Peter the Lefty
Peternerdman
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Posts: 3,506
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« on: August 01, 2013, 03:43:07 AM » |
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President Ford was emboldened by his victories in the 1978 midterms. He pressed on with his agenda, but found the conservative wing of the party increasingly hostile. But he found himself forced to deal with the ongoing crisis in Iran, where the American-backed Shah was facing a popular revolution. In spite of massive police repression, the revolt had grown quite huge. The Ford administration was forced to defend the Shah, but found this difficult in light of the pledges it had demanded of the Soviet Union on human rights.
As the Islamist faction of the revolutionaries began to dominate, Ford began to soften his support for the Shah. Knowing that a religious government would also be hostile to the USSR, he was prepared to accept a new government in Iran. The Shah was forced out, and his Prime Minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, seemed unable to establish order in spite of his reforms. As soon as Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran and established a government of his own, the U.S. recognized it almost immediately. But when the deposed Shah was allowed into the U.S. for cancer treatment, students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 65 diplomats hostage.
Ford condemned the takeover, and sanctions were passed. Continual back-channel negotiations were carried out, but they were all vetoed by Khomeini. Ford attempted to rescue the hostages through a helicopter mission, but mechanical failures caused the mission to be canceled. On their way back, the helicopters crashed, humiliating the administration. Even the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan wasn't enough for the Iranians to consider the U.S. as a potential ally.
On the economic front, Ford continued his policies of budgetary restraint. Having Tip O'Neill as Speaker seemed to threaten this at first, but O'Neill was painfully aware of the fact that his party lost the overall popular vote in the 78 House races. He therefore cooperated in most of the negotiations. However, conservative Republicans were beginning to make their dissent more vocal. They began to demand tax cuts from Ford, which the President derided as inflationary. Still, he began to sense that their numbers may be growing, and to keep crucial votes for his budgets, Ford needed to keep his party in line. So in July of 1979, he signed an act which cut capital gains taxes by 18%. Democrats almost unanimously accused him of breaking his pledge not to cut taxes. Speaker O'Neill turned up the rhetoric against him. Yet with the hostage crisis, the debate suddenly stopped. The temporary "rally around the flag" effect managed to save Ford on that front.
In his bid for the Republicsn nomination, Ford is being challenged by New York Senator James Buckley, Jr. As Buckley describes it, "we need a truly conservative President in the White House. One who can dismantle the welfare state, put the bums back to work, and end our crushing regulations and socialized medicine. We need someone who's tough enough to stand up to the Iranian terrorists."
On the Democratic side, it'd chaos. Former House Speaker Mo Udall, once considered the front-runner, has ruled out a run. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy has also decided to sit this one out. The flock of liberals running include former Senator Birch Bayh, former Senator Walter Mondale, former Attorney General Frank Church, California Governor Jerry Brown, and Representative Shirley Chisholm. The moderate-to-conservative Democrats in the race include Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, and Ohio Senator John Glenn. Then there's Scoop Jackson, who is framing his "Cold War liberalism" as the perfect response to the times.
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