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President Jimmy Carter And The Iran Hostage Crisis

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Mere minutes after President Jimmy Carter was out of office, the Iran Hostage Crisis, for which his presidency is most remembered, was over. Behind him was a disjointed foreign and confused domestic policy. When he left office, Carter’s approval rating was 34 percent, and his disapproval rating nearly twice that (Roper Center). Today, it seems that he is a better ex-President than he was a president, as evidenced in his founding of the Carter Center, his cultivation of his presidential library, his contributions to Habitat for Humanity, and his numerous other humanitarian efforts. During his term, he had a poor relationship with Congress, a low approval rating with the American people, and a lack of cohesive international or domestic policy. I believe his two greatest failures are also the two which marked his entire presidency and caused the drop in his approval ratings: the confused and faltering domestic and international policies which lasted throughout his presidency and the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Jimmy Carter was a one-term president who won on a campaign of being “not Washington” and “not Gerald Ford” (Hargrove, 1988). Shortly after entering office, his refusal to trade political favors with members of Congress, unwillingness to learn the rules of Washington politics and play by them, and the general lack of communication between his administration and Congress stalled any possible working relationship. This cannot be seen as a failure on the part of Congress, who

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