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Carter's speech in 1979 was prescient: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jimmycartercrisisof... "We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path -- the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."

Too bad we (US Americans) collectively picked the wrong path...

But thankfully some of us did go down the right path individually and in small groups. And so, for example, forty years later, solar power is now cheaper than coal, and electric cars are increasingly cost effective, and we know how to build super-insulated passive-solar homes in cold climates that do not require a furnace, and so on. We could have had that all decades earlier with a lot less suffering and pollution and other expenses from externalities -- and maybe had fusion power and thorium power too by now. But at least we made progress because of individuals with the same spirit of grace-full humanity, community-mindedness, persistence, and cooperation that Jimmy Carter demonstrates.

It would be un-American to pick the right path.

> Volker's plan of raising interest rates massively would cost him (Carter) re-election. I believe he would have survived even the Iran crisis but for that, but it was the right thing to do. Reagan got all the credit for it since it started under Carter's watch and finished under Reagan's.

It's hard to take this as anything but partisan spin.

These issues are never black & white and there is hardly consensus on what you wrote.

There are many who believe his raising interest rates to nearly 20% where fundamental in resulting unemployment to 11% & causing a recession.

Note to say those people are right either.

Just that it's complicated, there are compounding factors & many POVs.

Some other positions:

https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2010/03/31/who-beat-...

http://theweek.com/articles/618964/forgotten-recession-that-...

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-federal-reserves-an...

I don't see how that can be partisan, and I'm not even sure in which direction you might mean.

But my comment was about Carter: he took an unpopular decision because he thought it was in the best interest of the nation, whatever the personal cost. And indeed, as I said, Reagan got the credit. Even if you think Volcker was wrong, or even made things worse, my comment still stands.

That National Interest link you sent is about the "Volcker rule", a 21st-century position decades after he was Fed chairman and having nothing at all to do with the topic (and the article from The Week mentions that people these days think of Volcker more for that).

The article from The Week supports the point as well (that says that Volker's action put an end to the stagflation that resulted from years of not doing anything about the problem), and says Reagan did precisely the wrong thing.

The Economist article does tepidly raise the idea that Volcker may not deserve the level of credit he gets ("Would those [non-Volcker] factors have been sufficient to take the air out of growing inflationary pressures? Perhaps not."). The consensus is of course that it worked; I do think that topic deserves more analysis.

It is really worth reading the Hunter S Thompson essay on Carter's "Law Day Speech". I think it was in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76. It is extremely insightful.

The Iranian hostages were released the day of Reagan’s inauguration. Reagan would have bombed Iran. Carter’s diplomacy were just about effective as Obama’s lines in the sand. Sometimes diplomacy through a gun barrel is needed.

As Theodore Roosevelt said, speak soft but make sure you carry a big stick.

Reagan, whose government later sold weapons to Iran while talking up an embargo to keep Iran away from the Soviets and to potentially help release hostages from Lebanon? Got a source on that claim?

Actually internal Iranian records from that period show that the occupation was actually a pain in the neck to maintain on operational and diplomatic grounds, though it was worth waiting until Carter left as a great fuck you to him in response to him having (unsuccessfully) sent in a special forces team.