30 Years Of Night

If you were alive in 1980 and old enough to vote, you were faced with an interesting decision on the next American President.  Continue with Jimmy Carter, who as President personified both the best and worst of progressive politics, or go with a known conservative who openly spoke about dismantling government, Ronald Reagan.

In the end, the election was more about image and world power than domestic politics.  Carter was viewed by too many as weak on the world stage, and Reagan strong (although he'd done nothing yet).  Carter's inability to end the hostage crisis in Iran was the principal evidence used by many in their decision to vote against him.  It didn't help that Jimmy Carter wore his heart on his sleeve and looked visibly depressed and strained, while Ronald Reagan looked either righteously stern or amiably upbeat, but never distressed, in his public appearances.  The public wanted reassurance, and Carter couldn't give it to them.

But Jimmy Carter was right about a lot of things, not least that energy policy was critical to the nation's future - the 'moral equivalent of war'.  That phrase seemed overwrought to his critics at the time, but we now know how prescient a phrase it was.

After the election in 1980, President Reagan fulfilled his promise of dismantling as much of the government as he could, memorably gutting the Interior Department and stopping decades of progress in cleaning up and protecting the environment, all in the name of promoting business. You might say Reagan's 'moral equivalent of war' was undoing Carter's progressive policies, and as much of Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' as he could.

He took aim at Carter's energy policies as well. As related in an article in a recent issue of The Atlantic (July/August 2009), Reagan had the solar panels Jimmy Carter installed on the White House removed, following that symbolic gesture shortly thereafter by shedding many of the government programs to subsidize and encourage alternative energy.  

The Reagan and Bush Years almost completely ignored alternatives to fossil fuels, except perhaps to rekindle interest in nuclear power, once Three Mile Island and Chernobyl began to recede in memory.  Even Democrat Bill Clinton didn't pick up Carter's torch when his chance came.  Too risky perhaps, after being bloodied on Health Care, or just another piece of evidence that Clinton was first and foremost a political animal, guarding his power at the expense of his beliefs.

Now, 30 years later, President Obama has it to do all over again.