Worst Year Evah?
While I was debating the relative demerits of GWB and Jimmy Carter on the TNR website last weekend, one of their resident wingers claimed that 1979 was the worst year for the American republic since the Great Depression, citing the economy, gas prices, Iran, and Afghanistan as evidence. Really? Worst year?
I countered that 1968 was a pretty obvious contender for worst year, with Vietnam, MLK, RFK, and Nixon's narrow election all sinking it well below 1979. 1967 wouldn't be far behind. And, if you ignored the traditional January start-time, the one-year span from November 2000 to October 2001 (from stolen election to 9/11 and Bush's response) should also count as much worse than 1979, even if some of the shitstorm was then concealed by a public veneer of national unity. Not many good years in this entire decade. If you look at all the major polls (Gallup, AP, WSJ, etc.), 60% or more of the American public has said we're on the "wrong track" for a solid two years now (roughly 70% in the most recent polls), and there haven't been any net positive results since January 2004--a brief and narrow blip. Overall, the numbers have remained low with the exception of spring 2003 during the initial invasion of Iraq and, before that, the 2002 haze of post-9/11 intoxication. Today's bad seeds were all planted in 2001.
Part of the difficulty here is sorting out years that felt especially bad to the public vs. years where underlying structural damage was being done to the republic, even if it had not yet been detected by the public. It's hard to deny that 1979 had an awful economy. But most of that was the result of the 1973 oil shocks, which eventually proved ephemeral. It was Carter's Federal Reserve pick, Paul Volcker, who eventually turned the economy around by getting inflation under control. And the foreign policy crises that undermined confidence in 1979 look less fearsome in retrospect. Carter negotiated the safe release of the hostages before leaving office, and Afghanistan proved a disaster for the Soviets, not us. I doubt the same can be said for the bonehead economic, foreign policy, and national secuirty decisions of the current era, although time will tell.
So what was the worst year for the republic since the Depression? Any other contenders?
posted by tenaciousmcd @ 10:16 AM
2 Comments:
Um, isn't 1974 in the conversation, too? A disgraced president forced to resign alone puts it in the conversation. But did anything good happen in 1974 (besides, depending on your p-o-v, the congressional election)?
Yeah, 1974 was a pretty bad year for the American psyche. But there was also considerable upside: the cong. elections you mentioned, plus, Nixon's resignation, which started a process of recovery and allowed much of the truth of his administration to come out.
I'd actually make 1973 the awful year. Watergate was bubbling up, Nixon's approval and public confidence were plummetting, and the oil shocks kicked off a decade of economic turmoil. Then there's Vietnam. We negotiated an end to the war in 1973, but how do you count that? I think that's got to be a net plus, even though the short term (espec. 1973-5) was a big negative. Still, 1973 is pretty bad.
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