The Carter Presidency Revisited

[Bennet Kelley]

The Carter Presidency Revisited

From the moment he left office in 1981, Republicans from President Reagan to Mitt Romney have embraced Jimmy Carter as the poster child for Democratic failure. Since Democrats raced to distance themselves from Carter with almost as much vigor as Republican embraced him, the Carter failure meme has gone unchallenged for 35 years. With Carter’s announcement this week that he is fighting advanced cancer, maybe it is time to set the record straight.

Let me be clear from the outset, I am by no means a Carter apologist. I first entered politics partly because I was unhappy to see Carter win the nomination in 1976 and was a strong Kennedy supporter in 1980. I also will concede that regardless of what I may say on this page, the most important determination on the Carter presidency occurred on November 4, 1980 when voters overwhelmingly decided to change course.

That vote, however, cannot change how consequential the Carter presidency remains today. The only Naval Academy graduate to serve in the White House, President Carter has an enormous foreign policy legacy. He took office after a decade that saw three Arab-Israeli wars and the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, yet managed to forge a historic agreement at Camp David that, according to at least one Middle East scholar “reshaped the Arab world . . . and in doing so, strengthened immeasurable the U.S. position in the Middle East.” More importantly, it fostered a period of relative peace in the region.

Carter also reshaped Latin America, with the Panama Canal Treaty and cut off of military aid to repressive regimes in Argentina and Brazil. In doing so, Carter signaled that the days of Yankee Gunboat Diplomacy was over (at least temporarily).

Carter was the first U.S. president to put human rights at the forefront of foreign policy. Carter’s emphasis on human rights and use of the CIA to smuggle in pro-democracy texts into the Soviet bloc played an important role in fostering the anti-Soviet activism that led to the collapse of Soviet control over Eastern Europe.

While Republicans often cite Reagan’s military buildup as contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union, rarely do they mention that it began under President Carter. When the Soviets challenged Carter, he acted forcefully by arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan to give the Soviets their own Vietnam-like catastrophe, proceeding on the MX Missile Program, reinstating draft registration and boycotting the Moscow Olympics.

More importantly, unlike past Presidents who did little to prevent Soviet military action in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as 27 Soviet and Warsaw Pact divisions amassed on the Polish border ready to invade to crush the nascent Solidarity movement, Carter publicly and privately signaled to the Soviets that there would be “very adverse consequences”. These were not mere words, as Carter had a retaliatory strategy in place with key allies that included a plan to immobilized much of the Soviet merchant fleet. Poland’s leader later indicated that Carter’s actions and the Soviets’ difficulties in Afghanistan led to their abandoning invasion plans.

Then there is Iran. The hostage crisis and failed rescue attempt was an albatross that hung over Carter, no more so than on election day which happened to be the first anniversary of the hostage crisis. Carter deserves credit for getting all hostages home safely and would have done so sooner but for an apparent deal that the Reagan campaign had agreed to provide arms to Iran in exchange for delaying the hostages release.

Domestically, Carter had to deal with an economy in a state of shock from two Arab oil embargos, the release of Nixon-era price controls and the continued decline of manufacturing jobs due to foreign competition. Once again, he did so forcefully with an aggressive energy policy that included establishing the Department of Energy, promoting alternative fuels and the establishing fuel efficiency standards in automobiles. Had subsequent administration’s followed his path and continued to increase fuel efficiency standards, we would have stopped importing oil years ago.

His legacy also includes the creation of the Department of Education, expanding Pell Grants to an additional 1.5 million families and doubling the size of the National Parks through the addition of 43 million acres in Alaska.

Carter could have achieved far more, including national health care, had he been a better communicator and not antagonized Congressional Democrats. This, along with disarray within his administration, undermined Carter as a leader and was part of what led me to campaign for Ted Kennedy in 1980.

It is curious to see Republicans continue to bash President Carter as a failure when he makes his Republican successors look like the JV-team. Carter outperformed all of them in job creation and both Bush presidencies in GDP growth, while actually lowering the deficit.

While there is consensus that Carter has been our greatest ex-President, it is time that we also acknowledge in his lifetime what his Presidency achieved and its continued legacy.

[MisterP]

1. I'd drop Afghanistan from all that--there's a few buildings missing from Manhattan from that

[L. Coyote]

2. OFCS!

You are now really going to blame Carter for that one. Geeeeeez!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[eggplant]

4. +1

because nothing since 1980 contributed to that, right?

