The State of the Union Is Not Good (2015) - full transcript
I must say to you that the
state of the Union is not good.
Will these people somehow
translate politics into power
and make a government work?
We are privileged to witness a significant
achievement in the cause of peace.
What was once a distant foreign policy
issue has become a domestic issue.
There is no malaise in the
spirit of this country.
It's just Mr. Carter!
We can turn this country around
and we can turn our economy around.
And the time to do it is now.
In just a few moments now,
President Nixon will be
appearing before the people
perhaps for the last time as
President of the United States.
Jail to the chief!
Jail to the chief!
Good evening. I shall resign the Presidency
effective at noon tomorrow.
In turning over direction of the government
to Vice President Ford,
I know that the leadership of America
will be in good hands.
In those first few days and weeks
when Gerald Ford ascended
to the Presidency,
you could say
if you were casting someone
to play the role of a President
to heal a nation,
that Gerald Ford
would have been that person.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President
of the United States, and Mrs. Ford.
Gerald Ford was one of
the most popular people in Congress,
conservative and Republican to the core,
but always willing to talk,
always willing to compromise.
My fellow Americans,
our long national nightmare is over.
Part of what Gerald Ford wanted to do
was move beyond Watergate.
And so to say,
"our long national nightmare is over,"
was to try to tell the nation,
"my main job as President
will be to heal this country."
May our former President,
who brought peace to millions,
find it for himself.
David, what do you think?
I would guess that in his term we may see
a little of what we were promised
in the preamble to the Constitution
but seldom see.
That is a little bit of
domestic tranquility.
When Gerald Ford became President,
he understood the public needed
something completely different.
He seemed to be the right man
for those times.
The change from Nixon to Ford is likely to give
the nation's economy a psychological lift.
But it's going to take more than
a new President to cure the economy.
It was an extremely difficult time.
Ford inherited the deepest
recession since the 1930s.
But he was spending 25% of his time
on leftover Nixon matters.
Ford's in a brand new job and faces
this really consequential choice.
Pardon Nixon and try to put Watergate
behind the country,
or let the investigation run its course.
This year,
especially the past few months and weeks,
have been filled with extraordinary days.
Today was another one that historians will be
writing about and thinking about for years to come.
I, Gerald R. Ford,
President of the United States,
do grant a full, free and absolute pardon
unto Richard Nixon
for all offenses against the United States.
- Do you think President Ford's action is wrong?
- It's wrong, absolutely wrong.
Ford did the generous thing.
I think the American people
must forget about Nixon.
I think it raises as a political issue the
whole question of equal justice under law,
except for Presidents,
who seem to get special treatment.
Good morning.
We are about to see something
which as far as we know, may never have
been seen before in American history.
A sitting President of the United States
testifying before a Congressional committee.
The subcommittee will be in order.
I had just just been
out of law school for a few years.
I was the last person on that subcommittee
to ask a question.
And I thought for sure somebody in the
subcommittee would ask President Ford
the tough questions about the pardon.
Nobody asked the questions.
I would like to point out, Mr. President,
that the circumstances
of the pardon which you issued,
the secrecy with which it was issued
made people question whether or not
in fact it was a deal.
Mrs. Holtzman, I repeat with emphasis
that if we had had an indictment,
a trial, a conviction,
that the attention of the President,
the Congress, and the American people
would have been diverted from
the problems that we have to solve.
Ford now looks very smart
in history for issuing the pardon.
It did not look that great at the time.
He took a beating for it.
Justice gone!
Justice gone!
If we'd had a trial of Nixon,
the country would have been stopped.
You've got to remember,
Presidents are there to govern.
And we hadn't had much governing.
Wherever you look
across the United States,
plants are closing,
industries are slowing down,
businesses are failing.
At least 6 million people
are out of work.
Unemployment in the United States
is at its highest level in thirteen years.
Economically, the country
began to pay a very heavy price
for the long Vietnam war,
for which tax increases
had not been passed to pay for it.
We have stag-flation.
It's a new disease.
It's stagnation with inflation.
The chuck steaks have gone up.
They're usually 0.68 a pound
or around 0.79 a pound.
Now they're 0.94 this week,
which is ridiculous. And I can't afford it.
For many pensioners,
the struggle is to find enough to eat.
From garbage, if necessary.
Inflation went through the roof.
People would come into my
Congressional office and they'd be crying.
Americans were feeling poorer and poorer.
Their salaries weren't going up
as quickly as the cost of milk and cheese.
Something was wrong with the system.
There is only one point on which
all advisers have agreed.
We must whip inflation right now.
Unless every able American pitches in,
Congress and I cannot do the job.
Gerald Ford is a conservative Republican,
so he's trying to figure out
how do you deal with economic problems
without strong government?
So he puts together this program
which relies on voluntary action
by Americans.
There was no program.
Basically the President was saying,
"buy less."
The "win" buttons were
part of the propaganda.
There were also pamphlets
and posters.
I object to distracting people's attention
away from the principal goals,
the principal methods,
of coping with inflation.
Are you suggesting, sir,
that buttons and flags are trivial?
Yes.
ABC News presents live coverage
of the President's State of the Union
message to Congress.
The President of the United States.
When he goes to give the State of the Union
address, he is under tremendous pressure.
I remember being there,
and it was palpable. You could feel it.
A lot hangs on this, this being his
very first State of the Union.
26 years ago, a freshman Congressman
who was out to change the world
stood at the back of this great chamber.
As President Truman said,
"I am happy to report to the 81st Congress
that the state of the Union is good."
Today, millions of Americans
are out of work,
recession and inflation are eroding
the money of millions more.
Prices are too high
and sales are too slow.
And I must say to you
that the state of the Union is not good.
Former California Governor Ronald Reagan is about
to hold a press conference here in Washington,
where he is expected to announce that he is a
candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination.
One of the things that was a problem for Ford is the
fact that his party was coming apart at the seams.
Reagan was able to mount a formidable challenge
to Ford in the '76 Republican nomination contest.
I'm running because I have grown
increasingly concerned about
the course of events in the United States
and in the world.
Reagan was the great two-term
Governor of California,
and he goes after Gerald Ford
as being weak.
I am quite critical of our
foreign policy right now.
Matter of fact, I think that it is
almost anchor-less and almost aimless.
He's a good actor,
but he also is a formidable challenger.
Ronald Reagan was challenging
a sitting President in his own party,
a relatively conservative President, and he
was basically calling him a liberal sellout.
In the Texas primary, Reagan wiped out
the President in a stunning victory.
In August of 1974,
this country had some very difficult
and formidable obstacles ahead of us.
We blew it in the right direction,
young man.
And those of you...
This was the period of time
right in the wake of Watergate.
Americans were very,
very suspicious about government
and about people who had spent
too much time in Washington, D.C.
So Jimmy Carter could run as
someone who called himself an outsider.
As a guy who wasn't tainted by Washington,
D.C. and its corruption and its culture.
I remember when I announced for President, there
was a major headline on the editorial page
of the Atlanta Constitution that said,
"Jimmy Carter is running for what?"
I'm running...
I'm running for President.
- Jimmy Carter?
- Jimmy who?
I don't know who he is.
I picture him like one of us.
One of the common people.
Jimmy Carter grew up in a very small town
in the South, Plains, Georgia.
He had grown into a family of farmers.
Became a peanut farmer himself.
And from Georgia, he really basically
started his political ascent.
The idea that somebody from that region could
aspire to that kind of national office...
You know, people didn't even try.
Yesterday about 50,000 Democrats in Iowa
met in caucuses
to choose delegates for their
State Party Convention.
Former Georgia Governor
Jimmy Carter did extremely well.
