans to the airport. He and I discussed the changing Democratic Party. In response to my question about his moving to the left at the 1976 convention, he told me that powerful liberal forces, including major unions, threatened to support Republican Gerald Ford over him if he didn’t make such a move. He said, with a note of melancholy, that he had no choice.
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The implications of Jimmy Carter’s victories and defeats live on; neither should be forgotten.
Ron Faucheux is a nonpartisan political analyst, pollster, and writer. He wrote Running for Office and publishes LunchtimePolitics.com, a nationwide newsletter on polls and public opinion.