Hear, hear! If the Iranian hostage crisis hadn’t broken out, the Camp David Accords would be the thing Carter was remembered for! Not inflation, not the oil shocks, but making peace between Israel and Egypt! The Middle East is still a snake pit, but how much worse it would be if Israel still held the Sinai! If Carter was incompetent, we could use another such incompetent in the Oval Office!
Posted by Shodan:
But the Cold War was just a big misunderstanding, Shodan, in that most American leaders misunderstood (or misrepresented) its nature. The Soviet Union was never really out to conquer the world for Communism, that kind of thinking went out with Trotsky. From Stalin’s time onward, the USSR was bent on acting just like any great power: grab as much international power and influence as you can get. We might think the USSR had no business being a great power at all, but can we blame them for trying? Carter, at least, understood that the USSR was less an evil empire than an incompetent one.
“The economy, during Carter’s presidency, was an absolute disaster area”
Not really. Economic growth from 1977-1979 was quite healthy with annual growth rates of 4.6, 5.5 and 3.2. Then you had a recession in 1980 but this had more to do with OPEC than anything Carter did. Of course the timing was just terrible for Carter’s re-election prospects. As for inflation, inflationary expectations were being built in the US economy during the 1970’s before Carter. Then once again you had the oil price shock which sent prices spiralling in the last couple of years of his presidency. The man who defeated inflation , though at the cost of a steep recession, Paul Volcker was appointed by Carter. Unemployment fell for most of Carter’s presidency and though it climbed back during the 1980 recession it was only to the same level as when he came to office.
Overall I wouldn’t call this “an absolute disaster” especially to the extent that it had anything to with Carter’s economic policies.
Carter’s foreign policy was also a lot tougher than generally thought. He began the policy of fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and increased military spending during his last year.
Among Carter’s achievements which have stood the test of time: trucking and airline deregulation and the Camp David accords (as well the afore-mentioned appointment of Volcker to the Federal Reserve). His administration was also relatively scandal-free compared to Watergate and Iran-Contra.
Overall I don’t think Carter was either a big failure or a big success but something in between. He was pretty unlucky though.
Is it becoming clear why Carter’s presidency was such a dismal failure? He was no doubt the most moral of all presidents that I have witnessed, yet an absolute disaster as a leader. Like yeah, I’m your president, but you guys are so fuckin hopeless so don’t blame me if your future goes to hell in a hand basket. All Reagan had to do as president is ask himself “what would Carter do in this case”, and then do the exact opposite. I was in my late 20’s at the time and I do not remember the Carter years fondly.
Yes, we can blame them for trying. Specifically, we can blame them for trying to conquer Afghanistan, which took Jimmy completely by surprise, because he thought that if he made nice, they would make nice. He did, and they didn’t.
A moment, Wang-ka, if you will. See, thing is, we’re the Good Guys. That’s why we wear the white hat. One of the rules of Good Guy is you try to avoid slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians. One is expected to regard that as a matter of morality, rather than convenience, or the temptation to show off what a bad-ass we can be. I would break that down into simpler terms for you but its surprisingly hard to type when you’re gritting your teeth.
Further, the 9/11 terrorists were suicide bombers. Under those circumstances, the threat of retaliation seems rather moot, don’t you think?
Your site gives only year-over-year figures, and I suspect they’re using GDP deflator instead of the more widely reported Consumer Price Index. The CPI rose by 13.2% during calendar year 1979, and at an annualized rate of 17.8% during the first four months of 1980. I understand that it did not sustain that pace for an entire year, as Volcker’s policies began to take effect.
Concerning interest rates, you’re correct—the Prime Rate peaked at 20.35% under Carter, and later reached 20.5% under Reagan. The peaks occurred after (and indeed, because) the Fed began tightening, so this was actually a good thing.
Anyway, Carter should have been banging on the Fed to raise interest rates from the day he took office. Had he done so, he could have gotten the recession over with early in his term, like Reagan did, and been a hero for conquering inflation.
