Previous thread on President George H W Bush
President Carter was in office from Jan 1977- Jan 1981
The Good:
Camp David Accords.
SALT II Treaty
Creation of the Department of Energy
Panama Canal Treaty
Paul Volcker as Fed Chairman
Ending diplomatic relations with Taiwan
The Bad:
1980 Olympic boycott
Ineffective response to the Iranian hostage crisis
“Malaise” speech
Poor handling of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
I think it’s debatable whether or not the creation of the Dept. of Energy and the ending of diplomatic relations with Taiwan were good things.
Two other bad things for the list:
Two strong US allies being replaced by two regimes that caused us problems during the 80’s and 90’s (Nicaragua and Iran – yes, the Shah and Somoza were two ruthless dictators, but they were our ruthless dictators, dammit!)
High inflation and high unemployment
I’m not sure how anyone could really argue that Carter was a good president. Sure, you may disagree that he was “history’s greatest monster,” as was once claimed on the Simpsons, but it would be hard to say he was a “success.” His numerous failures outweigh the few good things he accomplished (I’ll even give him the Camp David accords and the Panama Canal Treaty, although the latter was really started under Ford, if I recall correctly).
I think Carter was a good, moral, intelligent person. And an ineffective president. He prided himself on not being part of the Washington in-crowd, and thus he was unable to accomplish much since hardly anybody owed him anything.
Some presidents, like Lyndon Johnson, were real sons-of-bitches, but were able to get things done because people didn’t want to get on the wrong side of them. Many of the things JFK is credited with were actually put into effect by LBJ. But he was still a nasty SOB when he wanted to be.
He was a Washington outsider who was not very effective at getting his agenda pushed through (not that I’m impressed with what he wanted to do in any case). The OPs ‘Good’ are even debatable and as Renob pointed out some key ‘Bad’ are missing. I’d say whoever is going to call Carter as President a success is going to have their work cut out for them.
-XT
These are questionable as good at best. Why did we have to give up the Canal? As you remember, when Colombia refused to sell us land for the Canal, we supported Panamanian independence and forced Colombia to accept it. We then bought the Canal Zone from them. I don’t recall the Panamanians volunteering to become Colombians to set things right.
Ending diplomatic relations with Taiwan? We deny supporting a (theoretically) republican country to support a communist one in the middle of the Cold War? What purpose did the renunciation of Taiwan serve?
I really like Carter. He seems to be the most genuine person to have occupied the White House in my lifetime. Of all the ex-Presidents, he seems like the one I’d most enjoy sitting next to at a dinner party.
But I just can’t square that with the US inaction on the Cambodian Genocide conducted by the Khmer Rouge during Carter’s presidency. And the continued support for the Khmer Rouge after they were deposed (most of which happened under Reagan, but it started under Carter.)
I honestly don’t know what role Carter played in this. Maybe he tried to do something, maybe he didn’t. The fact is, the US stood by and did nothing and he deserves the blame for that. Because of that alone, he makes the list of Bad Presidents for me.
He lost the 1980 election as an incumbent president of the party in power in Congress. That’s a pretty solid indictment of his presidency, issued by the public at the time.
To what extent that result came about solely or mostly from the hostage situation will never be known…
There is no question that it was the right time to end diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Like it or not, we could not and should not ignore mainland China. Trying to pretend that an island is China while ignoring one billion people is just silly. Nixon did the right thing by opening China and Carter did the right thing by continuing in those footsteps.
The energy crisis during Carter’s administration showed the need for a federal energy policy. I think that at times the Department of Energy has been badly mismanaged. However, I think the creation of the cabinet level position was necessary.
I’m going to go ahead and call Carter a success in his presidency. I don’t think there is any way to overestimate the importance of Camp David. Also, his appointment of Volcker to the Fed Chairmanship was genius. Volcker and Greenspan have helped the US economy maintain stability until today.
That’s the first real election I can remember following. And I recall that Carter was such a lame duck that the Republican primary was seen as a bigger event, almost, than the presidential election, because everyone thought that whoever the Republicans put up was going to crush Carter. He was that bad.
