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Why I Like Jimmy Carter (A Little Bit)
It’s popular to say that Carter was the worst president ever—at least until Biden appeared. But there are some things that conservatives should like about Carter.
Carter served his country in the Navy from the time he was admitted to the Naval Academy in 1943 until he resigned from active duty in 1953. He stayed in the Naval Reserve until 1961. He joined the Naval Academy during World War II and was part of the class that graduated in three years to fight in the war (although it was over by the time he graduated in 1946). He joined the submarine service and was selected by Adm. Hyman Rickover to help start the nuclear navy. Anyone who could win Rickover’s confidence was no slouch. He left the sea service with the rank of lieutenant.
As president, Carter deregulated the airline industry, removing government control over routes and fares. He also deregulated the beer industry, allowing the sale of hops and brewer’s yeast to ordinary Americans for the first time since Prohibition. Anytime you drink a craft beer, you owe a small debt of thanks to Carter.
Carter revived the Middle East peace process by inviting Begin and Sadat to negotiate the Camp David Accords, which resulted in Egypt becoming the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Sadat had already been moving Egypt away from being a Soviet client state, and the Camp David Accords solidified Egypt’s position as a US ally, further weakening the Soviet position in the Middle East.
When the Soviet Union overthrew the government of Afghanistan and invaded, Carter began supplying weapons to the mujahideen. He started the Afghanistan quagmire for the Soviet Union, and, ultimately, the Afghanistan quagmire was an important factor in the Soviet’s domestic political quagmire that brought the Communist regime down. Of course, Reagan deserves the lion’s share of the credit for ramping up the pressure on the Soviets to unbearable levels.
When Carter took office in 1977, he was determined to reengage with the Soviet Union through friendship. However Soviet aggression forced him to change his approach and request the first inflation-adjusted increases in defense spending since the end of Vietnam. Several foundational weapons systems were procured by the Carter administration, including the M1 Abrams tank, which entered service in 1980. Carter reinstated the MX Peacekeeper missile program in 1979. The KC-10 Extender tanker entered service in 1980. Carter pushed for the development of stealth aircraft, which resulted in the development of the F-117 Nighthawk. While Carter will never be called a defense hawk, he realized that his initial posture of friendship with the Soviets only resulted in greater aggression on their part. He learned from his initial mistakes (unlike Biden) and started the defense buildup that Reagan maximized.
Carter is far down the list of good presidents, and there is a lot to criticize him for, but he is certainly not at the bottom of the list. As we memorialize the 39th president in less than a week, conservatives should give him a hurrah, albeit a small one.
Published in General
In 1975-76 Carter was the most conservative Democrat running (I count George Wallace as effectively still third party; he had no chance whatsoever of being nominated by Seventies Democrats) in a year that didn’t look good for the GOP. He was one of those out-of-nowhere, Wendell Willkie type political phenoms. A Southerner, a sincere Christian with a distaste for the grandiose, Carter was moderately popular his first two years. The Democratic establishment never warmed to him, the Democrats in Congress didn’t know him and weren’t afraid of him.
He screwed a lot of things up. But if you make a list of presidents who the press hated, Carter, a member of the same political party as nearly every reporter covering him, would be near the top of the “kill” list. Ironic. There’s an old saying I’ve always agreed with: The Press is not always pro-democrat, but it is always anti-Republican. They despised Carter for not being more progressive. In 1976, they wanted Jerry Brown or Morris Udall. In 1980 they wanted Teddy Kennedy, and tore Carter down so effectively it did half of Reagan’s job for him. Carter himself did the rest.
Another thing I like about Carter is that I was younger when he was President. Maybe not more prosperous, but younger is important, too.
Compare Democrats Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden. Biden did every sort of thing that Obama did, but worse; a third of a century ago, Clinton did everything that Carter did, but better–politically. For all of Clinton’s flaws, he was, like Carter, a Southerner, even though he wasn’t from the heart of the Cotton South. They were both, by loose Democrat standards, political moderates. They weren’t woke in today’s terms, just liberal. Clinton, a more gifted politician, was also luckier.
There are endless hinges of history that could have gone the other way. Carter made much of his own bad luck, but not all of it. Admittedly we (the US, not just the Democrats or Carter) had been coasting along with the Shah for decades.
So here’s my purely theoretical, imaginative challenge to my fellow amateur historians of the right: as patriots, not just partisans, we should be able to imagine a Carter presidency that would not only have been regarded as successful, but one that set a hands-off attitude towards traditional culture that would have made the Democrats stronger competitors in national elections, as well as better stewards of the interests of the nation when they do get into power.
Luckier because he had a Newt Gingrich lead congress. Gifted because he knew to go along with said congress.
No, he didn’t.
