The Reagan scandal that came out forty years later--did it defeat Carter in 1980?

Look up the Logan Act.

After President Jimmy Carter death at 100, America has already begun observing something of a pre-state funeral for a good man whose stature has only grown in the 44 years since he left the White House.

During Carter’s one term in office, he was labeled an “incompetent” politician by some critics, largely because 52 American diplomats and foreign service workers were taken hostage in Iran, and Carter was unable to bring them home in time to save his own presidency.

That stroke of bad luck, a terrible hand that Carter’s presidency drew, came on the heels of a recession, an energy crisis and the lingering aftermath of the Vietnam/Watergate era that dampened American patriotism.

The Logan Act specifically “criminalizes the negotiation of a dispute between the United States and a foreign government by an unauthorized American citizen. The intent behind the Act is to prevent unauthorized negotiations from undermining the government's position”.

Carter, painfully honest, made the hostages and sagging American optimism his primary concerns, to his political detriment. If he had been more cunning and less earnest, Carter would have played performative politics and appealed to our latent jingoism and xenophobia. That’s what Ronald Reagan did to throttle Carter at the polls in 1980—he won 44 states, a real landslide not possible now.

But did Reagan have clandestine help that we never knew about until now?

Two years ago, it was a bitter irony that as Carter lay dying in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, a dirty story about the Iran hostages emerged that could have changed the outcome of the 1980 presidential election. Talk about GOP election interference in 2020 seems laughable in comparison

The New York Times, published an article on March 18, 2023 with this opening paragraph: “It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of (President Jimmy Carter).”

Barnes was a former lieutenant governor of Texas, arguably the most powerful political job in the state, and a longtime aide to the late Texas Gov. John Connally. Connally died in 1993, after surviving the assassination attempt that claimed the life of President John F. Kennedy. Interestingly, many people thought Ben Barnes, in his relative youth, was a potential president himself, a Lyndon Johnson protege and possessed of good looks and oratorical polish.

When Reagan won the GOP nomination for president in 1980, Connally “resolved to help Reagan beat Carter,” and then make the case to Reagan that he should be defense secretary, wrote The New York Times. How?

“What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal,” according to The Times.

This was a clear violation of the Logan Act.

The Logan Act specifically “criminalizes the negotiation of a dispute between the United States and a foreign government by an unauthorized American citizen. The intent behind the Act is to prevent unauthorized negotiations from undermining the government's position”.

Hmm.

A perusal of President Carter’s memoir, “Keeping Faith,” shows no reference to Barnes, and only one derisive mention of Connally about his debate performance.

There is this poignant passage, however: “It was very likely I had been defeated and would soon leave office as President because I had kept these hostages and their fate at the forefront of the world’s attention, and had clung to a cautious and prudent policy in order to protect their lives during the preceding fourteen months.”

The political milieu of October 1980 featured the oft-expressed bleatings of Republicans warning voters of a sneaky “October surprise,” orchestrated by President Carter. Unpredictably, Carter had ordered a hostage rescue mission in April 1980—it was his only military operation.

This attempt ended tragically when a chopper hit one of the mission’s C-130 transport planes. Another chopper was about to fail, and the mission was aborted. Of course, this tragedy was widely trumpeted by the GOP as Carter’s latest incompetent failure. Americans think presidents are the Wizard of Oz, when mostly they’re just the man behind the curtain, hoping for the best from the people they lead.

Carter later repeatedly bemoaned the lack of an extra helicopter. In an interview with former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky on Dec. 30, the former news executive said Carter called out to her in his last days in office from his driveway in Plains, Georgia.

He then told Zirinsky the lack of that extra chopper cost him the presidency, a wound he would nurse for 44 years.

About half of the Iran hostages are still alive, and The New York Times reported on March 22 that they are divided about whether the Barnes revelations were meaningful, or whether Connally’s efforts were effective.

We’ll never know.

Of course, on January 20, 1981, a beaming Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as the 52 hostages deplaned at Andrews Air Force Base.

There’s your real October Surprise.

But we know this: Jimmy Carter did his best to be an honorable president. He reached the twilight of his life at peace, unlike Barnes who shared a story with The New York Times that reeked of the opportunism and dirty politics that are all too common today. Carter was as decent a man in The White House as he was when he left the White House.

Imagine how “I’ll never lie to you” would play today. Of course, look at our next president: a slime bag felon who was rewarded with the most important job in the world for his comical mendacity.

This Republican hypocrisy is only more glaring after the death of this now-revered man.

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