The Presidential Campaign of 1976

Crouse, Eric R.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_5

Eric R. Crouse²

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Abstract

This chapter follows the 1976 presidential race. Gerald Ford failed to woo the support of many conservatives and almost lost the nomination to Ronald Reagan. It explains Jimmy Carter’s rise to defeat better-known Democrats for the nomination and his victory over Ford. Although voters gave Carter no rousing endorsement, the Democratic Party was set to fix the economy for the American people who expected the government to have solutions to ensure healthy economic times.

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Notes

1.
Tip O’Neill with William Novak, Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O’Neill (New York: Random House, 1987), 299–300.
2.
Jimmy Carter, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 110. Bob Woodward, Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 41.
3.
Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964–1980 (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 398.
4.
Robert M. Collins, Transforming America: Politics and Culture in the Reagan Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 30–31. Paul Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (New York: HarperPerennial, 2004), 42.
5.
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, The Reagan Revolution (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981), 86.
6.
Dinesh D’Souza, Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 52.
7.
Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), 4.
8.
D’Souza, Ronald Reagan, 67.
9.
Collins, Transforming America, 42–43.
10.
Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge, The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 311.
11.
Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: An American Life (New York: Pocket Books, 1990), 200.
12.
Ibid., 20–21.
13.
Bob Colacello, Ronnie & Nancy: Their Path to the White House, 1911 to 1980 (New York: Warner Books, 2004), 431.
14.
Kiron Skinner et al., eds. Reagan in His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America (New York: Touchstone, 2002).
15.
Ibid., 255–256.
16.
Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge, 538.
17.
Reagan, Ronald Reagan, 200–201.
18.
Milton Friedman, “A Tale of Two Governors,” Newsweek, March 1, 1976, 71.
19.
Reagan, Ronald Reagan, 201.
20.
Jules Witcover, Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972–1976 (New York: Viking Press, 1977), 376–377.
21.
Ibid., 378–379. Also, see Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge, 595–596, and Martin Schram, Running for President 1976: The Carter Campaign (New York: Stein and Day, 1977), 227.
22.
Witcover, Marathon, 380, 382, 384.
23.
Ibid., 383, 385, 387.
24.
Schram, Running for President 1976, 228.
25.
Reagan, Ronald Reagan, 201.
26.
Martin Anderson, Revolution (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 41.
27.
Colacello, Ronnie & Nancy, 437–438.
28.
Anderson, Revolution, 42–45.
29.
Colacello, Ronnie & Nancy, 451–452.
30.
Quoted in Colacello, Ronnie & Nancy, 454.
31.
Quoted in Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge, 794.
32.
Reagan, Ronald Reagan, 202.
33.
O’Neill, Man of the House, 300.
34.
On southern liberalism, see Donald Cunnigen, “Jimmy Carter as Spokesman of Southern Liberalism,” in The Presidency and Domestic Policies of Jimmy Carter, eds. Herbert D. Rosenbaum and Alexej Ugrinsky (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994): 45–56.
35.
Fred I. Greenstein, Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to George W. Bush, Second Edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 129–132.
36.
Burton I. Kaufmann and Scott Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr., Second Edition, Revised (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 10.
37.
Jimmy Carter, Why Not the Best? (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1975), 9, 99, 111.
38.
Ibid., 11, 131, 152.
39.
Ibid., 146–147, 151.
40.
Leo P. Ribuffo, “Jimmy Carter and the Selling of the President, 1976–1980,” in The Presidency and Domestic Policies of Jimmy Carter, 145.
41.
Kenneth W. Thompson, ed. The Carter Presidency: Fourteen Intimate Perspectives of Jimmy Carter (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1990), 22–23. Patrick Anderson, Electing Jimmy Carter: The Campaign of 1976 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), 2, 67. Former Carter speech writer, Anderson presents a candid insider’s perspective on key people of the Carter campaign of 1976.
42.
Thompson, ed., The Carter Presidency, 53.
43.
Sanford J. Ungar, “How Jimmy Carter Does It,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1976, 31.
44.
Anderson, Electing Jimmy Carter, 68.
45.
Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1995), 43.
46.
Chris Hedges, “It’s Back to School for a Beaten Political Warrior,” New York Times, January 27, 2005: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/nyregion/its-back-to-school-for-a-beaten-political-warrior.html?mcubz=0 (accessed September 12, 2017).
47.
Witcover, Marathon, 319–325.
48.
Ibid., 320–324. A special assistant to President Carter writes of the irreverence, drinking, and profanities of the Carter staff during the campaign, behavior at odds with Carter’s religious image. See Peter G. Bourne, Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography from Plains to Postpresidency (New York: A Lisa Drew Book/Scribner, 1997), 315–316.
