The un-celebrity president: Jimmy Carter shuns riches, lives modestly (2018)
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Heck, he even gave away the Panama Canal! That’s some serious lack of forward thinking.
That's how far the steward class of this nation has fallen.
I doubt that. In the 2024 election he won the electoral college handily and also won the popular vote. Kind of hard to argue he wasn’t America’s choice.
I guess the smartass ("teeeeechnically") way to argue against that is that for the popular vote Harris/Walz won 48.34%, Trump/Vance won 48.81%, and "other" candidates got 1.85%, for a total of 50.19% to Trump/Vance's 48.81%.
Sometimes I think the political types and the elites don't realize how big of a minority they represent because they live in echo chambers that always tell them what they want to hear.
Coming to that conclusion yet not realizing that it applies perfectly to your own negative opinion of President Trump is pretty funny.
I get reminded, with my votes for independent parties, of how big a minority I represent in this nation literally every election. The difference between you and I is that I know I'm in the minority. Conservative and liberal voters feel they are in the majority. You're actually shocked that so many people are vehemently opposed to your policies. You genuinely believe the entire world believes in the policies you believe in because, surprise, surprise, everyone in your world does believe in those policies.
In other words, your "echo chamber" has fooled you.
That is what's dangerous. Getting taken in by your own propaganda. In the military back in the day they called it Incestuous Amplification.
Whatever. Not worth trying to explain. Just try to do yourself a favor and remember that the purpose of your propaganda is to fool the enemy, not yourself.
The only hard facts we have are the actual votes that were cast. And of those he came out on top of in both the electoral college and the popular vote. Any other interpretation is an attempt to weasel out of those undeniable truths.
I have yet to see either major party present some message where some level of respect is required to even acknowledge that someone thinks differently than another, irrespective of the validity of their ideas, even if it’s completely illogical. The mainstream discourse I read typically descends into insults, which doesn’t help anything. However, I feel we’re past a point in which this is even possible given the polarization of viewpoints. That snowball has been rolling for over two decades it seems.
Carter deregulated government far more than Reagan did, and he was the one that appointed Volcker and took the political hit for the pain Volcker caused in taming inflation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43871492 (elaborates on my two points)
Certainly, I've frequently encountered the idea that he was the greatest ex-President ever, but hardly ever (anywhere on the political spectrum) that he was the greatest President ever.
Citation needed. This is the first time I've ever heard such a wild claim.
> Besides the numerous accomplishments listed https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/30/jimmy-...
That opinion piece was written by a former member of the Carter administration.
Every president since Carter has talked a tough foreign policy but then either wisely paid the enemy off (Bush's Iran-Contra arms deal, Obama's planeload of cash), or stupidly started new wars which have bankrupted our treasury.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
- Douglas Adams
Could you clarify what you mean by this?
All while basically shutting down crypto regulations or enforcement. Emoluments have never been so obvious & visible.
If we can all get on board and write our senators and congress people we can get this done, and I just don't see any downsides to this at all? Cause lets face it folks, as marvelous and miraculous as Trumps days in office have been, I just don't think he's going to get the pope gig.
I do fully believe, even at the time, he would have been much much better than Reagan ever was. Plus we would not be saddled with Trump at this point.
It was also Carter that appointed Volcker to jack up interest rates to end stagflation (that Carter gets blamed for, but inherited from Nixon). There's a (probably apocryphal) story that Carter asked Volcker if he could end the whole inflationary mess and Volcker said he could, but that it'd likely cost him election. Carter said do it.
Carter's deregulations (including many other industries, like allowing home brewing and therefore the entire microbrewery market) have mostly stood the test of time because they were market-oriented. Most of the deregulation that has happened since (especially under Reagan and Clinton) was more "business friendly" and has led to lots of financial crisis (savings and loan, long term capital, 2008 crisis, etc).
It didn't help that for all his character and long term thinking, Carter was a terrible public speaker. Even though I admire him, I never feel inspired when I see any video of him speaking as president. He felt unpresidential for the opposite reasons that Trump is - he feels too meek.
Genuine question: how much credibility should then people give to Trump's "I inherited this mess from Biden..."?
Pretty much none..except maybe the deficit, but republicans don't exactly deserve a pass on that, either. I mean, just listen to Trump talk. Any "good" news is because of him; any "bad" news is because of Biden. He's a grifter.
The tragedy is that of all the developed countries, the USA had the most growth and lowest inflation under Biden - if anything his administration did pretty darn well, but they just couldn't communicate it or it wasn't good enough to voters. Because monetary inflation tends to take time to work its way through the economy, the COVID pumping and cheques sent out under Trump could arguably be more to blame than anything Biden did (this is arguable either way at this point, though - it takes a lot of time to sift through and understand all the economic data).
Trump has no basic understanding of economics. Unless you want to hoard dollars to sit and do nothing with, you cannot have a trade surplus with every country in the world - and the deficit is only in goods. The USA has service surpluses with most of the world and investment dollars are still coming back into the USA. Trade deficits in durable goods are actually a symptom of wealth.
Reagan stood up and said, "It's Morning again in America", that all the hard and bad was behind, economically but also spiritually. We didn't have to do anything other for the future, for other people, for social wellbeing: we can just enjoy right now however we want. https://youtu.be/pUMqic2IcWA
The American temperament alas resoundingly went with option #2.
It'll be interesting to see if Dear Leader today inspires a fanaticism or belief willing to make people sacrifice today. The tariff test will surely shake a lot of people. I'm not sure what or how Carter sold the difficulties faced, and how tough times were necessary, but I sure don't see much but bluster anger and vague gesticulation as we are being steered directly into extreme hardship today. Sorry but like, factory jobs are shit servitude, and the American cost of living forever make us incredibly uncompetitive, and now trying to build the factories is fantastically expensive because of tariffs.