Let's play a game... Jambozi's try.

I won't argue with you concerning foreign policy. Had Carter acted immediately the situation would have been different. That is a military action we COULD have done, unlike the rescue attempt a year later that, even without the crash, we could NOT have done.

My spin on this game is slightly different. The malaise that was the Carter Legacy began well before Nov. 4 1979. The economy was already tanking. Carter, whom several historians have labeled as the last New Deal President, was placing band-aids on an economy dying of dehydration. (His label as a new deal president? Bunk. But I'm already on record as saying that so we'll move on.) His very persona was not one that fired the imagination, stoked one's patriotism and made a person happy to be alive. (Almost exactly like his VP in 1984.) But even crippled with a personality that made Hoover look like Jay Leno, had he used fed money to "stimulate" the economy instead of trying to band-aid it with social spending (raw pandering to the party, but I digress) the malaise would have passed. What happens in the late seventies is a recession no different than 1987, 1991-2, or 2000-01. Having personally lived through all of those, I can say with 1st person experience, I never lost optimism then. I saw a complete lack of optimism in 1977-78-79. And that leads directly to the domestic agenda and the desk of Jimmy Carter.

One final note on Titus' surgical strike idea in 1979? I'm not at all certain as to the accuracy of period weaponry but I have complete confidence in the US Navy's ability to place ordinance on targets. Two carrier strikes could do the trick, even with A-6 and old F-14 platforms.