# Jimmy Carter - was he so bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 1, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987 "2009-05-01T16:44:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/41 "2009-05-02T00:00:06Z")
Carter inherited a period of stagflation and with the nomination of Paul Volcker turned it around, something that Reagan gets credit for, though in reality the market tanked under Reagan in 1987 and left Bush I with a bad economy which he turned around, but fickle public memory doesn’t think that there is a delay on Presidential policy. So Bush is remembered for a bad economy and Clinton is remembered for a good economy. Reagan was extremely over-rated and Carter is extremely underrated. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/42 "2009-05-02T00:03:58Z")
That list of Presidents from C-Span is kind of odd. I don’t understand how Clinton gets a worse grade than Bush under moral authority. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/43 "2009-05-02T00:10:34Z")
It should be noted that the demonization of Carter was a team effort of the Reaganites and the Kennedy wing (i.e. the Establishment) of the Democratic Party. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/44 "2009-05-02T00:14:34Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > That list of Presidents from C-Span is kind of odd. I don’t understand how Clinton gets a worse grade than Bush under moral authority. Infidelity is more morally reprehensible than torture, don’t you know. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/45 "2009-05-02T01:19:05Z")
> [@bup](#): > > My contention that it’s part of the president’s job to make the country feel good about itself. Feeling good != being good. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/46 "2009-05-02T01:21:41Z")
One criticism sometimes leveled against Carter is a pure matter of style, that he took the “man of the people” thing too far, with his cardigans and walking to his inauguration and having dinner with random citizens, etc. All mostly-harmless stuff, but many people think that since we don’t have a king here, we need for our actual political leader to be a regal, larger-than-life figure. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/47 "2009-05-02T01:34:24Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Let me see if I get this correct: > > You are asserting that the end of the Cold War was worth the loss of the lives of thousands of innocent American civillians in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers? You insist this to be true and you claim that anyone who thinks this is not true should be willing to “expand their thought processes??” > > I’d love to see you pitch that to our society as a politician and survive. I’ll sell the tickets to the public lynching, and cut your heirs in on the concessions. :rolleyes: > > Apart from which the actions in Afghanistan, while a part of the disintigration of the Soviet Union, were not the main reason at all. Had Carter remained in office, the failure to ratchet up the cost of the Cold War would have allowed the Soviets to repair any damage done. Indeed, the failure to spend the Soviets out of house and home might well have allowed them to invest enough resources in Afghanistan to keep a lid on the issue there, and, thus, not have to deal with the lengthy and unpopular war. :dubious: > > But I really like your first assertion. Go out on the street with that one. “We should be thankful for our civillian deaths; they were a small price to pay for the end of the Cold War!” Actually, the arming of the mujahideen took place under Reagan, mostly due to Charlie Wilson’s instigation, as detailed in book and movie. The arming of the resistance didn’t directly lead to the rise of the Taliban. The problem was that after the war was over, we thought the job was done and left. The resulting chaos enabled the taliban to come to power as they were perceived as being preferable to the anarchy the power vacuum created. ---
**Author:** ![groo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecd19e/32.png) [@groo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groo)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/48 "2009-05-02T02:51:01Z")
7/10 I think people forget how badly we hurt after Nixon and Vietnam. We’d had a president who was corrupt and evil, and who believed that he was completely above the law, and we’d been shown that fumbling into wars that had no actual purpose could lead to nothing but tragedy. I’m not sure you can imagine that kind of situation ;), but it was a pretty miserable time. And his biggest negatives, as described by others here, were that he had difficulty getting things done because he just wasn’t cynical enough. That’s bad, but I don’t fault him for being a decent human being. At that point in history (and in my life), just having someone who wasn’t actively ass-raping the country was good enough for me. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/49 "2009-05-02T03:15:44Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Are you looking for a rational response or an emotional one? > Rationally, how do you compare those deaths with a certain possibility of mass destruction in a nuclear war - the thing I grew up with. I was in Berlin a few weeks ago, and stayed a few blocks from Checkpoint Charlie, and went to a little exhibit at Potsdamerplatz with photos of the city before and after the Wall came down. > > I agree that Afghanistan was not a major cause of the fall of Communism, but our supporting the anti-Russian Afghans wasn’t a major cause of 9/11 either. > > Not to mention that a lot more people died in the proxy wars that the Cold War spun off than did on 9/11. First of all, no nuclear war happened because no nuclear war was going to happen. Remember, I lived through the Cold War; M.A.D. was an effective