The Carter-Reagan Election And Its Parallels To Obama-Romney

In this History video commentary, I discuss the unbelievable similarities between this year’s presidential race and that of 1980. Tune in!

Quick transcript:

The similarities between this year's presidential race and that of 1980 are unbelievable, and they're getting stronger by the minute. So let's talk a little about what happened in 1980, because I think it's very instructive.
Remember what things were like in 1980: the US was just at the "peak" of inflation, prices were going up by 15, 17% per year. Literally, workers were getting pay raises throughout the year, to help them with inflation. The Federal Reserve board, under Paul Volker, decided that unless inflation was to become a permanent part of America, destroying our savings and destroying our currency, it had to stop... and he had the courage to raise interest rates. Not to five, or six, or seven, but to 20 percent. The result was that the economy completely dropped dead. It stopped growing; unemployment soared, inflation remained high - for the moment, about to come down - and interest rates were high. We had 20% interest rates, 14% inflation, and 8, 9, 10, 11% unemployment. It was absolutely an economic catastrophe.
And then, on top of that, our embassy staff, and students, and marines, were held hostage in the Iranian embassy for over 400 days, by the ayatollah and his minions, and it was a daily humiliation of the United States. And when Carter sent a rescue mission, he sent, like, three helicopters, and one crashed and the others turned back, and it was absolutely a ludicrous, pathetic attempt to rescue them, never got anywheres near the hostages.
So, you figured Jimmy Carter's a dead duck. On top of that he had a tough primary against Ted Kennedy; almost didn't win the nomination. So you figure, Carter's... horse... meat... he's meat, you know he's gonna lose.
But that didn't happen, because Carter's campaign was based on scaring people about Ronald Reagan. Now we look back on Reagan, and we see the success that he enjoyed, but back then the role model for Ronald Reagan was Barry Goldwater, who had run in 1964, and Johnson had defeated him because of the fear of nuclear war. Johnson had an ad, produced by Tony Schwartz, of a little girl, picking petals off a daisy, saying "he loves me, he loves me not," and then, all of a sudden, it becomes a countdown, "ten, nine, eight, seven six..." and it gets to zero, and an atomic bomb explodes. And as the mushroom cloud grows, Johnson, the Democratic candidate, said "Those are the stakes... either we must love each other, or go into the darkness together, and perish." That was... never mentioned Goldwater's name, but obviously was a slap at Goldwater, who said he would favor using nuclear weapons in Viet Nam... he claimed to defoliate the trees, but still... using "The Bomb."
And people were scared to death of Goldwater, and Johnson won an overwhelming landslide... and Ronald Reagan seemed just cut in the Barry Goldwater model. He had strongly supported Goldwater, he had done speaches for him... and everybody saw Reagan as just another crazy right-wing extremist.
And Carter succeeded in vilifying him, in just the same way - although not over the same issues - that Obama has been vilifying Romney. And, it showed in the polls: throughout September, and October, Carter led. And on October 27th, Carter was at 45% of the vote, Reagan 39%. Then, immediately after that, they had their first - and only - debate. And in that debate, everybody saw the Ronald Reagan you and I know, and have come to know and love over the decades. A nice, kind, common-sense, witty, moderate, reasonable guy... with a conservative philosophy that he explained brilliantly.
And we saw that he wasn't this monster that Jimmy Carter was making him out to be. Goldwater used to love to say things to drive people crazy. Everyone called him "an extremist." So in his convention speech, he said "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," almost designed to alienate the voters. At one point, he said they should saw off the East Coast, and let it float out to sea.
But Reagan wasn't like that, and it became evident that he wasn't like that in the debate. Well, the transformation was amazing. Carter went from a six-point lead, to losing by three points on November third, to - ultimately - a nine point defeat on election day. So he literally... a "flip" of fifteen point in about ten days.
And that's really what you're seeing now, in the Romney-Obama campaign. Whenever an incumbant vilifies the challenger, and then lets him face them in a debate, and you see that the challenger is not the monster he's been depicted as... and the incumbent's regime is admittedly a total failure... then, the incumbent has no place left to go.
He can't go back and say "don't believe your own eyes when you see what Mitt Romney's like, believe my negative ads." And, I think that in 1980, that was precisely the conundrum that Carter found himself in, and he lost the election. And I think history now is very much repeating itself. I think that the shift that's begun to take place as a result of Romney's first debate and second debate victories, I think will continue, and ultimately will result in a resounding Romney victory just as Ronald Reagan won by a resounding victory, in similar circumstances, in 1980.
Thanks very much for watching.

Note Mr. Morris' use of the word "regime" in the next-to-last paragraph. Kind of funny.

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