CREATING THE IRANIAN CRISIS

"Slipping Toward Impotence"

When Jimmy Carter became president in 1977, America was entering one of the most productive periods in its history. The Vietnam War, the Nixon impeachment effort and the Ford recession were safely behind us. Our major economic indicators were showing considerable strength. Real Gross National Product was growing at a vigorous 5 percent rate, inflation was still only at 6 percent and even the 7 percent unemployment caused by the Ford recession was on its way down.

Carter was initially pictured as a "strong" messiah.

Carter himself had been nominated during a convention which was overtly utopian in expectations. Reporters covering the convention described it as an "orgy of togetherness," saying it was "less a convention than a festival" and wondering how Carter and Mondale would be able to give "substance to their promise of a new millennium."(1) After he was elected president, Carter was pictured as a "born-again" messiah, someone who would lead America to a millennial rebirth'.. merely by his presence, with little effort on our part.

Since people only have such unrealistic wishes about their leader when they are actually feeling very depressed about themselves,(2) it is not surprising that

Carter's extreme messianic image soon began to decay. By September of his first year, his popularity in the polls began to decline and his media imagery changed from the "strong" imagery of his honeymoon period to those showing that his strength was "cracking." The occasion for this "cracking" of Carter's image was actually an insignificant event - Bert Lance's banking trouble-which was blown far out of proportion to its real importance in order to fit our new fantasy that Carter was growing impotent in solving our underlying depression. Whatever Bert Lance's banking troubles really were about, they had nothing to do with Jimmy Carter's running of the government. Yet, after the press magnified the importance of the affair, Carter was seen by columnists as a "political incompetent" whose "shattered" image had left the presidency in a "dangerously weakened state."(3) Although it is a fact of American politics that all presidents decline in popularity during their first two years, Carter's polls declined faster than most, and the language and imagery of the media were increasingly dominated by fears of his growing weakness.

Bert Lance was the excuse for the "cracking" of Carter's image, shown by a cracking egg.

In reality, our fantasies of Carter's growing impotence were directly in contrast to his actual success in running the government and managing a booming economy during his first two years. The more the economic indicators moved upward-a record four million people were added to civilian payrolls in 1977 alone-the more incompetent Carter was considered to be.

Carter was seen as increasingly impotent during his "cracking" phase.

The same contrast was true of our evaluation of his running of foreign policy. The more successful Carter was

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in carrying out his pledge to engage in peaceful diplomacy-negotiating the Panama Canal Treaty, detente with Russia, a reduction in U.S. troops in Korea and the Camp David Mideast Peace Accords-the more he was accused of being an "ineffective leader abroad." The New Republic captured the attitude most succinctly:

WHEN IN DOUBT, DUMP ON CARTER

It is hard to pick up a newspaper, foreign or domestic, without encountering the refrain EUROPEANS VIEW CARTER AS WEAK, UNSKILLED LEADER . . . "Our Most Ineffectual Postwar President" . Nowadays, there's no need to think about what to do. Just say, "Carter's ineffective" and everybody nods.(4)

Whatever the reason for our fantasies of growing impotence, the reality was quite clear: peace and prosperity seemed to have made us feel worse and worse about our nation's condition. At the very time when unemployment was at a five-year low, when inflation had been moderating and when production was expanding the fastest, a Time "State of the Nation" survey concluded that a majority of Americans felt "THE TROUBLE IS SERIOUS" in America. Between April 1978 and April 1979, Time reported, the number of people who thought that "the U.S. is in deep and serious trouble" jumped from 41 percent to 64 percent,(5) the highest despair rating in our history. It almost seemed as if peace and prosperity were the causes of our fantasies of "deep and serious trouble" and "presidential impotence."

Thoughtful reporters could not help but note this strange reversal of common sense, even when they found they couldn't explain why it might be so. New York Times reporter Bernard Gwertzman noted a "PARADOX IN FOREIGN POLICY. Carter Finds He Gets Less Support, Not More, When Relations With Soviet Union Are Smooth."(6) James Reston wondered why America seemed to focus so much on shortages, when in fact "it is our surpluses and not our shortages that are choking and strangling us."(7) Vermont Royster, writing in The Wall Street Journal, located the feeling of how growing prosperity can be accompanied by fears of something terrible about to happen:

We've all had the experience one time or another. Everything's fine at home, the family's healthy, the children are doing well at school, the job prospers. Yet we awake in the night with an uneasy feeling that something bad is about to happen. Psychologists call it "free floating anxiety" . . . (8)

In fact, what psychologists actually call the "free floating anxiety" which people feel as a result of too much success is guilt, guilt about the success itself. And the "something bad which is about to happen" is actually the wish that something bad might happen to punish us for our growing success and pleasures.