The Iowa Caucus was something
no one ever paid attention to.
But Carter and his team said,
"hey, if we go and we win,
the media is going to treat us like
a serious political front-runner."
Mr. Carter is also deeply religious.
He prays in public and speaks
openly about his religious beliefs.
Carter was a person
who you thought would lead America
to some kind of spiritual redemption,
which at the time we really needed.
Nothing has happened tonight
to change the feeling that Jimmy Carter
is on his way to a kind of coronation
in Madison Square Garden.
The battle for the Republican nomination
turned out to be really close.
It was close enough to make
the Ford people's fingernails sweat.
But by a whisker,
Gerald Ford got the nomination.
When Ford was nominated,
Reagan's supporters staged a demonstration
on the Convention floor.
And it went on and on
and on and on.
By the end of that Convention,
it's clear
that although Gerald Ford
may be the nominee,
Ronald Reagan has won the hearts
and minds of conservatives.
Reagan did great damage to Ford.
Look at the poll numbers. You'll see
that Jimmy Carter starts surging,
over 30 points ahead of Gerald Ford.
Ford had a weak position in the national race,
so he challenged Jimmy Carter to a debate.
Mr. President, I would like to explore a little
more deeply our relationship with the Russians.
Max Frankel asked Ford a question
about whether the United States
was accepting of Soviet domination
of Eastern Europe.
There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and
there never will be under a Ford administration.
Uh, I'm sorry, could I just follow...
Did I understand you to say, sir,
that the Russians are not
using Eastern Europe
as their own sphere of influence?
Everybody's jaw just dropped.
Are you alive? Are you aware?
What he meant to say was, "I will not accept
any Soviet domination of Eastern Europe."
Governor Carter, have you a response?
Charitably, that was a momentary slip.
Uncharitably,
it was a loss of touch with reality.
Clearly a huge moment where
the country makes the judgment,
you know what, maybe we do need to go in a
different direction and replace the President.
Ford had never lost an
election in his life.
Won fifteen straight terms
in the House,
and here all of the sudden, he's beaten
by this one-term Governor of Georgia.
And he was crushed.
My voice isn't up to par.
Let me call on the real
spokesman for the family, Betty.
It's been the greatest honor
of my husband's life
to have served his fellow Americans
during two of the most difficult years
in our history.
I think the real test comes now.
Whether these people
who have taken apart the old system
can somehow translate politics into power
and make a government work.
That's their real test, and we're on the
threshold of possibly the greatest change
since the New Deal in 1932.
The parade has started.
He is out of the car.
This is a change in the schedule.
He is walking.
Most Presidents in our time
have wanted to do this.
But in recent years
after our various tragedies,
it has been discouraged
and there has not been very much of it.
Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn
get out of the car.
It was game-changing.
People looked at that and said
"this is what we need.
A real person as President."
Carter was a man of the people.
Glamor was not what we were in the market
for. We were looking for a redeemer.
I'd like to take a little look
around, you know. I haven't seen it.
Supposed to have a meeting with some of
the Cabinet officers in a few minutes.
Are you actually going upstairs,
taking a look at the living quarters?
Yeah, for the first time.
President Carter knew he had four years to
do things that he thought were important.
Fix the economy,
try to bring some peace to the Middle East,
fix energy, and some other things.
We will have available for public scrutiny
and for Congressional action by April 20th
a comprehensive,
long-range energy policy.
The winter of 1977 is one of the worst
the country had experienced,
and this comes at a time
the economy is still doing poorly.
The severe weather has already led to
a serious shortage of natural gas.
Federal Power Commission
estimates at least 200,000 layoffs
due to industrial gas curtailments so far.
In the Dayton area,
school districts must close for 30 days.
Congress will consider this week
emergency gas legislation.
Good evening, President Carter
is about to speak to the nation
from the White House
on the subject of energy.
Tonight,
I want to have an unpleasant talk with you.
The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed
us, but it will if we do not act quickly.
We need to shift to plentiful coal, while
taking care to protect the environment.
And to apply stricter safety standards
to nuclear energy.
This difficult effort will be
the moral equivalent of war.
The policies that he rolls out
around the speech really don't go anywhere.
One of the key reasons for this is that Jimmy
Carter really had poor relations with Congress.
For the producing states I think it would
be a catastrophic, cataclysmic calamity.
What he's trying to do is prepare the public mind to
accept only the Carter proposal and nothing else.
Carter alienated the powers
that be in Congress.
So when Jimmy Carter begin to falter, he didn't
have friends coming out and speaking for him.
In fact, I was getting calls
from Democrats criticizing him.
I've always heard about the advise
and consent role of the Congress.
So far they've been a little stronger
on the advice than they have the consent.
Carter inherits a financial mess
and there was no magic wand to cure it all.
He needed a big
feather in his cap quickly.
It's almost a White House cliche that
when a President is in trouble at home,
his counselors advise a trip abroad.
A President on the road.
His first long overseas trip
to the Middle East and Western Europe.
Mr. Carter met not only with
Anwar Sadat of Egypt,
but also with King Hussein of Jordan, King
Khalid of Saudi Arabia, and the Shah of Iran.
The United States had always
backed the Shah of Iran
and that goes back to 1953
when in fact, America essentially
put the Shah into power.
Iran is an island of stability
in one of the more troubled
areas of the world.
Even though Western
governments loved the Shah,
they weren't really paying attention
to the facts on the ground.
And there were many people who
were discontented with the Shah,
in part because of his extremely
oppressive policies.
Iran was seen as important
for its oil resources,
but also because the shah was an ally
when it came to regional goals.
This was a natural alliance
for the United States.
The President and the Shah of Iran spent a
long time talking about the Middle East.
And it was brought up
by other leaders in other countries.
Jimmy Carter saw the Middle East
and the settlement of the conflict
between the Israelis and Arabs
as central to any kind of stability
for the next generation.
Hopes for a Middle East peace settlement were
never higher than they were last November,
when Sadat went to Jerusalem
to meet Begin.
And then after Begin returned the visit,
the enthusiasm began to drop off.
While the world watched,
Sadat and Begin took to bickering
and negotiations broke down.
Jimmy Carter took advantage of Sadat's
willingness to talk to the Israelis.
I think he thought he might be able to do
something that his predecessors couldn't.
It was a huge gamble.
Good afternoon,
the stage is set and the participants
are now beginning to arrive
here in the Washington area.
President Carter, Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
will sit down in
the lonely solitude of Camp David
and attempt to work out
a peace settlement for the Middle East.
Failure here would just increase the impression
that is being reflected in the public opinion polls
that Mr. Carter is a nice man,
but an inept President.
There are hundreds of reporters here,
largely interviewing each other.
What the three are discussing,
whether the talks are friendly or tense,
we just don't know
because of the unprecedented secrecy.
By the end of the second day,
Rosalynn says you could hear them screaming
at each other at the top of their lungs.
Carter had to physically separate them.
He had to block them from leaving.
The Middle East Summit at Camp David
is a week old today,
and there's still no official word on how
those talks are going or when they might end,
but their length already has given rise
to reports of a stalemate.
Carter had a photograph
made of the three men,
and had made up copies
for Begin's nine grandchildren,
and had signed each of them,
"Love, Jimmy Carter."
Very reluctantly,
Carter went back to see Begin.
Carter handed him the photographs
and he said,
"I had hoped to write that, 'this is where
your grandfather and I made peace'."
And Begin began to weep.
Carter went back to his cabin
to tell Sadat that the signing was off,
and the phone rang.
And it was Begin saying that
he would sign.
We are privileged to witness tonight
a significant achievement
in the cause of peace.
An achievement
none thought possible a year ago.
