How The Democrats Lost Dixie, Part 3: The Obstacles Carter Faced As President - And The Ones He Put On Himself

 

In addition to the problems Carter faced as he took office listed in the previous article he faced two other issues that would deeply hurt his administration: one from within his own party and one that would have no doubt damaged any President who tried to handle it.

The first problem was the identity crisis that the Democratic Party was facing some of which is unaware of at the time and some of which it ignored. That problem was one that Carter was actually aware of during his run for the nomination and the Presidency but it was one most Congressional Democrats had basically ignored. And that was that the liberal coalition that had led the Democratic party to immense success from the time of FDR's New Deal to LBJ's landslide victory had shattered with the Vietnam War.

In large part that division was because a new part  of that coalition had decided to redefine what liberalism was. As Theodore White expressed in The Making of the President 1972:

From the founding of this country on, the central instinct and pride of the American liberal has been to keep opportunity for individuals. The wars of American liberals…have reflected a doctrine that is more than politics, a doctrine which in essence is the culture of the nation: No man must be locked into or hammered into a category from which he has no opportunity to escape. He must not be locked in by the color of his skin or his racial genes; he must not be locked in by lack of educational opportunity; he must not be locked in by birth, or parentage, or age or poverty.

But as White pointed out the 1960s had convinced American liberals "that government is the chief instrument of action and morality; that the government must move to its moral goals…and further what the government did could be measured by quantifiable results…However much the real world might fear liberal programs, it must submit because programs were morality, it must submit, even after programs had gone wrong in visible ways. (italics mine)

White wrote this, I should mention, in 1973. No self-proclaimed liberal would have dared even question this as anything but doctrine even a few years later. White also pointed out that the liberal champion of the Black Revolution – the issue which was costing the Democrats the South. White doesn't deal with the racial issues of the time which were becoming part of the problem but much of which he discusses is the formation of identity politics and the coalition that made up the Democratic party. McGovern had done everything in his power to champion this coalition and it had won him the Democratic nomination – and led to the biggest electoral defeat for the party in its history.

Because the events of Watergate had undone Nixon's Presidency so incredibly the party and the members of the progressive coalition began to rewrite history almost immediately. They argued that Nixon only won because of corruption and trickery even though as I said in the introduction to this series Nixon had essentially guaranteed himself a landslide after Wallace's assassination and McGovern's own incompetence as a candidate. It is understandable they might have misread the signs of that given how shockingly Nixon's administration came and unraveled but if nothing else the way the primaries of both parties in 1976 had played out should have been a sign to the Democrats that the American people were no longer satisfied with the old guard liberal values. The party would take a long time reaching that conclusion and it remains unclear if the left wing  ever accepted it even now.

The bigger problem was one that had been going on during the decade as a whole and that was that the prosperity of the 1960s  - which had been one of the main reasons so much of the liberal ideas were even possible – had come to an end well before Carter's administration.

 Much of the blame for this in revisionist progressive thinking is that the roots of our today's problems began with Ronald Reagan, the left's boogeyman. In truth those problem had been going on well before he began his first serious run for the Presidency in 1976. Indeed as White illustrated those problems were going on well before Nixon began his campaign for reelection.

In May of 1970 the policies of Nixon had led the Dow Jones to fall to an eight year low and for the first time unemployment and inflation was going up simultaneously. Unemployment was at 6 percent in 1970. In 1971, the nation was facing a trade deficit for the first time in the 20^th century. After a historic meeting of his cabinet on August 15^th of that year he took America off the gold standard and imposed wage and price controls – both of which would put him at odds with the far right of his own party. That action Nixon would later say was necessary or the dollar would be worthless.

It was the start of a decade full of financial problems, forced on them by oil embargos from the Middle East as well as conflict that led to increasing actions to ration gas. Ford was thrown into the deep end on this when he came into office and was unable to come up with more than a campaign slogan: "Whip Inflation Now' or WIN. It didn't help. Because of his inability to handle these hard times adequately he would face a challenge from Reagan he was barely able to overcome and lost to Carter narrowly in the fall.

Carter had an awareness of both these issues when he came into office, something that took a long time for even his Vice President Walter Mondale to accept. From the start of his administration Carter was concerned with keeping inflation in check. "The party whose coalition was forged during depression and sustained by decades of economic outlook was now grappling with the threat posed by slower growth and rising inflation." Mondale admitted with hindsight: "The world had changed and that Carter more than any other Democrat, acknowledged the fiscal realities and congressional Democrats did not."

All of this could be blamed on the Democratic Congress' own view of the world. However, much of the blame must be laid at Carter himself. Considering the majorities he had in both houses if he had given proper leadership they might well have been willing to listen. But from the start Carter seemed unwilling or incapable of providing it. Carter never felt it necessary to build a strong relationship with Congress. As Ira Shapiro would illustrate in his book The Last Great Senate:

"During the transition, president elect Carter invited a number of leading Democrats to Plains to discuss administration appointments. Those invited came eagerly, anxious to begin forming the relationships to help Carter govern successfully. They came back stunned.

It would become clear soon enough, the new president disliked political small talk, disliked politicians and liked politics least of all. He thought that the interest groups who had worked to elect him were selfishly pursuing their own narrow agendas at the expense of the national interest. He saw members of Congress as either complete captives of the interest groups or too quick to bend to their views. The only politician he had faith in was Jimmy Carter."

