BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

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In this episode , we let you listen to Jimmy Carter in his own words. You will be treated to a campaign video chronicling his time in office, an interview conducted by the President of Emory University where he served as a professor for many, many. years and an interview conducted by the daughter of the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr and Coretta Scott King. 

Plus he will be talking with Larry King and Piers Morgan and throughout you will hear the former President talk about foreign Policy, faith, family,  personal principles, a Changing World,  Studying at Emory University, being flexible,  advice for Presidential candidates, The Carter Center,  and having Goals. 

You can a learn a lot of really good life lessons from President Jimmy Carter as he has spent a lifetime setting a good example for all of us on the proper way to spend a life, no matter your beliefs or disagreements with  him  on his political and  policy positions. 

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For me this series has been a learning experience. It is the section of our history documentaries that I had the least knowledge and I have come away with a deeper appreciation for the single term of Jimmy Carter.  He actually got more done than you think and that he ever got credit for having achieved. 

He was ahead of his time in the field of Energy policy, he brokered peace treaties in the Middle East, and with the Soviet Union, and he stood the course to break the back of inflation, a policy that began under his appointee Paul Volker and continued under Ronald Reagan.  Carter made the Vice Presidency a much more modern and important job with his partner Walter Mondale.  He also signed the treaty that returned the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama. 

In this episode we look at those achievements and listen to a couple of historians who believe that if you were buying stock on a Presidency rising in esteem over the next half century they would advise an investment in Jimmy Carter. I guess the jury is out on that,  but as anyone who has ever assessed Jimmy Carter they would probably say don't bet against him either. 

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In this episode, we look back at John Connally's relationship to President Richard Nixon.  In this episode we feature two calls, one just after Nixon was re-elected President when you see that Connally has enormous influence over the President. He is giving the President advice on how to conduct the second term and which changes he needs to consider making for that term. 

In another call we listen as the men discuss an incident that had occured at the White House just the day before. President Nixon had invited the Ray Coniff Singers to perform for a reception honoring the publishers of the magazine "The Reader's Digest" (My Dad's favorite magazine) . Just as the program was about to begin one of the singers, Carol Firace , confronted the President and implored him to stop the bombing of Vietnam and for God to bless Daniel Ellsberg.  Firace got kicked out of the event. 

We will look back at that event, the young lady it involved, the news coverage, and how it became a significant protest event in the history of the White House. Then we will listen in to President Nixon and JOhn Connally as they discuss what had happened. 

We hope that after these three episodes you will have a better feel as to what a major figure John Connally had been in the previous 20 years of political life in America, especially the Southwest. We hope you also can learn enough to make your own decision as to whether you think he would have tried to sabotage the Carter Administration. 

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This is the first of two episodes where we give you a chance to listen in on John Connally giving advice to Presidents of the United States. 

In this first episode, we listen to the Texas Governor advising his old friend and mentor Lyndon Johnson as to how things look on the ground throughout the south just before the 1964 election. 

It is with Johnson that Connally had the most influence and in whose debt Connally was the most in for his own remarkable career. John Connally had been LBJ's campaign manager throughout many of the Presidents political races and Connally had Johnson's ear. 

It is also worth noting that it was Connally that managed both of Johnson's campaigns for the United States Senate, one in which he called in his vote totals on time only to watch the Johnson lead evaporate into a loss to former Texas Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, and then, seven years later,  it was John Connally who was on the ground in Alice, Texas when LBJ won his Senate seat by 87 votes in one precinct in which it was alleged the voter roll sheet had been signed in the same ink, with the same handwriting, to carry Johnson into history over another Texas Governor, Coke Stevenson. 

In this episode you will hear the two men discuss the 1964 campaign and where Johnson stands and just how big a disaster a Robert Kennedy appointment to the Vice Presidency would be for the campaign in the South.  

