I’ve heard a lot of people recently wondering if Obama will be another Roosevelt or another Carter. The implication is that Roosevelt was a good president and Carter was a bad one.
I’ll admit that I don’t have an opinion of the issue. I was a kid when Carter was president and wasn’t paying much attention to him.
So, let’s not take into account all the good works he’s done after he was finished being president. Just a straight up evaluation of his presidency.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, how would you rate President Carter, and why?
Carter was a better president than Nixon,Ford,Reagan,Bush I and Bush II.
Talking him down is part of the process of talking UP Reagan, which is a very popular thing to do in some circles.
On the down side, we had stagflation, the misery index, the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets, the hostage crisis (and the botched rescue attempt), his brother lobbying for Libya, the malaise speech, warrantless wire-tapping, Attack of the Killer Bunny Rabbit, a fourteen-year-old girl advising the Leader of the Free World on what he priorities should be, and disco, all while Mr. Peanut was working on the schedule for the White House tennis courts.
On the plus side, we had the Camp David Peace Accords, and…
I think a 3 is high, but I am feeling generous.
The poor bastard was in over his head. Fortunately, everyone else realized that before he did.
ETA: You know how bad he was, when Dems can’t discuss him without changing the subject.
Well, Carter was no Roosevelt, but he was no Bush either. 1 to 10? I’d say a 5.
Some of the things were not his fault, such as the economy. I think a lot of the disapproval of Carter springs from the folks who think we should’ve gone in with both guns blazing about the Iranian hostages. Carter knew the only answer to that predicament that would keep the hostages alive was diplomacy. The military rescue he tried to get underway (under pressure from the John Wayne set) was a miserable failure.
But let’s not forget that the Camp David Accords for peace between Israel and Egypt is the only mideast peace treaty still operative after thirty some odd years.
That’s quite an accomplishment.
Unfortunately, he was a president who hated politics. That’s mostly why we elected him. But a political outsider isn’t going to get too far in Washington, and a president who hates politics is going to be a little, well, useless. Politics is the way things get done in Washington.
At the time, he wasn’t looked upon as all that great. I remember a song we had in high school during his campaign for re-election. It’s sung to the Oscar Meyer song:
My peanut has a first name
It’s J-I-M-M-Y
My peanut has a second name
It’s C-A-R-TE-R
Oh, I hate to see him everyday
And if you ask me why I’ll sayyyy
“'Cause Jimmy Carter has a way
of fucking up the U-S-A.”
One reason he is regarded as an ineffective President is because he initially staffed his administration heavily with outsiders – i.e., people who were not Washington insiders. This was what he’d promised to do, because post-Watergate it had a good-government appeal to it. His people quickly alienated powerful Congressional Democrats, however, and this hindered his ability to accomplish a legislative agenda.
His personal manner likely contributed to this situation as well. By many accounts, Carter was not much of a schmoozer. He is somewhat solemn and moralist, and those are qualities that permanent Washington does not prize.
Bottom line: He made few friends as President and thus has few people willing to defend his Presidency.
No. Just like criticism of Obama triggers the knee-jerk of “Bush Sucked!”, any discussion of Carter triggers the knee-jerk of “Reagan Sucked!”
Dems hate discussing Carter, because a balanced assessment of his administration shows him to have been about as effective as a fart in a hurricane.
But, by all means prove me wrong. Present all the shining successes of the Carter administration - the soaring self-confidence in the USA that he inspired, the solid prosperity he brought about, the new sense of dignity we all recognized from having a President whose sister was a faith healer and whose brother lent his name to a beer.
This seems like a red herring. What does having self-confidence/feeling good about oneself have to do with being a good president? And what do his brother and sister have to do with his qualifications for pres?
Put Volcker in as Fed Chair, which just about everyone now regards as a good call, and funded the Mujahadeen against the Soviets, which may not be universally held as the right choice (as it encouraged Muslim Jyhadists) but I think was probably worth the later price.
All presidents can only be measured as to how ‘good’ they were as President by the results of their term in office. That sort of measurement is, of course, largely subjective, so the answer is dependent upon things like personal political bias. It’s also difficult to measure until sufficient time has passed subsequent to the person’s term(s) in office that the full extent of the ramifications of their policies have had time to take effect. For example, the answer to questions about FDR as president will have changed between 1965 and 1985, as the nation began to deal with the full effects of a shift in governmental philosophy from a weak federal to a strong federal.
With these in mind:
President Carter’s time in office was marked by very little in the way of positive accomplishments. Clearly, the biggest accomplishment was getting Egypt and Israel to come to peace terms. This shouldn’t be a surprise: it turns out that one of his strong suits is getting people with diverse outlooks to sit down and actually, you know, talk to each other to resolve differences. He probably would have made an excellent Secretary of State to some other president. Personally, I think he ought to be the S-G of the U.N.
But other than that, his presidency had little to crow about. During it, the nation suffered through its worst economic malaise since the Depression (even now, with things relatively in the tank, I would still take the present climate over the economic situation of the late 70s). He was seen as ineffectual in managing a solution to the situation (contrast the fact that, whether because of or inspite of his efforts, President Reagan managed the government through to a conclusion of the economic woes and into the longest expansion of the economy ever). His foreign policy efforts were widely ridiculed even before the Iran hostage situation (anyone remember Doonesbury parodying the human rights promotion efforts with an Oscar Awards-like ceremony?). He appeared to believe that the United States should be a force for morality in the world, even when that interfered with our other political interests (which is why the Iran crisis was especially ironic given that it happened during his watch). His domestic efforts on other fronts never managed to get much of anywhere; education, health, labor, etc. didn’t really achieve any break-throughs.
I think that the people of the country spoke their opinion of the situation when they tossed him out of office in preference to an almost “has been” former actor whos potential as a president offered so much uncertainty that a significant third-party candidacy managed to gain quite a bit of headway. After the mess that was Watergate, the country really should have been ready to keep the Republicans away from the switches for some time. But after President Carter, it wasn’t until President Obama that the Republicans (including that DINO, Clinton) had to yield up the reins.
It’s not the be-all, end-all of being President, but one of the things we want from our government is to lead us to a good place as a nation. We castigated Johnson for leading us into a war that made us feel bad about ourselves, we tossed Bush the First out of office because the economy tanked while he was president, etc. In these terms, President Carter did not fare well.
Naw, I’m sticking with it. Afganistan was a large factor in the fall of the Soviet Union, which was worth it even if it was directly responsible for Al-Queda and the Taliban. The damage done by the Cold War and the threat posed by nuclear war were greater evils by an order of magnitude.
And its a pretty large stretch to say Carter’s funding the Mujahadeen was directly responsible for the destruction of the Twin Towers some twenty years later. It was one of many factors, but a lot of stuff happened in between to reach that point.
You’re conflating *being *in a good place with *feeling *like we’re in a good place. Reagan was (and, among many, still is) popular largely because he told us what we wanted to hear about ourselves. Carter was honest and paid the price.
As I recall, his management style was criticized for being a micro-manager and indecisive. And for whatever reason, he seemed completely unable to “inspire” the public. To the contrary, his name, accent, and family provided plenty of opportunity to diminish him.
I suspect if he looked and sounded more “presidential”, he would have been viewed far more favorably. Don’t think he appreciated the importance of “image” at all.
He may not have been horribly effective, but I’m not sure he caused more than average harm either. He was okay - but didn’t inspire any large group to lionize him.