FFS.

[MisterP]

5. and why not? they thought they were so clever--"let's give Russia its own Vietnam and lure it into

Afghanistan"; it's mostly Brzezinski's doing, I hasten to add, building on plans from the Ford era

but this and backing the Contras (when the Carter DoS couldn't get its "somocismo sin Somoza" absolutely let the Reaganauts in the door: there in fact was very little left for the neocons to do

this isn't so much about blame, however: Carter after all hired Stansfield Turner to clean out the CIA and kibosh the shenanigans, but the admiral could only do so much in that sector; it's about how even Presidents can't escape the logics and discourses and entrenched institutions of the Cold War

[L. Coyote]

7. Why not? Because it is utter nonsense!

Not to mention absolute bullshit.

[MisterP]

8. so he's supposed to get credit for Afghanistan ... but not get any credit for Afghanistan?

there's factors at play inside the Beltway, in the intel community's networks (few of them as "rogue" as we like to think), in the ironies of Cold-War liberalism ...

[L. Coyote]

11. No, you're not supposed to blame him for what happens decades later.

That's what is ridiculous.

[MisterP]

15. we *poured* money into the mujads under Carter and the ISI set up

he same Saudi-brokered channels that created--nay, WERE al-Qaeda: Cyclone's arms, money, and radical pipeline started in 1979 and Azzam came in 1980 under CIA and ISI auspices, heading the "Afghan Arab" networks that Afghan mujahedeen depended on (though to be fair many mujads weren't Taliban but simply smack-runners) if Carter's off the hook for Afghanistan, then how's Reagan not? this is all a matter of public record--heck, it's a matter of plain formal logic: there's no way to argue that luring the USSR into Afghanistan has nothing to do with 9-11

1977-9 Carter's foreign policy had been marked by a human-rights emphasis: Chile, Guatemala, and South Africa were particularly punished--Americans were heartened that Iran even had a Muslim Martin Luther in Ali Shariati! There were still some uncomfortable allies, like Somoza and the Shah (who got more money than Israel does even today IIRC). The Iranian Revolution was a staggering blow to everyone in Washington, and Carter was particularly stung by the pro-Carter Democrat Jeane Kirkpatrick's noisy assault on his foreign policy--replacing "moderate autocrats friendly to the U.S. with less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasion." At the very least the WH needed intel so the CIA firings were slowed down--and officers started building up their private empires, particularly with the human and financial resources the Afghan adventure was providing. Vietnam, the Church Committee, Carter's human-rights focus, even the "New World Informational Order" had spooked the establishment and enraged the spooks, generating not only the neocons as a movement but as a center of power and influence that could massage foreign policy in its favor.

the neocon worldview started creeping into foreign policy in the late 70s: Carter compared the assassination of Amin to WWII and brought back the Domino Theory--typical Cold-Warrior tropes--but much more dangerously the incoming arrivals of both parties after 1978 would see any hostage situation, any overthrow, any STRIKE was a surefire sign that Moscow was advancing and freedom retreating: all problems were due to failure to restrain “Soviet expansionism”; so the Carter WH not only set up the massive ISI-handled networks that the Reagan WH bought into, it also laid the ideological grounds for its own demise, handing the terms of the 1980 debate over to the GOP and freeing the CIA to act on its own; Carter was also the one who struggled mightily to keep the Nicaraguan National Guard in power 1979 and, failing that, use Honduras not only as a refuge for Somoza's child-butchers to raid Nicaragua but a militarized stronghold against regional revolutions--a "new Nicaragua"; next door, El Salvador got millions in "clean counterinsurgency" aid under Carter, and he patched up with Guatemala; this all not only laid material and ideological foundations for Reagan's revival of the Cold War, but gave it a bipartisan legitimation: it made its logic bipartisan, and made Dems who'd otherwise oppose these interventions think that this time we're finally "doing it right"

so the question is--how does this foreign-policy shift reflect on Carter as a person? Carter was massively and increasingly uncomfortable with the resurgence of the sort of CIA he'd run to dissolve, was sick of feeling carefully manipulated by the "old hands," feeling that every time he sat down with Brzezinski or any staffer they were just there to snow him, to keep the reformist in the dark; he'd let himself get spooked (in both senses of the word) after Iran, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Angola, Afghanistan, Ethiopia--had found himself thinking like the people who'd caused the global problems he'd run to reverse 1976, had found himself turned intolerant of any social change abroad; he'd even been browbeaten into cutting capital gains 40%; Truman, Eisenhower, and LBJ all went through these same regretful processes after the stepped down, but Carter was feeling this in 1980, especially as his own men October Surprised him, and a second term would've swung differently by 1982: I might add that Carter is in fact one of the few goddamned noble souls in the WH this century, above even JFK and FDR (nobility-wise at least)

[1939]

17. Read a bio of Herbert Hoover sometime

Hoover was a great humanitarian before the presidency and a valued public servant afterwards.

