This was 1980. Jimmy Carter (Democrat) v. Ronald Reagan (Republican) v. John B. Anderson (Independent) v. Ed Clark (Libertarian)
That moment in time feels crucially foundational to this moment. I won’t say that I chose correctly. I don’t believe I did, to be honest with you, but given the situation the country was in and the choices available, I’m not terribly mad at myself for this vote. That said, based on my understanding of myself and of the world of that time with my 20/40 hindsight, I might have done better to vote for John B. Anderson.
Jimmy Carter, much as he is now admired by modern Liberals, was an ineffective and arrogant failPOTUS. For those who don’t know the history, he faced a difficult geopolitical era. The US-installed Shah of Iran was deposed and that country was taken over by fundamentalist Muslims under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeni. As Iran had been the US’s main supplier of petroleum to that point, the US suddenly found itself in yet another round of long lines at the gas pumps and rising prices for things like heating oil and jet fuel and all of the down-market items that depend on oil for either production or transport, which is pretty much everything. At the same time that prices were rising, so was unemployment — a situation known as stagflation.
Complicating this was that Iran then kidnapped and held hostage 52 Americans employed at the US Embassy to Iran. They were held in Tehran for 444 days, and only released (suspiciously) within hours of Ronald Reagan’s swearing-in on 1/20/81. Carter had launched a rescue attempt in April 1980, which failed and led to the deaths of 8 American servicemen.
Let’s just say that it’s no surprise that Carter lost in 1980 in a landslide, even without understanding his own arrogance and high-handedness within the confines of the leadership of his own party. He even got on television and gave a speech in which he chastized the American people for a “lack of confidence.”
I certainly had no loyalty to him as a Democratic presidential candidate. In my opinion, he typefies the breed: Ineffectual and smug. I continue to view the leadership of the Democratic Party in this way to this day. Carter got 44% of the vote, winning 6 states in the Electoral College.
Ronald Reagan was not a good option, either. Darling of the Christian right, least articulate and intellectually rigorous of all four candidates on my ballot that year, and championing some of the craziest economic policy of the era, which his own vice presidential candidate, GHW Bush, had characterized as “voodoo economics” right up until the moment that Reagan chose him as his running mate. Me voting for that fascist was never gonna happen. Still, he got 47% of the vote and 44 states in the Electoral College.
Ed Clark angered his party once by describing Libertarianism as “low-tax Liberalism.” He’d run in the previous California gubernatorial race in favor of the anti property-tax referendum Proposition 13 and against Proposition 6, which sought to bar gay men and lesbians from working in public schools. It was his pro-gay stance and record of fighting for us that won me over. My burgeoning understanding of myself as a queer person made him an attractive candidate in a field of terrifying prospects. I’ve only recently been reminded that his running mate in that election was David Koch of Koch Industries. eep. He got just over 1% of the vote.
John B. Anderson, the candidate today-me would have absolutely supported in that election was also pro-civil rights, including gay rights, ran in the Republican primary that year warning that Reagan’s economic policies would be a disaster for the country (he was right) proposed a 50% hike in gasoline taxes, using that to offset a 50% reduction in Social Security payroll contributions, which I recall liking, and which I now think is a little bit questionable as policy, based on how it would have tied the Social Security fund to unrelated outside factors. He was also against the draft registration that Carter had initiated in 1978, and which Reagan supporters were very excited about. Anderson wound up with 6.6% of the vote, not winning even a single precinct across the country.
I can’t claim to be an authority on this, but it seems to me that Anderson was the last gasp of Liberal Republicanism in this country’s politics. I would not ever describe myself as any such thing as a Liberal or a Republican, much less some hybrid combination of the two, but from this standpoint almost five decades later (damn, I’m old!) He looks to me like the best path forward the country could have chosen at the time. He wasn’t perfect on policy, but at least he was generally pointed in the right direction.
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