1976 was a great year for a 13 year old boy living in central Georgia. It was hot. The creek was cool. Girls were less weird and more pretty. My friends and I were within walking distance of the 7-11. “Now-Laters†and a Cherry Coke Icee were the treasures of choice if we could get enough change together or beg a dollar from mom.
That Bicentennial Year had both optimism looking back and trepidation looking forward. Where were we going as a country, as a people? Fresh wounds from Vietnam, the Cold War, Watergate, Agnew’s resignation, Nixon’s resignation, inflation and recession, everything had a feel of uncertainty.
I was a little young to grasp it all, but I knew one thing: the peanut farmer had the answer. His grin, his southern drawl, his optimism were infectious. The thrust of Carter’s campaign was the reorganization of government (i.e. change). He attacked the status quo and offered a semi-religious healing for the nation’s wounds. Carter became the front-runner early on by winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. One of his strategies was to get into regions ahead of other candidates. He traveled thousands of miles and delivered hundreds of speeches.
The media discovered and promoted Carter. As Lawrence Shoup noted in his 1980 book The Carter Presidency and Beyond: “What Carter had that his opponents did not was the acceptance and support of elite sectors of the mass communications media. It was their favorable coverage of Carter and his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls. This helped Carter win key primary election victories, enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to President-elect in the short space of 9 months.”
Unfortunately for our nation, the change and optimism of the man from Plains did not translate into Presidential success. Energy crises both real and perceived were responded to by calls for conservation, lowering thermostats and wearing sweaters. Government borrowing shot up, “stagflation†set in… the economy suffered double-digit inflation, very high interest rates, oil shortages, high unemployment and slow economic growth. Productivity declined and the federal budget deficit ballooned.
Fortunately this story had a happy ending that can be described in three words: Ronald Wilson Reagan.
That 13 year old boy has learned a lot through the years. I pray for Barak Obama and I pray for this great nation, may God bless. I won’t judge President-Elect Obama before his term even begins, but I can’t help but feel that I‘ve seen this show before. It’s like 1976 all over again.
