The challenges facing Jimmy Carter mirror those facing Biden

Forty-four years passed between the time Jimmy Carter left the presidency and the day he died.

Four decades seems like a long time – a record for a former US president – ​​yet many of the challenges facing America in 2024 are not very different from those that Carter faced, and sometimes succumbed to, in the late 1970s.

During the Carter years, the United States faced a crisis of confidence. Americans were grappling with economic turmoil at home and a host of challenges to US power abroad. Four decades later, the players and issues are strikingly familiar: the economy, the environment, Russia, Afghanistan, the Middle East. Years have passed, and leaders have changed, but challenges remain.

Carter celebrated the power of American diplomacy by brokering the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1978, but the glow of success was fleeting. The limits of American power were painfully clear during the Iranian hostage crisis that occurred a year later, after the capture of US embassy employees in Tehran.

It took more than 12 months of intense efforts – diplomatic and military – to free them. A sense of American impotence contributed to Carter's landslide election loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980, as the eventual release of prisoners came only hours after Carter left office.

The inability to shape global events of even the most powerful offices in the world continues to haunt US leaders. Current President Joe Biden's dose of this cold reality first came during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which brought down the curtain on two decades of futile American nation-building and saw the Taliban return to power.

More recently, Biden and his diplomatic team have proven unable to prevent the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 from spreading into a regional conflagration and a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Both Carter and Biden, who felt humbled by the regional powers that seemed superior to them in Iran and Afghanistan, also faced the regional ambitions of the world powers. Carter was criticized for his inappropriate response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and then was widely criticized for the move he took – ordering a boycott by American athletes of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Biden has had greater early success in confronting the invasion of Ukraine, uniting allies to support and supply Kiev's forces in resisting the Russian advance. But as the war continued, American resolve was tested. The prolonged bloody conflict turned Afghanistan into a cauldron of instability that ultimately gave birth to Al Qaeda and global jihad.

The lasting impact of the war in Ukraine could have deadly and unforeseen consequences, all of which could be laid at the feet of this president.

In the Middle East, Carter's victory at Camp David proved to be an incomplete achievement, as he succeeded in securing peace between Israel and Egypt but failed to resolve the Palestinian issue which, with the Gaza war, had once again become a source of urgent global concern. For more than a year, the war has been a constant reminder of the limits of American power — and Biden's.

The United States was unable to prevent the conflict from expanding into Lebanon, including, for the first time, direct hostilities between Iran and Israel. It seems that the latter, America's closest ally in the region, has repeatedly ignored Biden's advice and forged a more aggressive path on his own.

Biden has also had to contend with his tense relationship with a rising China, whose current standing in the world owes largely to Carter's decision to normalize US relations with China in 1979.

That watershed moment set a course for the country to become a major economic and military power, ultimately creating the geopolitical rivalry with the United States that Biden had to confront.

External crises tend to spill over into domestic affairs as well, and four decades ago Carter faced environmental and energy challenges, partly caused by unrest abroad.

While the current threat of global climate change is different from the oil embargo that Carter faced in the Middle East, many of his policy approaches — environmental conservation, the transition to renewable energy and government investment — served as the backbone of the environmental agenda that Biden helped shepherd from During Congress in 2013. 2022.

The specter of hyperinflation that the United States has faced recently also dates back to the Carter years. The spikes in consumer prices during the first two years of Biden's presidency, sparked by the shock of the global Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, served as reminders of the darkest days of the late 1970s.

The only major difference was that, in contrast to Carter's position, job growth remained strong, and the US economy continued to grow, with the exception of only one quarter. However, this fact may come as cold comfort to Biden, whose popularity has yet to recover from public anger linked to inflation.

Carter was also one of the first modern US presidents to deal with an issue that has become an undeniable political reality for each of his successors – the American public's lack of confidence in American government and institutions.

Carter described it in a July 1979 speech as a “crisis of confidence.”

“Our people are losing that faith, not just in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate arbiters and makers of our democracy,” he said.

Public confidence that his government would do the right thing at least “most of the time” was 34% at the start of his presidency and fell to 27% in March 1980, according to the Pew Research Center. This number has risen to more than 50% only once since the Carter era, in the month following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

It may have seemed for a time that the decline in public respect in the Carter years was a result of the immediate aftermath of Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal, when net approval numbers first fell into negative territory.

But the truth is that a lack of trust in government is now a fact of life in American politics. During Donald Trump's presidency, the percentage of the public who believed the government would do the right thing regularly registered in the teens. Biden was unable to reverse this trend during his time in office – a fact that enabled Trump to turn against the man who defeated him in his relentless march to return to the White House.

It is difficult to avoid comparisons between Carter and the last one-term president, Biden.

It's something two-time winner Trump calls for repeatedly. His political views crystallized in the 1970s and 1980s, and he sometimes referred to Carter as a way to seduce Democrats.

“I see everyone comparing Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter,” Trump wrote in one of his tweet-like press releases in 2021. “This seems to me to be very unfair to Jimmy Carter. Jimmy has mishandled crisis after crisis, but Biden has created crisis after crisis.”

Carter himself did not shut up about the 45th president, telling the Washington Post that Trump was a disaster “on human rights and taking care of people and treating people equally.”

To say the least, the two make an interesting contrast. Both were modern politicians who won their presidential terms against great odds. Both struggled with domestic politics in Washington.

Carter sought to serve in the White House with humility. He wore wool sweaters, carried his own luggage on Air Force One, and prohibited the playing of the presidential anthem “Hail to the President” when he entered the room. Trump seems to relish the pomp and trappings of power, from lavish Fourth of July celebrations to using Air Force One as the backdrop for his re-election rallies.

Then there is the post-presidential period – or in Trump’s case, the presidential interregnum. After losing re-election, Carter returned to his two-bedroom home in Plains, Georgia. He withdrew from domestic politics and worked for charities such as Habitat for Humanity. He founded the Carter Center, charged with combating global diseases, promoting human rights, and serving as an independent observer of democratic elections. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump spent the immediate post-presidency focused on discrediting his 2020 election defeat and setting the stage for his 2024 presidential campaign. His election victory and now imminent return to the White House was a plot that Carter never publicly considered, decisively closing the door behind him when He left his post.

Carter was only 56 years old when he left the White House, and his obituaries reflect his accomplishments after his time in office as much as they do during them. It is also a reflection of how America has changed over four decades – and how much it has not changed.