President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, shake hands as they greet one another before their debate on the stage of the Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio. (Getty Images)
Adding to Carter’s woes, was the overrunning of the American embassy in Tehran in the late autumn of 1979, which triggered the more than yearlong Iranian hostage crisis.
Carter, politically weakened by a fierce and nearly successful primary challenge by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, was crushed by GOP nominee Ronald Reagan in the general election, with the former California governor sweeping 44 of the 50 states.
Historian and author Craig Shirley, who wrote multiple books about Reagan and Carter, pointed to the economic conditions at the time as a major contributor to Carter’s demise.
"Interest rates were something like 18%. Inflation was almost as high. The value of a dollar wasn’t worth today what it was yesterday. It was really devastating to people’s savings," Shirley spotlighted in a C-SPAN interview a few years ago.
FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER TO SPEND 'REMAINING TIME' AT HOME RECEIVING HOSPICE CARE
Veteran political scientist Wayne Lesperance, president of New England College, concurred.
"While it is certainly true that the Carter Administration had its share of successes, such as the Camp David Accords and the Panama Canal Treaty, in the months leading up to the 1980 election, voters were focused on high inflation, low economic growth, an energy crisis and the growing perception that American power and influence in the world was in decline," Lesperance said.
Republican President-elect Ronald Reagan (R) and wife Nancy standing with President Jimmy Carter and wife Roslyn outside the White House, on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1981 ( Photo by Diana Walker/Getty Images)
"The Iran hostage crisis and failed rescue attempt punctuated the feeling that the U.S. under Carter had become a paper tiger. Americans wanted John Wayne. They elected Ronald Reagan whose campaign projected strength, confidence, humor, and a nostalgic appeal to an America as the proverbial shining city on a hill," he emphasized.
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But it’s the "malaise" speech that still stands out more than four decades after Carter’s stinging rejection by American voters.
"Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency would be known for many things: stagflation, a terrible economy, weakness in the face of Soviet advances, but also the Camp David Accords and ushering in the Age of Reagan. Yet to his everlasting chagrin, Carter’s failed four years in office will always be reduced to the word "malaise," and his awful, terrible, embarrassing speech in July of 1979," Shirley wrote on the 40-year anniversary of the infamous address.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jimmy-carters-presidency-time-malaise-led-election-ronald-reagan