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Texas Governor and Nixon Administration Treasury Secretary John Connally has emerged in recent days as a possible player in activity that has long been alleged to have gone on between the campaign of Ronald Reagan and the Iranian Government.  The rumor of an October surprise has been out there for years but no one could quite ever tie the entire thing together. 

However, just this year, after President Carter was admitted into Hospice Care, a former Texas Speaker of the House, and well known political player named Bill Barnes, a protege to John Connally, stepped forward with a tale that captivated the nation.  That his mentor, John Connally, had traveled around the Middle East and tried to broker a deal between the Islamic militants that were holding our hostages in Tehran and the Reagan Campaign manager who was himself a former spy and would later become the CIA chief Bill Casey.  Could it be true? 

While no evidence exists that ties Ronald Reagan to any of this activity personally, no one seems to be willing to defend Bill Casey. John Connally's name never surfaced in two separate investigations of these allegations. But it is hard not to take Bill Barnes seriously because he is a credible political figure in a way the late Anna Chennault was not when accusations arose about the 1968 election. 

In this episode, we will look at the life of John Connally, his influence over two United States Presidents, his place in history as a passenger in the car with John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in Dallas, and finally the embarrassing political situation he found himself in after a disastrous run for the White House in his own right earlier in the 1980 election cycle.  Which could explain how a man of such stature could have gotten himself involved in skullduggery like this accusation belies.  Did John Connally really attempt to cut a deal with Iranians on behalf of the Reagan campaign?  While it sounds improbable, it is a story that has a credible witness and certainly it happened at a moment when a man who had been one of the most influential figures in America had suddenly found himself on his way to political irrelevancy. 

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In this episode we draw the crisis to a close. Jimmy Carter has lost his bid for re-election and Ronald Reagan is on the verge of the Presidency.  In this episode we take you through the story of Jimmy Carter's frantic final days as he races against time to end the hostage standoff before he leaves office. 

We will also take a look at the media who covered the story, mainly for ABC News. For it was under the leadership of ABC News President Roone Arledge that a new show was born, "Nightline" which had been known for a while as "America Held Hostage" . Arledge had a vision of a late night news program that could compete with "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" but he had yet to find the type of continuing story that could build a steady audience. They had covered the death of Elvis Presley but that had been sort of a one night event. 

The Hostage Crisis would be that story he had looked for and it would captivate the nation for 444 days. By the time the story was over, ABC News had a hit on its hand, "Nightline with Ted Koppel" was born, and they would cover those final days  where Jimmy Carter would literally work, with no sleep,  to the very end of his Presidency to insure that every single American Hostage would come home from Tehran, Iran,  alive. 

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Election Night 1980. The Iran Hostage Crisis is going on, the economy is struggling, and the ABSCAM scandal has several candidates seeking re-election while either under indictment or after conviction. It is with this back drop that both of our subjects, Representative John Jenrette and President Jimmy Carter, are facing re-election. It did not go well for either of them. 

In this episode we will let you watch the evening progress as the networks zero in on the ABSCAM Defendants elections for at least some drama because the Carter efforts are fairing so badly.  Ronald Reagan will be elected in a landslide and John Jenrette will lose in a surprising squeaker to John Napier. 

This election is also a treat because it will feature just about everyone , save Lyndon Johnson, we have focused on throughout our podcast run.  Jimmy Carter, John Jenrette, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Frank Reynolds, Ted Koppel, Walter Cronkite, and even Richard Nixon will all be featured at some point through out the night. Finally, the episode will end as former President Gerald Ford is interviewed  while Ronald Reagan comes out to address the nation for the first time as President - Elect and the two will talk on live TV.  It is a big night for the Republican Party as they win the Presidency and the Senate for the first time in a generation and break the New Deal Coalition that had dominated the nations politics since 1932. 

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In the second episode of the long saga that would be the Iranian hostage crisis, we watch as Jimmy Carter attempts to take action into his own hands.  Carter orders a rescue attempt of the hostages in Iran, Operation Eagle Claw.  An operation run by an Horry County Native named General James Vaught.

