Jimmy Carter

Polls showed most Americans opposed giving up the Panama Canal, yet Carter pushed the 1977 treaties through the Senate with a single vote to spare, and several senators who backed them lost their seats. The canal passed to Panama in 1999 and has been run efficiently since, though the second Trump administration has revived questions about it. His appointment of Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve, whose high interest rates hurt Carter's re-election, is the other unpopular choice now credited with ending double-digit inflation.