The peace treaty changed the
tenor of politics across the region.
An Arab country which accounted for
a quarter of the Arab world population
recognized Israel's right to exist.
And it changed the dynamics
of the Middle East.
Aren't we in bliss.
What a picture, what a picture.
And the room of course
has erupted in cheering.
Applause.
As Menachem Begin said,
"peace now celebrates a great victory."
The Camp David Accord was
Carter's crowning achievement.
But it was very shortly thereafter
diminished by the crisis with Iran.
Ayatollah Khomeini, the rebel priest,
now exiled in Paris,
has called on his supporters
to depose the Shah.
Khomeini called for the building of
an Islamic state not dependent on the West.
I don't think the United States,
as a secular country, really understood
that Islam, a religion,
could oust a monarchy
that had prevailed as a system of
government for two and a half millennia.
We support the Shah, but we don't try to
interfere in the internal affairs of Iran.
We did put the Shah in,
but you're saying we can't keep him in?
I think that's a decision to be made
by the people of that country.
Good evening.
The Shah of Iran is in Egypt tonight.
His countrymen are deliriously
rejoicing at his departure.
And all around the world, government
leaders are trying to come to grips
with the fall of the man
known as "The King of Kings."
The old chant of "death to the Shah"
was replaced today by a new one,
"death to Carter."
We want Jimmy Carter
to know that we want freedom
and we don't want
his human rights anymore.
Obviously, the source of energy
for the 1970s was a core question.
The Iranian revolution is drying up
our energy supply.
We're literally running out of gas.
Your attention please.
There has been a state of emergency
declared on Three Mile Island.
At a nuclear power plant near
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
the cooling system broke down this morning.
Some radioactive steam
escaped into the air.
Radiation passed through
the four-foot concrete walls
and was detected
a mile away from the plant.
This was the first big nuclear disaster
at a time when the country was
increasingly reliant on nuclear power.
And the federal government and the state government
couldn't do much about it. It was scary.
It's the beginning of mistrust
of nuclear power
as the magic salve
to the energy problem.
The President said today
that he believes this incident
will make it necessary to reassess the
country's present nuclear safety regulations.
That comes from a President who has been
claiming that more nuclear reactors are needed
to offset the demand for foreign oil.
The energy crisis which had
been going on all decade
only gets worse
with Middle Eastern turmoil.
Californians sat fuming in their cars,
waiting impatiently in long lines,
wondering who and what
had put them there.
Somehow there wasn't
enough gasoline to go around.
But prices rose elsewhere
and lines began forming,
and Americans began realizing
that California was not unique.
California was first.
People in this country always worry about the price of
gas, but this was a worry about the availability of gas.
While the oil producers were
getting ready for another price increase,
the oil consumers
were beginning to meet in Japan.
President Carter's state visit began today.
My information is that in the
next few weeks, hopefully sooner,
there will be an increase in supply
of gasoline to the affected areas.
I think it's phony. I think they're trying
to get the prices jacked up.
That's my personal opinion.
What was once a distant foreign policy
issue has become a domestic issue.
A truck strike has driven
food prices upward,
slowed industry and resulted in violence.
The bloodiest episode
in Levittown, Pennsylvania.
32 people were injured when motorists joined
the truckers in protesting the fuel shortage.
The crowd of two to three thousand, mostly
young teenagers, packed the intersection.
Then it turned violent.
Police brutality!
This is Levittown, Pennsylvania. This is the
perfect, quintessential symbol of middle America.
And middle America is in torment
about the gas crisis.
Sunday, July 1.
Because of the gas lines,
President Carter flies straight home
from the Tokyo Economic Summit
and announces a television speech
to the nation Thursday.
Then to Camp David by helicopter,
presumably to work on that energy speech.
But then, a sudden change.
The energy speech is canceled
with no explanation.
Critics speak of indecision.
Carter decides that he wants to meet
with advisers from all walks of life.
The latest group shuttled to Camp David
includes Energy Secretary Schlesinger,
several non-government oil experts
and three Governors.
Well now he's been up there for eight days,
and there is still no word
on when the Camp David
Domestic Summit will end
and the President will
come down from the mountain.
One almost expects the President
to alight from his chopper
carrying with him two tablets of stone.
Sources say Mr. Carter will address what
he calls a malaise affecting the nation.
This is an ABC News Special Report.
Fifteens seconds, sir.
Stand by.
Good evening.
I want to speak to you first tonight
about a subject even more serious
than energy or inflation.
It is a crisis of confidence.
For the first time
in the history of our country
a majority of our people believe
that the next five years
will be worse than the past five years.
Too many of us now tend to worship
self-indulgence and consumption.
Human identity is no longer
defined by what one does,
but by what one owns.
So the President has concluded his speech
and what a remarkable speech it was.
It was almost a sermon.
Afterwards,
he gets a bump in the polls.
People are like, "hey, this is good."
But then the op-eds begin to drip in.
I think the President and his advisers
are making a mistake
if they think out there in the country people feel
there is a crisis of confidence in themselves.
They feel there is a crisis of confidence
in the President.
It was analysis of the speech that really
began to turn things for him.
And right after the speech
he then basically fired his Cabinet.
When members of the Cabinet
gathered at the white house this morning
for a two-hour meeting with the President,
they seemed to be in good spirits.
But by the time they left,
things had changed.
Along with the senior White House staff,
their resignations were requested.
Don't you think someone should
come out and assure the country
that we don't have to worry
about this crisis?
I think... I think that...
I don't think there is a crisis.
Don't the American people have a right
to know who is running the government?
Well, they do have a right to know.
They do know who's running the government.
The American public isn't confused about
who's running the government.
The President is running it.
Sometimes perception is more
important than reality.
And the perception became that
Jimmy Carter made one big
mistake after another.
The Shah of Iran is in
a New York City hospital tonight.
An American government source
in Washington says
the deposed Iranian monarch is suffering
from cancer and a blocked bile duct.
The Shah was admitted to this country
on condition
that he not engage in any
political activity while here.
The present Iranian government
was assured of that.
Meanwhile, tighter security measures
have been put into effect
at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran
as a precaution against possible actions
by anti-Shah fanatics.
Carter agreed to allow the Shah to come
to the United States for medical treatment.
And at that point it was the match
that lit this conflagration.
The American Embassy in Tehran
is in the hands of Muslim students tonight.
Spurred on by an anti-American speech
by the Ayatollah Khomeini,
they stormed the Embassy,
fought the Marine guards for three hours,
overpowered them,
and took dozens of American hostages.
The Iranians burned the United States flag
and denounced the U.S. government,
saying they would stay until the U.S.
sends the deposed Shah back to Iran.
What I remember,
and this was the second day,
was that the provisional government
of Dr. Bazargan, the Prime Minister,
which was essentially the people
we dealt with, had resigned.
At that point I remember thinking,
"we are definitely in the soup,"
because there was no one to talk to.
There was no government
for our government to talk to.
In Tehran it is Tuesday morning.
The hostages at the American Embassy,
more than 60 of them,
have spent another night, their ninth,
as prisoners of their Iranian captors.
And today President Carter made
his first public response to their ordeal.
I am ordering that we discontinue
purchasing of any oil from Iran
for delivery to this country.
High administration officials believe
that through today's action
they have removed a bargaining tool that can no
longer be used in dealing with the hostages.
Other officials say candidly that
today's announcement was also intended
to dampen the outrage and frustration
expressed by Americans
over the country's seeming helplessness.
How they treated our diplomats
was humiliating.
That put extraordinary pressure
on Jimmy Carter.
The meeting is on,
but there is nothing to suggest
those meetings have produced
any new ways of solving the crisis.
