Jimmy Carter's Place In History
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  Jimmy Carter's Place In History
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Question: Assess Jimmy Carter's Place In History
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Author Topic: Jimmy Carter's Place In History  (Read 1901 times)
Fuzzy Stands With His Friend, Chairman Sanchez
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« on: February 18, 2023, 07:03:18 PM »

Discuss Carter's place in history.  As a man and as a politician.  Where does he rate?
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Orser67
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« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2023, 03:12:37 PM »

Although he did some interesting things in foreign policy and probably deserves a lot of credit (or if you prefer, blame) for the policies that crushed inflation in the early 1980s, at the end of the day I think it's hard to overlook that he was a one-term president whose defeat ushered in a new political era. I think he'll be seen as a mostly unsuccessful president who redeemed himself to a large extent with a strong post-presidency.

I think the debates over his presidency will be less about whether he was unsuccessful, and more about why he was unsuccessful. Was he just a poor candidate for the job, or was he given an impossible task? Or maybe he could have been a good president in different circumstances, but was the wrong person at the wrong time. Then there's also interesting questions about the extent of continuities between his presidency and the Reagan presidency, and how/why/whether he prevented another period of major left-wing domestic legislation sought by liberals like Ted Kennedy.
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« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2023, 04:10:22 PM »

Successful as a man, he truly has a large heart for the Lord and his ways and it shows
Moderately unsuccessful as a president although he was not at fault for most of it and the way Reagan made him out to be a chicken was despicable.
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« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2023, 04:14:40 PM »

Option 3, I guess. He will be more positively remembered for his severe impact after the presidency. Perhaps the most successful post-presidency in American history.
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« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2023, 05:07:22 PM »

I'd like to go ahead at the outset & drop all pretense on the matter by just outright saying that Carter was a good President who didn't fail the American people so much as they failed him: when handed multiple bad hands (e.g., an oil crisis, post-Vietnam malaise, & a recession brought on by the manufacturing economy shuddering & dying as it was forced to absorb the baby boomers who were entering the workforce), he was expected to work miracles by the American people, who, in gracious return, promptly scoffed at him when he expected them to hold themselves to the same standard. It's truly a shame, since he actually saved us from going into a depression for crying out loud, to say nothing of the Carter legacy legitimately being one of workaday reforms that significantly improved American life with cheaper travel thanks to airline deregulation & cheaper goods for the middle class (including beer thanks to beer industry deregulation leading to the large amount of craft- & micro-breweries today) by actually doing the thankless job of restraining & reforming government.

Not to mention Teddy, before using the last 29 years of his life to become the Liberal Lion of the Senate whose credo in his work was "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good," singlehandedly blocking Carter's 1978 healthcare reform in order to instead propose his own alternative bill that'd secure him the AFL-CIO's endorsement for his primary of Carter for the nomination 2 years later, irresponsibly sacrificing good healthcare reform to be able to (narcissistically) champion his comparatively "perfect" plan, making the post-1980 rebrand feel a lot more hollow.

And to top it all off, what's still utterly astounding is the fact that he worked through his literal last minutes in office to free the Iranian hostages, only to see Reagan get all of the credit Veep-style for all of the Carter team's hard work all because the hostages didn't manage to clear Iranian airspace 'til just after noon ET on Jan. 20th. That's a testament as to how unfair life can sometimes be, & I'm probably more pissed about him not being recognized as the one who succeeded in getting our hostages out than even he himself is, because actually doing so - as opposed to getting the credit for doing so later on too - was all that mattered to him, which is exactly the perfect testament as to the truly great man - & damn good President, as somebody who mostly made the right decisions all along but was undeservedly blamed by the people for circumstances largely out of his control - that he was.
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« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2023, 11:29:34 PM »

A far better president than he is given credit for.

