Right. Let’s go down that list, shall we?
Eisenhower had a few years in retirement where he had a role as an elder statesman, after which his health rapidly declined. Nixon had an active retirement, authoring numorous books devoted mostly to foreign policy. Reagan’s retirement was taken up mostly by his illness. Bush Sr’s retirement was as I noted above.
The only person I’d regard as having squandered his post-presidency, Republican or Democrat, is Ford.
Fair enough, and my apologies to Renob for over-reacting. I’ve seen the effects of Guinea worm up close and it’s absolutely horrifying. The work the Carter Center has done to move towards eradicating this is commendatory. The reduction in cases from three million 20 years ago to 12,000 last year is nothing short of miraculous, given the superstitions and traditions to be overcome in that part of the world. The thread title should probably have been “The good work of the Carter Center”.
I do have my own gripes about the Carter administration. However, I would have to say that a failed administration certainly pales by comparison to a failed life. Some of Carter’s dealings are a little too pollyanna-ish, but by and large he has succeeded wildy in his post-presidency, and more than ‘walked the walk’. Compare the afterlife of other presidents, and the probable afterlife of the current failed administration, and I’ll put Carter up against any of them. His goal in office and out of office was and is to preserve life. George Bush’s agenda seems to be to snuff out as many as possible without crossing the line into the ‘notorious’ category, his pandering to the pro-life bunch notwithstanding.
Watergate and a hot wife are what got Carter into the Presidency. Also, people at this time were looking for a young Democrat to pick up the “Kennedy torch,” and give us a ‘breath of fresh air’ from the Republicans and Old Guard.
He was crapped all over by Democrats as well as right-wingers, when he was in office. He had to crawl to Ted Kennedy and practically beg for his support at his 2nd convention.
He may be a fine person, socially minded wise, but was not good for the US as a president. “For this work alone, Carter and et al., should be canonized.” I can agree with that. Not much that he did as president would qualify him. If he were to stay in the private sector, I might agree with you.
He appointed Muhammad Ali to be a broker to Iran in the hostage crisis because of some nonsense along the lines of “he’s a Muslim, so they could understand each other.” That was the most idiotic in terms of outright laughable, but the other nonsense was worse and far more costly to US interests.
He is a miserable wretch for interfering in US foreign policy, which is more than laughable since his was one of the most dismal failures in FP (at least, in the US interests.) IIRC, he even criticized, or even threatened legal action against those that were trying to do something to set affairs straight during the Iran thing without State Department sanction.
When the PC craze was starting in the US, sometime in the early 80s, or maybe late 70s, media people were really making noise that Carter was using a word processor to write his memoirs (remarkable, yes!!!) It was blazed about that he lost a page/chapter/section when somebody accidentally deleted it by pressing the wrong button. His former staffers quipped “Why is he complaining? he lost whole nations quicker!”
I thought that Carter was going to be a good president, going into his administration; sadly, he is the reason that I became a Republican later.
Of course, it could have been my malaise that made me do it! :eek:
The Camp David accords are certainly nothing to sniff at. How long were Egypt and Israel mortal enemies?
I certainly won’t sniff at the accords. However, it should be noted that Carter was building on the work of previous administrations, especially Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy after the 1973 war. Carter also nearly screwed up the whole deal when he replaced the bilateral Kissinger approach with a multilateral approach that even brought the Palestinians into the conference.
Sadat got so fed up with all of this he opened up secret negotiations directly with the Israelis. The Sadat initiative led directly to the Camp David talks, where Carter shone in keeping both sides at the table.
So, some brilliance among many screwups. This was a pattern displayed throughout Jimmy Carter’s life.
Painting with a broad brush, aren’t you?
Carter does the best that he can do with the cards that he’s given. It’s clear now that we were better off with Yassir Arafat than without him. The situation in Palestine was always an impossible one from the moment that Arafat inherited it. You had a population of which many people had been personally pushed off their ancestral land in Israel by force. That, combined with extreme poverty and continuing incursions by the Israeli Army, creates a breeding ground for extremism. Arafat calmed that extremism as much as he could.