It was as though in the middle of our prosperity during the Carter period a vindictive parental figure awoke in our collective heads, begrudging us our happy families and prosperous work. The more our lives became successful, the more a ghostly conscience disturbed us in the middle of the night to remind us that we should not enjoy more happiness than our parents had enjoyed during our childhoods. Statistics confirmed what our consciences felt: in 1978 we earned double the real income our parents had earned, on the average,(9) we had better health, more personal freedom, more sexual enjoyment, in fact, more of everything worth striving for . . . and it was making us feel terrible.

Just how bad national peace and prosperity made us feel can be seen by examining the fantasy words used in the president's news conferences during Carter's third, or "collapse" phase. Presidential news conferences are especially revealing, because reporters express the nation's feelings and shared fantasies in direct form, while the president answers by telling the nation what he intends to do to relieve our bad feelings. Here is a sample news conference from Carter's "collapse" phase. As above, only the strong emotional words and body images are considered.

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The fantasy that our increasing prosperity was producing a "tremendous pressure" which might lead to total collapse of our world reached its climax in 1979. Carter's Gallup Poll dropped from 67 percent to 39 percent approval in one year, the lowest presidential rating for that month since Truman. Newspapers regularly reported such opinions as "Carter is a weak president... Few in Washington dispute the President's weakness. His cabinet officers and his aides know it to be a fact. On Capitol Hill party friend and foe alike take account of it. The pollsters measure it; the press, for the most part, revels in it..."(10) Newsweek proclaimed Carte; was now on "a downward crumbling path as America's decline accelerates."

We poured our "collapse" fantasies into
the Oval Office, and saw Carter as too
weak to prevent our world from collapsing.

The Washington Star declared that America was "SLIPPING TOWARD IMPOTENCE ACROSS THE GLOBE."(11) In one day, The New York Times carried two articles, the first telling Carter he must resign because he was "the weakest and most incompetent president since Martin Van Buren," and the second by a psychiatrist saying that Carter needed psychiatric treatment.(12) Speculations about Carter's sanity multiplied. One day when Carter simply delayed a speech he was about to give to the press, "the unexplained cancellation caused world-wide speculation that Carter had gone bonkers." His appointments secretary had to assure newsmen that "Carter was sane and in charge and knew what he was doing."(13) Mrs. Carter even had to be sent out to give several speeches in which she "went out of her way to defend her husband's mental...health."(14) Both Carter and the nation were fantasized to be "going crazy," so split were we between our actual peaceful exterior conditions and our "collapsed" interior state. Several magazines during the summer of 1979 ran front cover headlines reading "THE SUMMER MADNESS," and James Reston, in a column entitled "THE SUMMER MADNESS," wondered why "Washington was having a nervous breakdown" at that moment.(15)

That Jimmy Carter felt these crazy projections of ours acutely goes without saying. After all, the main function of a leader is to contain the feelings we inject into him and to do something about them. If we felt we were going crazy and disintegrating, he had to feel the same. If we felt we were dying, he must be made to feel he was dying.(16)

Suggestions that Carter should die proliferated during the summer of 1979. Carter was said to be "among the political 'walking dead,"' "buried politically" and "a terminal political case."(17) Cartoons increasingly showed him strangled, beaten to death or present at funerals. One major newspaper featured the following interview with a noted labor leader on their front page: "Is there any way the President can redeem himself in your eyes?" "Yes, there's one way he can do it." "What's that?" "Die."(18) Now when people "go crazy" from too much success, one of the ways they often try to ward off their mounting guilt and depression is by manic spending sprees. The most familiar example, perhaps, is the wild spending sprees of new celebrities.

We felt like we were going crazy by the middle of 1979, as shown in this ad.

Cartoonists saw Carter as falling and disintegrating.

