Probably one of the most under rated presidents. I was born in 1972 after the Nixon fiasco, so Jimmy was my man. I often tell folks besides Nixon bringing it up, Carter warned us of climate change and if the SOB would not have beat him in 1980, we would have had real change. I still remember election day in 1980 or shortly after and my grandpa talking about the presidential election, “I voted for Jimmy, he is a good man.” It was classic Carl sarcasm, it was a dig on Reagan. Man how they hated Reagan.
Let me preface my remarks about Jimmy Carter by telling you that I was a Kennedy Delegate at the 1980 Democratic National Convention. I did not support Carter’s re-nomination. I voted for Ted Kennedy at that convention, but I did vote for Carter in the fall of that year against Reagan. It was my first presidential election where I could vote. Back then, I had many of the same reservations many Americans had about Carter’s re-election. There was an obvious vacillation to his presidency and an aloofness to the realities of the game or how his White House saw themselves and how all others saw the Carter White House in turn, which were born from his outsider message from day one, I surmise, and an approach he never seemed to leave and its inevitable vulnerability to events which would eventually consume the Carter Presidency in my estimation.
In hindsight, however, I long for the Carter presidency, its decency, its peace, its diplomacy, and its wish for the greater development of alternative forms of energy. Sure, for many, Carter is Iran, high interest rates, and gas lines, but the Carter presidency was proof that events make the man and not the man. The man from Georgia with his “Georgia Mafia” was no match for many of the challenging events of the latter 1970s, but a lot of that had to do with how Carter was the last president who allowed “The buck stops here” to be the true presidential reality of his time. This vacillating image of the Carter presidency during his presidential tenure, along with the willingness of a sitting president to accept responsibility during the Carter years and with the failure of the chopper in the ill-fated Iranian rescue mission in April of 1980, I believe, were the true causes that made Carter only a one-term president. It was not the Kennedy challenge nor the Hollywood ways of Reagan that stopped Carter, but rather a reality many have forgotten, or do not know of, that, for instance, the Carter White House was the last presidency that used the term “Presidential Spokesman” while starting with Reagan the term was changed and has been kept ever since to be the “White House Spokesman,” which helps to confuse and defuse tough decisions and realities for any sitting president. Because, with that change in “Spokesman,” the “buck” was allowed to be passed on, but Carter never experienced that presidential favor during his tenure and thus, Carter was tagged in his time with words like vacillation, responsibility, and the “buck.”
Jimmy Carter should also be remembered for the peace accords between Israel and Eqypt and how his appointment of Paul Volker to the Fed may have resulted in interest rates rising to the highest level since the Civil War, but that those interest rate rises then led to the end of 70s inflation in the early 80s, where once again events made the man and Reagan received credit for ending inflation, but it was Carter who actually set this reality into motion. I might also add that Volker was really the only high-profile Carter appointee that Reagan then reappointed and an appointee who had much to do with the successes of Reagonomics until its own fall in October of ’87 due to Reagan’s overall de-regulation of our market and markets.
Of course, Carter was a champion as a former president, too. He demonstrated how a former president should act. He authored 33 books, built homes for the needy, taught Sunday school, and helped to promote fair and honest elections throughout the world, and all of these efforts played a great part in his eventually receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as a former president.
Do I regret not voting for him at the convention? No. I am a Kennedy Democrat. Do I regret voting for him in the fall of ’80? Absolutely not. Jimmy Carter was the last president who lived in the real world where the “buck” stopped with him. Today, the presidency has become a spin, a finesse, especially for some presidents more than others. So, as we say good bye to Jimmy Carter, we say good bye to a honest president and a honest presidency, and ask God not only to be with the Carters at this time of loss but also with our entire country as we soon adventure into a new presidency which the American people out of a respect for the late Jimmy Carter should demand transparency, honor, and responsibility from and any future presidencies as well.
I agree with much that has been cited so far, but JKC left out the main reason for the 1970’s high inflation, the Chicago School economic theories where Milton and Rose Friedman pushed for higher inflation to pay off the Vietnam conflict debt. Get off the gold standard so the debt can be played with. The conflict was paid for by Nixon and Ford through five year bonds and they were coming due. According to Milton and Rose and their group of bad actors, the conflict was fought with cheap money and by hiking the economy through inflation allows the government pay down the debt faster. The bonds were 1% to 3% and the fed was forced to control inflation through sales of high priced bonds. Paul Volker’s hard medicine took down Carter and pumped up the phony from California.
Everything people credit Reagoon with as successes were actually started by Carter. The Reagoonites could not have the peanut farmer smarter than them. The election of Reagoon was one of the worst things to happen to this country and it has led to the worship of wealth and phoniness of Trumpet.
Carter’s life:
A genuine American.
Born poor with fundamental values.
Military service with distinction.
A farmer with respect for the land.
Office at all levels of government.
Later years building homes for the poor.
A 70 year marriage to a woman he cherished.
His stature was helping without hurting.
Name one president since and many before with these qualifications? This man was an example of who should lead without being a politician or greedy billionaire.
Yes, remember Carter for making peace in the middle east, just like DOnald Trump made peace in the middle east. The only two presidents to do so.
Mike,
Carter should have gone into Tehran with a second attempt. If he had, he probably would have been re-elected, but Carter, an Annapolis graduate, was for the most part a peacemaker and not a warmaker. Trump, however, along with many of his supporters, claimed that Trump brought peace to the Middle East, but to make that claim, you have to forget how Trump’s “My Generals” talked Donald out of unilaterally attacking Iran during his first four years.