What difficulties did Jimmy Carter confront during his presidency?
Jimmy Carter endured many disappointments during his years in the White House. The American economy performed very poorly. Many Americans became especially angry about the combination of high prices and high interest rates. To some extent, these economic difficulties were beyond Carter's control. High oil costs resulting from price hikes by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), wreaked havoc on industrialized economies around the globe. Still, Americans grew increasingly frustrated that the president seemed powerless to tackle the nation's problems. In the summer of 1979, the president delivered a nationally televised address in which he discussed Americans' "crisis of confidence." The address proved extremely unpopular, because many viewers felt that the president was blaming citizens for America's troubles, rather than accepting responsibility for them.
In the last year of his presidency, Carter struggled with the Iran hostage crisis. In 1979, a government led by Islamic fundamentalist leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in Iran by ousting Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a widely unpopular ruler who had been supported by the U.S. In November, Iranians seized the American embassy in Tehran, and took 53 Americans hostage. Carter was unable to negotiate the hostages' freedom before the 1980 election, after an effort to rescue them in the spring of 1980 failed miserably. As the crisis dragged on, it became a symbol of America's seeming lack of power around the globe. Coincidentally, the 1980 election was held exactly one year after the hostages crisis began. In that election, Reagan handily defeated Carter. (Carter did gain the hostages' freedom in time for them to be released on the final day of his term in January 1981.) In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to put down a rebellion of Islamic guerillas against the Communist government, further adding to the impression that America's enemies were asserting themselves around the globe.