I happen to like much of what Carter tried to do, though he often wasn’t very effective at doing it. But equating the Iran hostage crisis with the killing of Osama bin Laden isn’t a solid comparison. The hostage crisis was in the news every day in a time when there were limited news outlets. Everyone who watched the news saw it and was reminded of it. And it was very much ongoing during the 1980 election. The crisis didn’t end until January 1981- after the election. Killing Osama bin Laden occurred nearly a decade after the hijackings; the U.S. had already been through the Iraq fiasco and was years into its Afghan adventures. In May 2011, Obama’s re-election was eighteen months away. Furthermore, the news landscape had been fractured; it was increasingly possible for Americans to watch/listen/read entirely different versions of the “news” and to believe themselves informed. That trend, of course, has become more pronounced now.
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