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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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Oakes:

I don't think I have much light to throw on that. I do think -- and this has nothing to do with the Middle East, particularly -- I do think Carter halfway -- and yes, maybe this does in a way try to answer your question. Because I was very strongly under the impression that Carter, halfway through his presidency, realized that for whatever reason-- and there were a whole lot of reasons, oh, I guess, coming at him from different directions -- but about halfway through Carter's presidency, say 1978, we're talking about now, it was very clear that he was about as unpopular a president as we had had in years and years and years and years. His popularity rating really plummeted after he had been president for a couple years, and possibly his general position on the Middle East had something to do with that. I'm not really sure at this point how to quite explain it. But there's no question that Carter was really down at the bottom of the popularity totem pole, about halfway through his term. And he got frightened that he might not even get the Democratic nomination. He was so unpopular, for whatever reasons by this time, it's quite conceivable, although I couldn't prove this, that his rather strong position on environmental issues contributed --

Q:

Really. You mean in the sense that it alienated Congress?

Oakes:

Yes, yes. Yes, alienated Congress. And made it appear as though he were against development or progress and all the phony arguments that the basic development interests in Congress and in the country were putting up, in favor of some of the big public works that Carter was opposing. But his whole position, I guess, was interpreted as anti-business and anti-free enterprise, etc. Whatever the reason, he lost popularity in both. Of course, he never had any popularity among Republicans. But even among the Democrats, I think, he





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