Opinion of Jimmy Carter

[President Mitt]

I hope people realize that the Soviet Union would have fallen five years earlier under Carter. (Waits for inevitable response)

Clueless poster ^^^^

I don't necessarily believe it would have happened faster under Carter, but are you one of those people that believes "Reagan won the Cold War"?

He accelerated its self-decline.

So you do not agree that if the Grain Embargo (started by Carter, ended by Reagan) had stayed in place that the Soviets would have dissolved earlier?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I hope people realize that the Soviet Union would have fallen five years earlier under Carter. (Waits for inevitable response)

Clueless poster ^^^^

I don't necessarily believe it would have happened faster under Carter, but are you one of those people that believes "Reagan won the Cold War"?

He accelerated its self-decline.

As Eastern European familiar with my country and region history I can tell you, that Reagan contibution is badly overrated.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Reagan took credit for many of the things which Carter put into action.

[Scam of God]

Reagan took credit for many of the things which Carter put into action.

Aye. Carter began deregulation; he instituted deflationary policies; the entire economic miracle of the 1980s was based on his policies, and not those of Reagan, whose ultimate effect was the massive deficit of the late-80's and early-90's. Carter was more economically conservative than Reagan.

[JerryBrown2010]

FF he's not a bad person, just a bad president.

[Psychic Octopus]

I agree with Kyle. He didn't quite have the proper mind to be President. While he had some good ideas in theory, he lacked the competence and decisiveness required of a President in the modern age. He is a good man, and his work for world peace shows this.

[useful idiot]

FF, one of my favorite presidents on a personal level. If only we could have candidates today like we had in 1976...

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

FF, one of my favorite presidents on a personal level. If only we could have candidates today like we had in 1976...

Yeah, even on issues I disagree with him on, I can't help but admire his character. Unlike the current hypocrites in power, Carter practiced what he preached and put on a sweater....

[jokerman]

Beet delivered an excellent defence of Carter 6 years ago:

the disaster of Carter (economic maliase and all

I think Carter is one of the most underrated Presidents in history. Firstly, people tend to equate the problems of the Carter years with Carter himself, but in fact the problems of that era, notably stagflation, had begun far before the Carter presidency. In fact, it was Jimmy Carter's appointment of Paul Volcker to head of the Federal Reserve board that began to turn the country's economy around. Volcker, who says that he was "sort of a Democrat" was also a known monetary tightener. He curbed growth of the money supply and immediately began to raise interest rates dramatically in October 1979. This sent the economy into a recession that hurt Carter in the election but brought inflation down from its peak- and it would continue to fall ever since. The "Carter recession" of 1980 and the much deeper "Reagan recession" of 1982 were all engineered by Paul Volcker. At the time, he was widely disliked and accused of creating high unemployment, but inflation was finally defeated. Another thing that hurt Carter (and Volcker) but which was beyond his control was oil price hikes set off as the result of the Iranian revolution. These hikes were even bigger than the oil price hikes under the OPEC oil embargo. A glance at a long-term chart shows that Carter and Volcker were trying to steer an industrial economy at a time when energy prices were at pre-industrial levels-- the highest since about 1870.

http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1869.gif
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/crudeoilprice7281.gif

One interesting thing pointed out by the chart is that Carter announced oil price decontrol. The website says: "The US imposed price controls on domestically produced oil in an attempt to lessen the impact of the 1973-74 price increase.  The obvious result of the price controls was that U.S. consumers of crude oil paid 48 percent more for imports than domestic production. Of course U.S producers received less.
Did the policy achieve its goal? In the short term the recession induced by the 1973-1974 crude oil price rise was less.  However, it had other effects as well.  In the absence of price controls U.S. exploration and production would certainly have been significantly greater. The higher prices faced by consumers would have resulted in lower rates of consumption: automobiles would have had higher mileage sooner, homes and commercial buildings would have been better insulated and improvements in industrial energy efficiency  would have been greater than they were during this period. As a consequence, the United States would have been less dependent on imports in 1979-1980 and the price increase in response to Iranian and Iraqi supply interruptions would have been significantly less. "
Thus, price decontrols, plus monetary policy reversal, brought short-term pain that cost Carter the election, but at the long-term benefit to America.

