Statement on President Carter’s Health
cartercenter.org
cartercenter.org
I know he wasn't popular in the US which I don't really understand. It sounds to me like he fought the vested big money interests too much and they campaigned against him. I'm a European though and as such I don't know a lot about his domestic policies. Perhaps those were not as well received as his international leadership.
But I'm very sure that if most world leaders were like him, the world would be a much better place.
I'm very sad to hear he's in a hospice now.
https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-n...
The former was critical to actually get things done, but a president has to realise that the latter is just as critical because you need that public support to get the former through the door.
Image is important because thats what maintains support, but you also need to be pragmatic at the same time and do things that might lose you support because voters dont understand the trade offs.
Theyre really not related at all.
Disgusting.
Definitely. He returned the Panama Canal to Panama because it's the right thing to do despite perhaps not being in the US' best interest. He advocated Palestine's rights despite all the resistance from the pro-Israel community.
I can't find too much on this now except for the fact it happened, but initially Carter decided to buck tradition and not have a chief of staff, preferring instead a more level cabinet that could come to him as needed. I can't remember where I heard/read/saw this analysis, but it was cited as a major faux pas which led to him being completely inundated with competing priorities. The office of president is much more complex than that of the governorship of even a large state, and not having a trusted chief of staff who could help Carter prioritize led to a more ineffectual office.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Top_Left...
C. Northcote Parkinson, of Parkinson's Law fame, has written on this, both in British and American history. The inner council seems to grow and is replaced as the leader's inner council by a smaller body over time.
We need leaders because everyday people are often not informed or interested in the boring but important things. The sober choices that are often right but unsatisfying. But then a lot of us want our leaders to obsess over the little, inconsequential things we find to be important. And then we end up wondering if a candidate is someone you could have a beer with, and the exceptional candidates are seen as unpopular.
I’ve always felt that politics, when working, should feel boring. And that one’s civic duty to be informed and vote should feel like actual effort. Like homework.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sigh. Just got this in the mail. It says I have to be president this year.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
The ancient Greeks pretty much appointed magistrates and others by lottery, and every citizen participated in a very direct democracy.
The Greeks saw this as a counter to oligarchy. I'm not sure that today's federal government is very far off from oligarchical tendencies.
Of course there are power hungry sociopaths who make it. But there are 535 members of Congress, 50 governors, thousands of mayors and city council members and state reps, etc. They can’t all be terrible, yet I feel like the popular refrain is still “no one actually good wants to be in charge.”
I don’t know. Just feels very self fulfilling and defeatist.
It seems to work, particularly at lower levels. At high levels, perhaps not so much.
I agree that there’s people who sign up out of civic duty. I think the sexiness of politics attracts the wrong people. I think this is particularly an American phenomenon, but not unheard of elsewhere. We have a handful of cult personalities in politics but 99% of the politicians you can’t even name. They’re not getting huge kickbacks or a big salary. It’s just a job.
It's much much easier to be casually evil and join a bloc of powerful interests who will take care of you and look after you if you happen to be caught in bed with a prostitute.
That is: yes, politicians can absolutely all be terrible.
Of course it is statistically possible that all of them are all terrible. Are you willing to bet that it’s the case?
In regard to your mother, I believe we erred greatly in giving unnatural persons like corporations most of the same rights as natural persons. I'd favor a system where only those who are eligible to vote for a particular candidate could advocate on their behalf, in any form other than casual personal conversation. Same would go for lobbying politicians once they're in office. Only those the office holder represents would have to right to lobby them and it could only be in a personal capacity. Office holders would be free to reach out to whoever they wanted, but without the quid pro quo of campaign donations, the nature of those discussions would be very different. Under those circumstances, she'd probably be a much better officer holder than many of the creeps we have running things now.
Although yes to sortition. It'd be much better than current practices.
But good and ineffectual. I'm not sure I'd pick that over a dickhead who gets the job done.
This statement is self-contradictory. President Carter solved inflation by appointing Volcker. Period. He sacrificed the his presidency to do it, thus he took it seriously. No president gets anything done in during their first term, but President Carter's decisions not only solved inflation, it turned the economy around.
That's not how it works. He was appointed with the approval of the senate. The president does not have the ability to fire the Federal Reserve chair.
Congress investigated and concluded that there was no collusion, i.e. that Reagan's illegal arms sales to Iran were unrelated, but unsurprisingly, many are not convinced. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_th... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis.
In short: fuck that guy.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
And i think that Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove was a good parody of him.