A far better human being than most presidents could ever hope to be.
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« Reply #6 on: February 20, 2023, 12:50:25 AM »

Bottom 10 President but Top 3 Human Being to be President
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Sir Mohamed
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« Reply #7 on: February 20, 2023, 09:54:33 AM »

Bottom 10 President but Top 3 Human Being to be President

Nah, Carter is not nearly in the bottom 10. I tend to agree with answer #3 or at least see there are strong arguments for that, but I can easily name you 10 different POTUS that were a lot less successful than Carter.
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« Reply #8 on: February 20, 2023, 10:55:25 AM »

Bottom 10 President but Top 3 Human Being to be President

Nah, Carter is not nearly in the bottom 10. I tend to agree with answer #3 or at least see there are strong arguments for that, but I can easily name you 10 different POTUS that were a lot less successful than Carter.

Buchanan , A.Johnson , Pierce ,Hayes ,Hoover , Trump , W  are the only presidents I can say we’re objectively worse . Maybe Harding as well , but that puts him bottom 10z

Like who else would you objectively argue :

Jackson/Wilson/LBJ: All had clearly horrible and downright evil parts in their legacies but they also made transformational change in a positive way too

Harrison: Shouldn’t even be ranked

Garfield/Arthur/B.Harrison : All Medicore presidents but Carter was definitely worse
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« Reply #9 on: February 20, 2023, 07:39:10 PM »

From what I can remember he was elected on expectations of being an old style southern conservative democrat, though one that accepted the civil rights act, and would clean up the government from all the scandals.

Once in power it seemed that he didn't knew what he was doing, and was just bungling from one crisis to another.

In short, he was a bit like Trump but with a public image of a weak intellectual.

Reagan simply continued most of Carter's policies, as both relied on christian southern conservatives for votes, but was far luckier with his friends and enemies.
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dw93
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« Reply #10 on: February 20, 2023, 08:29:58 PM »

On balance, moderately unsuccessful as President. He had Congressional majorities that most of his predecessors and all of his successors would've killed for and had little to show for it. He could've achieved so much in terms of softening the blow the economic malaise of the late 70s and accomplished healthcare reform had he understood the art of politics, but alas he didn't. It says a lot that Reagan had a better working relationship with Tip O'Neil than Carter did. He was also a terrible messenger (messaging matters in politics) and the 1976 primaries aside, a terrible campaigner which was part of why the 1976 campaign was as close as it was and why 1980 was such a landslide loss. Micromanagement is also a bad trait to have in a President.

 That said, the Departments of Energy and Education were net pluses, as was his deregulation of the airline and beer industries. His appointment of Volker was also a long term benefit, but like George HW Bush and the Tax increase of 1990, it cost him politically and contributed to his loss of a 2nd term and thus wasn't able to reap the benefits of the decision. Carter was also ahead of his time in regards to energy, putting solar panels on the White House, only for Reagan to stupidly take them down.

With regard to Foreign Policy and Defense, the Camp David Accords was probably his biggest success as President, and is an achievement that is still in effect today. He also began the Defense Build up that Reagan is credited for. While the Iranian Revolution  wasn't caused by anything his administration did and Carter did the best he could once the Hostage crisis happened, he should've never allowed the Shah in for Cancer treatment and instead had him stay in Mexico and he should've shut down the embassy before it could be stormed. He did ultimately get the hostages freed, Reagan thanks to timing got the credit.

As a person, he was a great, compassionate man and one of the best leaders from a moral and ethical standpoint, if not the best that this country ever had and he was a model ex President and I think his post Presidency and all he accomplished during that time will be what ultimately shapes his legacy.
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« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2023, 07:46:01 PM »

His legacy will have three main aspects: courageous visionary, petulant micromanager, and ultimate family man.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #12 on: February 25, 2023, 02:14:29 PM »

On balance, moderately unsuccessful as President. He had Congressional majorities that most of his predecessors and all of his successors would've killed for and had little to show for it. He could've achieved so much in terms of softening the blow the economic malaise of the late 70s and accomplished healthcare reform had he understood the art of politics, but alas he didn't. It says a lot that Reagan had a better working relationship with Tip O'Neil than Carter did. He was also a terrible messenger (messaging matters in politics) and the 1976 primaries aside, a terrible campaigner which was part of why the 1976 campaign was as close as it was and why 1980 was such a landslide loss. Micromanagement is also a bad trait to have in a President.

