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Is It Time to Rethink Jimmy Carter?
Up until Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter was the worst President of my lifetime (and certainly the worst ex-President). From a strict policy perspective, however, I am starting to think that he deserves some credit. As was pointed out on a recent episode of the Need to Know podcast, he started the military build-up; he began deregulating the economy (with trucking first, if memory serves); he was fiscally conservative for a Democrat; and, finally, as Fred Siegel points out in his wonderful book The Revolt Against the Masses, he was constantly at odds with liberal special interests. What say you?
It’s depressing to compare him with current Democrat politicians. Back then, a Democrat could occasionally bumble into doing the right thing and, even more rarely, intentionally do the right thing. They have since improved their quality control.
Yes, he started the military buildup, but only after he could no longer ignore Soviet provocations – He was incredulous that they would lie to him. So, yes, in Jimmy’s favor, he can react from some of his mistakes. So can certain single cell organisms when confronted with stimuli.
Note, I didn’t say learn from his mistakes – there is still no evidence of that.
Contrasted with President* Obama – there is no comparison. Obama tells us he makes no mistakes and I think we should take him at his word.
I never thought Carter hated this country, merely that he was tone deaf and inept, a living example of the Peter Principle.
Barry by contrast appears to hate this country, is dedicated to a vision he has of himself and wants to do to this country, and has managed to do it with an ideological Democrat Party and some connivance of the courts.
The best thing about the Republican Party is that the House has pretty much held the line since Pelosi has been replaced, and the Republicans in the Senate vote as a block against a lot of bad things proposed by the Democrats.
It is both sad and frightening that President Carter, an absolute disaster both as prez and ex-prez, is made to look good in comparison to President Obama.
And it is nothing less than nauseating to think how awful Obama will be as an ex-prez himself. His holier-than-thou preening will know no bounds.
Carter only looks non-horrible in comparison to Obama
I have to disagree that Carter loves his country. I think he was so embittered by losing to Reagan that he decided he was too good for us.
I would agree. Look at his cozying up to the Norks, and his deliberate attempts at undermining of the foreign policies of Clinton and both Bushes. It’s rather telling that Clinton at first tried working with Carter as a fellow, then found him unreliable and untrustworthy
Recall that Carter had a staged rehabilitation. It started swinging a hammer for Habitat, and then progressed through stages of leftist advocacy and dementia.
Obama will have to bypass the hammer swinging stage and go straight to bitterness. That won’t look good.
He’s at bitterness already!
Is it the deregulating?
Is it the build-up?
Money, it’s gotta be the shoes.
The things you mentioned as being the basis for reevaluating Carter need to be placed in context. It would be like saying thirty years from now that Obama wasn’t so bad because he was good on drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia.
Or that he played a mean (i.e. petty) game of liars golf.
Nah, he’s still pretty bad, even in retrospect. I voted for him in 76 but for Reagan in 80 (my first R vote). Never thought I’d see a Prez that bad again and that’s why the 21st century has been so discouraging. By 2008 I concluded that George W Bush was as big a failure as Carter, though GWB is a good man whom I respect, and he was followed by Obama who is simply off the charts on the badness scale (whether measured by ideology, constitutional fidelity or competence). We’re 0 for 2 so far in this century.
Salvatore,
Please don’t get the impression I thought he was a good President. He was incompetent like the current one. However, he governed on domestic issues fairly moderately for a Democrat and starting moving rightward which Reagan accelerated.
One odd bright spot for Carter was his utter contempt for the Army Corps of Engineers. Being an engineer himself he could spot engineering BS from the Corps, and put the brakes on a lot of their levee and dam projects, and cut down their fiscal profligacy. Apparently he took that agency’s behavior personally.
Not interested in rehabilitating this miserable old anti-Semite. He made his bed, I don’t care what’s under the covers; let him lie in it.
So much for Obama. What do you think of Carter?
Nor will I ever forgive his disparaging remarks about a standing U.S. president (George W.) during a time of war. In another day and age, we would have defined Carter’s remarks as ‘treason.’
John Hanson: “Carter only looks non-horrible in comparison to Obama”
Sorry John, they both look horrible and, while I remember Nixon, they occupy a stage reserved for two.
Yup. second best Democrat in 50 years.
(Even though he did deliver us a communist South America, the community reinvestment act, International Islamic fascism and nuclear basket cases. That’s not enough to limbo below, Obama or LBJ.)
Carter:
Created Dept. of Education
Created Dept. of Energy
Gave away Panama Canal
Iran hostage crisis
Wore a sweater sitting in a straight backed chair next to a fire and told us that things weren’t going to be OK that we were going to have to live smaller.
No, he’s not any better than Obama, just no worse.
Yer reaching further than Stretch Armstrong could ever dream of.
In comparison to Obama, Carter was a foreign policy genius.
That was difficult to write.
I think I injured my soul.
Donald Todd: “Sorry John, they both look horrible and, while I remember Nixon, they occupy a stage reserved for two.”
Sorry if I gave the impression Carter wasn’t horrible. My meaning was that he was the worst in history until Obama, then slid into the number 2 horrible slot, hence my poor choice of the word non-horrible, less horrible might have been better. Completely agree on the stage for two.
Of course, all of this is somewhat relative, since I wasn’t here in the 19th century, and a few of those presidents were rumored to be no great shakes either, but certainly in the era where the US is a world leader, these qualify as the worst. Direct comparison of someone from the 1800s with current individuals on a horrible scale is subject to time and place biases.
That’s peanuts compared to this one.
We need to put this myth to bed. Jimmy Carter is a “nuclear engineer” the way I’m a former president of the United States. His Naval career (where he earned the engineering “credential”) coincided with the Manhattan Project, of which he was not a contributor, just to be clear. The first nuclear submarine (which he might have qualified as “operator”) was launched after his father’s death when he returned to the peanut farm.
His campaign could have been said to “resume pad,” which is nothing new or particularly reprehensible, I suppose. But the damage he did to the nuclear energy industry with his misbegotten policies is lasting. For that, he deserves as much revulsion as most of us feel about him.
No one should mistake Jimmy Carter for an engineer.
Link
Charles Logan was a better U. S. President than Carter or Obama.
Yes, JC was pretty bad and BO is certainly worse, but perhaps we need go back a bit further. Both of these fellows have a ways to go in order to reach the level of James Buchanan. If the Civil War starts just after your watch, it sort of makes our troubles in Iran and Iraq look a bit trifling by comparison, doesn’t it? But be of good cheer, lads! After Buchanan we got Lincoln, and after Jimmy we got Reagan. So, if that logic holds, we’ll get someone better than Reagan but not as great as Lincoln. I’ll take that! Of course that is no guarantee, but the really scary part is that BO still has two years to go to achieve Buchanan-level, er, distinction. He might have to put the Buchanan Prize next to that Nobel Prize as they make a nice pair. But who will make this award? With what will we fund this? Let’s create a 501 c(4)! On second thought, never mind!
He was temperamentally unsuited to the Presidency (loner, thoroughly convinced of his own moral superiority, etc.). He practically oozed naivete when it came to foreign policy (see Soviets, Khomeini, etc.). He had no idea how an economy works. Other than that, he was great.
His post White House years have been worse. As previously mentioned, he has tried to run his own foreign policy under the noses of both Bushes & Bill Clinton. His actions in the run up to Gulf War I were borderline treasonous (lobbying foreign governments against Bush I). His actions & writings have given political cover to the enemies of Israel.
The only good thing is; he had 1 term, not 2.