The underlying hope of this defense mechanism is that one can magically get rid of the guilt of having so much money by spending it foolishly.

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Death images of Carter proliferated in 1979.

The same thing happens to large groups of people when they feel as if they have accumulated too much. Consumers begin spending more than they should, borrowing the difference. Businesses begin expanding more than they should, again with borrowed funds. Labor begins demanding excessive wages, oblivious of whether the costs can be absorbed. Corporations raise their prices faster than usual, regardless of the effect on sales volume. Banks begin lending more than is prudent, for increasingly risky ventures, both in the U.S. and abroad. Everyone seems to make more "mistakes" than usual. The result of all this manic activity is what is termed "an inflationary psychology." It is a shared manic fantasy, one that follows a period of prosperity and operates through the magical device of warding off the guilt and depression that go with prosperity through manic spending. As Time put it in an article on the causes of inflation:

"People are to blame in part because they're greedy. They've got to have the bigger house, the extra car, the new refrigerator. And there's no waiting for a year or two, they've got to have it now." Officials agree.. Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Charles Schultze blames 60% of the problem on the inflationary psychology that keeps spreading.(19)

Accordingly, the first result of the "collapse" fantasies after the steady prosperity of 1977-78 was a jump in inflation rates in 1979 from the 9 percent to the 14 percent range, as everyone began to participate in a manic attempt to spend more in order to get rid of their prosperity.

That this sudden jump in inflation was blamed on Carter's policies had a certain crazy logic . . . after all, wasn't it his successful running of our economy that had increased our guilt and made us feel so bad that we had to spend more to try to get rid of it and feel better? No one, of course, analyzed the sudden surge in inflation that bluntly. Usually,

analysts were vague when blaming the inflation on Carter, preferring not to have to point out a particular policy of his that was responsible for it.

The "collapse" fantasies of the summer of 1979 dropped Carter's popularity polls below those of any previous president in American history, a condition l had predicted would occur two years earlier. In my book, Jimmy Carter and American Fantasy, and in a series of articles, speeches and radio broadcasts during 1977, I analyzed the patterns of shared fantasies of American presidents and forecast that by the summer of 1979 Carter's popularity would totally collapse. I further predicted that America would then call him impotent and ask him to find an "enemy" by the end of 1979 who would humiliate America and force us into a military confrontation.(20) Two years after these predictions, the national mood was precisely what I had said it would be. Redrick Smith wrote a front-page article in The New York Times in June of 1979 calling American mood "politically explosive" and quoting a high administration official as saying "The American people are mad-hot-summer mad "(21)

Obviously something had to be done by the president, and soon. Carter retreated to Camp David for guidance. Like Moses, he went "to the mountaintop," listening to the voice of God: the people and their elected representatives. Re jotted down in his diary some of the things the people told him while at Camp David:

"Mr. President, we're in trouble. Talk to us about blood, sweat and tears."
"Congress has collapsed . .
"The people are just not ready to sacrifice."
"There is a malaise of civilization."
"Be bold, Mr. President."
"If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow."(22)

Carter heard what the people wanted him to do. He had to be bold. He had to give them blood, sweat and tears. And he had to end their malaise by providing them with a sacrifice.
After Carter came down from the mountain, but before he had a chance to address the nation, several commentators speculated on what he would tell them must be done to cure the country's emotional crisis. Max Lerner told him how he must be a shaman:

CARTER'S MOUNTAINTOP POLITICS

The leader today must be a practitioner of magic, a tribal shaman who calls on the unseen spirits to work their healing effects.(23)

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Harriet Van Home guessed at what the message to the country might be: "From Camp David will shortly come another message of inspiration for the American people. The gist of it: 'Sacrifice' . . . What's left to sacrifice?(24) What indeed? Or, rather, who indeed?

On July 15, 1979, President Carter addressed the nation and told them what he had heard on the mountaintop and what he was going to do to relieve our despair:

The columnists had been right. There would have to be a magical sacrifice by "a tribal shaman who calls on the unseen Spirits to work their healing effects." It was the oldest principle of mankind: When the world seems full of guilt, rage and despair, when everything seems polluted and you are certain the end of the world is near, sacrifice. For in this sacrifice-whether of animal or human-the group will be purified. Bad feelings will be purged and all bad blood between us will be cleansed.(25) All rage will be vented on the sacrificial object, the group will experience a rebirth and the nation will feel whole and able to love again.