 That said, the Departments of Energy and Education were net pluses, as was his deregulation of the airline and beer industries. His appointment of Volker was also a long term benefit, but like George HW Bush and the Tax increase of 1990, it cost him politically and contributed to his loss of a 2nd term and thus wasn't able to reap the benefits of the decision. Carter was also ahead of his time in regards to energy, putting solar panels on the White House, only for Reagan to stupidly take them down.

With regard to Foreign Policy and Defense, the Camp David Accords was probably his biggest success as President, and is an achievement that is still in effect today. He also began the Defense Build up that Reagan is credited for. While the Iranian Revolution  wasn't caused by anything his administration did and Carter did the best he could once the Hostage crisis happened, he should've never allowed the Shah in for Cancer treatment and instead had him stay in Mexico and he should've shut down the embassy before it could be stormed. He did ultimately get the hostages freed, Reagan thanks to timing got the credit.

As a person, he was a great, compassionate man and one of the best leaders from a moral and ethical standpoint, if not the best that this country ever had and he was a model ex President and I think his post Presidency and all he accomplished during that time will be what ultimately shapes his legacy.

This is an indictment of the new wave of post Watergate babies and ideologues that took over Congress in '74 and pushed for too much if anything.

No different from what a Romney Presidency would look like in the face of the Tea Party, and arguably the first 1/4 of Trump's time before those aspects of the GOP were given the what-for.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #13 on: February 27, 2023, 12:46:43 AM »

Bottom 10 President but Top 3 Human Being to be President

Nah, Carter is not nearly in the bottom 10. I tend to agree with answer #3 or at least see there are strong arguments for that, but I can easily name you 10 different POTUS that were a lot less successful than Carter.

Buchanan , A.Johnson , Pierce ,Hayes ,Hoover , Trump , W  are the only presidents I can say we’re objectively worse . Maybe Harding as well , but that puts him bottom 10z

Like who else would you objectively argue :

Jackson/Wilson/LBJ: All had clearly horrible and downright evil parts in their legacies but they also made transformational change in a positive way too

Harrison: Shouldn’t even be ranked

Garfield/Arthur/B.Harrison : All Medicore presidents but Carter was definitely worse


I have no qualms about including Jackson and Wilson in my bottom five and pushing Carter out of the bottom ten.

If Hoover is bottom ten, then arguably so should Van Buren for the same reason. Tyler and Fillmore are also strong contenders for bottom ten as is Nixon.

I don't get why Hayes would be included in bottom ten.

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progressive85
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« Reply #14 on: February 27, 2023, 06:59:50 PM »

I can only think of one word and that is goodness.  To me, Jimmy Carter represents the kindness, the decency and the honesty of the Christian faith.  

I don't know very much about the presidency itself, but as he is now in hospice care, I think with the tributes from all kinds of people, he's hearing from so many what others don't get to hear, and politics aside, the man has never been more beloved.  He's like the Betty White of American politics.  Very old, almost to 100 years old, but leaving behind a legacy of down to earth kindness.
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #15 on: March 02, 2023, 01:31:25 AM »

Option 2 tbh
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« Reply #16 on: March 02, 2023, 08:14:58 AM »
« Edited: March 02, 2023, 08:29:52 AM by Mechalord »

Unsuccessful.

Look folks, a president who is anywhere near remotely "successful" doesn't have an election result like this:



Carter basically had the Democratic equivalent of the 1932 election loss.  And I'm absolutely certain that if someone spent enough time they would find similar things to give Hoover credit for and somehow argue that the good things he did (I believe he expanded the national park system) would make him something more than straight up unsuccessful as president.  We can discuss things Carter did that admittedly helped Reagan in his first and even second terms.  We can give him credit for trying to get the US onto cleaner energy.  We can give him credit for trying to expand healthcare and we can blame Ted Kennedy for feeling like he had to upstage Carter for his own glory.  But at the end of the day Carter as a President was downright terrible at just basic politics that a lot of these things he gets dinged for got as bad as they did cos he clearly did not know how in the hell to deal with national politics.  

