- With many flags flying at half-mast for several more days in his honor, we wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on the footprint and history left by President Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States.

- Carter's presidency was defined by triumphs like a Middle East peace agreement and major crises, including the Arab oil embargo, which left Americans waiting in long lines for gasoline and the Iran hostage crisis.

- To talk more about his legacy and important Texas connections, I sat down with Dr. Jeremi Suri, Professor of Public Affairs and History.

(soft music) Thank you so much, Dr. Suri, for joining us.

- Sure, my pleasure.

- Absolutely, well, you know, it is hard to imagine a moderate Democrat winning a statewide office in Texas today.

From a political or a policy perspective, what do you think was perhaps the most important impact for everyone and all parties of the Carter presidency here in Texas?

- Well, Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat at the national level to win in Texas.

Texas was a democratic state from the early 20th century through the late 1970s.

And Jimmy Carter was actually quite popular in Texas, in part because of his religious background, in part because he was a child of the south.

And in part because in spite of his civil rights advocacy, he also argued for state's rights.

He was a believer that states in the South should get their due in the federal government.

- Yeah, absolutely and you know, the energy crisis was perhaps a very defining moment and aspect of the Carter years.

How do you think that his response played out here in Texas, especially considering, you know, our state's significant energy sector?

- So one of the things that led to Carter's plummet in popularity that allowed Ronald Reagan to win Texas in 1980 and helped Republicans take control of the state, was the fact that Jimmy Carter embraced conservation.

He argued, especially in the second half of his presidency, that Americans should use less oil.

For oil drillers in Texas, that's not good politics.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And President Carter rather was notably very vocal about his religious beliefs, like you mentioned.

So do you think that that perhaps served him well here in Texas specifically?

- Absolutely.

Jimmy Carter was probably our most openly evangelical president to that time, and that served him very well with Texans, who took Evangelical seriously, believed the Bible was a central text for American politics as well as American society, and they identified with him in that way.

They didn't with Gerald Ford, who was the Republican candidate in 1976.

- Yeah, that's a very interesting note of history.

And on that note, one of the recently revealed Texas specific stories about Jimmy Carter.

You know where I'm going with this.

It involves former Texas Governor John Connolly and the Iran Hostage crisis.

So can you just tell me a little bit about that and why it's so historically significant?

- And this is really important for Texas and really important for those of us who love history because we didn't know this even 10 years ago.

This is something that's come out in the last few years.

Ben Barnes, who was a protege of Lyndon Johnson, and then a protege of John Connolly, has recently revealed this.

He revealed it when Carter went into hospice care because he believed it was an important part of the story.

So at the end of Carter's presidency, President Carter was struggling as President Biden is today to get hostages released overseas.

These were Americans being held in Iran.

And this was an important campaign issue too, because the holding of these hostages, it's my first political memory, right, watching this on television every night, made President Carter look weak and ineffectual.

So Carter was working as hard as he could to the very end of his presidency to get these hostages released.

The Ronald Reagan team that was running for office in 1980, they were afraid that if there was a big breakthrough near the time of the election, that this would help Carter get votes and possibly win the election.

It looked close until the very, very end.

And so John Connolly, the former Democratic now Republican, former governor of Texas traveled with Ben Barnes to the Middle East in the summer of 1980, and they encouraged Iranian leaders who they met with in the Middle East, secretly, they encouraged them to hold the hostages until Reagan took office.

This would be an actual violation of the law, right?

It's interfering with the president's efforts to conduct US foreign policy.

These were Americans who were being held, and Connolly and Barnes were asking the Iranians to hold them longer to help Reagan get elected.

Ben Barnes has revealed that this was the case, and it shows that Connolly was trying to basically put Americans at risk for the purpose of helping his Republican choice get elected president.

Connolly believed that that would help his political career.

- Very fascinating.

It's a very interesting moment in American political history for sure.

So thank you again so much for helping us dissect all of the information and for joining us here on the show today.

- My pleasure.

(soft music) - Thanks so much for watching.

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