7 Jimmy Carter 7pressed for a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics
due to be held in Moscow.
Carter’s substantial foreign policy successes were over-
shadowed by a serious crisis in foreign affairs and by a
groundswell of popular discontent over his economic poli-
cies. On Nov. 4, 1979, a mob of Iranian students stormed
the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and took the diplomatic staff
there hostage. A standoff developed between the United
States and Iran over the issue of the captive diplomats.
Carter’s inability to obtain the release of the hostages
became a major political liability. The failure of a secret
U.S. military mission to rescue the hostages—which ended
almost before it began with a crash in the desert of a plane
and helicopter—in April 1980 seemed to typify the ineffi-
cacy and misfortune of the Carter administration.
On the home front, Carter’s management of the econ-
omy aroused widespread concern, as inflation increased
and unemployment remained high. The faltering economy
was due in part to the energy crisis that had originated in
the early 1970s as a result of the country’s overdependence
on foreign oil.
Carter was able to fend off the challenge of Mass-
achusetts senator Edward Kennedy to win the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1980. However, the public’s
confidence in Carter’s executive abilities had fallen to an
irretrievable low. In the elections held that November,
Carter was overwhelmingly defeated by the Republican
nominee, a former actor and governor of California,
Ronald W. Reagan.
In his final months in office, Carter was able to push
through important legislation that created the Superfund
to clean up abandoned toxic waste dumps and that set
aside some 100 million acres (40 million hectares) of land
in Alaska to protect it from development.