1976 Jimmy Carter Democratic Convention Acceptance Speech

[buritobr]

In the 1970s, there was a worldwide distrust in the public sector. In the end of the decade, Thatcher became the british prime minister and said that "there is no public money, there is taxpayer money", and Reagan became the US president and said that "government is not the solution for our problems, government is the problem".

However, we can see that this distrust in the public sector was not restricted to the right. In the 1976 DNC, Jimmy Carter did it in a progressive way, after Watergate scandal: "government cannot solve all the problems", "people should run the government and not the other way around", "privileged bureaucrats", "we need strong communities", "competition is better than regulation".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KepvUaukvqw&t=1157s

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Yes. As much as conservatives love to use Jimmy Carter as a punching bag, his rise was very much emblematic of the shifting winds of political discourse--a Sunbelt Governor, peanut farmer, Washington outsider, and "man of the people". One of Carter's primary problems in this respect was that he wanted to be all things to all people, and as such he came off as incoherent. It would be Reagan, rather than Carter, who successfully squared the circle between "populist" and "neoliberal". This could be much more easily done from the right than from the left, given the Democratic party's base, as well as its power structure in Congress.

Carter faced a similar dilemma in foreign policy, where he wanted to rhetorically dispense with detente--not because it was bad but because it was associated with the incumbent administration--while not repudiating any of its principles. This resulted in a foreign policy that was both intent on negotiation while at the same time removing areas of cooperation because of foci on human rights and peeling back leftist governments in the Third World.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

However, we can see that this distrust in the public sector was not restricted to the right. In the 1976 DNC, Jimmy Carter did it in a progressive way, after Watergate scandal: "government cannot solve all the problems", "people should run the government and not the other way around", "privileged bureaucrats", "we need strong communities", "competition is better than regulation".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KepvUaukvqw&t=1157s

No. Carter presented himself as a Southern populist whilst simultaneously enacting neoliberal policies that repudiated the legacy of his party. Though his administration was regarded as a failure, Jimmy Carter fundamentally changed the course of American politics. His actions shifted the Overton Window rightward and allowed someone like Reagan to win the Republican nomination and Presidency. In the 90s Bill Clinton followed the Carter model by presenting himself as both the folksy "man from Hope" and a reform-minded "New Democrat", but unlike Carter he was successful in duping the American public.

[Kingpoleon]

No. Carter presented himself as a Southern populist whilst simultaneously enacting neoliberal policies that repudiated the legacy of his party. Though his administration was regarded as a failure, Jimmy Carter fundamentally changed the course of American politics. His actions shifted the Overton Window rightward and allowed someone like Reagan to win the Republican nomination and Presidency. In the 90s Bill Clinton followed the Carter model by presenting himself as both the folksy "man from Hope" and a reform-minded "New Democrat", but unlike Carter he was successful in duping the American public.

Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were a lot like Herbert Hoover and FDR. The latter of each pair took the economic policies of the former, expanded and rebranded them, and received all the credit for a strong economy which was really built upon the policies of their predecessor.

[solidcoalition]

Carter was quite the moderate in ‘76.