Carter saw the whole situation pragmatically. Without Arafat’s leadership, Hamas and other terrorist groups would grow more powerful. Consequently, the best course of action is to support Arafat. If Arafat had been given more free reign to actually govern, he might have convinced more Palestinians of the benefits of a secular government. But that’s water under the bridge now.
(For comparison, consider Dubya’s continuing support for King Saud. If asked to defend it, most Republicans would fall back on similar reasoning: “If we ditched Saud, somebody worse might come to power in Saudi Arabia. Consequently, we must keep Saud.” It’s hypocritical to use that logic in Saudi Arabia and then blast Carter for supporting Arafat in the West Bank.)
Something tells me that Sadat didn’t need Carter to stay at the table.
No real brilliance. Plenty of screwups.
Again, I cannot judge the man. As a president, pretty scary.
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For those harping on shitty presidents, I’d ask them to look at the steaming heap of crap occupying the White House now and tell me who’s worse: Carter or Thatmutherfucker. As far as doing good once out of office, I don’t anticipate Bush doing anything for anyone. Carter is one of our best and brightest. I’m proud to have voted for him. His legacy will be an example that future presidents can strive to emulate.
Remember, we live in the age of The Big Lie. Reagan is God to right wingers and the conservative controlled press. Since Carter is clearly a superior individual than Reagan, this means that Carter must be slandered in every possible way to preserve the memory of Reagan. But it is all Big Lies.
Carter’s presidency was a high point in America. He beat down inflation (0% increase in CPI in July 1980!), put OPEC in the hole, inherited then-record deficits but submitted a balanced budget to Congress by 1980, put America on firm moral ground, tremendously advanced peace in the Middle East, actually deregulated industries, supported the Afghan rebels (over the objections of Republicans!) which directly lead to the collapse of the USSR, etc. Just too many great accomplishments to mention.
He made one glaring mistake. He believed Henry Kissinger. Kissinger said that allowing the Shah into the US wouldn’t be a problem. Carter was too trusting. You never believe anything Kissinger ever says.
Note how disgusting the attacks on Carter are. Carter was a life-long Southern Baptist who taught Sunday school. Reagan didn’t go to church regularly. Guess which one is thought of as more religious?
One of these days, hopefully the US people will realize that the media has been lying to them big time for decades and start to actually read the facts about recent US history. (E.g., who actually captured Saddam.)
Carter era inflation rates hit 14%, and his prime interest rate topped out at more than 21%. This had absolutely disastrous effects on the economy.
Since one of the primary obligations of a president is to manage certain broad macronomic economic policies, and since Carter’s were a miserable failure (at least until he appointed Paul Volcker) he cannot be considered one of our best and brightest on this point alone.
He also was a miserable failure in terms of foreign policy. Carter supporters will always point to the Camp David accords, yet gloss over our inadequate response to the Afghanistan crisis and our miserable efforts to get our Iranian-held hostages back.
Kalhoun, you will, I’m sure, criticize Bush for the military deaths under his watch, but what you might not know is that the Carter-era military was so disorganized and demoralized, and the recruits of such lower quality, that there were far more military deaths under him than under Bush, with no major hostile operations at all under his watch.
I will give Carter credit where he is due, and did so above. But his presidency overall was a failure, and some of what he has done since ought to be criticized, IMHO.
What does this have to do with Reagan? We are talking about Carter here. When I criticize him, I’m not doing so with an eye towards defending Reagan, but towards showing how crappy he was as President.
I assume you are talking about your list below.
I hope you are joking about this, I really do. You seriously can’t believe the era of malaise was a “high point.”
What? Inflation was 6.8% when he came into office and 12% in 1980.
Really? How so?
Who cares about the budget he submitted to Congress? That’s essentially meaningless. Let’s talk about the actual budget during his term. When he came into office it was $27.7 billion and when he left it was $59 billion.
How? By abandoning traditional US allies? By seeing Communism advance rapidly during his administration?
I’ll give you those two.
Somehow I think the events of the 1980’s played a pretty big role in the collapse of communism, too.
“Too many”? More like very few.
I don’t think anyone views Reagan as more religious than Carter. Carter is certainly religious, but being a religious man didn’t make him a good president.