strategy. So there was no “certain possibility of mass destruction in a nuclear war” if the Cold War had not ended when it did. Second, our intervention in Afghanistan, if you postulate it was effective in ending the Cold War, or even partially effective in doing so, must also have been the reason (or partial reason) for the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Had the Taliban not been allowed to control the mechanism of government in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda wouldn’t have had as easy a time carrying out a terrorist operation against the United States. So the two ARE related, making the assumptions other posters made, not me. But please note, I wasn’t the one who asserted that the loss of the WTC was worth it to end the Cold War. That came from **Simplicio** , followed up by **Bryan Ekers** , who said: "I think even with all that [Taliban, Al Qaeda and loss of the WTC], undermining the Soviet Union (and thus eventually removing the ever-looming threat of World War III) was well worth it. Heck, losing fifty towers would still be mild in comparison. Maybe it’s you who needs to expand his thought process." Now, Mr. Ekers can try to disown this if he likes with his later post, but I contend that my restatement is accurate, and misses nothing of what he said. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/50 "2009-05-02T03:17:16Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I was in grad school at the time, and pretty much insulated from the economy, but the speech sure as hell didn’t cheer me up. I’m not knocking him for the policy proposals, but for the lack of leadership that ensured they weren’t going to get adopted. He didn’t increase anyone’s confidence, and that was indeed a lot of the problem. The reason why I think the so-called “malaise” speech has gone down as a presidential gaffe is because shortly after he gave it, Carter almost completely overhauled his cabinet. When he did that, a lot of people who may have actually agreed with the substance of the speech seriously began to wonder if Carter knew what he was doing. And I agree with the common view that Carter as a president was well-meaning but ineffectual and give him a 4.5/10. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/51 "2009-05-02T03:40:08Z")
He was a nice man who was in way over his head being president of the US. Good man, lousy president. I’ll be generous and give him a 4. He created few problems and solved none. Although a moral man, he was not a likable man. You’ve got to have some spark that says ‘follow me’ to be a successful president. No spark at all. He had few followers at home or abroad. Some will point to the middle east peace accords as his success. Well the situation has not measurably improved in all these years since. A nation in idle gear just waiting for charisma. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/52 "2009-05-02T05:41:59Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > 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. This. Reagan was, objectively, a horribly misguided or deeply disingenuous President who talked a conservative, balanced-budget game while going shockingly into debt & lurching erratically in foreign policy in a half-hearted attempt to build American hegemony in the Middle East. But people never talk about that. Carter was a good man in over his head in a DC culture that saw him as an uppity hick. In today’s more term-limited Washington, now used to governors getting elected POTUS & thinking they’re God, he’d be a king. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/53 "2009-05-02T06:01:35Z")
I was quite small at the time. He was the first Prez I was aware of. So no ranking from me. **Shodan** , you seriously want to blame **stagflation** &\*\* disco \*\*on James Earl Carter? > [@bup](#): > > Other milestones in his presidency that haven’t been brought up: > > - cancelled the B1 bomber. That was a very visible cut of the military, and wasn’t really popular. > > - pardoned the Vietnam draft dodgers. Again, not popular with a lot of the public. > > - came in with the debt just under a trillion, left with the debt just over a trillion. That’s only a big deal in retrospect, as 3 of the 4 presidents since have let the debt increase massively, and the 5th, well, I \*hope \*he takes the debt seriously. > > - boycotted the Moscow Olympics. Really dumb PR move. I consider the amnesty a plus, & the boycott a silly idea. The Olympics are supposed to transcend war & politics. > [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > Others have brought up Paul Volcker. > > There’s also the deregulation of the air travel and trucking industries. > > Plus He Kept Us Out of War, which is kind of grading on a curve, but given the rest of the presidents over the second half of the twentieth century, doesn’t look so bad. Of those, the deregulation of air travel & trucking seems a bad thing to me. > [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > But I really like your first assertion. Go out on the street with that one. “We should be thankful for our civillian deaths; they were a small price to pay for the end of the Cold War!” Well, that could be objectively rather than locally good: > [@Voyager](#): > > … a lot more people died in the proxy wars that the Cold War spun off than did on 9/11. A HELL of a lot more. Order **s** , plural, of magnitude. But that’s beside the point: > [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > Actually, the arming of the mujahideen took place under Reagan, mostly due to Charlie Wilson’s instigation, as detailed in book and movie. The arming of the resistance didn’t directly lead to the rise of the Taliban. The problem was that after the war was over, we thought the job was done and left. The resulting chaos enabled the taliban to come to power as they were perceived as being preferable to the anarchy the power vacuum created. Anyway… > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > One criticism sometimes leveled against Carter is a pure matter of style, that he took the “man of the people” thing too far, with his cardigans and walking to his inauguration and having dinner with random citizens, etc. All mostly-harmless stuff, but many people think that since we don’t have a king here, we need for our actual political leader to be a regal, larger-than-life figure. I think that’s what I like about him. I don’t want a snobby king, a spotless teflon would-be GodEmperor. I want a man doing the job in a republic. I don’t like the tendency to turn the POTUS into a third-world “President” (really king). ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/54 "2009-05-02T06:05:48Z")