After repeated attempts to obstruct Congressional initiatives, on the very things that Clinton had promised during his campaign, Dick Morris explained to him that he had no choice but to go along.
Good point.
Also, Clinton had a habit of vetoing legislation, perhaps several times, then later accepting and claiming it was his idea from the start.
That was back in the day when there were moderate and even conservative Democrats: Scoop Jackson, Sam Nunn, David Boren to name a few.
The Carter administration also deregulated the trucking industry. Good post, Steve.
Carter was blamed for the spike in energy prices that occurred in the last 18 months of his Administration. A further result of this was a tremendous spike in the interest rates issued by banks to the average consumer of car loans and mortgages.
Construction businesses and real estate firms failed. Soon everyone felt the pinch.
I always wondered about all of this. The last headline I read in an airport mid-May 1979, before heading for a summer vacation in Europe, indicated that Carter was the USA’s most popular president ever. His approval rating was above 60%
Three months later, mid-July 1979, the first headline I read while I briskly moved thru the O’Hare terminal was “Carter’s Popularity Stands at 16%.”
My thinking was that if it was true that the oil barons of the ME did have ships ordered to remain out at sea but visible from the Eastern coast of the USA, that something strange had happened. I felt like Kissinger was involved and that this was a silent coup to get Carter out.
Carter was hated by the Establishment not simply for things he didn’t do, such as his unwillingness to get the US a war on, but also as a way to get back at every one in the public who had gotten sick of the war in Vietnam and the coddling of the military-industrial complex.
The public was to be punished for failing to see the benefits of always having un-ending, non-winnable wars going on. It didn’t help that many Baby Boomers could do the math that was necessary: Our military had defeated the Third Reich as well as Japan in three & a half short years. Yet we couldn’t succeed in winning in Vietnam in 6 years that later became 8, and that then became 12??
I realize nobody cares about this. I saw somebody talking about how Clinton balanced the budget. He balanced it because Alan Greenspan was printing too much money and the temporary capital gains FROM THE NASDAQ BUBBLE made it look like we had a balanced budget. The [REDACTED] that was the treasury secretary, even wiped out the 30 year treasury bond. He was on the cover of the save the world thing by Time Magazine. Then everything collapsed in 2008. Of course the ruling class made out really well and everybody else got screwed like they are now.
Exactly. This topic drives me crazy. What did those guys think like and why did they have power?
I can’t prove this, but I have recently heard that the left in the Democrat party which runs everything currently thinks like, “If everybody isn’t equal, it’s fascist”.
Inflation hurts at least the bottom 90%. A recession affects about 15% of the population. They haven’t run the Fed like that for a long time.
Really excellent post Steve.
I just remembered who his main economist was on this. Alfred Khan. I loved watching that guy talk on TV when I was a kid. He was really happy and it seemed like he had a lot of guts. lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Kahn
In May 1979 Carter’s approval rating was in the 30s (and rapidly descending).
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/jimmy-carter-public-approval
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t true.
I had forgotten about that. They also deregulated the railroad industry, although it was too late to save passenger rail and local and regional freight lines. All we’re left with are the giant oligopolistic freight rail carriers.
He’s probably responsible for bringing the kumquat to American public attention. When he got pushback for saying that Carter’s policies would lead to a depression, he started saying that they would turn the economy into a banana. When the banana producers complained, he began saying they would turn the economy into a kumquat. Since American-owned kumquat production was minimal, he was safe.
That is hilarious.
I looked for youtubes of him. I like the ones I found, but it probably isn’t that great for the general interest. He seemed like a really good guy.
That’s a great point. Maybe the lesson is that economic growth powered by deregulation and productivity increases (thanks to Reagan) is the easiest way to balance the budget. But better to skip the loose monetary policy so that you don’t end up with a hangover.
We can’t take high interest rates, even though that would be better. We need to libertarian -ize. the economy.
Clinton had a choice. He decided to go along with the advice Morris gave him.
I remember the rumors about that. Though I didn’t pay much attention to politics back then, today I’m not at all surprised that the rumors were bogus.
He was a better President (or less bad) than many give him credit, for much of the reasons you lay out.
However, I’d assert he was much, very much a worse of an ex-President than virtually everyone gives him credit for. I saw coverage of all his post Prez activities and I thought it bad. There were things I hadn’t known. Like borderline sedition in cases. For example trying to undermine active President’s key foreign policy. So he built a few houses, so what compared to his negatives post Prez.
Part of the reason why my parents backed him in the campaign when he was less known. My mother especially worked on his primary campaign when they moved north. Somewhere they actually received a thank you note from Carter. He was viewed at the time as perhaps a moral, reasonable steady Southern Democrat. However, time changed their opinion of him.