Like I already seen someone bring up his Malaise speech and how unfair it is that Americans got mad cos he asked them to make sacrifices.  Like sh*t dude, inflation and supply shortages had been an issue althroughout the seventies going back to before Nixon's first term in office, people saw the prices going up and up and up and up.  Did Jimmy Carter, and frankly many liberals at the time, seriously think (like many do today) that the average American was just going out and blowing money and living in ritzy hotels?  No my dude if the America of 1979 was anything like the America of 2022 millions of Americans had already made significant sacrifices, cut back on a lot of sh*t they used to do regularly, they had switched to cheaper alternatives, they had already done what they can to keep their budget low.  And then suddenly this freaking sh*thead comes on tv, this sh*thead that many folks in his own party didn't like, and then tell Americans that they just needed to give up more?  And you're morally outraged and shocked that American citizens living in 1979 with skyhigh inflation would not take kindly to this message, after seeing their rents (like they are nowdays) skyrocket, they have to skimp on even necessary nutrition at the grocery store, they stopped packing their office lunch so they could have lunch meat for dinner, etc?  Like seriously like for five seconds put yourself in the shoes of a normie American minding his own business back then and hearing this.  What more did Carter want these folks to do?  Start living in cardboard boxes under the bridge to help bring down rent costs?  Move their family to the local YMCA housing?

It's a typical example of a high position Democrat who lives a life of comfort and feels no fear of impoverishment whose idea of a sacrifice is having no sausage for breakfast and having a fruit smoothie instead.  It's like there's this type of breadskull liberal in this country that genuinely has no clue the stresses and concerns that folks who have to actually worry about bills go through.  Inflation was not some overhyped thing (just like it wasn't "all hype" last year either) caused by Americans going to the all you can eat buffet all the time.  It was caused by very real supply shortages at the time that were a result of our meddling in foreign affairs.  And yeah I guess if you are a certain kind of egotistical hack you could argue that the American people deserved this for voting for the wrong people but at the end of the day it wasn't Joe down the street or Larry up the street who voted for the War in Vietnam, who voted for interfering in the affairs of Middle East, it was the effort of cynical as hell politicians who once elected into office ended up serving the interests of the military industrial complex and the national intelligence apparatus over their own constituents.

And then you have this guy, this peanut farming laid back religious baptist man who ran on a platform of cleaning Washington up and representing the people go on live tv and basically blast the people who got him elected into office on the idea that maybe just maybe this guy gave a damn about them and would at least do what he could to make the economy good enough so they could at least save money.  And then two and a half years into his term with crises blowing up in the Middle East and suddenly a return to gas lines and he has the nerve to tell an already economically beleaguered American public to "tough up"?  Yeah I can see why you think the people were being unreasonable in being upset here.

You don't need to be a conservative Reaganite to think that Jimmy Carter's Malaise speech was truly one of the dumbest, most condescending, and just all around worst political moves in US History.  I don't care how brave you think Carter is for doing it.  I don't care if you think people who could barely pay the rent despite working two to three jobs reacted poorly to this.  I don't care if you have a polling result from 1979 that showed that respondents overwhelmingly said they didn't recycle much and took multiple grocery store trips during the week.  This was a DUMB speech, a speech that anyone with any sort of political sense (including the rightly reviled Ted Kennedy) would have never EVER have made.  Luckily for Carter Kennedy, though politically smarter, managed to kill a young staffer while drunk one night and if there's one thing people think outweighs a self righteous politically incompetent jackass it's a self righteous ideological blowhard who thanks to his family connections and tribalistic constituencies got away with driving a woman into a body of water.  In fact the Carter nuts on here should thank Kennedy, whose need to promote himself endlessly at the slightest hint that he might have a shot at glory, probably kept many much more competent Democrats from challenging Carter once he started failing hard.