Any encouraging news from Iran,
Mr. President?
- Status quo, sir?
- Yes, I'm afraid so.
The first sign of hope in two weeks
from the American Embassy in Tehran.
The students holding the hostages there
promised to obey an order today
from the Ayatollah Khomeini
to free all women and blacks.
The Ayatollah explained, "Islam has
a special respect for women and the blacks,
who have spent ages under
American pressure and tyranny."
As he departed for Thanksgiving week
at nearby Camp David,
the President was apparently confident that at
least some of those hostages will soon be free.
"We are thankful," said his statement,
"the ordeal may be over for them and that they
may be soon reunited with their families."
But it went on to urge
that the authorities in Iran
now move to secure the safe release
of all those still being held.
What can you do? You bring pressure.
You can bring sanctions,
you can go to the United Nations,
you can send emissaries.
But America can't do a damn thing.
Ted Koppel on ABC News,
Walter Cronkite,
"America, Day fifteen,"
"Day one hundred,"
"Day two hundred."
It started wearing on people.
And Carter started becoming
the symbol of lost American prestige.
Ronald Reagan is running officially.
He got in the race tonight in
New York City at a fund-raising dinner.
And he taped a speech yesterday
for showing tonight
on about 90 independent
television stations.
I'm here tonight
to announce my intention
to seek the Republican nomination for
President of the United States.
The crisis we face is not the result
of any failure of the American spirit.
It's a failure of our leaders.
The country is looking for optimism,
looking for a new dawn,
new beginnings.
And Ronald Reagan
epitomized all those things.
Between '76 and '80,
Reagan's building a coalition.
Bringing in Christian fundamentalists,
and law-and-order Nixonian people.
Reagan is realizing in order
to sell conservatism,
you've got to do it with a smile.
And you've got to do it in a way that
makes people feel good, not scold them.
We can turn this country around
and we can turn our economy around.
And the time to do it is now.
We want Kennedy!
We want Kennedy!
There are many Democrats who are worried
that Carter is not going to win.
So Ted Kennedy,
who was a Senator from Massachusetts,
decides to take him on.
Today I formally announce
that I am a candidate
for President of the United States.
Many Democrats believed Carter
had moved too far to the center
and that he abandoned
the traditional ideas of the party.
Jimmy Carter and Kennedy
became the polar opposites
within the party and Jimmy Carter
on top of that had a feeling that
the Kennedys felt they were
above we Southerners.
It's a nasty contest. When someone
asked Jimmy Carter in passing,
"what do you think about
being challenged by Ted Kennedy?"
Jimmy Carter says,
"I'll whip his ass."
This is a special report
from CBS News.
The 174th day of the Iran Crisis
has brought a startling
and tragic turn of events.
The United States mounted a
military operation into Iran last night
to rescue the American hostages.
But it failed.
Eight helicopters took off from the deck
of the aircraft carrier Nimitz.
The eight helicopters proceeded toward a desert
staging area 200 miles southeast of Tehran.
Two of the helicopters
experienced problems en route.
But once on the ground,
yet another helicopter malfunctioned,
leaving only five for the mission.
At that moment,
the President scrubbed the mission.
In the rush to pull out, one of the
helicopters taxied into a C-130 fuel tanker.
Both burst into flames.
Eight of our men were killed.
Four others suffered burns.
The bodies of the dead have not
yet been returned.
The Ayatollah Khomeini seemed to enjoy
stage-managing in this grisly theater
as the bodies were shown.
The soldiers obviously took no joy here.
It was my decision to attempt
the rescue operation.
It was my decision to cancel it
when problems developed.
The responsibility is fully my own.
Why do you want to be President?
Well, I'm... Uh...
Kennedy should have been
prepared to answer that question.
In some ways, he'd been preparing to
answer that question his entire life.
And instead, he gives mud.
A stammering, halting answer
that instantly told people
this guy does not know
why he wants the job.
There's more natural resources
than any nation in the world.
The interesting thing is that after it
became clear that Kennedy couldn't win,
he became a great candidate.
There is no malaise
in the spirit of this country.
It's just Mr. Carter!
Kennedy's primary challenge
has a big effect,
because many Democrats are not that enthused about
their candidate once the Convention takes place.
Live from New York City,
the 1980 Democratic National Convention.
The Democrats have had their
first day of the Convention.
Senator Kennedy lost
the first and decisive fight.
Jimmy Carter is the nominee of this party.
I congratulate President Carter
on his victory here.
I am confident that
the Democratic party
will reunite on the basis
of Democratic principles
and that together we will march
towards a Democratic victory in 1980.
People are cheering Kennedy on.
The enthusiasm for what he has to say is much
more than the response that Carter gets.
In good times and bad,
in the valleys and on the peaks,
we've told people the truth.
Carter then wants Kennedy to come onstage
and they can hold up their hands together
to show that this party is unified.
But when Kennedy comes up,
he doesn't really do that.
There will be no pictures in tomorrow
morning's paper, and none for posterity.
Of Ted Kennedy holding Jimmy Carter's
hand aloft.
Well, this is slightly awkward.
Kennedy did not win, could not win.
And yet he had ripped the party apart
when what they needed to win that
election was full Democratic unity.
- We love Reagan!
- Thank you!
This country needs a new administration
with a renewed dedication
to the dream of an American.
An administration that will give
that dream new life
and make America great again.
Ronald Reagan will call Carter out for this
whole idea that we live in an age of limits,
and say no, America's future is
just as expansive as it ever was.
Next Tuesday,
all of you will go to the polls.
I think when you make that decision,
it might be well if you would ask yourself,
are you better off
than you were four years ago?
This is continuing ABC News
election night coverage.
It is beginning to look like,
well, the word is landslide.
The word is landslide
for Ronald Reagan tonight.
If they're not breaking out the champagne
at the Reagan headquarters now,
it's only because, well,
they can't find an opener.
Jimmy Carter, though beaten at the polls,
did not act like a beaten man.
He said he didn't feel the people
had turned against him personally,
but had voted their frustrations over
America's lost dominance in world affairs
and lost preeminence in economic affairs.
Mr. Carter showed a flash
of anguish only once,
when he said his wife had seen one of the moral
majority preachers on television this morning
say that the American electorate had acted
to put a true Christian in the Oval Office.
We knew that Reagan had won the election.
The Iranians told us that
certain gloating feeling
that they were responsible
for Jimmy Carter's defeat.
Mr. Carter is back in his office
burning the midnight oil.
And perhaps that's characteristic
of the Jimmy Carter Presidency.
He's doing it here
on his last night in Washington.
Up until the last moment, right before he
actually has to shake Ronald Reagan's hand
during Reagan's inauguration, Jimmy Carter
is doing everything he possibly can
trying to get those hostages home.
Jimmy Carter was perceived in Iran
as the ultimate ally of the Shah.
And they didn't want to give
any rewards to Jimmy Carter.
We had to wait until Ronald Reagan
had taken the oath of office
before the plane was allowed to fly
out of Tehran to Algiers
Everything was delayed,
despite the agreement,
to make sure that Jimmy Carter didn't get
any credit for the freedom of the hostages.
It was a bittersweet moment
as Jimmy Carter, private citizen,
left Andrews Air Force Base outside
of Washington to go home to Georgia.
Luck is a big factor in a Presidency.
And Jimmy Carter
had some very bad luck.
Because of the blow-back
from Vietnam and Watergate,
it will be recognized
that Jimmy Carter inherited
a national and world situation
that was almost completely unmanageable.
A few moments ago on Air Force One,
I had received word
officially for the first time
that the aircraft carrying the
52 American hostages
had cleared Iranian air space
on the first leg of the journey home
and that every one of the 52 hostages
was alive, was well, and free.
state of the Union is not good.
