Cue the disco dancing, shag carpets, and “have a nice day” bumper stickers. Republicans are getting a 1970s feeling about inflation, high gas prices, and turmoil in the Middle East, betting that voters will begin to see President Joe Biden as a Jimmy Carter clone.
A Republican National Committee statement earlier this month juxtaposed images of Biden and Carter in a spoof of a poster for Back to the Future (ironically, a Ronald Reagan-era film). “The images this weekend are just a sign of what’s to come, and the damage of Biden’s policies will make the crisis of 1979 look like nothing,” the RNC’s rapid response director said.
Former President Donald Trump has gotten into the act. “I’m sorry to say the gasoline prices that you will be confronted with are far higher than they were just a short number of months ago where we had gasoline under $2 a gallon,” he said in a statement issued through his political action committee. “Remember as you’re watching the meter tick, and your dollars pile up, how great of a job Donald Trump did as President. Soon Russia and the Middle East will be making a fortune on oil, and you will be saying how good it was to have me as your President.”
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Though Trump has taken issue with the Biden-Carter comparisons. “I see that everybody is comparing Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter,” he said earlier this month. “It would seem to me that is very unfair to Jimmy Carter. Jimmy mishandled crisis after crisis, but Biden has CREATED crisis after crisis.”
Carter, a one-term Democratic president who lost to Reagan in a 44-state landslide, was for decades a symbol of liberal failure and ineffectual government. From stagflation at home to the hostage crisis in Iran, the public perception was that the country’s problems were getting out of control and Carter was ill equipped to handle them. His presidency was followed by a dozen years of Republican rule. Biden served in the Senate during the Carter administration.
“Biden is a little bit of history repeating,” said Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman. “While the young are experiencing shortages and inflated pricing, the older folks are remembering the failed policies of Jimmy Carter. Reports are that like Carter, Biden is consumed with details that hinder decisions. Biden is a creature of process and is repeating the failures of the past.”
The question is whether attacks involving Carter will still resonate decades after he left office and following years of rebuilding his reputation through post-presidential humanitarian work. Among younger voters, the 96-year-old may now be better known for building houses for the homeless through Habitat for Humanity or teaching Sunday school at his Georgia Baptist church than for national malaise.
In a 2015 Quinnipiac poll, 40% of registered voters said Carter had done the best work since leaving office, this time beating Reagan, who finished second, with 24%. Admiration for his post-presidential endeavors may also have improved how the public views his time in office. A 2009 CNN poll found 64% approved of the job Carter did as president. An ABC News poll a decade earlier put that figure at 66%. “Jimmy Carter is not getting older, he is getting better,” said ABC’s 1999 statement accompanying the survey’s release. “At least in retrospect.”
Carter left office with a 34% approval rating. His Gallup average approval rating of 45.5% was the second worst since World War II. Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, was the Democratic nominee in 1984 and came within one vote per precinct in his native Minnesota of losing all 50 states. Mondale died earlier this year.
“Voters are going to care about Biden now, not Carter then,” said a Republican operative. “But it is a cute comparison. Arguably apt.” The obvious Democratic rejoinder will be to point to the more recent Trump administration.
Biden’s approval ratings have mostly held steady, with the RealClearPolitics polling average showing him at 54.2% approval to 41.5% disapproval. But there is a wide range of results in individual surveys, with a low of 49% in Quinnipiac and a high of 62% in Harris just this month.
The president’s party tends to do poorly in the midterm elections of a first term. Democrats will be defending much smaller congressional majorities than under Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Republicans actually gained House seats last year.
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Republicans will spend much of the next year making the case that Biden is a failed liberal president in the hopes of leaving him as discredited as Carter.
“For the younger folks, Biden will be as mocked as Carter was,” Blakeman said. “Government spending and borrowing without budget cutting is an invitation to inflation. Likewise, a weak foreign policy and repressive energy policy is an invitation to shortages and disruptions.”