On his post presidency yeah sure Carter is a great guy.  I just mean in terms of the poll question god no he wasn't in an objective sense "successful" as president.
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #17 on: March 03, 2023, 12:34:33 AM »

Re: the “malaise” speech:

Quote
A majority of Americans were riveted by the speech and, surprisingly (given its poor historical reputation), reacted in positive agreement with their president. The speech was “successful,” in that it boosted Carter’s poll numbers by 11 points (a rarity for the generally unpopular president) and elicited letters and phone calls to the White House from regular citizens who pledged to cut down on their consumption of gas. One person from Malden, Massachusetts, wrote right after Carter finished his delivery, “You are the first politician that has said the words that I have been thinking for years. Last month I purchased a moped to drive to work,” which would “cut my gas consumption by 75 percent.” A woman from Oregon wrote, “The American people are so spoiled, so wasteful.” And another woman from Long Island got behind the president to exclaim, “It is unconscionable that we Americans let our love of luxurie consume us as we consume oil.” It’s easy to picture the famous Carter grin breaking big at reading these reactions.


What killed the president’s bounce upward and surge in support from ordinary citizens was not the substance of the moral call to arms, but his decision to fire his entire Cabinet two days after giving the speech. One presidential adviser commented to the New York Times that this was “Armageddon.” In the speech, Carter had admitted to making mistakes and quoted notes from discussions with ordinary citizens and politicians, one a Southern governor who said, “Mr. President, you are not leading this nation—you’re just managing the government.” Some had said Carter’s Cabinet members were disloyal to him, but a mass firing of top officials was not outlined or called for in the speech, and the act generated confusion and a sense of instability within his administration.In his memoir, Carter admitted, “I handled the Cabinet changes very poorly,” certainly an understatement.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/jimmy-carter-energy-crisis-malaise-speech-biden-supply-chain.html
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« Reply #18 on: March 03, 2023, 01:42:00 AM »

His legacy will have three main aspects: courageous visionary, petulant micromanager, and ultimate family man.

Hmm.  I’ll put my money on ineffectual, one-term President.
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« Reply #19 on: March 03, 2023, 05:57:21 AM »
« Edited: March 03, 2023, 06:04:29 AM by Mechalord »

Re: the “malaise” speech:

Quote
A majority of Americans were riveted by the speech and, surprisingly (given its poor historical reputation), reacted in positive agreement with their president. The speech was “successful,” in that it boosted Carter’s poll numbers by 11 points (a rarity for the generally unpopular president) and elicited letters and phone calls to the White House from regular citizens who pledged to cut down on their consumption of gas. One person from Malden, Massachusetts, wrote right after Carter finished his delivery, “You are the first politician that has said the words that I have been thinking for years. Last month I purchased a moped to drive to work,” which would “cut my gas consumption by 75 percent.” A woman from Oregon wrote, “The American people are so spoiled, so wasteful.” And another woman from Long Island got behind the president to exclaim, “It is unconscionable that we Americans let our love of luxurie consume us as we consume oil.” It’s easy to picture the famous Carter grin breaking big at reading these reactions.


What killed the president’s bounce upward and surge in support from ordinary citizens was not the substance of the moral call to arms, but his decision to fire his entire Cabinet two days after giving the speech. One presidential adviser commented to the New York Times that this was “Armageddon.” In the speech, Carter had admitted to making mistakes and quoted notes from discussions with ordinary citizens and politicians, one a Southern governor who said, “Mr. President, you are not leading this nation—you’re just managing the government.” Some had said Carter’s Cabinet members were disloyal to him, but a mass firing of top officials was not outlined or called for in the speech, and the act generated confusion and a sense of instability within his administration.In his memoir, Carter admitted, “I handled the Cabinet changes very poorly,” certainly an understatement.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/jimmy-carter-energy-crisis-malaise-speech-biden-supply-chain.html

Yeah and then like a month after this speech he appointed Paul Volcker to the Fed.  So yeah it was popular for five minutes. . . . and there's a plethora of reasons why it wasn't popular outside of our usual suspects for much longer.  ANyone who isn't married to the idea of Jimmy Carter the Misunderstood Genius and sees him for what he was (the guy who jumpstarted the Reagan Revolution by embracing early neo-liberal reforms and called the US Welfare State "a disgrace to the human race") realizes that yeah there's a reason he barely beat the guy who succeeded the guy who resigned because of Watergate and then later went onto lose a landslide against a guy who just 8 years earlier would have been seen as a right wing extremist.

