Fuzzy Bear
Atlas Star
Posts: 27,756
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« Reply #25 on: October 02, 2020, 07:49:05 AM » |
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Happy Birthday to our finest ex-President and (perhaps) our most underrated President of this century.
If I had to take two (2) votes back it would have been in 1980. If I could do it over again I would have voted for Carter in the Democratic Primary (instead of Kennedy) and in the GE (instead of abstaining, while voting straight Democratic for the rest of the ticket).
Carter represented the Politics of Accomodation, but he represented the best of those politics. He was actually a rather conservative Democrat prior to his election as Governor of GA in 1970, and he flirted with delivering the GA delegation to George Wallace at the DNC in 1972 (before opting to support Scoop Jackson) and it was in this period of his life where he made most of his lasting enemies. He led the Anyone But McGovern movement and stated that he would vote for McGoverh but not campaign for him. (McGovern called Carter "the biggest p--ck in politics".) He worked hard to stake out moderate positions for a run in 1976 (pro-civil rights, anti-busing, pro-defense buildup, more or less OK with our withdrawal from Vietnam and pro-draft resister pardon). This strategy worked well in securing the Democratic nomination in 1976. It would not work in today's Democratic Party, but Carter's primary task in 1976 was to go head-to-head with George Wallace and win, and the Democratic Party electorate had a significant bloc of conservative voters that voted for Nixon in 1972. This went downhill from the minute Carter was nominated; he was nominated by a coalition of the more conservative and moderate members of the more liberal party. He was exploited as "wishy-washy", and that was a label that stuck. It was also a label that was inevitable when a Democraitc party elects as its President a candidate who is farther to the center than it's liberal base, but which could not get elected without its conservative and moderate members, many of whom deserted the party in 1972.
Carter governed in the same manner. He had to twist arms to pass the Panama Canal Treaty, but he did. He deregulated energy prices and airlines (conservative strategies). He negotiated a peace between Israel and Egypt, a frosty peace that, nonetheless, exists to this day and preempts the Arab States' abilities to wage successful war against Israel. He faced down unparalleled economic and foreign policy issues at the time he was facing re-election and he actually faced them well. He DID get the hostages back without starting WWIII and, perhaps, despite unholy interference by George Bush meeting with the Iranians during the campaign. (It's one reason I imagined Jimmy Buffett singing "He Went To Paris" at Bush's funeral, but I digress. It's also one reason I don't share the view of Bush 41 as this fine and decent man.)
I was active in Democratic Party politics during the Carter years. I worked on his 1976 primary campaign. There were liberal activists who were NEVER happy with Carter. I am personally convinced, however, that there would have been no primary challenge of note to Carter in 1980 if the Democrats didn't have Ted Kennedy. Many, many Democrats were still, in a real sense, grieving over both JFK and RFK and what might have been and couldn't wait any longer to have a Kennedy to vote for. The Kennedy challenge to Carter was based largely in emotionalism without reasoning; it should have been obvious that if Kennedy had been nominated he would have had to run on Carter's record. I regret falling into that mindset. There was no reason, from a Democratic partisan point of view, that Carter should not have been supported for renomination by all across the Democratic spectrum in 1980. Had there been no Kennedy, there would have been no John Anderson, and the election would have been much, much different (although Reagan may still have won).
Carter kept the country out of war and he kept the Constitution as he found it. There were few scandals of note and there were accomplishments that were unheralded but real. (Carter actually got a great deal of his legislative program through Congress.) I believe that a Carter 2nd term would have been productive, free of the pressures of re-election. I also believe that Carter would have had a moderating presence on the Democratic Party. A Carter victory in 1980 may have prevented the neo-Bolshevik Democrats we have now, where the most unreasonable elements of the Left are the tail wagging the Democratic dog.
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