804 Chapter 30 Running on Empty, 1975–1991
time since the Vietnam War the entire country agreed
on something.
Nevertheless the hostages languished in Iran. In
April 1980 Carter finally ordered a team of marine
commandos flown into Iran in Sea Stallion helicopters
in a desperate attempt to free the hostages. The raid
was a fiasco. Several helicopters broke down when
their rotors sucked sand into the engines. Another
helicopter crashed and eight commandos were
killed. The Iranians made political capital of the inci-
dent, gleefully displaying on television the wrecked
aircraft and captured American equipment. The
stalemate continued. When the shah died in exile in
Egypt in July 1980, the Iranians made no move to
release the hostages.
The Election of 1980
Despite the failure of the raid and the persistence of
stagflation, Carter had more than enough delegates at
the Democratic convention to win nomination on the
first ballot. His Republican opponent in the campaign
that followed was Ronald Reagan. At sixty-nine,
Reagan was the oldest person ever nominated for
president by a major party. However, his age was not
a serious handicap in the campaign; he was physically
trim and vigorous and seemed no older than most
other prominent politicians.
Reagan had grown up a New Deal Democrat,
but during and immediately after World War II he
became disillusioned with liberalism. As president of
the Screen Actors Guild he attacked the influence of
communists in the movie industry. After his movie
career ended (he always insisted that he was typed as
“the nice guy who didn’t get the girl”), Reagan did
publicity for General Electric until 1960, then
worked for various conservative causes. Reagan won
the undying loyalty of supporters of the Vietnam
War, as well as the permanent enmity of the left, by
proposing that the United States “level North
Vietnam, pave it, paint stripes on it, and make a park-
ing lot out of it.” In 1966 he ran for governor of
California, and struck a responsive chord by attacking
the counterculture. “Hippies,” he quipped, “act like
Tarzan, look like Jane, and smell like Cheetah.” He
won the election and was easily reelected.
Both Carter and Reagan spent much of the 1980
campaign explaining why the other was unsuited to be
president. Carter defended his record, though without
much conviction. Reagan denounced criminals, drug
addicts, and all varieties of immorality and spoke in
support of patriotism, religion, family life, and other
“old-fashioned” virtues. This won him the enthusiastic
backing of fundamentalist religious sects and other
conservative groups. He also called for increased
spending on defense, and he promised to transfer some
functions of the federal government to the states and
to cut taxes. He insisted at the same time that the bud-
get could be balanced and inflation sharply reduced.In 1979 Islamic militants hold an American embassy worker in Tehran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, lectures in 2010. When
Ahmadinejad spoke at the UN in 2009, many were
struck by his resemblance to the young militant
(left photo) who held Americans hostage in Iran in
- Then, Ahmadinejad was 23. He denied that
he was the person in the earlier photo.