Will these people somehow
translate politics into power
and make a government work?
We are privileged to witness a significant
achievement in the cause of peace.
What was once a distant foreign policy
issue has become a domestic issue.
There is no malaise in the
spirit of this country.
It's just Mr. Carter!
We can turn this country around
and we can turn our economy around.
And the time to do it is now.
In just a few moments now,
President Nixon will be
appearing before the people
perhaps for the last time as
President of the United States.
Jail to the chief!
Jail to the chief!
Good evening. I shall resign the Presidency
effective at noon tomorrow.
In turning over direction of the government
to Vice President Ford,
I know that the leadership of America
will be in good hands.
In those first few days and weeks
when Gerald Ford ascended
to the Presidency,
you could say
if you were casting someone
to play the role of a President
to heal a nation,
that Gerald Ford
would have been that person.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President
of the United States, and Mrs. Ford.
Gerald Ford was one of
the most popular people in Congress,
conservative and Republican to the core,
but always willing to talk,
always willing to compromise.
My fellow Americans,
our long national nightmare is over.
Part of what Gerald Ford wanted to do
was move beyond Watergate.
And so to say,
"our long national nightmare is over,"
was to try to tell the nation,
"my main job as President
will be to heal this country."
May our former President,
who brought peace to millions,
find it for himself.
David, what do you think?
I would guess that in his term we may see
a little of what we were promised
in the preamble to the Constitution
but seldom see.
That is a little bit of
domestic tranquility.
When Gerald Ford became President,
he understood the public needed
something completely different.
He seemed to be the right man
for those times.
The change from Nixon to Ford is likely to give
the nation's economy a psychological lift.
But it's going to take more than
a new President to cure the economy.
It was an extremely difficult time.
Ford inherited the deepest
recession since the 1930s.
But he was spending 25% of his time
on leftover Nixon matters.
Ford's in a brand new job and faces
this really consequential choice.
Pardon Nixon and try to put Watergate
behind the country,
or let the investigation run its course.
This year,
especially the past few months and weeks,
have been filled with extraordinary days.
Today was another one that historians will be
writing about and thinking about for years to come.
I, Gerald R. Ford,
President of the United States,
do grant a full, free and absolute pardon
unto Richard Nixon
for all offenses against the United States.
- Do you think President Ford's action is wrong?
- It's wrong, absolutely wrong.
Ford did the generous thing.
I think the American people
must forget about Nixon.
I think it raises as a political issue the
whole question of equal justice under law,
except for Presidents,
who seem to get special treatment.
Good morning.
We are about to see something
which as far as we know, may never have
been seen before in American history.
A sitting President of the United States
testifying before a Congressional committee.
The subcommittee will be in order.
I had just just been
out of law school for a few years.
I was the last person on that subcommittee
to ask a question.
And I thought for sure somebody in the
subcommittee would ask President Ford
the tough questions about the pardon.
Nobody asked the questions.
I would like to point out, Mr. President,
that the circumstances
of the pardon which you issued,
the secrecy with which it was issued
made people question whether or not
in fact it was a deal.
Mrs. Holtzman, I repeat with emphasis
that if we had had an indictment,
a trial, a conviction,
that the attention of the President,
the Congress, and the American people
would have been diverted from
the problems that we have to solve.
Ford now looks very smart
in history for issuing the pardon.
It did not look that great at the time.
He took a beating for it.
Justice gone!
Justice gone!
If we'd had a trial of Nixon,
the country would have been stopped.
You've got to remember,
Presidents are there to govern.
And we hadn't had much governing.
Wherever you look
across the United States,
plants are closing,
industries are slowing down,
businesses are failing.
At least 6 million people
are out of work.
Unemployment in the United States
is at its highest level in thirteen years.
Economically, the country
began to pay a very heavy price
for the long Vietnam war,
for which tax increases
had not been passed to pay for it.
We have stag-flation.
It's a new disease.
It's stagnation with inflation.
The chuck steaks have gone up.
They're usually 0.68 a pound
or around 0.79 a pound.
Now they're 0.94 this week,
which is ridiculous. And I can't afford it.
For many pensioners,
the struggle is to find enough to eat.
From garbage, if necessary.
Inflation went through the roof.
People would come into my
Congressional office and they'd be crying.
Americans were feeling poorer and poorer.
Their salaries weren't going up
as quickly as the cost of milk and cheese.
Something was wrong with the system.
There is only one point on which
all advisers have agreed.
We must whip inflation right now.
Unless every able American pitches in,
Congress and I cannot do the job.
Gerald Ford is a conservative Republican,
so he's trying to figure out
how do you deal with economic problems
without strong government?
So he puts together this program
which relies on voluntary action
by Americans.
There was no program.
Basically the President was saying,
"buy less."
The "win" buttons were
part of the propaganda.
There were also pamphlets
and posters.
I object to distracting people's attention
away from the principal goals,
the principal methods,
of coping with inflation.
Are you suggesting, sir,
that buttons and flags are trivial?
Yes.
ABC News presents live coverage
of the President's State of the Union
message to Congress.
The President of the United States.
When he goes to give the State of the Union
address, he is under tremendous pressure.
I remember being there,
and it was palpable. You could feel it.
A lot hangs on this, this being his
very first State of the Union.
26 years ago, a freshman Congressman
who was out to change the world
stood at the back of this great chamber.
As President Truman said,
"I am happy to report to the 81st Congress
that the state of the Union is good."
Today, millions of Americans
are out of work,
recession and inflation are eroding
the money of millions more.
Prices are too high
and sales are too slow.
And I must say to you
that the state of the Union is not good.
Former California Governor Ronald Reagan is about
to hold a press conference here in Washington,
where he is expected to announce that he is a
candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination.
One of the things that was a problem for Ford is the
fact that his party was coming apart at the seams.
Reagan was able to mount a formidable challenge
to Ford in the '76 Republican nomination contest.
I'm running because I have grown
increasingly concerned about
the course of events in the United States
and in the world.
Reagan was the great two-term
Governor of California,
and he goes after Gerald Ford
as being weak.
I am quite critical of our
foreign policy right now.
Matter of fact, I think that it is
almost anchor-less and almost aimless.
He's a good actor,
but he also is a formidable challenger.
Ronald Reagan was challenging
a sitting President in his own party,
a relatively conservative President, and he
was basically calling him a liberal sellout.
In the Texas primary, Reagan wiped out
the President in a stunning victory.
In August of 1974,
this country had some very difficult
and formidable obstacles ahead of us.
We blew it in the right direction,
young man.
And those of you...
This was the period of time
right in the wake of Watergate.
Americans were very,
very suspicious about government
and about people who had spent
too much time in Washington, D.C.
So Jimmy Carter could run as
someone who called himself an outsider.
As a guy who wasn't tainted by Washington,
D.C. and its corruption and its culture.
I remember when I announced for President, there
was a major headline on the editorial page
of the Atlanta Constitution that said,
"Jimmy Carter is running for what?"
I'm running...
I'm running for President.
- Jimmy Carter?
- Jimmy who?
I don't know who he is.
I picture him like one of us.
One of the common people.
Jimmy Carter grew up in a very small town
in the South, Plains, Georgia.
He had grown into a family of farmers.
Became a peanut farmer himself.
And from Georgia, he really basically
started his political ascent.
The idea that somebody from that region could
aspire to that kind of national office...
You know, people didn't even try.
Yesterday about 50,000 Democrats in Iowa
met in caucuses
to choose delegates for their
State Party Convention.
Former Georgia Governor
Jimmy Carter did extremely well.
The Iowa Caucus was something
no one ever paid attention to.