It's very hard to see his speech, in the context of these actions (appointing Volcker, firing his cabinet, etc) as little more than excuse mongering.  Sure, I entertain that it is entirely possible he wasn't thinking about Volcker being appointed at the time he made the speech but the firing of the cabinet is just . . . . . crazy.  The whole "he said good things about the environment and he admitted mistakes" bit doesn't matter.  Those bits were the bits he included to deflect blame from his own plans.  Everyone knew Jimmy Carter was pro-environment at the time.  This wasn't like some brave new revelation.  It's entirely possible to be pro-environment and see the disgusting neo-liberal implications ("you folks are greedy for wanting more than dilapidated shacks") prevalent throughout Carter's rhetoric.

It's a good thing post presidency he's managed to learn where he went wrong.  Obviously some folks (like Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter) are much better human beings than they are presidents.
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« Reply #20 on: March 03, 2023, 06:27:20 AM »
« Edited: March 03, 2023, 07:05:07 AM by Mechalord »

But more important than just a speech or whatever the hell you guys want to believe about it, we should judge Jimmy Carter's presidency much harsher than we do because honestly like much of the problems we have as a country today can be directly traced to specific things his administration did to try to tame inflation.  Nobody I know of who was alive at the time thinks that sky high interest rates were in any way a good solution to the inflation and supply shortages of the time.  Nobody, not liberals and not conservatives.  Like Carter appointed a man who deliberately caused a significant recession!  That was Carter's doing, not *shudder* Ronald Reagan.  I mean it's entirely possible to hate Reagan but also realize that he didn't win everything through black magic or a pact with the devil.  He was able to win and his acolytes got massive success because all they had to do was point at Jimmy Carter and Carter's failures, even if half of it was stuff Reaganite policy makers would have done themselves.

Moreover the belief that moderate hero Carter was some far left stereotype or a liberal gone liberal and that's what cost the Democrats elections led to the rise of DNC types like the Clintons who further took the Democratic party down the route of technocratic neoliberalism.  Carter was the start of this trend, not a brief exception.

As an MMJ patient I don't enjoy calling out a President who wanted to take marijuana off the narcotics schedule, I mean that does deserve praise, but overall again Carter was just as bad for the Democratic Party as Herbert Hoover was for the GOP.  You can point at congressional results in the 80s and say "well the House numbers disagree in 1985" to which I would just point out that the consequences to the Democratic Party are as much ideological as they are electoral.  There's a reason why the Democratic Party spends gazillions of dollars and tons of ads on feel good social issues but has to be dragged kicking and screaming into even supporting half baked healthcare reform or why administrations are usually mum and straight up "businessy" when it comes to economic reforms.  The Democratic Party has become thoroughly gentrified, concerns that costs have gone up are waved aside because "that's the price of opportunity" and "maybe poor folks are poor because they are stupid".

And this has had profound consequences.  Would another Democrat in office been able to avoid defeat in 1980?  Would they also have had to deal with a return of inflation and foreign crises like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?  It is probably likely that the answer to the first question is "no" and the answer to the second one is "yes" but as we've seen from Biden's admin attempts at trying to get a "soft landing" on inflation there are a variety of approaches Carter could have taken to tame inflation that don't involve sky high interest rates (though raising interest rates on a quarterly basis after we've had prolonged period of low rates is causing some issues and I worry about how far Powell will go with these).  Biden seems to have learned from Jimmy Carter's failures (namely a failure to boost domestic manufacturing and production to help fill in the supply gaps at the time) on this front at least.

There are many things we can't say for certain about a hypothetical alternate Democratic administration in 1977-1981 but there is enough of a reasonable assumption to make (based off of who all was running, might have ran in 1976) that another Democrat while being far from perfect on addressing the economic crises of the late 70s, might have at least had a presidency with less congressional losses and (much more importantly) less concessions to the right wing Reagan agenda (though yeah deregulating the airlines was a good idea.  You have to be kind of a hack to think it wasn't).

