I don't remember (m)any Americans saying that in the 20 years between the Suez Crisis and Carter's election. The bigger picture is that empires were falling apart everywhere and we were the original anti-empire power, so we would eventually have to give up our overseas possessions. Suez was part of that anti-empire trend but not the whole story or the chief reason for our giving up the canal.
If Carter hadn't come along we would have held on to the canal longer and negotiated better conditions if we did give it up. Panamanians certainly wanted the canal. There'd been protests and riots in 1964. LBJ dismissed the Panamanians' grievances, and wielded his big stick and Americans backed him up. It was ours, we built it, and we were going to keep it. Later, after Vietnam, Carter came in with a very different point of view.
My father’s uncle was one of the engineers on the Canal. His wife was with him in Panama. She died there of spinal meningitis. My father wasn’t alive to see the Chinese taking control of it. He would have been livid.
I’m glad my parents are no longer alive to see what is happening to this country with the Communists destroying everything they can lay their hands on. I grew up in the 50s and remember very well the horrible 1960s. This era under Democrat rule and Republican cowardice is much worse.