But Carter and his team said,
"hey, if we go and we win,
the media is going to treat us like
a serious political front-runner."
Mr. Carter is also deeply religious.
He prays in public and speaks
openly about his religious beliefs.
Carter was a person
who you thought would lead America
to some kind of spiritual redemption,
which at the time we really needed.
Nothing has happened tonight
to change the feeling that Jimmy Carter
is on his way to a kind of coronation
in Madison Square Garden.
The battle for the Republican nomination
turned out to be really close.
It was close enough to make
the Ford people's fingernails sweat.
But by a whisker,
Gerald Ford got the nomination.
When Ford was nominated,
Reagan's supporters staged a demonstration
on the Convention floor.
And it went on and on
and on and on.
By the end of that Convention,
it's clear
that although Gerald Ford
may be the nominee,
Ronald Reagan has won the hearts
and minds of conservatives.
Reagan did great damage to Ford.
Look at the poll numbers. You'll see
that Jimmy Carter starts surging,
over 30 points ahead of Gerald Ford.
Ford had a weak position in the national race,
so he challenged Jimmy Carter to a debate.
Mr. President, I would like to explore a little
more deeply our relationship with the Russians.
Max Frankel asked Ford a question
about whether the United States
was accepting of Soviet domination
of Eastern Europe.
There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and
there never will be under a Ford administration.
Uh, I'm sorry, could I just follow...
Did I understand you to say, sir,
that the Russians are not
using Eastern Europe
as their own sphere of influence?
Everybody's jaw just dropped.
Are you alive? Are you aware?
What he meant to say was, "I will not accept
any Soviet domination of Eastern Europe."
Governor Carter, have you a response?
Charitably, that was a momentary slip.
Uncharitably,
it was a loss of touch with reality.
Clearly a huge moment where
the country makes the judgment,
you know what, maybe we do need to go in a
different direction and replace the President.
Ford had never lost an
election in his life.
Won fifteen straight terms
in the House,
and here all of the sudden, he's beaten
by this one-term Governor of Georgia.
And he was crushed.
My voice isn't up to par.
Let me call on the real
spokesman for the family, Betty.
It's been the greatest honor
of my husband's life
to have served his fellow Americans
during two of the most difficult years
in our history.
I think the real test comes now.
Whether these people
who have taken apart the old system
can somehow translate politics into power
and make a government work.
That's their real test, and we're on the
threshold of possibly the greatest change
since the New Deal in 1932.
The parade has started.
He is out of the car.
This is a change in the schedule.
He is walking.
Most Presidents in our time
have wanted to do this.
But in recent years
after our various tragedies,
it has been discouraged
and there has not been very much of it.
Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn
get out of the car.
It was game-changing.
People looked at that and said
"this is what we need.
A real person as President."
Carter was a man of the people.
Glamor was not what we were in the market
for. We were looking for a redeemer.
I'd like to take a little look
around, you know. I haven't seen it.
Supposed to have a meeting with some of
the Cabinet officers in a few minutes.
Are you actually going upstairs,
taking a look at the living quarters?
Yeah, for the first time.
President Carter knew he had four years to
do things that he thought were important.
Fix the economy,
try to bring some peace to the Middle East,
fix energy, and some other things.
We will have available for public scrutiny
and for Congressional action by April 20th
a comprehensive,
long-range energy policy.
The winter of 1977 is one of the worst
the country had experienced,
and this comes at a time
the economy is still doing poorly.
The severe weather has already led to
a serious shortage of natural gas.
Federal Power Commission
estimates at least 200,000 layoffs
due to industrial gas curtailments so far.
In the Dayton area,
school districts must close for 30 days.
Congress will consider this week
emergency gas legislation.
Good evening, President Carter
is about to speak to the nation
from the White House
on the subject of energy.
Tonight,
I want to have an unpleasant talk with you.
The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed
us, but it will if we do not act quickly.
We need to shift to plentiful coal, while
taking care to protect the environment.
And to apply stricter safety standards
to nuclear energy.
This difficult effort will be
the moral equivalent of war.
The policies that he rolls out
around the speech really don't go anywhere.
One of the key reasons for this is that Jimmy
Carter really had poor relations with Congress.
For the producing states I think it would
be a catastrophic, cataclysmic calamity.
What he's trying to do is prepare the public mind to
accept only the Carter proposal and nothing else.
Carter alienated the powers
that be in Congress.
So when Jimmy Carter begin to falter, he didn't
have friends coming out and speaking for him.
In fact, I was getting calls
from Democrats criticizing him.
I've always heard about the advise
and consent role of the Congress.
So far they've been a little stronger
on the advice than they have the consent.
Carter inherits a financial mess
and there was no magic wand to cure it all.
He needed a big
feather in his cap quickly.
It's almost a White House cliche that
when a President is in trouble at home,
his counselors advise a trip abroad.
A President on the road.
His first long overseas trip
to the Middle East and Western Europe.
Mr. Carter met not only with
Anwar Sadat of Egypt,
but also with King Hussein of Jordan, King
Khalid of Saudi Arabia, and the Shah of Iran.
The United States had always
backed the Shah of Iran
and that goes back to 1953
when in fact, America essentially
put the Shah into power.
Iran is an island of stability
in one of the more troubled
areas of the world.
Even though Western
governments loved the Shah,
they weren't really paying attention
to the facts on the ground.
And there were many people who
were discontented with the Shah,
in part because of his extremely
oppressive policies.
Iran was seen as important
for its oil resources,
but also because the shah was an ally
when it came to regional goals.
This was a natural alliance
for the United States.
The President and the Shah of Iran spent a
long time talking about the Middle East.
And it was brought up
by other leaders in other countries.
Jimmy Carter saw the Middle East
and the settlement of the conflict
between the Israelis and Arabs
as central to any kind of stability
for the next generation.
Hopes for a Middle East peace settlement were
never higher than they were last November,
when Sadat went to Jerusalem
to meet Begin.
And then after Begin returned the visit,
the enthusiasm began to drop off.
While the world watched,
Sadat and Begin took to bickering
and negotiations broke down.
Jimmy Carter took advantage of Sadat's
willingness to talk to the Israelis.
I think he thought he might be able to do
something that his predecessors couldn't.
It was a huge gamble.
Good afternoon,
the stage is set and the participants
are now beginning to arrive
here in the Washington area.
President Carter, Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
will sit down in
the lonely solitude of Camp David
and attempt to work out
a peace settlement for the Middle East.
Failure here would just increase the impression
that is being reflected in the public opinion polls
that Mr. Carter is a nice man,
but an inept President.
There are hundreds of reporters here,
largely interviewing each other.
What the three are discussing,
whether the talks are friendly or tense,
we just don't know
because of the unprecedented secrecy.
By the end of the second day,
Rosalynn says you could hear them screaming
at each other at the top of their lungs.
Carter had to physically separate them.
He had to block them from leaving.
The Middle East Summit at Camp David
is a week old today,
and there's still no official word on how
those talks are going or when they might end,
but their length already has given rise
to reports of a stalemate.
Carter had a photograph
made of the three men,
and had made up copies
for Begin's nine grandchildren,
and had signed each of them,
"Love, Jimmy Carter."
Very reluctantly,
Carter went back to see Begin.
Carter handed him the photographs
and he said,
"I had hoped to write that, 'this is where
your grandfather and I made peace'."
And Begin began to weep.
Carter went back to his cabin
to tell Sadat that the signing was off,
and the phone rang.
And it was Begin saying that
he would sign.
We are privileged to witness tonight
a significant achievement
in the cause of peace.
An achievement
none thought possible a year ago.
The peace treaty changed the
tenor of politics across the region.