Carter's failures to learn from inflation and how to address it and going with Volcker as Fed Chair arguably has done more harm to the cause of liberalism (in the American sense) than anything Ronald Reagan ever said on the campaign trail.  Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both massively failed at learning what Carter actually screwed up versus the conglomerate media explanation of what he screwed up.  Thankfully we have a Democratic President who clearly remembered Carter's presidency and is doing common sense stuff to tame inflation while also not hurting jobs.
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« Reply #21 on: March 03, 2023, 07:58:47 AM »

His legacy will have three main aspects: courageous visionary, petulant micromanager, and ultimate family man.

Hmm.  I’ll put my money on ineffectual, one-term President.

Is there something you have specifically to critique about my post, or did you just not read? Because an effective President would definitely not be described as a "petulant micromanager." Perhaps you don't recognize either of those words?
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Libertas Vel Mors
Haley/Ryan
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E: 9.03, S: -0.17

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« Reply #22 on: March 03, 2023, 11:16:47 AM »

A bad president and a bad man.

I agree with some of what Mechalord has said. However, the idea that Jimmy Carter was anything other than extremely left wing is absurd. Yes, he appointed Paul Volcker -- but he also voted for Bernie Sanders, gave away the Panama Canal, passed $30 billion in stimulus spending, and hiked taxes. Not expanding government by as much as Johnson or Roosevelt (especially in the context of the already apparent failure of those policies) does not make Carter a moderate.

The bad man part of this might be more controversial. I don't deny that Carter was a faithful Christian, or that remained true to his wife. But I do not believe a politician can abuse the power of government to take hundreds of billions of dollars from the American people and be considered good despite that barring extraordinary circumstances.
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #23 on: March 04, 2023, 06:26:47 PM »


That's good!

Quote
gave away the Panama Canal

What do you mean "gave away?" And why was that a bad thing?

Quote
passed $30 billion in stimulus spending

That's not very much even adjusted for inflation.

Quote
and hiked taxes.

So did Reagan. Many more times than Carter and far more consequentially, in fact.

Quote
Not expanding government by as much as Johnson or Roosevelt (especially in the context of the already apparent failure of those policies) does not make Carter a moderate.

Apparent failure? I suppose you could say that about some of Johnson's policies, which were largely means-tested and relied too much on deficit spending in the context of escalating the Vietnam War ("guns and butter") at almost the precise moment the post-war economic boom ended.

Quote
I don't deny that Carter was a faithful Christian, or that remained true to his wife.

Good...

Quote
But I do not believe a politician can abuse the power of government to take hundreds of billions of dollars from the American people and be considered good despite that barring extraordinary circumstances.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it in the American system the President cannot directly create fiscal policy.
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Libertas Vel Mors
Haley/Ryan
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Posts: 3,871
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E: 9.03, S: -0.17

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« Reply #24 on: March 04, 2023, 07:31:36 PM »


That's good!

Quote
gave away the Panama Canal

What do you mean "gave away?" And why was that a bad thing?

Quote
passed $30 billion in stimulus spending

That's not very much even adjusted for inflation.

Quote
and hiked taxes.

So did Reagan. Many more times than Carter and far more consequentially, in fact.

Quote
Not expanding government by as much as Johnson or Roosevelt (especially in the context of the already apparent failure of those policies) does not make Carter a moderate.

Apparent failure? I suppose you could say that about some of Johnson's policies, which were largely means-tested and relied too much on deficit spending in the context of escalating the Vietnam War ("guns and butter") at almost the precise moment the post-war economic boom ended.

Quote
I don't deny that Carter was a faithful Christian, or that remained true to his wife.

Good...

Quote
But I do not believe a politician can abuse the power of government to take hundreds of billions of dollars from the American people and be considered good despite that barring extraordinary circumstances.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it in the American system the President cannot directly create fiscal policy.

1. Bad!

2. The Panama Canal belonged to the US, and then Carter signed a treaty that ceded it to Panama. Pretty simple.

3. $300 billion (as a % of GDP) isn't a lot of money?

4. Nope, Reagan cut taxes on net. Carter raised them.

5. Yeah, the war on poverty was a total failure and the New Deal hindered economic growth throughout the 30s. Unfortunately, the failure of the New Deal received less public appreciation, but voters definitely recognized that the great society didn't work by 1976.

7. Sure, but he has the power to veto and pass legislation and the ability to influence congress.
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