Give credit where it’s due–the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the Motor Carrier (trucking deregulation) Act of 1980, and the Depository Institutions Deregulation Act of 1980 were all signed into law by Carter!
However, these laws were passed largely in the face of Carter’s indifference. He lacked the conviction to back a consistent philosophy of deregulation, and especially to extend it to energy. Had he done so, the OPEC-induced “energy crisis” of 1979 would have been much like the gas price spike of 2003–a temporary annoyance, rather than a cause for gas rationing, gas station closure, and “national malaise”.
“Specifically, we can blame them for trying to conquer Afghanistan, which took Jimmy completely by surprise, because he thought that if he made nice, they would make nice. He did, and they didn’t.”
This is nonsense.
Here from a 1997 interview with his NSA Brzezinski:
“I told the President, about six months before the Soviets entered Afghanistan, that in my judgment I thought they would be going into Afghanistan. And I decided then, and I recommended to the President, that we shouldn’t be passive.”
"We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again - for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. " http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brzezinski2.html
His administration also sprayed paraquat on domestic marijuana, thereby endangering the lives and health of thousands, if not millions, of heads, myself included.
Mr. Peanut can build all the houses for Habitat for Humanity he wants. He’ll always be a cold-hearted sonofabitch to me.
“Web of Three Scandals” - article from Syracuse University - http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/2/v2n3_wts.html
“Like an untreated infection…” - article from the New Yorker - http://www.markdanner.com/newyorker/061791_Like_an_untreated_infection.htm
“October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan” - book by Gary Sick
“Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery” - book by Robert Parry
“Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery” - Frontline documentary
“Coverup: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair” - documentary
Los Angeles Times; April 18, 1991 - Written by Alexander Cockburn
“October Surprise Report” - Russian intelligence report by Sergei Stepashin - http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/051499a.html
SARAH MCCLENDON’S WASHINGTON REPORT, October 1992
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - 1991
“Paul Wilcher & the October Surprise” - Parents Against Corruption and Coverup, 18 June 2000
“During the first week of December, Executive Intelligence Review reported that Henry Kissinger ‘held a series of meetings during the week of November 12 in Paris with representatives of Ayatollah Beheshti, leader of the fundamentlist clergy in Iran.’ …According to EIR, ‘it appears that the pattern of cooperation between the Khomeini people and circles nominally in Reagan’s camp began approximately six to eight weeks ago, at the height of President Carter’s efforts to secure an arms-for-hostages deal with Teheran. Carter’s failure to secure the deal, which a number of observers believe cost him the November 4 election, apparently resulted from an intervention in Teheran by pro-Reagan British circles and the Kissinger faction.’ These revelations from EIR are the first mention in the public record of the scandal which has come over the years to be known as the October surprise. The hostages were not released before the November election, which Reagan won convincingly. That night, according to Roland Perry, Bush said to Reagan, ‘You’re in like a burglar.’ Khomeini kept the hostages emprisoned until January 20, the day of the Reagan-Bush inauguration, and let the hostage plane take off just as Reagan and Bush were taking their oaths of office…quite apart from questions regarding George Bush’s presence at this or that meeting, there can be no doubt that both the Carter regime and the Reagan-Bush campaign were actively involved in dealings with the Khomeini regime concerning the hostages and concerning the timing of their possible release. In the case of the Reagan-Bush Iran connection, there is reason to believe that federal crimes under the Logan Act and other applicable laws may have taken place. George Bush had now grasped the interim prize that had eluded him since 1968: after more than a dozen years of effort, he had now become the Vice President of the United States.” - ‘George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography’ by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin
“Over the past two decades, more than a score of witnesses – including senior Iranian officials, top French intelligence officers, Israeli intelligence operatives and even Palestine leader Yasir Arafat – have confirmed the existence of a Republican initiative to interfere with Carter’s efforts to free the hostages before the U.S. presidential election in 1980. In 1996, during a meeting in Gaza, Arafat personally told former President Carter that senior Republican emissaries approached the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1980 with a request that Arafat help broker a delay in the hostage release. ‘You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the elections,’ Arafat told Carter. [For details, see Diplomatic History, Fall 1996] The existence of the Republican-Iranian meetings in Paris also was confirmed by three senior French intelligence officials, including French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches, according to evidence uncovered by a later congressional investigation. David Andelman, a journalist who was deMarenches’s biographer, testified to a House task force that the French intelligence chief admitted setting up the Paris meeting for Casey… In January 1993, another piece of corroborating evidence was sent to Congress by the Russian Supreme Soviet, which pored through intelligence files in Moscow at the request of the task force and reported finding documents showing that Casey had traveled to Europe in 1980 for meetings with Iranians…Despite this body of evidence, the Republican hierarchy has steadfastly rejected the October Surprise charges. That denial was backed by a bipartisan House task force that agreed in early 1993 that there was ‘no credible evidence’ to support the allegations of a Republican-Iranian deal.”
