President Joe Biden finds himself far underwater with voters, facing foreign crises and increasingly scary inflation figures — all of which attract comparisons to America’s 39th president, Jimmy Carter.
Carter is perhaps the president most closely associated with high inflation, and thanks to a legacy that includes a stiff 1980 primary challenge and a decisive reelection loss to Ronald Reagan, he’s a president to whom no White House Democrat wants to be compared.
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“High inflation and rising gas prices are economic numbers that make people nervous, which tends to bring down presidential approval ratings — all of that is similar,” said Robert Strong, a political professor at Washington and Lee University. “For both of them, Russia invaded a neighboring country. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, with very big consequences. Ukraine may be bigger, but [Carter and Biden] were both surprised by those Soviet/Russian actions.”
Of course, any comparison of historic figures is far from perfect, and Biden is in many ways quite different than the Man from Plains.
“Biden belongs to the group of presidents who are lifelong politicians, like Kennedy, Nixon, Johnson, and Bill Clinton,” said Strong, who authored a book about Carter’s foreign policy. “Carter belongs to a group that did significant things before embarking on a political career — Eisenhower, Reagan, or even Trump.”
Unfortunately for them, one key similarity the two share is low approval ratings. Carter started strong but went underwater by the spring of his second year in office, flip-flopped for the better part of 1978 and ’79, then went sharply negative during the election year of 1980, drawing a primary challenger in Ted Kennedy before the loss to Reagan.
Biden’s polling also slipped following a honeymoon period and now sits firmly underwater, with just 39% approving per the latest data.
Hence the Carter comparisons. High gas prices are also a staple of the collective memory of the 1970s, though one that largely took place under the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Similarly, Carter inherited an inflation rate of 5% upon taking office, far above the 1.4% Biden welcomed in January 2021.
Both presidents were also hounded by foreign policy troubles, with Carter marred by the Iran hostage crisis and Biden’s approval slide beginning with the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
Some argue that Carter deserves more credit for his economic moves, namely through his deregulating of industries ranging from railroads to beer to airlines and his naming of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who tamped down inflation but not in time for the 1980 election.
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The Fed is once again hiking interest rates at a quickening pace today. Biden has promised to stay out of the agency’s way but has attacked a long list of enemies for high gas prices, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, oil companies, and even locally owned gas stations. He’s also vowed not to raise taxes while in office.
But an early action, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed against unified Republican opposition, may seal the public’s perception of Biden as being responsible for high inflation this time around.
“That huge stimulus program is, in the light of history, going to look like a catastrophic mistake,” said historian David Garrow. “This, to my mind, will be Joe [Biden] and Jay [Powell]’s soon-to-be recession.”
Both Carter and Biden entered the White House on the heels of controversial ex-presidents in Nixon and Donald Trump. In Carter’s case, being seen as a trustworthy outsider from Georgia was a plus because Nixon had spent decades in Washington. For Biden, the same sentiment applied because he is a career politician, providing a sharp contrast to the politically inexperienced Trump. Each also had troubled family members, with Carter having brother Billy and Biden having son Hunter.
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The part of Carter’s legacy Biden may want to avoid most is matching the 39th president’s high-profile Democratic primary challenge from Kennedy, which reflected and added to his weakness in 1980. This may already be playing out for Biden, with rivals circling and polls indicating Democrats are ready to ditch him.
For Strong, who is cautious about making comparisons between any presidents, the truth is that sometimes, outside factors outweigh anything a president may do.
“Carter served during a period when people were very worried about the future of the economy, which is one of the things that inflation creates,” he said. “Presidents are blamed for economic numbers that they very often can’t control. If they could control them, we’d have a great stock market and economic results every four years. But sometimes, people run when economies are in trouble.”