An Arab country which accounted for
a quarter of the Arab world population
recognized Israel's right to exist.
And it changed the dynamics
of the Middle East.
Aren't we in bliss.
What a picture, what a picture.
And the room of course
has erupted in cheering.
Applause.
As Menachem Begin said,
"peace now celebrates a great victory."
The Camp David Accord was
Carter's crowning achievement.
But it was very shortly thereafter
diminished by the crisis with Iran.
Ayatollah Khomeini, the rebel priest,
now exiled in Paris,
has called on his supporters
to depose the Shah.
Khomeini called for the building of
an Islamic state not dependent on the West.
I don't think the United States,
as a secular country, really understood
that Islam, a religion,
could oust a monarchy
that had prevailed as a system of
government for two and a half millennia.
We support the Shah, but we don't try to
interfere in the internal affairs of Iran.
We did put the Shah in,
but you're saying we can't keep him in?
I think that's a decision to be made
by the people of that country.
Good evening.
The Shah of Iran is in Egypt tonight.
His countrymen are deliriously
rejoicing at his departure.
And all around the world, government
leaders are trying to come to grips
with the fall of the man
known as "The King of Kings."
The old chant of "death to the Shah"
was replaced today by a new one,
"death to Carter."
We want Jimmy Carter
to know that we want freedom
and we don't want
his human rights anymore.
Obviously, the source of energy
for the 1970s was a core question.
The Iranian revolution is drying up
our energy supply.
We're literally running out of gas.
Your attention please.
There has been a state of emergency
declared on Three Mile Island.
At a nuclear power plant near
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
the cooling system broke down this morning.
Some radioactive steam
escaped into the air.
Radiation passed through
the four-foot concrete walls
and was detected
a mile away from the plant.
This was the first big nuclear disaster
at a time when the country was
increasingly reliant on nuclear power.
And the federal government and the state government
couldn't do much about it. It was scary.
It's the beginning of mistrust
of nuclear power
as the magic salve
to the energy problem.
The President said today
that he believes this incident
will make it necessary to reassess the
country's present nuclear safety regulations.
That comes from a President who has been
claiming that more nuclear reactors are needed
to offset the demand for foreign oil.
The energy crisis which had
been going on all decade
only gets worse
with Middle Eastern turmoil.
Californians sat fuming in their cars,
waiting impatiently in long lines,
wondering who and what
had put them there.
Somehow there wasn't
enough gasoline to go around.
But prices rose elsewhere
and lines began forming,
and Americans began realizing
that California was not unique.
California was first.
People in this country always worry about the price of
gas, but this was a worry about the availability of gas.
While the oil producers were
getting ready for another price increase,
the oil consumers
were beginning to meet in Japan.
President Carter's state visit began today.
My information is that in the
next few weeks, hopefully sooner,
there will be an increase in supply
of gasoline to the affected areas.
I think it's phony. I think they're trying
to get the prices jacked up.
That's my personal opinion.
What was once a distant foreign policy
issue has become a domestic issue.
A truck strike has driven
food prices upward,
slowed industry and resulted in violence.
The bloodiest episode
in Levittown, Pennsylvania.
32 people were injured when motorists joined
the truckers in protesting the fuel shortage.
The crowd of two to three thousand, mostly
young teenagers, packed the intersection.
Then it turned violent.
Police brutality!
This is Levittown, Pennsylvania. This is the
perfect, quintessential symbol of middle America.
And middle America is in torment
about the gas crisis.
Sunday, July 1.
Because of the gas lines,
President Carter flies straight home
from the Tokyo Economic Summit
and announces a television speech
to the nation Thursday.
Then to Camp David by helicopter,
presumably to work on that energy speech.
But then, a sudden change.
The energy speech is canceled
with no explanation.
Critics speak of indecision.
Carter decides that he wants to meet
with advisers from all walks of life.
The latest group shuttled to Camp David
includes Energy Secretary Schlesinger,
several non-government oil experts
and three Governors.
Well now he's been up there for eight days,
and there is still no word
on when the Camp David
Domestic Summit will end
and the President will
come down from the mountain.
One almost expects the President
to alight from his chopper
carrying with him two tablets of stone.
Sources say Mr. Carter will address what
he calls a malaise affecting the nation.
This is an ABC News Special Report.
Fifteens seconds, sir.
Stand by.
Good evening.
I want to speak to you first tonight
about a subject even more serious
than energy or inflation.
It is a crisis of confidence.
For the first time
in the history of our country
a majority of our people believe
that the next five years
will be worse than the past five years.
Too many of us now tend to worship
self-indulgence and consumption.
Human identity is no longer
defined by what one does,
but by what one owns.
So the President has concluded his speech
and what a remarkable speech it was.
It was almost a sermon.
Afterwards,
he gets a bump in the polls.
People are like, "hey, this is good."
But then the op-eds begin to drip in.
I think the President and his advisers
are making a mistake
if they think out there in the country people feel
there is a crisis of confidence in themselves.
They feel there is a crisis of confidence
in the President.
It was analysis of the speech that really
began to turn things for him.
And right after the speech
he then basically fired his Cabinet.
When members of the Cabinet
gathered at the white house this morning
for a two-hour meeting with the President,
they seemed to be in good spirits.
But by the time they left,
things had changed.
Along with the senior White House staff,
their resignations were requested.
Don't you think someone should
come out and assure the country
that we don't have to worry
about this crisis?
I think... I think that...
I don't think there is a crisis.
Don't the American people have a right
to know who is running the government?
Well, they do have a right to know.
They do know who's running the government.
The American public isn't confused about
who's running the government.
The President is running it.
Sometimes perception is more
important than reality.
And the perception became that
Jimmy Carter made one big
mistake after another.
The Shah of Iran is in
a New York City hospital tonight.
An American government source
in Washington says
the deposed Iranian monarch is suffering
from cancer and a blocked bile duct.
The Shah was admitted to this country
on condition
that he not engage in any
political activity while here.
The present Iranian government
was assured of that.
Meanwhile, tighter security measures
have been put into effect
at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran
as a precaution against possible actions
by anti-Shah fanatics.
Carter agreed to allow the Shah to come
to the United States for medical treatment.
And at that point it was the match
that lit this conflagration.
The American Embassy in Tehran
is in the hands of Muslim students tonight.
Spurred on by an anti-American speech
by the Ayatollah Khomeini,
they stormed the Embassy,
fought the Marine guards for three hours,
overpowered them,
and took dozens of American hostages.
The Iranians burned the United States flag
and denounced the U.S. government,
saying they would stay until the U.S.
sends the deposed Shah back to Iran.
What I remember,
and this was the second day,
was that the provisional government
of Dr. Bazargan, the Prime Minister,
which was essentially the people
we dealt with, had resigned.
At that point I remember thinking,
"we are definitely in the soup,"
because there was no one to talk to.
There was no government
for our government to talk to.
In Tehran it is Tuesday morning.
The hostages at the American Embassy,
more than 60 of them,
have spent another night, their ninth,
as prisoners of their Iranian captors.
And today President Carter made
his first public response to their ordeal.
I am ordering that we discontinue
purchasing of any oil from Iran
for delivery to this country.
High administration officials believe
that through today's action
they have removed a bargaining tool that can no
longer be used in dealing with the hostages.
Other officials say candidly that
today's announcement was also intended
to dampen the outrage and frustration
expressed by Americans
over the country's seeming helplessness.
How they treated our diplomats
was humiliating.
That put extraordinary pressure
on Jimmy Carter.
The meeting is on,
but there is nothing to suggest
those meetings have produced
any new ways of solving the crisis.
Any encouraging news from Iran,
Mr. President?
