Over at the wonderful ’80s comics site Blinded Me With Comics—which is a companion site to the great ’70s comics site Diversion of the Groovy Kind—a recent post highlighted Captain’s America’s run for the presidency.

This all took place back in a 1980 story arc by writer Roger Stern and artist John Byrne, though the post also reprinted the letters page from Captain America #250 in order to give credit to the two guys who first suggested that concept—Roger McKenzie and Don Perlin.

But what I found far more interesting than any back story was how that page also revealed the changing times. Roger Stern printed the results of a survey he’d run several issues earlier in which he asked readers to write in and answer the question, “What do you think are the major problems facing Cap and/or America in the 1980s?” (The poll also asked fans whether they wanted to see the secret of Cap’s shield revealed—and 65.9% said no.)

It’s interesting to see what they readers felt 29 years ago as they looked around at the world of 1980.

Here’s what they had to say were America’s most pressing problems (and you can find the complete page here):

The Iranian Situation: 20.8%
Possibilities of limited or world war: 11.7%
Energy Crisis: 10.4%
Soviet expansionism: 9.0%
The economy: 9.0%
Socio-political cynicism: 7.8%
Terrorism: 3.9%
Other: 27.4%

I’m sure you’d agree that both terrorism and the economy would rank higher on the list today than they did three decades ago. But how startling to see that Iran topped the list back then, just as it possibly would right now—though back then, of course, the readers were referring to a completely different Iranian situation.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.