Now I would guess maybe a 3. Before Bush II It would have been a 1. But by comparison I would raise it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/55 "2009-05-02T06:26:05Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > First of all, no nuclear war happened because no nuclear war was going to happen. Remember, I lived through the Cold War; M.A.D. was an effective strategy. So there was no “certain possibility of mass destruction in a nuclear war” if the Cold War had not ended when it did. I spent my time hiding under desks and in hallways practicing for an attack. I lived in New York City, by the way. As for the certainty that no war could have happened, I ask you to imagine the Cuban Missile Crisis with Richard Nixon as president. I also don’t think it is possible to say with certainty what would have happened if the Cold War had continued. > [@](#): > > Second, our intervention in Afghanistan, if you postulate it was effective in ending the Cold War, or even partially effective in doing so, must also have been the reason (or partial reason) for the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Had the Taliban not been allowed to control the mechanism of government in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda wouldn’t have had as easy a time carrying out a terrorist operation against the United States. So the two ARE related, making the assumptions other posters made, not me. I thought I had said that this was a minor cause of the end of the Cold War. No matter - if we had not ignored Afghanistan after the Russians left we could have kept the Taliban out, so they did not have to have been connected. > [@](#): > > But please note, I wasn’t the one who asserted that the loss of the WTC was worth it to end the Cold War. That came from **Simplicio** , followed up by **Bryan Ekers** , who said: "I think even with all that [Taliban, Al Qaeda and loss of the WTC], undermining the Soviet Union (and thus eventually removing the ever-looming threat of World War III) was well worth it. > > Heck, losing fifty towers would still be mild in comparison. Maybe it’s you who needs to expand his thought process." > > Now, Mr. Ekers can try to disown this if he likes with his later post, but I contend that my restatement is accurate, and misses nothing of what he said. No, I thought you were saying that it was not worth it - not that there was any direct tradeoff. I was saying that the costs of the Cold War, in many dimensions, were far greater than the costs of 9/11. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/56 "2009-05-02T07:08:39Z")
The populist answer is that Presidents are responsible for the good and bad that happens on their watch. So Carter is blamed for high interests rates, Afghanistan, the Iran Hostage crisis and the gas price jump. As such, he was not a popular president. Did he cause any of these things? No. Did he make them worse? No. Could he have done better with any of them? Possibly. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/57 "2009-05-02T12:58:45Z")
I’m not very impressed with the good that Carter did, except for the Camp David Accords. However, I also need to look at the BAD that presidents did during their term. And I’m not buying the argument that he did much bad. Which is a pretty substantial compliment when compared to other latter-half-of-the-twentieth-century presidents. Especially since 1970, I have trouble thinking of another president who did less bad than Carter. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/58 "2009-05-02T13:01:42Z")
**BrainGlutton, 'luci** , I understand that cheerleading/talking a good game is not the same as being good, and is not substantive; however, Bill Clinton understood that if you don’t get the American people to believe in themselves, they don’t believe in you. And if you don’t cheerlead, you don’t stay in power, and then you don’t get any of your initiatives/governing ideas practiced. I think that’s the big difference between Clinton’s success and Carter’s lack of it. One other thing I remembered that hasn’t been mentioned - Carter took a lot of prisoners from Cuba when Castro offered them. He put them in prisons in states that instantly guaranteed he’d lose those states in 1980. Was it the right thing to do? 30 years later, almost certainly. Could he have marketed it worse? Certainly not. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/59 "2009-05-02T13:11:40Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Now, Mr. Ekers can try to disown this if he likes I’ve no intention of doing so, and your interpretation is still wrong. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2009, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987/60 "2009-05-02T13:32:34Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > 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. Carter was a better President than all of those except Bush II who was a pretty good President. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jimmy-carter-was-he-so-bad/494987.md?page=4)