Because there was a black leader elected that Mugabe resisted, and Carter could’ve put severe pressure on Mugabe or at least not been seen taking photo ops with him. All white rule was vastly superior to Robert Mugabe’s rule, so no if the alternative is Mugabe, then ending all-white rule was not the right thing at the time. Though it’s irrelevant since all-white rule wasn’t the alternative to Mugabe.
The face of all-white rule in Rhodesia:
:rolleyes:
Exactly. Carter is-was a great Statesman, but a poor Cheif Executive.
Heh, I would say that it was the reverse. His foreign policy was his really terrible part. His Domestic policy was a sight better. I mean the Israel/Palestine stuff was a good job, though he destroyed any credibility he had on the subject since then.
For somebody who emerged from the cesspool of Georgia politics, Carter understood very little. For example, he announced to the world, that henceforth, the CIA would not act to gather information on enemies…the KGB was very grateful for this (they moved into Central America in a big way) . Carter seemed concerned that foreign governments should “like” the USA (whatever that means); he should have read Lord Palmerstone: “Nations have interests, not friends”.
The iranian hostage debacle was the icing on the cake-his advisors gave the rescue attempt about a 5% chance of success-he authorized it anyway.
All in all, Carter was a disaster.
Cite? (And you do understand the difference between personal enemies and national enemies, don’t you? I believe the pledge you are failing to comprehend is Carter’s pledge not to use the CIA to go after personal enemies, as Nixon had done.)
Cite?
Not by his book, he didn’t!
Why didn’t Carter’s energy proposals go anywhere?
I suppose one can only get so much credit for being right- it is getting things accomplished that really counts. But when it comes to energy policy, he was just about right on. Leaders since then have treated conservation and energy independence as if they were the Devil, culminating in W., The Oilman President.
Reduce dependence on foreign oil? 20% of our power from solar by 2000? It would’ve been freakin’ great had these ideas been implemented instead of squashed.
Thanks to Carter at least now we can say, ‘we’ve been talking about this issue for decades. It’s time to act!’ For what that’s worth…
Uh, no. Nixon was the first to make a big deal about energy independance, during the 1973 oil embargo. Ford repeated it, and every President since has claimed it was a goal of theirs. Cite.
Since 1998, I’ve been advocating flying cars powered only by cotton balls. It would’ve been freakin’ great had my ideas been implemented instead of squashed.
Jimmy Carter is pretty much universally reviled by one side of the issue. That means he has no credibility left, and yes, it was that book that destroyed his credibility. He’s worthless on the issue now.
Well… I didn’t say he was the first to make a big deal of it.
I’m not going to say you haven’t offered a decent rebuttal to my post. We’re gentlemen after all, no?
I’ll take issue with a couple of points though: flying cars powered by cotton balls vs. 20% of our energy from solar? Flying cars are fiction. That goal for solar is not. I’ll try to provide a cite soon. Do you disagree?
And- here’s a quote from that article:
Well ok, that guy thinks it is a a ‘goal that’s not feasible’, but who is he, what’s his factual basis, and what does the Center for Strategic and International Studies promote? (really- I have no idea whatsoever). 2020 is only 11 years away, so maybe we will and maybe we won’t be using the ‘same kinds of primary energy’ then. Does that mean we give up on… I’m primarily interested in ending dependence on foreign oil, so can we constrain it to that? Do you consider that an unworthy goal? What are the consequences of conflating ‘We can’t do it by 2020’ with ‘We can’t do it, period?’
And- if you don’t like the word ‘squashed’, what’s a better way to interpret our seeming lack of progress on this issue over the last 30+ years?
I’m uncertain as to what role Jimmy Carter played in the Lancaster House Agreement.
Eisenhower wasn’t bad. But the Republican Party turned to the Dark Side after the Southern Strategy and the rise of movement conservatism. There will never be another Republican president worth a bucket of warm piss until the party purges itself of all that.
Yeah, neither am I.
He played Estlin, scapegrace, ne’er-do-well younger brother to Russelford, Duke of Umbrage.
A role later played by Hugh Jackman on broadway, so you know it was a good one!
And, no, Reagan was not worth a bucket of warm piss.
Really? I thought he took Umbrage.
You’d be surprised how common that mistake is. Umbrage was played by Lou Ferrigno.
I think to compare him to all of his Republican contemporaries without throwing in Clinton is really missing the OP. If you dislike republicans, fine, but talking Carter down is NOT talking Reagan up in ALL circles.
FWIW, IMHO (wow. I wonder how long I could string a sentence together with those things), Carter was the most honest, down to earth, “man of the people” president in my lifetime. He seemed (and seems) like a genuinely nice person with good intentions. His problem, from what I’ve read, is that he shut out his own party when he got into the white house, not following party form and rewarding folks that didn’t, in his opinion, deserve it. So, to punish him, the Dems in the house and senate (who I believe held a majority in both chambers), really tied his hands and didn’t allow him to do the things he wanted to do. He paid for his independence. It seemed to me that he didn’t play the game the way he was told to play it, so the powers in the democratic party made him virtually unelectable in 1980.
He had some successes, the Camp David agreements probably being at the top. But he’ll mostly be remembered for the Iran hostages, the olympic boycott of 1980, high inflation and 17% mortgage rates.
Of all the presidents of the last 60 years, I think he is the first one I’d like to have as a neighbor, have a beer with, and trust. He still impresses me as a man who wants to make a positive difference, and even if I don’t agree with everything he does or says, he doesn’t strike me as a man that has someone pulling his strings. I can’t think of any other president after Eisenhower that I can say that about.
Come to think about it, I wouldn’t mind having a beer with Eisenhower either. (Yeah, yeah… I know he’s dead.)