It would have been strange if the US did not supply Iran with weapons given the geopolitical situation. Iran was surrounded by Soviet friendly countries and an Iranian loss to Iraq would have been a disaster for both the US and Israel. Israel, not coincidentally, served as a backchannel for the Iranian US relationship during that time period.
The first oil crisis had nothing to do with Carter at all.
The second oil crisis was in part started when Carter was strongarmed into admitting the deposed Shah into the USA for medical treatment, and definitely made worse when the Republicans secretly negotiated with Iran to give them goodies if they'd hold the hostages until Carter was defeated. They feared an "October Surprise" if release was obtained before the election.
You will note that the Swissair plane returning the hostages was released for takeoff the moment Reagan was sworn in.
Finally let's not forget he was mocked for calling himself a nuclear engineer, when that was exactly what he was in the Navy. Why Germany can have a Quantum Chemistry PhD as Chancellor, but any scientific training in for an American politician is regarded as a joke, is beyond me.
He lost primarily because the economy was bad in the second half of his term, with inflation and oil supply shocks. Also, his adminstration botched the handling of the Iranian revolution, which lead to the hostage crisis, a huge public debacle.
He was a competent president, but not flashy, and presidents are not guaranteed a second term. So I don't think we need to imagine shadowy corporate interests to explain the election
But you're right, it's more how I imagine American politics than anything else.
It also didn't help that Carter ordered a military rescue option that ended in disaster. The Iranians shot down our helicopter.
Although "big money" is different people and different corporations now, they've pretty much always, in last 70+ years, acted in concert with the Republican Party. And that is exactly who drove him out of office, with activities such as illegally negotiating with Iran during the election to withhold the hostages until after the election, so the GOP could lord the hostage situation over the American public. That's just the tip, and the situation is exponentially more advanced today. Big Business, as we know it today, didn't even exist during Carter's Administration. Mom and Pop, family companies were still the majority then.
That's a good one. I think Big business has been in full control of both parties for most of the 20th century. It's just two sides of the same coin.
There's a famous site that pins it the date at 1971:
There are some other views about that:
"He started nuclear power school (a six month course of study that leads to operator training) in March, 1953. In July 1953, his father passed away and he resigned his commission to run the family peanut farm."
https://atomicinsights.com/jimmy-carter-never-served-nuclear...
Note, these are not my opinions, but I am going to seek to answer this based on the things I have read on him.
In short, the general opinion is that he was a weak, pitiful, activist president. His overtures toward peace, anti-imperialism, humanitarian causes were laden with activism rhetoric that one would normally use if they were outside the structures of power. Once one is within the structure of power, then one is expected to speak less, and do more. Consider a parallel story of outspoken-activist-turned-president Theodore Roosevelt, speak softly and carry a big stick and all that. Carter spoke loudly and forgot his stick. This, combined with a perceived lack of policy and agenda, on top of a time of various crises, made him look rather unfit for the job.
Again, please remember that this is the summary of a general stance many hold. I was not yet alive and so cannot necessarily speak to the zeitgeist of the time, firsthand.
My personal opinion is that, if you squint, his presidency is a lot like that of Trump, in that his presidency lacked a focus and tried, and rather failed, to react to events at the time. And of course, rather different in that he was not a corrupt buffoon. To expand on this, I actually think that if we waved a magic what-if wand, and got Carter today, he would be hailed as a fantastic president, if only by comparison, so you know, context matters.
The parallel goes further. Both of these presidents initiated a very different economic policy, and this was expanded on by the succeeding president despite the successor being a standard bearer of the other party:
* Carter initiated deregulation and appointed Volcker to the Fed.
* Trump initiated China tariffs and decoupling, and was leery of trade deals in general.
Another parallel is the unique foreign policy both had compared to their 'ordinary' successor. e.g. I don't think any other President would have been so supportive of Mugabe like Carter was.
Or maybe he was. After Nixon/Ford people were tired of corrupt career positions. Carter was folksy, one of us.
I think Carter would've been assessed very differently if he'd been president in the 90s or early 2000s.
Carter seems to be a genuinely good and kind human being, but his actual domestic legacy is mostly mediocre. His greatest achievement on the domestic side is probably establishing the Department of Education (no mean feat!).
Noah Smith has a good post on the topic: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/much-of-what-youve-heard-a...
Socially, Carter is some probably slightly left of the DNC’s national position.
His other policies were largely in line with center-left policies of today, mediating conflicts, reducing dependency on foreign oil, renewables investments, expansion of federal health care support, massive expansion of parks and conservation land, established Superfund, supporting marijuana decriminalization. On gay rights, he was the first president to meet with any gay marriage proponents and he worked (with Reagan) to defeat the proposed California law that would ban gay people from teaching positions (history doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes).
