Jimmy Carter: Unlucky President, Lucky Man | Hacker News Reader

Jimmy Carter: Unlucky President, Lucky Man

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76 pointschmaynard79 comments

Was he really unlucky as a president? I always had the impression that he stuck to his convictions and as a result a second term wasn't politically tenable. That seems admirable and how our system should work. We want people to get into office with an agenda, achieve it, probably with some compromise, then get out of the way for the next person. Carter did a lot of good in a single term and continued to do so for the remainder of his life.

It would be more frequent if the term limit was one, but possibly a six year term.

He was definitely unlucky as a president. He presided over the bad part of the business cycle, and his attempt (Operation Eagle Claw) to rescue the American hostages in Iran via helicopter completely failed leading to a disastrous PR nightmare.

But if he had been given another shot, then he could have continued the program he started with Operation Cyclone, to train and fund Bin Laden's forces. But with conviction! Unlike that other guy.

Maybe in his second term he would've rolled back his policy of deporting all Iranian students.

> and his attempt (Operation Eagle Claw) to rescue Iranian hostages

Which was thwarted by Reagan doing backchannel negotiations, in bad faith, while Carter was still in office.

So, he was unlucky in that Reagan was a criminal.

Yup, THIS is what the Logan act was designed for.

Perhaps there is reason to suspect that Iran held the hostages longer because of a deal. But Reagan didn't make the helicopters go down, or are you suggesting otherwise?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_th...

I doubt Reagan even knew of the rescue attempt. And he absolutely did not conjure a sand storm causing a copter crash.

He also created the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, advanced nuclear disarmament, and brokered a middle east peace deal.

He also gave attack helicopters to Suharto's regime while they were committing genocide.

Also don't forget, Carter was brave enough to get the fed to kill the inflation monster by forcing high interest rates which he knew would tank the economy into recession. It was a terrible price to pay on the economy but seems like the right idea in retrospect. Then the next president benefited a few years later when inflation ended (and took credit for it of course). Not many presidents would be willing to do that.

He didn't have power over the Fed, but he did nominate a wise man to lead it. He would've come out looking tarnished under any circumstance, regardless of what the Fed did. Either inflation or high interest rates eventually result in bad times, because that is the nature of the business cycle.

The Volcker shock was in 1981-1983, Reagan was incredibly unpopular before the summer of 84 because of the severe recession it caused.

Some people paid that price more than others, and some not at all. Those who paid the most might say that it wasn't worth it to them, and you're in no position to say they're wrong.

I was referring to the people who said it was a bad move politically. I was like 5 years old then. But it looks like the right thing looking back historically and politically in reality, except that it lead to Reagan winning.

> But it looks like the right thing looking back historically and politically in reality

to you

This is a week old, but in retrospect what would you have done at that time? I don't know, I was fortunate as a child that my parents remained employed during that time. I wonder what they thought might happen. There must have been people that lost their jobs and then lost their houses, just like in 2008 and maybe even now with interest rates going up, one can't afford a new house. Everything's more expensive.

People lost their jobs at that time not because of inflation, but because of Volcker's efforts to reign in inflation. Throwing people out of work was a feature not a bug. Raising unemployment was his objective, and he achieved that. That's certainly one way to go, but it's not the only way to go. It's not the way I would have gone.

"rein in" not "reign in"...typo

Jimmy Carter is my archetype of an American. A nuclear engineer who served in the Navy, and then worked on his family peanut farm, became a citizen President, and then returned to his small Georgia hometown to live out his days while doing humanitarian work. Even then, he wasn't above working with his hands to build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

Habitat for Humanity is still one of my favorite volunteer orgs: because they're damn good at scaling.

{A few contractors} + {unskilled volunteers} + {subsidized/donated materials} + {future owner sweat equity} = houses

And I specifically like that they don't build overly large houses, nor just turn them over.

They recognize that something earned is something valued, requiring recipients to work on their house AND others'. In addition to having owners attending financial literacy courses and check-ins through the first few years of ownership.

It's how bottom-up should work, if people actually cared about getting things done.

* not a nuclear engineer

> He was educated in the public school of Plains, attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. In the Navy he became a submariner, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and rising to the rank of lieutenant. Chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program, he was assigned to Schenectady, New York, where he took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine.

https://www.cartercenter.org/about/experts/jimmy_carter.html

Wikipedia --

> "In March 1953, Carter began nuclear power school, a six-month non-credit course covering nuclear power plant operation at the Union College in Schenectady."

which was not completed, through no fault of his own.

> not a nuclear engineer

Former Navy nuclear engineering officer here -- I guess it depends on your definition of "nuclear engineer," but I imagine most of us "nukes" think of Jimmy Carter as one of our own.

Us Georgia Tech folks like to take a bit of credit for him too, lol.

Awful president, very pleasant ex-president.

This is the guy who ushered in the neoliberal era; the guy they stuck in to suppress the left of the Democratic party, the first successful anti-McGovern candidate (whose slightly left-of-neocon positions were blamed for the loss of the previous election.) Carter left office as a failure, partially due to behind the scenes manipulation of the Iran situation by the Reagan campaign, but mostly due to the fact that there was no positive case to be made for his presidency either.

Carter was the bridge from the New Deal to Clintonism (with a brief stroll through the Party's destruction of the Rainbow Coalition), where the parties only ever differ on a handful of wedge issues. A merger that destroyed Democratic political dominance in the US, it didn't save it.

