Jimmy Carter’s Presidency and Post-Presidency – A Brutal Assessment By National Review
“Carter’s true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage.” After losing reelection, Carter worked “against the United States and its allies in a manner that could fairly be described as treasonous.”
Now that Jimmy Carter has passed away, most people are singing his praises. Philip Klein of National Review has written a more realistic remembrance of the former president.
Jimmy Carter Was a Terrible President — and an Even Worse Former President
A popular narrative surrounding the legacy of Jimmy Carter is that as president he was a victim of unlucky timing that impeded him politically but that he excelled during his long post-presidential career. The reality is that he was a terrible president but an even worse former president.
Carter’s true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage. He left the country in its weakest position of the post–World War II era. After being booted out of office in landslide fashion, the self-described “citizen of the world” spent the rest of his life meddling in U.S. foreign policy and working against the United States and its allies in a manner that could fairly be described as treasonous. His obsessive hatred of Israel, and pompous belief that only he could forge Middle East peace, led him to befriend terrorists and lash out at American Jews who criticized him.
A former governor of Georgia who had little charisma and national name recognition when he began campaigning for president, Carter ended up in the White House as a fluke. He presented an image as an honest, moderate, and humble southern Evangelical Christian outsider — an antidote to the corruption of the Watergate era. He also benefited from the vulnerabilities of the sitting president, Gerald Ford.
Once in office as an unlikely president, Carter spent his one and only term showing the American people, and the rest of the world, that he was not up to the job.
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Comments
Nice to see NR not attacking Trump.
Wait until they catch their breath.
I see the national media trying to lionize him for the work he did at Habitat for Humanity (which is pretty good), but I live only 20 miles from Plains and wouldn’t cross the road to go see him. He set us back decades militarily and I do remember 21.5% interest rates as well. His daughter was not the brightest either.
I remember those rates as well, Bizarrely, it was a unique opportunity for net savers, as the interests rates were incredible for them.
It was comforting to have lived in the last portion of the rational age, when interest rates awarded by common banks to savers had a true and proportional relationship to the interest rates charged to borrowers. Not like today, when interest rates charged borrowers bob up and bob down, while at the same time actual savers get dickall interest from standard banks.
It used to be hard to explain to those who didn’t live through it just how bad Carter was as a President. (Now, of course, Biden makes Carter look like another Reagan.)
And I share the disgust of many at Carter’s post-Presidential career: despite his public persona, he was a vicious little man who was an open anti-Semite, and was more interested in his personal standing than the welfare of the country.
Jimmy Carter showed the way, for politicians and think-tanks and universities to follow — just how much money you can make if you’re willing to blame all the world’s problems on
American people
White people
Christian people
Jewish people
There’s a direct line from Jimmy Carter’s presidency to Obammer’s presidency — as well as the latter’s multi- multi-million mansions in Hawaii, Chicago, Kalorama, and Martha’s Vineyard.
If you can’t say anything nice?!? Well…
Carter’s best domestic achievements were deregulation of the rail, trucking, and airline industries, and his appointment of Paul Volcker as Fed chairman.
I would say that Billy Beer had a more positive net effect on humanity than all of Jimmy’s efforts.
Don’t forget about committing “adultery many times in my heart.” Most normal men can’t help doing it, but very few put it into print. He was a complete imbecile. I wouldn’t count graduation from the naval academy as a plus when evaluating a job applicant, based upon him alone.
Jimmy Carter- Outstanding human being. One of the worst Presidents in history. But perhaps the best “Former President” ever. Thank God for Ronald Reagan.
Carter’s greatest achievement was ushering in the age of Reagan, and it bothered him to no end all the rest of his days. I sure hope it did.
The Iranian hostage rescue finished him, I first time voted for Reagan 1980. I was only republican in family, 18 yrs. Old
As President, Carter was an unmitigated disaster; his post-presidency and how he was as a man leave me with mixed impressions.
I will speak well of Carter’s work for Habitat for Humanity. I won’t fault him for admitting to “committing adultery in his heart”. To all of you who think the Sermon on the Mount is “simple, easy ethics” (i wish I had a green tenner for every time I’ve heard some biblically illiterate commenter say this) rather than a spiritual kick in the stomach, Carter had a far better understanding of how Jesus exposed the sinfulness and weakness of man therein. Indeed, one of the main points about being an Evangelical Christian is recognizing our radical sinfulness and the need for God to become one of us and bear the penalty we deserved. Thus far, Carter was true to his beliefs. However, Carter the post-president also spoke up for abortion and homosexuality, which are two very great evils.
While I can say nothing good about Carter’s foreign and military policies, he was handed a very bad hand. Even as conservative a thinker as Kissinger saw the world of the late 1970’s as one in which the US had clearly lost the Cold War, and had to adjust to a Soviet hegemony (mercifully, it was short-lived). I believe Carter sincerely wanted to show that the USA was completely sincere in its stance for human rights, and would follow such a commitment even to its own hurt (hence, accepting one man, one vote, one time “democratization” in Latin American and African countries). He also wished to show the US as an exemplary citizen of the UN. Carter probably believed that such a stance would bring much of the world around to the liberal point of view and discredit Soviet brutalism. His tilt to Communist China was a gamble that it could become an anti-Soviet ally, and maybe even liberalize like “good, peaceful Eurocommunism” (anyone else remember that?). Of course, that gamble was lost.
We see the Carterite delusion continuing to inform Democratic nostrums–even to the point of refusing to see that much of the problem with the current “Furor Ismalicus” isn’t “fundamentalism” (a term which ought to be limited only to such Christians as accept it) but the character of core Islam itself.
I’m pretty sure NR was brutal against Carter back in Carter’s day. However, today’s NR would be hard-pressed to attack anyone on the Left. They have an advanced case of “this is what happens to you when you move to Washington, D.C.” You turn Left. Hard Left. No, not that Left, but more Left.
Buckley is rolling in his grave.
That they even bother to remember some of Carter’s misguidedness is astonishing.