Inflation was not fixed with just the hike in rates. It took well over a decade for it to come down to near zero rates. The hike in the fed fund rates sent the economy into stagflation. The economy was also aided by Reagan's tax cut package. It was passed by a Democrat House.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=10d3t
The tax cuts were incidental to the better economy in the 1980s, and couldn't have caused it since they weren't in effect until well after things had recovered.
Most of a president's agenda is enacted in the first year of their adminstration.
https://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_t...
"Soon after taking office in 1981, Reagan signed into law one of the largest tax cuts in the postwar period"
going by pretty much every objective metric this has been a disaster for the US school system with how it changed teaching to be about hitting certain federally defined goals rather than actually teaching students
3) He worked to eradicate guinea worm (which has almost been achieved), helped build a lot of houses for Habitat for Humanity and also participated in election monitoring around the world.
To say that he was interested in world peace is pure revisionism.
>Funding officially began with $695,000 in mid-1979,[3] was increased dramatically to $20–$30 million per year in 1980, and rose to $630 million per year in 1987
His total funding of it was around 5% of what the Reagan administration spent in one of it's eleven years funding it.
At the time the dictatorship back home was also very much in the "good guys" book according to the USA
Starting to think they are just shit a selecting who to put in that book
Fuck Operation Condor
In the late 90s, Zbigniew said that it was worth Al Qaeda’s rise by saying something like it was better to end the Soviet Union than to have a few pissed off Muslim terrorists.
Of course, Zbigniew’s partner David Rockefeller was accused of propping up Carter as the Trilateral’s candidate. There’s derisive articles about it in the NY Times.
The Mujahideens the West supported became the Northern Alliance. The NA allowed girls to go to school. The NA was also allied with Iran and didn't persecute the Shia population of Afghanistan.
Unfortunately the NA lost the later Afghan civil war to the Saudi/Pakistan backed Taliban.
Also the rise of radical Islam has more to do with Arab countries and Israel than a Central Asian country that is culturally and geopolitically more connected to India than the Middle East.
Not in that area of the world. The Deobandi school is an indigenous South-West Asian school, a radical version of that was wed to a Pakistan going off the rails under Zia and we see the results today. It is a parallel to the Saudi-radical Wahhabi convergence of the time, but still an entirely local development.
The Mujahideen are NOT responsible for the rise of radical Islam. The Mujahideen have fought WITH the US since they were formed, and against Russia, the Taliban and Al Qaeda and other radical influences in Afghanistan, as they are continuing to do to this day.
Was he though? He did a B.Sc. and then "nuclear power school, a six-month non-credit course" which he did not finish (through no fault of his own).
The course was started after the clean-up in Canada.
* Very dubious energy policies - which were not dominated by environmentalism but by the search for alternate fossil fuel sources, all of them way more polluting than conventional fossil fuels.
* Mixed foreign policy record, failing badly in on Iran and Zimbabwe but helping with Egypt-Israel peace.
As with many, he has mellowed with age. His humanitarian efforts post-administration are probably the best summation of the man. While his policies were deeply unpopular, it is notable he is one of the last presidents not to sell out the white house after he left office. He still lives in a relatively modest home.
I’ve listened to hours of Carter talking and never once had this impression.
I have a hilarious road trip Kodak photo from the 70's where our family are standing in front of a sign at some mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains and the sign gives the elevation in both feet and meters.
A recent Google street-view I found for the same location shows elevation in feet only.
To hell with Reagan.
Clinton, Gore and Obama all became mega millionaires within a few short years of leaving office. What are they paying them for? Carter never sullied himself, and for that, he deserves respect.
You can contrast this with FDR who was president during the Great Depression. FDR was more pragmatic. He said he was willing to try anything if it helped the average American. That was what voters wanted to hear.
About FDR, one of America's most successful presidents. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/04/how-the-deal-w... Roosevelt was neither self-reflective nor a deep thinker
voters trusted Roosevelt to lead the country through eight years of economic desolation
As Kennedy emphasizes in “Freedom from Fear,” there was no master plan, no guiding philosophy, for the reforms that Roosevelt oversaw. Some were his idea; some were Congress’s; some were left over from the Hoover Administration. Roosevelt was >>improvising<<.
It strikes me as such a beautiful ideal. A simple statement to live up to and by, but difficult to achieve. It's easy to let your life be defined by one event or a narrow set of circumstances. Especially if you've achieved wild success, like becoming the President of the United States. Even if it's for a single one term.
