Jimmy, Oldest ex-POTUS Ever

cullennz said:
Never really hear much about Carter

Know he is a bit of a full on philanthropist afterwards, but was it a boring time to be Prez or was he just a bit crap?
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In terms of fereign policy at least, it was a pretty hard time. There was a perception that the U.S. had over-reached in Vietnam - so Carter tried to dial back our foreign military adventures a bit and to stop being so supportive of some very overtly nasty dictatorships. He reigned in some overly expensive military procurement issues like the B1 bomber. He also ended the Panama Canal zone, giving the area over to Panama.

But there was limited ability to do all of these sorts of things when the Cold War was still on and the shooting wars between the Arabs and Israelis were still fresh in memory.

Which led to the Iranian and Nicaraguan revolutions, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the (ETA: continuation of the) Lebanese civil war and probably a number of other problems that I am forgetting.

I've always thought he has been judged overly harshly - the U.S. really was blindly supportive of some terrible, terrible dictatorships. We still suffer blowback for our support of bloody tyrants in the Middle east and Central America.

We keep doing friendly/friendly things with tyrants (think Saudi Arabia), but at least Carter put the issue on the table. He made Human Rights an actual real component of American foreign policy - not just when dealing with enemies, but also in dealing with allies - and we had some very distasteful allies at the time.
 
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cullennz said:
Never really hear much about Carter

Know he is a bit of a full on philanthropist afterwards, but was it a boring time to be Prez or was he just a bit crap?
Click to expand...

He was dealt a bad hand but he played it poorly as well. During his years, the country experienced record inflation (as the Vietnam War deficit spending from years earlier rippled through the economy) combined with stagnant growth due to the sudden emergence of superior and cheaper Japanese products.

Carter was ill-equipped to deal with all this, and stumbled a bit on foreign policy, especially as his response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was weak (he canceled the US' team involvement in the 1980 Moscow Olympics).

Part of the problem was that Carter ran specifically as the candidate who was an outsider. The appeal of such a candidate in 1976 was pretty obvious: the country was still reeling from Watergate and the resignation of President Nixon. But the problem with such a candidate is that he actually has to become an insider once he gets the job, and this Carter failed to do.
 
Brainster said:
He was dealt a bad hand but he played it poorly as well. During his years, the country experienced record inflation (as the Vietnam War deficit spending from years earlier rippled through the economy)
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Of course the solution was more deficits! Reagan got the deficits up to where they needed to be.
 
I tend to look at Jimmy Carter with some realizations that he just didn't know how to make a case to the public, and that he didn't have the willpower to go through with things as would be needed. My examples:

Pro: He really sliced back on the 'support any dictator, anytime' as long as they were agin' Communism.
Con: Conversely he didn't seem to do a damn thing against the horriffic Communist antics either - case in point the Khmer Rouge. In fairness the US was probably sick of dealing with Asia at that point.

Con: The military was probably at a technical and morale low-point during his tenure, culminating in the failed Delta raid on Iran.
Pro: He did start the reforms and revamps that took the US military out of a lingering WW2 mentality and started modernization programs that would vastly improve the US military's effectiveness. It just wouldn't happen on his watch.

Pro: Late in his term Carter appointed Volcker chairman of the Federal Reserve. Indicating that he knew what needed to be done to stop stagflation.
Con: What needed to be done was to induce a recession. Carter didn't have the will, the popularity, or the time to pull a stunt like that. Reagan did, and he kept Volcker in place and let the recession happen. Reagan's popularity took a huge hit (at this point in his presidency he was actually less popular than Trump is now) but when the economy bounced back so did Reagan's popularity.

Con: Carter, despite his election, just did not know how to get along with other politicians or appeal to people. He could debate, but couldn't make a case to the public.
Pro: There really isn't a pro here. Carter was unable to deal with politicians in his own party. His public broadcasts were know for being anemic. If you were to watch the 'national malaise' speech with that part cut out you could still see why the public was just getting annoyed with him.
 
Lack of action against the Khmer Rouge was a holdover from the Nixon era.

We did not ally with China, but we preferred them over the USSR. The Khmer Rouge were allies with China, in opposition to Vietnam which was allied with the USSR. So failure to oppose the Khmer Rouge was less about being soft on communism than is was about opposing one group of communists (USSR/Vietnam) much more than we opposed the other group (China/Khmer Rouge). Chinese diplomatic pressure ensured that the U.S. continued to recognize the Khmer Rouge was the government of Cambodia until 1982 and continued to recognize its participation in the government until 1988.

It was not vastly different from Nixon supporting (West) Pakistan in it's effort to stop Bangladesh (East Pakistan) from gaining independence. Bengali self determination took a back seat to opposing India because India worked with the Soviet Union, and (West) Pakistan was becoming an ally and had Chinese support as well, and we needed Chinese support to try to get out of Vietnam.
 
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