[Samantha]

3. Incredibly interesting read

Thank you so much for posting this thread. It is wonderful those too young to have lived through his Presidency can read commentaries such as this and receive another sense of the man other than that portrayed by the Carter critics. Personally, I have always admired him.

Sam

[Bennet Kelley]

10. thanks for the comment

As I indicated in the piece, I was one of those critics.

[yeoman6987]

6. Good, but inflation is really what made president carter a one-term president

When buying a house was more then interest on some credit cards today, you know it was bad. 14 percent to buy a home was bad news.

[roamer65]

12. Carter paid the price of Nixon's closing the gold window in 1971.

The dollar devaluation was going to happen no matter who was in office from 1977-1981. Nixon was horrible at economic policy.

[rusty quoin]

9. I remember the release of the hostages

I was young in the military..on a military flight home for a visit. It's one of those times you remember where you were at an important event.

The feeling was...wow...here Reagan is getting sworn in and already he has released the hostages. I was too ignorant to see the connection. I hope at least I found it odd. I think I did.

Now we know there was a deal with Iran to hold them.

Another thing, the economy and gas prices sucked under Ford. Carter inherited the suck. I may be wrong, but I remember the same things going on under Ford.

Post president, no one can compare with this saint of a man. I love him.

[1939]

18. There were two gas crises

One was in 1974.

The second was in 1978.

Each one doubled the existing price of gas and produced rationing (you could only get gas on odd-numbered days if your license plate ended in an odd number).

In 1978, the government was producing WWII style ration stamps in case the crisis lasted.

[kentuck]

13. He restored trust and honor to the Presidency...

...after Watergate. No small deal.

[oberliner]

14. What about his relationship with the Shah of Iran?

Do you think that he bears any responsibility for that support?

[hifiguy]

16. He made a grave mistake in giving in to (War Criminal) Kissinger

and others who pressed him to allow the worthless Shit, er, Shah of Iran into the US.

Same goes for his embrace of deregulation. Bad move.

Apart from that, Carter was blamed for many things for which he had no responsibility or control and history will be fairer to him.

[bemildred]

19. Liberty Under Siege: American Politics 1976-1988

Liberty Under Siege is an extraordinary book. Here, finally, is a reveille for reality, a call to stop this long intoxication with illusion and look at what has been happening to our republic. Walter Karp combines the passion of Tom Paine with the urgency of Paul Revere to sound a patriot's alarm for his country.

http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Under-Siege-American-1976-1988/dp/1879957116

Woe unto thee, America, is the message of this powerful, disturbing work by the author of Indispensible Enemies. In Part I Jimmy Carter is described as the candidate of the democratic awakening, marked for systematic destruction by Reaction and losing one battle after another as the press grows "more stupidly cruel as Oligarchy grows more brazenly vile and Carter more stupidly weak." In Park II Karp turns his baleful eye on Ronald Reagan, whom he characterizes as "an ignorant, truthless demagogue." The story of the 1980s, in Karp's view, has been "the exaltation of a tyrant and the degradation of a republic." The military establishment has been fed at the expense of "the poor, the ill, the handicapped, the schools, local services, student loans, enforcement of laws." According to Karp, the Strategic Defense Initiative is a "hoax and a fraud," a "trillion-dollar mirage." As to the president's denial that he was involved in the Iran-contra scandal, Karp says, "You lie, Ronald Reagan; you lie through your teeth." He warns that the Right does not intend to give up power in the post-Reagan era: "It dreams and schemes and relentlessly plots to rule America from the grave." Despite the overwrought tone, this is an important, provocative work by a passionate political commentator.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

[davidpdx]

21. Carter is one of the most under-appreciated presidents in the history of our country

I was only 9 when he left office, so I can't remember much aside from Election Day 1980.