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“Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War, endured humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, has died. He was 100 years old…
“Carter governed amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets and social upheaval over racism, women’s rights and America’s global role. His most acclaimed achievement in office was a Mideast peace deal that he brokered by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the bargaining table for 13 days in 1978…
“Yet Carter’s electoral coalition splintered under double-digit inflation, gasoline lines and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. His bleakest hour came when eight Americans died in a failed hostage rescue in April 1980, helping to ensure his landslide defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan.” AP News
The left is divided over Carter’s presidency.
“Carter secured peace between Egypt and Israel at Camp David, a historic feat that helped end decades of violence. He agreed to an arms-limitation deal with Russia and came to support increased defense spending at a key moment in the Cold War. He normalized diplomatic relations with China…
“Yet it was Carter’s inability to effectively wield the powers of the presidency that would be his undoing. His failure to free 52 American hostages in Iran for more than a year became a microcosm of US impotence. His response to the 1979 energy crisis — going on prime time, warning of the perils of ‘self-indulgence and consumption’ — proved irresistible to his foes.”
Editorial Board, Bloomberg
Others argue, “His presidency is remembered almost exclusively for a series of events that were largely beyond his control: the seizure of 52 American hostages in Iran and the failed rescue mission to free them; the wretched state of the U.S. economy, which resulted largely from disruptions in Middle Eastern oil supplies; and the resumption of the Cold War with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which Soviet documents show had nothing to do with Carter’s perceived ‘weakness.’…
“Carter was a political failure but a substantive success… An incomplete list: the nation’s first comprehensive energy policy, including the first support for renewable energy sources; the doubling of national park land… the creation of two new Cabinet departments, Energy and Education, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)…
“Under Reagan, inflation was tamed and the economy revived… But the man who did that was Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — appointed by Carter in 1979. Even Carter’s worst moments are often misunderstood. The so-called malaise speech (in which he never used the word) was actually well-received… The Iranians tried to humiliate Carter by not releasing the hostages until just after Reagan took the oath of office. But they all came home safe, thanks to Carter’s efforts.”
Jonathan Alter, Washington Post
Some argue, “The Democrat Jimmy Carter—not Republicans Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan—first discarded New Deal policies that had long sustained growth and raised wages for all workers. He spurned Keynesianism, deregulated industries from airlines to banking, and fatally abandoned a labor-reform bill…
“The reform would have expanded the [NLRB] to resolve a backlog of 19,000 cases. It would have also blocked employers from undermining representation elections with endless delay… [and] barred firms from government contracts if they broke labor law… He set the US economy on its path toward lousy working-class wages.”
Jonathan Schlefer, The Nation
The right is critical of Carter’s presidency and subsequent diplomatic efforts.
The right is critical of Carter’s presidency and subsequent diplomatic efforts.
“Carter will be remembered as a decent, honorable man of faith, who lived a productive life according to those high standards, both publicly and privately. He was an outlier in his forging of a productive life after leaving office. Instead of grifting and selling access to policymakers, like so many former politicians do today, he had a distinguished second career promoting and monitoring democratic elections around the world… Recollections of Carter’s presidency will, unfortunately, be very different.”
Charles Lipson, Spectator World
“With an effort, one can recall a number of good things he did. He put missiles in Europe to defy Soviet buildups and bolster the NATO alliance. He brokered peace between Israel and Egypt. He installed Paul Volcker, the man who finally broke inflation, as chairman of the Fed. He approved an audacious plan for rescuing American diplomats held hostage in Tehran. It needs an effort to recall these because so much else went wrong…
“The Soviet Union and its clients had been on a roll worldwide throughout the Seventies, from Africa to Indochina; during his administration, Afghanistan would fall too. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat paid for his peace with his life. Inflation, pre-Volcker, raged simultaneously with recession, something liberal economists said could not happen. The shah of Iran fell to a despotic anti-American zealot, and the helicopters sent to rescue our kidnapped diplomats crashed in the Iranian desert.”
The Editors, National Review
“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… Concerned by the looming threat of war after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait [in 1990]… Carter wrote a letter to the leaders of every country on the U.N. Security Council, as well as a dozen other world leaders, [biographer Douglas] Brinkley recounted, making ‘a direct appeal to hold ‘good faith’ negotiations with Saddam Hussein before entering upon a war.’…
“As if this weren’t enough, on January 10, 1991 — just five days before a deadline that had been set for Saddam to withdraw — Carter wrote to key Arab leaders urging them to abandon their support for the U.S., undermining months of careful diplomacy by the Bush administration…
“It is one thing for a former president to express opposition to a policy of the sitting president, but [Carter was] actively working to get foreign leaders to withdraw support for the U.S. days before troops were to be in the cross fire… Carter’s meddling was not limited to the first Iraq War or to Republican administrations… [He] squandered a crucial window to stop North Korea from going nuclear [during the Clinton administration]… Historians have not been harsh enough.”
Philip Klein, National Review