Jimmy Carter knew well the principle of the cleansing power of sacrifice. Like a majority of Americans, he celebrated the sacrifice of Christ for the sake of the world every Sunday of his life. Like a majority of Americans,(26) he had experienced the rejuvenating power of Christ's

sacrifice in a personal born-again religious experience. In his July 15th address to the nation, analyzed above, he reminded us of the necessity of sacrifice in bringing about national rebirth. First he described the severi-ty of the emotional crisis: "We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives. . . threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America . . ." Then he told us the source of our problem, our prosperity: "too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption . . . we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing... piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness. . ." And finally he promised us that a sacrifice, "a little sacrifice from everyone" would produce the needed "rebirth of the American spirit."

Where, then, might this sacrifice take place? America was, after all, a civilized country, which meant that we would feel guilty about too open-ly sacrificing our citizens for our emotional needs. It was therefore necessary to set up our sacrificial stage on some foreign soil and to find an "enemy" to take the blame for the sacrifice.(27) Which country was the most likely to respond to our suggestion to become our sacrificial executioner? Which country would we most like to designate as our "enemy"?

The answers to these questions could be found in a Gallup Poll taken in February of 1979. Gallup regularly asks people about the popularity" of various foreign nations, and the two which had the lowest favorable ratings in 1979 were Cuba (26%) and Iran (27%):

Cuba, of course, was a previous "enemy" of America, and a brief attempt was made by Carter in the fall of 1979 to stir up interest again in Cuba, with a "discovery" that Russian troops were on the island. Yet Cuba, for its own internal reasons, didn't seem interested in being our executioner, so the other unpopular country, Iran, would have to help us perform our sacrifice.

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The poll cited above was also important in revealing how Iran had fallen in the eyes of the American public in the previous three years. It is rare for any country to fall 21 points in so short a time. Since the poll was taken in February of 1979, the Shah was still in power, so it was not just "revolutionaries" which were hated by Americans. Later in the year, when revolutionaries took American hostages, tore down American flags and chanted "Death to the Americans" in mass rallies, it became obvious that they were willing to participate in our sacrifice. In the face of these threatening actions, the prudent course for America to have taken would have been at least to beef up our security in Teheran and to avoid taking any actions which might provoke the revolutionaries to take hostages again. Yet, despite repeated pleas for help by embassy personnel, Washington refused to do anything to increase security substantially. So blatant was the invitation to grab hostages that after Iranian mobs had again stormed the embassy, one American general asked in frustration, "How many Americans will have to die before we do anything?"(28)

In June of 1979, Newsweek had reported that a White House advisor told them that Zbigniew Brzezinski had said that "a 'small war' might be useful to prove the President's toughness."(29) Obviously, if Iran grabbed American hostages, this might lead to a "small war" which would restore Carter's failing potency and divert the country's rage onto an "enemy" abroad.(30) Though no one said it aloud, the unconscious shared fantasy grew that American embassy personnel would have to be designated as the sacrificial victims. The only problem was to find a way to get Iran to act, and soon.

Despite clear reports from the C.I.A. which bluntly warned that "if the Shah were admitted to the United States, the American Embassy would be taken and it would be a threat to American lives,"(31) important people in America such as Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller began trying to get Carter to let the ousted Shah of Iran into the U.S. By August, everyone but Carter was for letting the Shah in. American officials in Teheran, slowly becoming aware of their possible role as sacrificial victims, sent an urgent Top Secret message to Washington saying, "The danger of hostages being taken in Teheran will persist. We should make no move toward admitting the Shah until we have obtained and tested more effective guard force from the embassy."(32) Still no additional security was provided.

By October 18th, Carter was the "lone holdout."(33) When his advisers told him he must now let the Shah into the U.S., he bluntly asked them:
"When the Iranians take our people in Teheran hostage, what will you advise me then?"(34) There was no question by October that hostage sacrifice was the hidden agenda. The only question was: would the will of the people be frustrated by one lone holdout? Carter would have to be told a lie to get him to cooperate. Although every doctor who had

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