Translation: Fuck the media for doing its job, and exposing criminal activity in the executive branch. This must be the conservative respect for law and order that we hear so much about.
Not only is this statement morally and ethically lacking, it also demonstrates, as OldGuy notes, a basic lack of understanding about the historical developments of the time. Nixon was in his second term as president. Had Nixon not resigned under pressure from the evil media (and Congress and the American people, but whatever, right?), and had he not been impeached, he would have served out his presidency as a lame duck crook with popularity numbers in the low teens, and a Democrat (probably Carter) would have been elected in 1976 anyway.
We can always rely on Starving Artist for a nuanced analysis of history and politics, though.
On a more general note, i think that Carter’s unpopularity as president was, in fact, partly due to the fact that he was elected largely as a protest against Nixon and Watergate. The country as a whole was moving in a conservative political direction, exacerbated by the stagflation and the oil crises of the 1970s. Had Nixon not engaged in criminal behavior, i think it’s pretty likely that the Republicans would have won the 1976 election. As it was, Carter ended up in something of a no-win situation, and his presidency was, in some measure at least, a period of marking time before the conservative shift was confirmed with Reagan’s election.
I think Carter was a better President than he got credit for - a decent guy who mostly avoided scandals (his family didn’t help on that score) and was tarred by events in Iran (including a failed rescue attempt) and a bad economy for which he was unjustly blamed.
On the other hand, he gets too much praise for post-Presidential activities, including alleged statesmanship on Middle East matters that has only exacerbated tensions. His fans are better off sticking with Habitat for Humanity.
I disagree, but mostly because the most impressive accomplishment of his post-presidency is way under most people’s radar. How many other people do you know who were almost singlehandedly responsible for the eradication of a human disease?
Jimmy Carter is the perfect ex-president. He was never actively evil but he was ineffective even during the late 70’s. He was a literal peanut farmer and Sunday school teacher trying to lead the nation out of a huge string of crises and that worked exactly as well as you would expect.
People tend to have a distorted historical division even within living memory. The late 1970’s were not a good time by any measure. Forget about disco. Inflation rates were horrible, there were fuel shortages, crime was out of control, cities were falling apart including NYC, the Cold War was still going strong and foreign policy was either deadlocked or ineffectual. Jimmy Carter is a very decent and honest man but it is like asking Mr. Rogers to be a WWII General. He wasn’t the right person for the job at hand.
Not to mention the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977, which returned the canal to Panama. I remember the Reagan-wing of the Republican party threatening to go to war to keep the canal from falling into Panamanian control. According to Reagan: “I think the world would see it as, once again, Uncle Sam putting his tail between his legs and creeping away rather than face trouble.”
Carter graduated from the Naval Academy and served as executive officer on a submarine. Also, modern commercial farming is a difficult complex business. And what’s wrong with being a Christian and a Sunday school teacher?
He wasn’t a great president, but he wasn’t a terrible one either. The Iran Crisis didn’t really have any good solutions.
Well, that depends. In general they mostly report negative stuff about Republicans and positive stuff about Democrats, while in reality positive and negative exist with both.
Nixon first earned the enmity of the press (unsurprisingly) by being an anti-commie in the 40s, and for going after Alger Hiss. They hounded him relentlessly and did everything they could to cast him in a negative light throughout the rest of his career. Once Watergate began to develop they smelled blood and went after him and pounded him day after day after day for two years, eventually managing to erode his support among Congress and the public. I have not the slightest doubt that had any Democrat president been guilty of the same (attempting to cover up relatively minor illegal misdeeds perpetrated on his behalf but not at his direction) we’d never had heard a peep.
More nuanced than you my friend. You make it sound as though Nixon’s entire problem with the press existed only throughout the Watergate affair, when in reality their enmity toward him and their efforts to bring him down had been going on for decades. Perhaps you aren’t old enough or educated enough to have been aware of his “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore…” comment to the press during his gubernatorial concession speech in 1962 in regard to a kicking around that had been going on for 15 years or more even at that time.
I thought he was considered a below average President, but an amazing former President.
I had Leonard Woodcock’s daughter(Leslie Tentler) as Professor at the University of Michigan. Her Father was the ambassador to China under Carter and, I think, Reagan.
Her Father told her that Carter was smart, but very bad at management. He would assign tasks to members of his staff, but follow up constantly to make sure they were being done correctly. According to her Father, he had a hard time delegating and letting things be handled by others. He tried to manage the entire Presidency sometimes, which is impossible.
Just his thoughts conveyed through his daughter.
Unrelated but interseting, she also shared her Father’s thoughts on Clinton, who was President at the time. This was during the Lewinsky scandal, but before Clinton had admitted to the “affair”, so to speak. Her Father had met Clinton both before and during his Presidency and told her that while he may have had affairs, he was super intelligent. Way too intelligent to have a relationship with some intern. I remember thinking later how wrong that view ended up being.
There is nothing wrong with any of that. It is just a different set of skills than the Presidency requires, especially during that period. I know he is a smart, moral and kind-hearted man. I would jump at the chance to have dinner with him tonight if I could. Unfortunately, I do think he was a terrible President because he lacked senior leadership skills. He was the first President that I really remember and even I knew at 4 years old that he wasn’t doing very well. Revisionist history cannot ever erase the hellscape that was the late 1970’s. Jimmy Carter may or may not have made things worse but he had no idea how to lead to a better way.
I’m also well aware that a considerable amount of it reflected not the actual reality of media coverage, but Nixon’s own obsession with even the tiniest bit of criticism. When he blamed the media for his gubernatorial loss in 1962, for example, he conveniently ignored the fact that most of the state’s major newspapers had actually endorsed him. So much for getting kicked around.
That fact that he had a notoriously thin skin and was a master at holding grudges does not mean he was treated unfairly by the media. And the fact that people like you latch onto his insecurities and accept them as fact, without regard for actual historical analysis and scholarship, does not constitute evidence of unfair treatment.
Exactly. And it was during that time that he made speeches essentially encouraging acceptance of inadequate energy and malaise. Fortunately Reagan came along immediately after and almost instantly did a 180 on all that.
And the truth it was, until Reagan came along with the communication, leadership and administrative skills, combined with an cheerful and convincing sense of optimism needed to turn all that around and did. And like I said, almost instantly.
My impression is that Carter would have made a good caretaker president had the times given him the latitude, but was not allowed that luxury - being faced with multiple severe crises.
Of course these crises were not of his making; but he was unable to deal with them effectively, and what is worse, he actively appeared unable to deal with them.
Blaming him for the shit-shows of the late 70s is of course highly unfair (as in The Simpsons making fun of such over-reaction: “Carter - history’s greatest monster!” :D).
It isn’t unfair to point out that, as skilled as the guy undoubtedly is in many ways, he wasn’t very good at the job of being President during the late 1970s.
Compared with the guy currently “gracing” the office, of course, he’s a positive presidential genius.
I thought Carter was a decent president and voted for him both times. He’s more of a great ex-president, what with all he’s done and stood for since his time in office.
Let’s not forget, that in many ways he was sabotaged by the leading Dems. If he had been better supported by Tip O’Neill & Ted Kennedy he may have gotten more done and been better regarded.