49.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Journals 1952–2000, eds. Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), 406–407, 415.
50.
Ibid., 412–413.
51.
Charles Mohr, “Carter and His Audiences,” New York Times, June 2, 1976, A20.
52.
Schlesinger, Jr. Journals 1952–2000, 415. For example, on July 13, 1976, Schlesinger had dinner with Ted Kennedy, Candice Bergen, and other luminaries.
53.
Ibid., 408–409.
54.
Ibid., 415.
55.
Ibid., 416, 419.
56.
Ibid., 420–422.
57.
Michael Novak, Writing from Left to Right: My Journey from Liberal to Conservative (New York: Image, 2013), 171.
58.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earle Carter Jr., 15.
59.
William E. Simon, A Time for Truth (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1978), 166.
60.
Bourne, Jimmy Carter, 317.
61.
Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), 619.
62.
Greenstein, Presidential Difference, 133.
63.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earle Carter Jr., 15–16.
64.
Schram, Running for President 1976, 300–301.
65.
Quoted in Schram, Running for President 1976, 303–305.
66.
Carter, A Full Life, 117.
67.
Schram, Running for President 1976, 306.
68.
Thompson, ed., The Carter Presidency, 21–22.
69.
Witcover, Marathon, 524–525, 529.
70.
Ibid., 539.
71.
W. Carl Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy: Policy in an Age of Limits (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 53–56.
72.
Ken Auletta, The Streets Were Paved with Gold (New York: Random House, 1979), 130–131.
73.
Leo P. Ribuffo, “Jimmy Carter and the Selling of the President, 1976–1980,” 146.
74.
Carter, Keeping Faith, 21, 74, 89.
75.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 218.
76.
Jeff Bloodworth, “‘The Program for Better Jobs and Income’: Welfare Reform, Liberalism, and the Failed Presidency of Jimmy Carter,” International Social Science Review, 82, nos. 3–4 (2006): 136–137.
77.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 31–32.
78.
Ibid., 33. Carter explained: “I didn’t approve of it the way it was originally written.” Advice from various academic economists was that the bill could bring double-digit inflation.
79.
Quoted in Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 36.
80.
Robert L. Heilbroner, “Middle-Class Myths, Middle-Class Realities,” Atlantic Monthly, October 1976, 40.
81.
Milton Friedman, “Humphrey-Hawkins,” Newsweek, August 2, 1976, 55.
82.
Ibid.
83.
In his book, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, Biven argues that Carter lacked the Keynesian rigor of others in the White House, 27; thus, he was a “reluctant Keynesian” (60).
84.
Quoted in Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 258. His words were from a postpresidency interview.
85.
Reagan, Ronald Reagan, 205.
86.
Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Berkley Books, 1980), 387,
87.
Quoted in Witcover, Marathon, 532. Ford first saw the strategy book a couple of weeks before the Republican convention.
88.
Ibid., 532–533.
89.
Ford, A Time to Heal, 396.
90.
Quoted in Ford, A Time to Heal, 400.
91.
Skinner et al., eds., Reagan in His Own Hand, 266.
92.
Richard K. Caputo, Welfare and Freedom American Style II: The Role of the Federal Government, 1941–1980 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 520.
93.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 29–30. Witcover, Marathon, 545–546.
94.
Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 551.
95.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 25–27.
96.
Stephen Woolcock, “The Economic Policies of the Carter Administration,” in The Carter Years: The President and Policy Making, eds. M. Glenn Abernathy et al. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 35–36.
97.
Bruce R. Bartlett, Reaganomics: Supply Side Economics in Action (Westport, CT: Arlington House Publishers, 1981), 167.
98.
W. Elliot Brownlee, Federal Taxation in America: A Short History (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1996), 129, 134.
99.
Witcover, Marathon, 557–558.
100.
Ford, A Time to Heal, 397, 400.
101.
Witcover, Marathon, 573. Ford wrote that the “grueling interrogation boosted my confidence.” Ford, A Time to Heal, 401.
102.
Witcover, Marathon, 574.
103.
Ibid., 577–578; Ford, A Time to Heal, 402.
104.
Ford, A Time to Heal, 579.
105.
Witcover, Marathon, 598.
106.
Ford, A Time to Heal, 415.
107.
Quoted in Meg Jacobs, Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2017), 155.
108.
Colacello, Ronnie & Nancy, 462.
109.
Schlesinger, Jr. Journals 1952–2000, 422–423.
110.
Witcover, Marathon, 620, 643–644.
111.
James A. Baker III, “Work Hard, Study … and Keep Out of Politics!” (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 72. Ford, A Time to Heal, 423.

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Tyndale University College, Toronto, ON, Canada
Eric R. Crouse

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Crouse, E.R. (2018). The Presidential Campaign of 1976. In: America's Failing Economy and the Rise of Ronald Reagan. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_5
Published: 14 February 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70544-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70545-3
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