The only thing I can put in the ‘good’ column for him was his appointment of Volcker to the Fed.
Brokering the Camp David Accords was a real accomplishement, too.
But the Dept of Energy? Phhht. What have we gotten for our money out of that thing?
Okay, now seriously, folks, that wasn’t Carter’s fault. With the continuing difficulties over oil embargoes, there was a demand from the public that something be done, and creation of a Cabinet position on the issue was an idea pretty common among those inside and outside the Belt.
I think this is a pretty good analysis.
I also think Carter’s term was a tough time to be president, and he didn’t really have what it took to effectively address many of the particular challenges that came up then.
On the other hand, I think the fact that the U.S. elected a leader who was so widely perceived as a “good, moral, intelligent person”—one who valued peace and honesty and who tried to do the right thing—helped the U.S.'s worldwide reputation (in a way that, say, GWB’s presidency has not). Can any Dopers outside the USA confirm or deny this?
I’d say no. Mind you, I don’t live outside the U.S.
The mere fact that Carter was a good man personally didn’t keep him from being met with massive anti-American demonstrations when he visited Paris as president. Larger and more violent demonstrations greeted him in Tehran.
A second’s thought will illustrate why. America is the target of these demonstrations, not a particular administration. And the weak foreign policy Carter pursued invited more anti-Americanism, not less.
Add to your list of The Bad, IMO:
Reinstated Selective Services registration.
Cost him my vote in 1980, because I had to register for the draft.
The office of the president was severly weakened by Nixon. The public elected him because they knew he wasn’t bold. (he was in ways people didn’t imagine)
Another good thing
Amnesty for draft evaders.
Nope. Bad thing. While I think draft evaders of that era were numerous enough that lenient treatment was a political necessity, the fact remains that they broke the law, and thus ought to have faced some kind of penalty.
A blanket amnesty went way too far. That is why it was so unpopular, especially among those people who did their duty, however unpleasant it turned out to be.
So, another Good thing, then: Reintroduced Irony to the oval office.
The 1970s was a lousy decade for America – the Vietnam war, Watergate, the oil crisis, stagflation, and at the very end, Iran and Afghanistan. Morever, the civil-rights reforms of the '60s had yet to bear fruit for many people. Carter was right – there was a malaise in America, and we needed to find a way out of it. Carter is accounted as a failure basically by acclamation, and by the judgment of the election in 1980. Notwithstanding, it’s hard to say who could have been successful in his situation.
The amnesty for draft evaders was the first, painful, step in the healing process over Viet Nam. Some people still don’t want there to be any healing process but that is their problem.
The register for the draft was a response to the hostage crisis. Not a great response and I thought it was sex descrimination against males that they had to register to get federal grants for college but women did not.
True, but that doesn’t mean that Carter would have been an effective president in better situations. In his autobiography, Tip O’Neill basically rips Carter and his staff- and especially Ham Jordan- a new one for their attitudes. According to Tip, Carter came into the office assuming he could just railroad the U.S. Congress the same way he had railroaded the George legislature. The massive Energy Bill that Carter proposed had to be completely re-worked by O’Neill just to get it onto the floor of Congress, and then Carter’s staff nearly sabotaged it because it wasn’t true enough to the President’s vision.
The most tell point, according to O’Neill, is at a summer barbecue in D.C. in 1978 where both O’Neill and Jordan were present. After telling a few stories to entertain the crowd, O’Neill heard Jordan tell a friend, “Man! That O’Neill can sure tell a good story!” The fact that the Carter administration had been in office for two years and still didn’t know that the Speaker of the House was a great storyteller speaks volumes (according to O’Neill; this is his interpretation, not mine) about how little the Carter White House was interested in working with Congress.
By comparison, O’Neill praises the hell out of Reagan’s staff and how they worked with Congress- even though they were different parties. O’Neill laments that the late '70’s could have been a golden time for the party if the President had only been someone with Carter’s political philosophy and Reagan’s personal charm and organization.