Carter would have several meetings immersing himself in the issues, reading briefings meeting with his transition staff who became his key advisers. Seldom was Congress invited. Carter would begin his program by offering an economic stimulus package to give the economy a moderate and hopefully non-inflationary bounce, The most notable feature of the program was a tax rebate of $50 per taxpayer and those on social security. When he announced this in a private meeting three days before he was sworn in Senate Democrats were blindsided and struggled to support a proposal many thought strange.

Then on February 2^nd Carter delivered his first televised address (in a sweater and tie) in which he laid forth his new proposal for an energy program that included the creation of the Department of Energy. He had not mentioned this at any point during the campaign and had not consulted anyone in Capitol Hill about it before the address. Carter had essentially foisted an agenda on Congress with no warning and that was going to be difficult to accomplish.

The rebate led to major issue and opposition spread even among Senate Democrats. Carter was advised by Senators such as Texas' Lloyd Bentsen to back away from it on April 11^th. Instead the administration doubled down  - and then just three days later abandoned the program altogether. This infuriated many Senate Democrats, most notably Maine's Edmund Muskie who called Carter's decision a 'disappointment and a breach of promise to the people'.

Much of this was due to the layout of Carter's approach to governing. As governor he'd refused to trade favors or cajole legislators, having meetings after meeting with lawmakers trying to persuade them of his plan. If that failed, he sought primarily to shame legislators into supporting it. The process of going over legislators heads for policy was very common to that of Woodrow Wilson's approach to governing – and it was that exactly superiority that eventually led to the collapse of support for the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations with Congress after the armistice.

Carter had these same flaws. He could not or would not understand that sending a congressman a set of presidential cuff links or taking them on Air Force One during a trip to their state was worth more than rational argument to support his policies. He would demonstrate throughout his administration he had no interest in granting 'pork' for favors to get votes as well. And he overestimated his ability to steamroll Congress. Carter was fundamentally a loner.

Most administration have a chief of staff to smooth these things over but Carter had never appointed one. The majority of the people who had audiences with were Hamilton Jordan and his fellow staff members but they never came up with a cohesive plan for a day to day schedule. Carter had run as an outsider but he seemed determined to govern as one. He viewed Congress – including the 118 representatives who had been elected in 1974 and 1976 – as all part of the Washington establishment. The only member of his staff who showed that respect was Bert Lance  but after a financial scandal forced him to resign, no one was there to take his place. And after Lance left in September of 1977, with the media against him his approval numbers began to tank. After that Congress began to turn against him and he never really won them back.

Carter's administration, as was related in numerous books afterwards, did manage significant accomplishments in foreign and domestic policy. The foreign policy successes – relinquishing the Panama Canal from under American control, the Camp David Accords – are well known. But there were significant domestic achievements. The establishment of the Department of Energy did happen under Carter's watch as did the bailing out of New York City. There was also a successful bailout of Chrysler (foreseeing later bailouts of the auto industry in the 21^st century) and the establishment of Alaska lands bill.

However much of these accomplishments could not have been achieved without the efforts of Congress, particularly in the Senate. Much of the help came from Senators Carter had defeated for the Democratic nomination such as Henry Jackson, Birch Bayh and Frank Church as well as those who had floated challenges but had gotten out before the primaries such as Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois, Lloyd Bentsen of Texas and Robert Byrd who became majority leader under Carter. He was also aided by men who would attempt to run against him in 1980 such as Robert Dole and Howard Baker.

By and large however Carter rarely gravitated towards these men, preferring the company of the southern conservatives of which he had been a part of in the Senate. This was understandable, particularly as Carter had picked up long before these liberal titans of the party had, about how America was moving more to the right in both parties.

However by taking on Carter's agenda the majority of these Senators were facing the fact that there own states were becoming more conservative. The term 'red state Democrat' would not come into exist until this century but by 1976 the majority of these Senators as well as so many others such as George McGovern and Thomas Eagleton (the Democratic ticket in 1972) were becoming aware of how precarious their positions were. And with Carter refusing to give the kind of pork that could help them back home as a quid pro quo, their positions were becoming increasingly precarious.

A sign of the problems to come came in the 1978 midterms While the losses were not bad compared to the house, the Democrats did lose three seats in the Senate. It was balanced that three major Republican incumbents lost to Democrats, Paul Tsongas in Massachusetts, Carl Levin in Michigan and Bill Bradley in New Jersey. Mostly the south still held with one critical exception.

James Eastland retired that year and the Democratic challenger Maurice Dantin was challenged by an African-American independent, James Charles Evers, the older brother of the assassinated Medgar Evers and the first African-American mayor in Mississippi since Reconstruction. Evers had already run for governor and failed he ran as an independent. He would finish in third with 24 percent of the vote, almost certainly syphoning off votes that would have gone to Dantin who received thirty-two percent. As a result Thad Cochran became the first Republican to win the Senate in Mississippi since Reconstruction. It was the first time the presence of a minority candidate would cost the Democrats in the Deep South. It would not be the last.

In the next article I will deal with the circumstances that led to Ted Kennedy's decision to challenge Carter for the Democratic nomination (and why they were misunderstood then and now) and how the battle broke the party in ways we are still feeling the consequences of to this day.