President Carter is unique because he is the only modern president I can think of whose impact after the presidency exceeded his impact during his presidency. He has chosen to "wage peace, fight disease, build hope" and has done so more successfully than most philanthropic efforts. Not many people can claim to have fought a disease and won.
What a legacy to have.
I had no idea who he was, and I have no memory of the conversation, but I have been told that he was relieved to find someone to talk to with about anything other than politics.
Thank you for keeping a little boy entertained on a summer afternoon long ago, among the countless other things you have done to make the world a more welcoming and caring place.
The complaints about him that I’ve heard from the older generation of my family is that he was too nice and naive to run a superpower like the US.
But Carter’s post-presidential years stand alone in their profound decency and generosity.
I can just never take those comments seriously.
I don't know much about Carter, but Obama's presidency is much more recent.
That said I’m not sure a modern president can really go through a tenure without having to make some tough choices and having some black eyes on their record. They are a hostage to many factors they don’t control, ranging from economic to even world affairs. Biden for all his faults is in a lose/lose when it comes to a situation like Ukraine/Russia. Even doing nothing is villifying, direct intervention is vilifying and could trigger larger conflicts. Discreet support is villifying too. There’s no win in such a situation.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-...
‘Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President’ is well worth watching, even if (like me) this isn’t your favourite kind of music
There’s so much to admire about their life. They represent people who rose to the very top of public life in the United States and chose to live quiet lives of service afterward. Their work on Habitat for Humanity helped tons of people and paved the way for hundreds of other nonprofits.
They weren’t perfect, but I believe they were admirable and worthy of respect.
My wife's parents were once legal professionals for the MPAA and lived near Washington; she continues to be touched by the way Jimmy introduced himself and his wife when they visited their home: "I'm Jimmy and this is my Rosalynn."
I found out about this in 2019 or so, and I'm within a day's drive. Thought about doing it, hadn't yet, and then it was too late.
I struggle to find a genuinely good one since Carter.
To summarise his successors:
Hollywood
World police
Junior staff suck
World police (this time its personal)
Change has come but not really
Budget Hollywood + Crack for breakfast
We ran out of ideas
With any luck it might be achieved by his 100th birthday.
—Jimmy Carter
He seemed like a pretty decent human being; a rarity for that office.
e.g. monitoring Venezuela's election 2013
For the birth of the neoliberal economic movement, aka 'globalization':
> "Countries, like the United States and Germany, better equipped to face worldwide competition and in favour of policies that strengthened it, saw trade liberalization as the right path.... Eventually, under US President Jimmy Carter's leadership and with the key support of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the results of the Round reflected a vote in favour of liberalizing international trade. Thus, the Round was shaped by the globalizing economy but, at the same time, its results gave further impetus to the globalization wave that would reach full swing in the 1980s–1990s. The GATT talks took place in the shadow of globalization: while attempting to govern the process, also built it up."
That really marked the beginning of the end of the political influence of manufacturing-sector unions in the United States as well, and it's curious that a Democratic administration kicked that off, I think.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2017.1...
Also, Carter and Brzezinski played a central role in the destabilization of Afghanistan, done in the name of opposing the Soviet Union, by approving the initial covert action program in 1979. Of course it got much larger under Reagan. The Soviets were hardly blameless, they wanted control of Afghanistan to facilitate a direct route to move their oil to the Indian Ocean, a theme interestingly revived in the Bush/Obama era (Clinton's New Silk Road, another failure). Now it's what, China's Belt and Road? Sort of bypasses Afghanistan though.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brz...
It's rather curious how public perceptions of public figures have been managed over time, but the reality is that every president since WWII has been engaged in empire-building of some sort or other, often in opposition to the Soviet Union, certainly, which was doing the same kind of thing.
A world without empires and superpowers would be a much more peaceful world, I'm pretty sure.
Chavez' officials, like Venezuela's own Elizabeth Warren, Karlin Granadillo, claimed "the law of supply and demand is a lie", and her socialist party nodded in unison to this ideological rhetoric:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112003937/http://www.bloomb...
Only an echo chamber can allow this kind of economic illiteracy to proliferate.
But I'll bite. There's lots of legit criticism of Chavez. However, democracy is not one. He was popular. I believe his elections were legit.
I also think it's a mistake to mix up Chavismo with the US right/left axis. Venezuela is not an extension of the United States. You can get into trouble when you mix up American political contrasts and inject them into places that work very differently. Chavez did not have anything in common with US democrats.
He did seize private oil companies for the state. He had a lot of propaganda with his TV program and whatnot, and bullying and demonizing opponents. But he was popularly elected. I think even your short sentence above is an exaggeration. (This is not my first consideration of the man. I've listened to him in his original Spanish.)