Operation Eagle Claw would be an operation in which it can be described best as "if it can go wrong it will" type of a military operation.  It was described on Wikipedia here:

"The operation, one of Delta Force's first,[2] encountered many obstacles and failures and was subsequently aborted. Eight helicopters were sent to the first staging area called Desert One, but only five arrived in operational condition.[3] One had encountered hydraulic problems, another was caught in a sand storm, and the third showed signs of a cracked rotor blade. During the operational planning, it was decided that the mission would be aborted if fewer than six helicopters remained operational upon arrival at the Desert One site, despite only four being absolutely necessary.[3] In a move that is still discussed in military circles, the field commanders advised President Carter to abort the mission, which he did.[4]

As the U.S. forces prepared to withdraw from Desert One, one of the remaining helicopters crashed into a transport aircraft that contained both servicemen and jet fuel. The resulting fire destroyed both aircraft and killed eight servicemen.[3]

In the context of the Iranian Revolution, Iran's new leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, stated that the mission had been stopped by an act of God ("angels of God") who had foiled the U.S. mission in order to protect Iran and his new Islamist government. "

It helped seal Jimmy Carter's electoral fate, and the hostage crisis continued for 9 more grueling months...... 

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In this special edition we will examine the recently declassified letter written by former President Richard Nixon to President Bill Clinton just after his two week trip to Russia and Europe. In the letter Richard Nixon gives the young President a thorough examination of what he thinks is happening in Russia, Ukraine and in Europe. In it he stresses the importance in helping Russia preserve its new found freedoms and helping it get on its feet economically and he discusses the dire consequences that could happen if we fail. 

It reads as though a psychic wrote it. It is a powerful letter and it was appreciated at the time by President Clinton and it is even more appreciated today. It really puts on display the brilliance of our former President and a man who ranks among our greatest American leaders in the history of the Republic. Here is a fine example, bold, strategic, insightful and full of visionary advice, as to why that latter statement is true. 

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The Iranian Hostage Crisis would last 444 days and its final day would also be the last day of the administration of Jimmy Carter. It was the singular event that seemed to spell out the frustrations of a nation that had suffered one humiliation and trauma after another for nearly two decades, from assassination of a President, to the Vietnam War that divided America to the  Watergate Scandal that had removed a President from office, and now here we were at the mercy of an Islamic regime determined to take its country back to the 8th century.  It seemed that we were helplessly careening out of control to the status of a failed , third rate power.

In Iran, the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,  had come from a dynasty that had ruled the Persian nation for nearly 1000 years. He had reformed the nation economically during his 37 year reign and it had created an economy that was flourishing, increasing the national income  423 times what it had been, a better growth rate than anywhere else on the planet, including the United States.  He built the the fifth largest Army in the world and had urbanized and modernized the country like no other in the entire Middle East.  He was also a friend to the United States and had embraced much of the western world's economic practices. 

But he had also had to crackdown on political dissent and as he did so many of the religious leaders of the Shiite Muslim faith had rebelled and considered him an enemy to their cause.  Much of that was because the Shah had given women the right to vote. One cleric in particular, the Ayatollah Khomeini, was offended that he would dare put the future of Iran in the hands of women. He was further incensed when the Shah allowed Iranian Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Baha'i to take the oath of office for municipal councils using their holy books instead of the Koran. Khomeini vowed then to overthrow the Shah and institute an Islamic Republic in the place of the ruling monarchy. 

In 1979, the political unrest turned into a full blown revolution and the Shah left the country on what was called a vacation from which he never returned. Khomeini took control and the events unfolded from their that led to our hostages being captured at the overrun American Embassy.  This is that story, and the brave story of the Canadian diplomats who worked to save six Americans who had somehow missed being taken into captivity on the day the embassy was overrun.  That story is worthy of being a plot of a James Bond movie, in fact, movie making would be a big part of the exit plan. 

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