Carter vs. Reagan
The 1970s in America were a strange time - it was like the Technicolor excesses of the previous psychedelic decade had gone sour like spoiled milk, then reduced to sepia-toned chasms of autumnal despair. Which is a fancy way of saying that it sucked as a decade to grow up in. Sure, there were tons of fast-food places to eat at (and the corresponding litter cluttering the highways), and plenty of great rock-n-roll (along with its vampiric other-counterpart, disco).
But there was this ghost in the room, especially as the decade wore on. And it’s name was Vietnam. Dressed in camo fatigues and armed with an M-16 rifle, the specter would sputter blurry recollections about burned-out huts in the jungle, or good-time girls leaning against beaded-curtained doorways in a now-forgotten place called Saigon. As a kid like I was then, you got the impression that Vietnam wasn’t simply a war America, land of the Big Mac AND the Super Bowl, lost - it was this middle finger pointed at the nation’s jugular, it’s own Shakespearian accusatory figure casting a curse on the country that had led down such a thorny path paved with Bouncing Betties and MIAs.
Ultimately, it was Vietnam that spawned the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Now, when I talk about Carter I’m not talking about his politics or religious beliefs or any of that - I’m talking about Carter as a cultural figure. See, the problem the former governor of Georgia ran into when he took on the top job was that he was not only following one of the most deeply-hated men in American history in that office (a man who was proud to call himself a Dick); he also had to heal a nation that had just gotten its head handed to it by a peasant army half-a-world away. Nobody in America could deal with that reality. Nonetheless, Carter tried to make the country face its fears.
It didn’t go well.
And I think that’s why he folded like a house of cards in the face of the political assault that was the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was everything Carter wasn’t - well-dressed, perfect hair, practiced way of speaking that came from being part of the old Star System in Hollywood. And he’d been governor of California, back when that really meant something. All Jimmy Carter could point to during his presidency was a peace deal between Israel and Egypt, the significance of which was muted by the numbing effect of the Iran hostage crisis. THAT thing was a slow IV drip of cyanide into Carter’s time in office - the longer the hostages stewed in Tehran, the more the American president appeared weak and ineffectual. Impotent even.
And so, Reagan beat him in 1980. Not long after that, Iran released the hostages; probably a coincidence, in retrospect.
But that election, that year of 1980, was a real tipping point. It was the moment America gave up its fascination with browns and oranges, with glitter balls and prowling land-yacht cars, and went full-tilt Red, White, and Blue.
The die was cast in a way that still affects how we live; it was a moment that’s had an extended shelf life, for good or ill.