Iranian revolution. Carter came into office much as a result of the corruption of the previous administrations. Consequently, he was the only President to pressure all of America's authoritarian allies to improve their human rights records, even if it made things more difficult for him (or, say, the Shah of Iran). But Carter's concern for human rights in dictatorial regimes didn't  lead to the revolt of Iranian religious leaders-- that came after somebody assasinated a relative of the Ayatollah in Iraq in 1977, and after the Shah's regime published an article mocking the Ayatollah in January 1978. At the time the revolution was actually a broad-based democratic revolution with a wide political spectrum participating. Only as 1979 and the early 1980s wore on did the Ayatollah increasingly eliminate all of his political opponents.

Peaks and troughs. The second oil shock sent prices to record (industrial) highs, and they peaked in January 1981, the same month Ronald Reagan took office. Thus while Reagan had falling oil prices throughout his presidency (they finally fell through the bottom in 1985), Carter dealt with rising oil prices throughout his.

Here are the prices under Reagan. Note that only the change in oil prices leads to inflationary/deflationary pressures; their absolute level does not lead to price presures over the long term.
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/crudeoilprice8198.gif

Hostage situation. Throughout the hostage year, television channels kept reporting the number of days the hostages had been in Iran. I read that Walter Cronkite began every broadcast with something like "today is the 339th day..." However this misses the point that the most important thing is that the hostages are not killed and eventually freed. Carter must be credited with taking very seriously the lives of the hostages in the U.S. embassy in Iran, and he was ultimately successful. He managed to negotiate for the release of all the hostages without a single dead. That is quite a remarkable feat considering they were held by a fanatical religious regime in a city in central Asia some 800 miles from the coast. Compare this to Putin's sledgehammer approach in central Moscow last year-- it may have benefitted him politically but it cost 115 innocent lives. Finally, Carter takes the heat for the failure of a military rescue mission, but it isn't the President's job to micromanage the mechanical viability of every helicopter. In this case Carter got unlucky.

Overall, Carter was probably one of the unluckiest Presidents in the 20th century, which is unfortunate because he was also one of the most honest and concerned about human rights.

[War on Want]

FF for his energy policy, most of his foriegn policy and his personality.

[Antonio the Sixth]

FF, a honest man who could have done good things, but went in the wrong moment.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

FF. His honesty and integrity served well the country after sh**ty 1970s mess. You may say a lot, but he takes a credit for restoring confidence to the office.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

HPresident HPerson

[Tetro Kornbluth]

A Clown as president; however a well-meaning one. Though looks good in comparsion to every president which has so far followed (the Jury is still out on Obama).

[Хahar 🤔]

The only President with a moral foreign policy.

[Bo]

FF for his good intensions, even if things didn't always go as planned during his presidency.

[Psychic Octopus]

FF. His honesty and integrity served well the country after sh**ty 1970s mess. You may say a lot, but he takes a credit for restoring confidence to the office.

Yes. I admire Ford as well.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Ford was definitely the sinister figure of the 1976 election. If nothing else Carter managed to save the country from four more years of Ford.

[Torie]

Only LBJ ranks lower than Carter on my ranking of presidents. So HP going away.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Ford was definitely the sinister figure of the 1976 election. If nothing else Carter managed to save the country from four more years of Ford.

And doom us to 8 years of Reagan.

[Magic 8-Ball]

Had he been reelected, we'd be so much further along in developing alternative sources of fuel.  So, he gets a FF vote for that.  It's quite a shame that Reagan canceled that program. 

That doesn't mean that he wasn't overwhelmed as president or that his management style is to be admired, though.

[Alexander Hamilton]

Carter did not restore any confidence. had he done so, he wouldn't have lost and also faced a primary in 1980.