Former President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden are headed for an election rematch in November 2024. (Getty Images)
Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer who wrote about the 1980 campaign in his book "Rendezvous with Destiny," attributed Carter's early lead over Reagan to "public sympathy and an outpouring of support for the Iranian hostage crisis."
The Iran hostage crisis began on November 4, 1979, when radicalized students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran to protest Carter's decision to allow the deposed Shah of Iran into the U.S. for medical treatment. Fifty-two Americans — mostly State Department employees and Marines — were held captive for 444 days while Ayatollah Khomeini spurned Carter's attempts to free the captives.
FILE – Three unidentified U.S. hostages speak to the press while their Iranian captors (L and R) watch closely, at the besieged U.S. embassy in Tehran, November 1979. (IRNA-FILES/AFP via Getty Images)
The final years of Carter's presidency saw inflation rise by an average 11% in 1979 and nearly 14% in 1980.
Biden faces similar foreign and domestic crises. While the president proclaimed an economic "comeback" in his State of the Union address last week, inflation remains persistent at 3.2% year-over-year, according to the Labor Department's February consumer price index (CPI) report.
Under Biden's watch, inflation surged to 9.1% in 2022 after a series of coronavirus spending packages that began under Trump and culminated in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan signed into law by Biden. Inflation has since come down but remains higher than the Federal Reserve's target 2% rate. But compared with January 2021, shortly before the inflation crisis began, prices are up a dramatic 18.49%.
High inflation has created severe financial pressures for most U.S. households, which are forced to pay more for everyday necessities like food and rent. The burden is disproportionately borne by low-income Americans, whose already-stretched paychecks are heavily affected by price fluctuations.
GAME ON: TRUMP, BIDEN, CLINCH 2024 MAJOR PARTY PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS
Polls show that former President Trump and President Joe Biden are in a statistical tie eight months ahead of the November general election. (Getty Images)
Shirley said that for Trump to repeat Reagan's success, he must make Biden the issue in this campaign.
"Now, Trump's already proved that he can be an acceptable alternative," he explained, noting that he has already been president and is ready to "step into the job and replace the other guy."
In Shirley's estimation, Trump has done a good job attacking Biden on the illegal immigration crisis and on inflation. He said that immigration is Trump's "signature issue, just as anti-communisim was Regan's signature issue."
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"The issue cluster that Reagan ran on in 1980, the winning issue cluster was strong national defense, federalism, tax cuts, individual rights. All those issues are still the issues of the Republican Party, still the winning issues," Shirley said.
"That was Reagan's gift, to bequeath the party a firm set of values on which the party stood for all, emanating from Reagan's bedrock belief in personal freedom."
Fox News Digital's Rémy Numa, Paul Steinhauser, Taylor Penley, Megan Henney and Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.
Chris Pandolfo is a writer for Fox News Digital. Send tips to chris.pandolfo@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @ChrisCPandolfo.
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