Echoes of Jimmy Carter could spell the end of the Biden presidency  

In 1980, incumbent President Jimmy Carter lost in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan. Many issues plagued the Carter White House, including some, like high inflation, that threaten Joe Biden’s reelection prospects today.

But one of the biggest problems for the peanut farmer from Georgia, and one that looms large once again, is that voters came to see his administration as incompetent. 

The final straw was the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, a Carter-approved Delta Force mission aiming to rescue 53 U.S. citizens being held hostage in Iran. Eight helicopters were dispatched; only five arrived at the target site in operational condition.  One had hydraulic problems. Another was caught in a sand storm. A third developed a cracked rotor blade. As the birds prepared to withdraw from the aborted mission, another helicopter crashed into a transport aircraft, destroying the plane and killing eight soldiers. 

Was Carter to blame for the embarrassing debacle? Of course not, but voters took the disaster as one more sign that the Carter White House was inept. Seven months later, they dumped him. 

President Biden is also wallowing in a sea of failures.  

Last weekend, his Transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, had to fend off criticism from Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” about completing only eight EV charging stations in two and a half years of trying, notwithstanding a budget of $7.5 billion. For comparison, Tesla has built over 25,000 fast chargers to date in the U.S., and tens of thousands of slow chargers as well. Given that Joe Biden is forcing rapid adoption of electric vehicles, and that the cars headline the White House’s climate agenda, failure to manage the roll-out of infrastructure critical to their success is profoundly embarrassing. 

The public also witnessed this past month the collapse of the $320 million temporary pier that the U.S. military built offshore Gaza, just two weeks into its existence. The floating hub, meant to facilitate delivery of supplies to residents of the Hamas-controlled territory, broke free of its moorings and sank. In addition, four Navy vessels were beached and, to date, three soldiers have been injured in the operation; one remains hospitalized in critical condition. A Pentagon spokesperson told reporters the Defense Department does not classify it as a failure. 

Even when operational, however, the project came up short. Because American troops are not allowed onshore, for fear they might be targeted by terrorists, the aid mostly failed to reach its destinations. Looters have stolen most of the goods; U.S. taxpayers’ efforts to help Gazan citizens have come to naught.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, the New York Times reported, “Some American-made, precision-guided weapons supplied to Ukraine have proved ineffective on the battlefield, their accuracy badly diminished by Russian jamming efforts.” Apparently, the weapons, including guided artillery shells, worked initially, until the Russians figured out a way to scramble their GPS signals. Since the bombs can no longer precisely target strategic sites, the Ukrainian army has stopped using them.

Even more frustrating to the war effort has been U.S. insistence that Ukraine not hit targets within Russia, including sites from which our ally is being attacked. The Biden White House is so afraid of angering Vladimir Putin that we have consistently held back the assistance Ukraine needs to actually win this war. Just in the past couple of days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has signaled that the U.S. may finally reverse this approach, at the urgent request of NATO allies and Ukraine’s military.   

Also in recent days, the U.S. has been pushing Britain, France and Germany to avoid confronting Iran over its nuclear activities, afraid a rebuke would “risk further escalation in the region and rock the boat ahead of November’s U.S. election,” as AP put it. That bizarre diplomatic effort has coincided with Tehran proxies continuing to attack our military and commercial ships with drones. Americans should wonder why Blinken is defending Iran, and especially its apparent efforts to build a nuclear bomb.

In recent congressional hearings, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blasted Blinken. “We now have two simultaneous wars waging: the worst war in Europe since World War Two, and the worst war in the Middle East in 50 years,” Cruz said. “Both, I believe, were caused by this administration’s consistent weakness.” Cruz also slammed Blinken for failing to enforce the tough Trump-era sanctions that had crippled Iran’s finances. Biden has allowed oil exports from the country to soar from 300,000 barrels per day to 2 million, the proceeds of which are helping fund its escalating proxy wars.  

Of course, Biden’s foreign policy fiascos began with the catastrophic pull-out from Afghanistan (which he directed, according to his military chiefs) and also include subsequent humiliations such as China’s deployment of a giant spy balloon that flew across the U.S.   

Joe Biden’s White House has messed up on so many fronts that it is hard to keep track. The climate agenda is undermined by the lack of a clear plan or ability to provide necessary infrastructure such as minerals (blocked by environmentalists) or charging stations; pretty soon some states will encounter brown-outs or even blackouts as electrical grids are overwhelmed by a misguided push to rapid electrification. 

The border is broken. The government seems unable to track even individuals on the terror watch list who have crossed illegally. It is simply dumb luck that terrorists have not pulled off an attack on the homeland, al though the recent effort by two Jordanians to breach a military installation in Virginia — one of whom entered the U.S. illegally — suggests it is just a matter of time. 

Biden’s White House is full of ideologues, committed to a progressive agenda. Common sense and competence are in dangerously short supply. If the Carter history is any guide, voters will have had enough by November. 

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.