[On November 2nd, 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected President. Perhaps the most delightfully straightforward person ever to hold the office nonetheless connects to a number of compelling contexts, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of them. Leading up to a special weekend post on thi year’s midterm election results (which I don’t know when I’m scheduling the rest of the series)!]
On three fascinating layers to a largely forgotten presidential election (which seems to have mostly swung on voter disgust with Watergate and thus with President Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon).
- The primaries: Every presidential election features at least one contested primary, of course, but 1976 had two: not only did seventeen total candidates vie for the Democratic nomination (with thirteen of them lasting long enough to get some votes); but the incumbent, President Ford, faced a Republican primary challenge of his own from former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Moreover, the Democratic primary featured a number of distinct stages, including a late (June) push from the “Anybody but Carter” (ABC) movement led by Idaho Senator Frank Church and California Governor Jerry Brown (who feared that the Southern Democrat Carter was too conservative). All of those factors meant that this was a primary season that really lasted from 1974 through the summer 1976 conventions; we tend to think of multi-year election cycles as a more 21st century phenomenon, but we had one during our Bicentennial year as well.
- The media: I wrote in this blog post (almost exactly three years ago) about the famous role of the televised debates in the 1960 presidential election. Like I have to believe most of us, I had always assumed that presidential debates were televised from then on; but in fact the 1976 election featured the first televised debate since that landmark 1960 one. And that September debate was a significant moment, as Ford (seasoned by his years in the Oval Office) performed well and the outsider Carter seemed a bit out of his depth, with the polls tightening dramatically as a result. In a more bizarre but parallel media moment from September, Carter was interviewed by journalist Richard Scheer for Playboy magazine, which published the controversial conversation (in which the born-again Evangelical Christian Carter admitted to having looking at other women with “lust” and thus to having committed “adultery in my heart”) in full. Neither of these moments were enough to keep Carter from winning in November, but they reflected the mass media’s increasingly central role in presidential campaigns.
- A faithless elector: This wasn’t something I had personally heard of until the Supreme Court’ important 2020 decision in Chifalo v. Washington, which upheld states fining presidential or vice presidential electors who break their pledge and vote for someone other the winner of the state’s popular vote (the Constitution is silent on this question so the power is reserved to the states). But as of the 2024 election there have been 165 total instances of this practice (90 for president, 75 for vice president), and the 1976 election featured a striking example: Mike Padden of Washington (state), who cast his vote for Ronald Reagan for president (while still voting for Ford’s running mate Bob Dole for VP). Perhaps a clear foreshadowing of Reagan’s ascendancy to the top of the GOP, as well as the presidency, four years later.
Next CarterStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
PPS. PPS. Also thanks to Jason Lee Guthrie for sharing his podcast on Carter!
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