He should be celebrated for his post-presidency e.g. his work for Habitat for Humanity and for Palestinian rights. But Democrats should stop trying to retcon him. I expect the effort to increase after he is dead, since he will have lost the ability to remind them that he's been opposed to their policies on the Israeli occupation. I could swear he was getting bipartisan-ly smeared as an anti-Semite just 15 or so years ago.

Thruout the 1980s - prime Reagan/Bush regime - I told anyone that wanted to listen that history would be kind to President Carter.

Mostly this opinion got hisses.

Well, let's see how his legacy plays out nowadays.

I agree, Reagan was nothing but an actor who depended on toxic masculinity and the ability to be a humorist. Carter was honest, where Reagan lied. Carter wanted to help people, where Reagan griped about welfare queens and put millions in prisons for non-violent crimes. Carter was highly educated, where Reagan had Nancy.

>Carter was honest

>Carter wanted to help people

He drafted mujahideen , gave them antique weapons, and hoped that both sides would extinguish each other in order to reduce deaths 'at home'.

Someone can say 'Well drastic times call for drastic measures..', but personally I wouldn't refer to anyone that participated in such things as 'honest'.

.. now that I think about it, I wouldn't really refer to any previous US president as 'honest' ; it's an incompatible trait with the job.

That seems reasonable immediately after Vietnam.

If we're being honest, most of international geopolitics is setting your competitors against each other.

That doesn't seem at all reasonable to me.

Ronald Reagan: calculating cynic or genial dunce ?

The jury is still out...

History's greatest monster!

Due to recent Presidents he can rest knowing with certainty that he will not go down in history as our worst President.

The more I read about the Iran-Contra scandal, the more convinced I am that Reagan and the people he surrounded himself with (including bush) were/are crooks.

The only reason history will be kind is that nobody will be left that actually lived through his presidency. He was a terrible president and the 1980 election results are proof. There are so many things he failed at, as a manager. I would be interested in knowing the age of all the comments here lauding him as a great example of a president. Likely the vast majority of those were not born. He certainly was a nice guy from a personal perspective.

Well, the inane drumbeat of "It's Morning in America" certainly attracted certain segments of the electorate.

Re >> "Most of today’s Americans had not been born by the time Carter left office in 1981."

Oof, The use of the word "most", as opposed to simply "many" hit me harder than I expected! (I'm early 80s, but not 81'). I guess taking into account how demographics skew young, that's not surprising. But still, oof.

Edit: Also, the older I get, the more I admire, respect, and appreciate Carter.

When we're young, we respect people who break things.

As we age, we respect people who don't break things.

When we age further, we really respect people who managed to change things with a minimum of breakage.

> I guess taking into account how demographics skew young

In 2022 the US median age was 38.8, which is not that young by world standards.

E.g., the median age in Afghanistan is < 19 (i.e., most people alive in Afghanistan today were born after the 9/11 attacks).

at the time that carter was running for office, south korea was embroiled in a political battle between student-church led populists and park chung hee, essentially a benevolent dictator. the populists or leftists as we might call them now were pushing hard against the normalization of relations with japan among other things. in the capital environment of that time, with south korea being poorer than north korea at a certain point, south korea was not in a position to turn its nose up to any kind of investment. this was made even more true by the post-vietnam cooling of the relationship between south korea and the united states. the only way that korea has become one of the most dynamic and successful countries in the world is because they accepted investment from japan and because they had a highly centralized form of government. if the student led leftist movement had gotten its way, they would have rejected investment from japan on principle, never allowed the chaebol to flourish through massive government deals, and south korea would today be more comparable to chad than singapore.

naturally the students would stage huge protests against their own wellbeing and these were responded to with force. this caused lots of people in the united states to take a political stance against the park regime. one of the things that carter ran on was withdrawing from south korea militarily completely so as to not lend support to the brutal dictator. this was of course completely insane. when he won, he tried to go through with it, giving official mandates to withdraw. in the end the department of defense was forced to intervene and stop carter. and of course we never withdrew. imagine if nobody had stopped carter and all the idiotic people who supported him. even if the north had not immediately invaded, nobody would have invested a dime in a country in that position. might as well just donate the money to the soviet union. i think its fair to say that jimmy carter tried to destroy a country for political gain.

Here's another post revisiting Jimmy Carter's legacy: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/repost-much-of-what-youve-...

I dimly recall the Carter Admin was also dealing with the aftermath of OPEC oil embargo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

The environmental efforts of the time were also framed in terms of energy independence, economic growth, etc.

Also a huge motivator for promoting peace and stability in the Middle East.

Everyone has probably seen https://wtfhappenedin1971.com, a graph that shows the point in time when wages where decoupled from productivity.

Apparently, Vaclav Smil argues that deflection point is because of the rising cost of oil. I'm willing to be persuaded.

However, I agree with u/pessimizer (upthread) that "Carter was the bridge from the New Deal to Clintonism" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34902957

Here's a hot-take from the right that I find agreeable: https://redstate.com/laborunionreport/2011/01/13/the-decline...

Another broader analysis from the left. TLDR: Labor's nadir was the '70s, inclusion of minorities (due to civil rights era reforms) undermined unity, foreign competition devalued domestic labor, and just plain old exhaustion. https://jacobin.com/2021/01/1970s-decade-strike-workers-labo...

The book Lobbying America is a history of Capital's decades long effort to roll back The New Deal, from the vantage of corporate America. https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So...

FWIW, that effort grew into the larger reactionary project, the culmination we're experiencing today.

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