History will be on the ballot Nov. 7 - Robert Parry
True… true… it would probably have been 1/11, 2/11, 3/11, 4/11, 5/11, 6/11, 7/11 and 8/11 making a 9/11 kind of pointless other then as a sign of stamina.
Seriously, when will people learn that maybe, just maybe, blowing up muslims might NOT be the best way to stop more muslims joining the war against the Great Satan. If the US blew up a Swedish town I would sign up at the nearest Al-Q recruitment center ffs.
“Hey! These guys seem to hate us… maybe if we kill some of their family members and desecrate some stuff they’ll come around. Or at least they’ll be too scared to do anything, because obviously tying explosives to your body and blowing yourself up is a sign of lack of resolve.” Schmucks.
I was young at the time, but I remember it seemed to me that Carter got a raw deal on the hostage crisis. Every night on the news, they would lead with the hostage story, and count the days that the hostages had been held, i.e. “Hostage Crisis: Day 11” or whatever day it was. American citizens have been taken hostage under the watch of other presidents without nearly that kind of incessant media hounding. Then when he tried to rescue them, he was criticized for that. I guess I’m not clear on what people thought he should have done - just start dropping bombs on Iran? Seems to me that would have sealed the hostages’ doom.
blowero, It wasn’t the “trying” that he was faulted for, it was the fact that the end result wasn’t good.
Earlier in this thread NDP said “the words that describe Carter as a president are “well-meaning” and “ineffectual.””- this pretty much sums it up. The “malaise” speech is another good example of this, as (IMHO) Carter was trying to get the American people to take this as a challenge to do better. Instead it came off as insulting.*
*[sub](from what I remember- I was pretty young)[/sub]
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the Metric System. From what I remember, the only real attempt to convert the US to the Metric System was during Carter’s administration. There were Metric posters all over school, “Think Metric” ads, a US Metric Board to supervise the changeover, etc.
Yeah, what ever happened to the metric system? It sure was a good idea, and Carter deserves credit for the effort – but why wasn’t it successfully adopted here? Is this another example of Carter being “well-meaning” but “ineffectual”?
I remember hearing on the radio – during the '80s, not the '70s – here in Florida a state legislator declared on the floor that the plan to repaint highway signs to show distance in kilometers as well as miles was a Communist plot, to make it easier for invading Soviet troops (ignorant of the English or Imperial system) to find their way around. All the other legislators laughed out loud, which was reassuring, but the fact that any public official would think or say such things in the first place was disturbing enough.
Yes, but my question was more along the lines of what it was that people expected him to do. Certainly the end result isn’t the only criterium; More Americans have died by the hand of terrorists under G.W. Bush’s watch, but he got high marks for his handling of the situation. It was too long ago for me to remember exactly what the criticism of Carter was, i.e. what did they want him to do about the hostages that he didn’t do? Or was it just a case of “this bad thing happened while you were president; therefore it’s automatically your fault”?