I’m sorry. I get here and realize this whole post was probably a joke. If not, then it’s not much use talking to someone who believes paranoid conspiracy theories.
I’m off to meet with the Queen, the Rothschilds, the Gettys, and Colonel Sanders at The Meadows.
Numbers don’t lie.
That’s just nuts. Inflation was out of control under Carter until Volcker was put in charge, and I will give Carter credit for putting him in. That doesn’t change the fact that Carter had to do more than just that to get things under control, and he did not do it.
I find it interesting that you chose a single solitary month to fix on the CPI.
Hell, Carter probably was more religious than Reagan. What does that matter when you’re unemployed and your car loan is financed at 22%?
If Carter was such an objectively great president he would have been reelected. He was not, and his vice-president four years later had to run in part on the Carter record. Reagan ran close to Mondale in Minnesota, and won all other states.
This post fails to point out that the Nasty Attacks were simply catalogings of Carter’s performance in office.
Also, it has been pointed out that Kissinger was the real agent that got Sadat to the table with Israel. The Middle East is not quite the pleasure resort that ftg would have it. Something to do with murder-bombings, pipe bombs, something…
The Soviet empire was not brought down by Afghanistan, and it most definitely was not brought down directly by the Afghan experience. If it was, the USSR wouldn’t have dissolved five or more years after the withdrawal.
As pointed out, submitting a budget ain’t nothin’. I submit budgets to everybody from my niece to the feds. What I think is that the bills of deficit spending that Carter signed are what mattered to the economy.
So he deregulated the airline industry. What else?
I think that the nation should be spanked for throwing Carter out of office after he had brought it up to such a high point. As a matter of fact, interest rates were over 100% higher. Gas prices were 150% higher.
American morality, though, has spiraled off the chart. We have Carter to thank for this. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Notice the standard form of Carter-haters. Carter inherited a major economic mess. In order to fix the mess he had to do certain things that people who don’t understand economics didn’t like. They worked. Don’t blame Carter for fixing problems caused by Johnson, Nixon and Ford.
You may have not liked the economic medicine, but it was good for you so quit complaining. Someone shoots you. A doctor fixes you up. Who do you blame for the pain of getting fix and then while healing? The shooter or the doctor?
And of course it’s all about “Reagan is God”. Reaganites have to invent things to bash Carter about. If the media actually started telling the truth (Carter great President, Reagan awful President), then how are the Reaganites going to get their guy on Rushmore, the dime and the 10 dollar bill while renaming every street, airport, school and body of water in the country after him?
I also like the “have it both ways” argument on Afghanistan. The Republicans fought against what Carter wanted to do in Afghanistan, then blame Carter for doing a limited job there. Very, very typical Reaganite “logic.” (E.g., Reagan submits huge budgets to Congress, Congress approves budgets with only a .6% increase total for all 8 years, therefore the deficits are Congress’s fault.)
You’ll never see me claim that Ford and Nixon were economic geniuses, and I’ll fully admit that Carter inherited a bad situation. He did not make it much better, though, and in fact made things lots worse.
As for your assertion that pain was needed to correct the problems inherited, of course it was. But the man who recognised that fact was Ronald Reagan, and he had the guts to assume that pain in the form of a significant early-'80’s recession while major transitions were made in the economy.
Carter never showed that kind of decisiveness, and while he dithered the patient got a lot sicker.
He was the only US President that gave the military a real pay raise and he was the only US President that treated us like human beings (the brass couldn’t handle it, but many junior elisted people respected him for his support).
Please tell me how he “fixed” any economic problems. It seems all economic indicators were quite a bit worse when he left office than when he entered. He certainly inherited a weak economy, but he left Reagan a much weaker one.
Something of future historical interest…
Jimmy Carter has now become the first presidential blogger. He has started a couple of threads over on Daily Kos that are quite interesting. Someone commented that he is the only American that has used the presidency merely as a stepping stone to greater achievements–I agree that whatever one may think of his presidential effectiveness, he is the model that all ex-presidents should be measured against.
Former President Carter is a nice guy who wouldn’t hurt a rabbit. His retirement years are impressive and (world) history will record them as such. I’d have to say he’s found his calling. His years as POTUS served as lessons for those who followed.