- Status quo, sir?
- Yes, I'm afraid so.
The first sign of hope in two weeks
from the American Embassy in Tehran.
The students holding the hostages there
promised to obey an order today
from the Ayatollah Khomeini
to free all women and blacks.
The Ayatollah explained, "Islam has
a special respect for women and the blacks,
who have spent ages under
American pressure and tyranny."
As he departed for Thanksgiving week
at nearby Camp David,
the President was apparently confident that at
least some of those hostages will soon be free.
"We are thankful," said his statement,
"the ordeal may be over for them and that they
may be soon reunited with their families."
But it went on to urge
that the authorities in Iran
now move to secure the safe release
of all those still being held.
What can you do? You bring pressure.
You can bring sanctions,
you can go to the United Nations,
you can send emissaries.
But America can't do a damn thing.
Ted Koppel on ABC News,
Walter Cronkite,
"America, Day fifteen,"
"Day one hundred,"
"Day two hundred."
It started wearing on people.
And Carter started becoming
the symbol of lost American prestige.
Ronald Reagan is running officially.
He got in the race tonight in
New York City at a fund-raising dinner.
And he taped a speech yesterday
for showing tonight
on about 90 independent
television stations.
I'm here tonight
to announce my intention
to seek the Republican nomination for
President of the United States.
The crisis we face is not the result
of any failure of the American spirit.
It's a failure of our leaders.
The country is looking for optimism,
looking for a new dawn,
new beginnings.
And Ronald Reagan
epitomized all those things.
Between '76 and '80,
Reagan's building a coalition.
Bringing in Christian fundamentalists,
and law-and-order Nixonian people.
Reagan is realizing in order
to sell conservatism,
you've got to do it with a smile.
And you've got to do it in a way that
makes people feel good, not scold them.
We can turn this country around
and we can turn our economy around.
And the time to do it is now.
We want Kennedy!
We want Kennedy!
There are many Democrats who are worried
that Carter is not going to win.
So Ted Kennedy,
who was a Senator from Massachusetts,
decides to take him on.
Today I formally announce
that I am a candidate
for President of the United States.
Many Democrats believed Carter
had moved too far to the center
and that he abandoned
the traditional ideas of the party.
Jimmy Carter and Kennedy
became the polar opposites
within the party and Jimmy Carter
on top of that had a feeling that
the Kennedys felt they were
above we Southerners.
It's a nasty contest. When someone
asked Jimmy Carter in passing,
"what do you think about
being challenged by Ted Kennedy?"
Jimmy Carter says,
"I'll whip his ass."
This is a special report
from CBS News.
The 174th day of the Iran Crisis
has brought a startling
and tragic turn of events.
The United States mounted a
military operation into Iran last night
to rescue the American hostages.
But it failed.
Eight helicopters took off from the deck
of the aircraft carrier Nimitz.
The eight helicopters proceeded toward a desert
staging area 200 miles southeast of Tehran.
Two of the helicopters
experienced problems en route.
But once on the ground,
yet another helicopter malfunctioned,
leaving only five for the mission.
At that moment,
the President scrubbed the mission.
In the rush to pull out, one of the
helicopters taxied into a C-130 fuel tanker.
Both burst into flames.
Eight of our men were killed.
Four others suffered burns.
The bodies of the dead have not
yet been returned.
The Ayatollah Khomeini seemed to enjoy
stage-managing in this grisly theater
as the bodies were shown.
The soldiers obviously took no joy here.
It was my decision to attempt
the rescue operation.
It was my decision to cancel it
when problems developed.
The responsibility is fully my own.
Why do you want to be President?
Well, I'm... Uh...
Kennedy should have been
prepared to answer that question.
In some ways, he'd been preparing to
answer that question his entire life.
And instead, he gives mud.
A stammering, halting answer
that instantly told people
this guy does not know
why he wants the job.
There's more natural resources
than any nation in the world.
The interesting thing is that after it
became clear that Kennedy couldn't win,
he became a great candidate.
There is no malaise
in the spirit of this country.
It's just Mr. Carter!
Kennedy's primary challenge
has a big effect,
because many Democrats are not that enthused about
their candidate once the Convention takes place.
Live from New York City,
the 1980 Democratic National Convention.
The Democrats have had their
first day of the Convention.
Senator Kennedy lost
the first and decisive fight.
Jimmy Carter is the nominee of this party.
I congratulate President Carter
on his victory here.
I am confident that
the Democratic party
will reunite on the basis
of Democratic principles
and that together we will march
towards a Democratic victory in 1980.
People are cheering Kennedy on.
The enthusiasm for what he has to say is much
more than the response that Carter gets.
In good times and bad,
in the valleys and on the peaks,
we've told people the truth.
Carter then wants Kennedy to come onstage
and they can hold up their hands together
to show that this party is unified.
But when Kennedy comes up,
he doesn't really do that.
There will be no pictures in tomorrow
morning's paper, and none for posterity.
Of Ted Kennedy holding Jimmy Carter's
hand aloft.
Well, this is slightly awkward.
Kennedy did not win, could not win.
And yet he had ripped the party apart
when what they needed to win that
election was full Democratic unity.
- We love Reagan!
- Thank you!
This country needs a new administration
with a renewed dedication
to the dream of an American.
An administration that will give
that dream new life
and make America great again.
Ronald Reagan will call Carter out for this
whole idea that we live in an age of limits,
and say no, America's future is
just as expansive as it ever was.
Next Tuesday,
all of you will go to the polls.
I think when you make that decision,
it might be well if you would ask yourself,
are you better off
than you were four years ago?
This is continuing ABC News
election night coverage.
It is beginning to look like,
well, the word is landslide.
The word is landslide
for Ronald Reagan tonight.
If they're not breaking out the champagne
at the Reagan headquarters now,
it's only because, well,
they can't find an opener.
Jimmy Carter, though beaten at the polls,
did not act like a beaten man.
He said he didn't feel the people
had turned against him personally,
but had voted their frustrations over
America's lost dominance in world affairs
and lost preeminence in economic affairs.
Mr. Carter showed a flash
of anguish only once,
when he said his wife had seen one of the moral
majority preachers on television this morning
say that the American electorate had acted
to put a true Christian in the Oval Office.
We knew that Reagan had won the election.
The Iranians told us that
certain gloating feeling
that they were responsible
for Jimmy Carter's defeat.
Mr. Carter is back in his office
burning the midnight oil.
And perhaps that's characteristic
of the Jimmy Carter Presidency.
He's doing it here
on his last night in Washington.
Up until the last moment, right before he
actually has to shake Ronald Reagan's hand
during Reagan's inauguration, Jimmy Carter
is doing everything he possibly can
trying to get those hostages home.
Jimmy Carter was perceived in Iran
as the ultimate ally of the Shah.
And they didn't want to give
any rewards to Jimmy Carter.
We had to wait until Ronald Reagan
had taken the oath of office
before the plane was allowed to fly
out of Tehran to Algiers
Everything was delayed,
despite the agreement,
to make sure that Jimmy Carter didn't get
any credit for the freedom of the hostages.
It was a bittersweet moment
as Jimmy Carter, private citizen,
left Andrews Air Force Base outside
of Washington to go home to Georgia.
Luck is a big factor in a Presidency.
And Jimmy Carter
had some very bad luck.
Because of the blow-back
from Vietnam and Watergate,
it will be recognized
that Jimmy Carter inherited
a national and world situation
that was almost completely unmanageable.
A few moments ago on Air Force One,
I had received word
officially for the first time
that the aircraft carrying the
52 American hostages
had cleared Iranian air space
on the first leg of the journey home
and that every one of the 52 hostages
was alive, was well, and free.