[12Jasoumemoobia]

I could swear you were talking about Bush, then I thought you liberals say that about all republican presidents.

But here's one of your own.
Jimmy Carter, who could forget the 444 days America was held hostage by Iran? Further during the Carter years we had 16 percent inflation, 22 percent interest rates, and 70 percent marginal tax rates. Good going Jimmy, I can't wait to salute the worst president ever until Obama who are clearly guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and lets not forget how corrupt they both are.

I'm not trying to make this a Jimmy Carter thread but he did have several good points :


(1) Economy. Carter picked an awful time to be President. The economy was pounded by inflationary pressures from the end of the Nixon price controls, the OPEC oil embargo, oil supply disruption caused by the Iranian revolution and the onset of the Iran-Iraq war and an erosion of our manufacturing base.

To his credit, however, Carter appointed a strong Fed chairman (Paul Voelcker) who under both Carter and Reagan beat inflation into submission; began reducing the deficit (despite beginning the post-Vietnam military buildup), and oddly enough had the highest average monthly job growth rate of any post-Watergate president.

(2) Iran. With respect to the fall of the shah the evidence is not that Carter's mistake was in pushing the shah out but rather in failing to send a clear message to the shah (because of the split among his foreign policy team). "All of the advisers in favor of the first option found it difficult to tell the president outright to drop his support for the shah, if indeed they wanted that. Brzezinski, while he disagreed completely with their calls for reform, at least agreed with the notion of supporting the shah. From the beginning, the compro- mises between Brzezinski and Vance and others were exactly based on this shared goal of maintaining the shah. Unfortunately for Carter, his advisers agreed only on the means, not the end. Vance and Ball held on to the shah to achieve stable reforms, while Brzezinski held on to get him to call in the army. Neither side got its way, and Carter was left without a policy."

The fall of the shah created an opening for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan which they seized. Carter responded by funding the mujadeen resistance within Afghanistan with the result being both nations paying dearly for their involvement in the conflict.

(3) Leadership. Carter's biggest shortcoming was his succesor's greatest strength - the ability to play the mythic role as US President. I often thought it to be a tragedy that Carter was never Vice President first -- since I think it would have better informed him how to use the power of the Oval Office.

At the same time, Carter does have a number of major and lasting achievements.

(1) Energy. After a 65 percent increase per year in crude oil imports from 1973-1976, Carter was able to reduce imports by 1.8 million barrels per day - something none of his successors acheived. It was Carter who established the Dept of Energy, fuel efficiency standards, the Alaskan pipeline and the strategic petrolum reserves.

(2) Foreign Policy. Carter's making human rights a central part of foreign policy and a vital part of the US-USSR competition gave life to dissident movements behind the Iron Curtain that ultimately would mature into the movements that brought down the Berlin Wall and the USSR.

His Camp David achievement is monumental, in part because of how close it came to not happening, and it has formed the basis for all future middle east solutions.

His transfer of the Panama Canal sent a powerful message to Latin America that Yanqui gunboat diplomacy was a thing of the past (of course until he lost and it was reinstated under the Reagan-Bush administrations).

And it was Carter who established formal diplomatic relations with China.

(3) Deregulation. Carter started the deregulation movement that continued into the Reagan administration - which brought price competition back to the airline industry.

(4) Environment. Carter set aside more land for preservation than any prior president and created the Superfund to fund contamination clean up.

Carter is a far better ex-president, but he was by no means the worst president. At least not now that you have experienced Mr.Bush .

[xresultsearch]

psst, guys it a thread about his birthday.. and that fact he would be 100 years old yesterday.

Not a political pissing match.

[12Jasoumemoobia]

psst, guys it a thread about his birthday.. and that fact he would be 100 years old yesterday.

Not a political pissing match.

this may sound a little cold and maybe dumb but why does it matter ?

[LypeReexy]

this may sound a little cold and maybe dumb but why does it matter ?

because some cons like to think of Reagan as some sort of deity.

(they don't like it when you tarnish the image with truth - like all the times he raised taxes)

[en-druzhba]

All this hate and venom.... for anyone who isn't/wasn't "your guy."

Disgusting.

[ggiifdfalls]

Regan's also the only president to negotiate with terrorist. Remember Iran/Contra arms for hostage deal.

[LypeReexy]

All this hate and venom.... for anyone who isn't/wasn't "your guy."

Disgusting.

Don't like the taste of your own medicine? Don't prescribe it so much.

[bitymnmictada]

Regan's also the only president to negotiate with terrorist. Remember Iran/Contra arms for hostage deal.

I have always been suspicious of the Iran hostages being released when Reagan was inaugurated. It had the smell of a backroom deal to me. I have always wondered what we gave up to help Ronnie get elected.

[steevytraunse]

Didn't we cut and run from Lebanon after a terrorist bomb killed a couple hundred US soldiers there? Wasn't that under Reagan?

And then there's Iran-Contra, in which the Reagan administration negotiated with terrorists, used taxpayer dollars to fund the Contra rebels in direct violation of a law written, passed, and signed by Reagan himself that prohibited exactly that, and then lied about to the American people.

Who can forget Fawn Hall, smuggling classified documents out of the White House so Ollie North could shred them before the FBI could get ahold of them?

Ah yes, good times...

[tramadolwithall]

Forplay- you missed my point. Reagan was elected in 1980, and was president for most of the decade of the 1980's. People with savings accounts got the benefit of compound interest at 10% during his terms, and it was a real addition to their net worth, nearly doubling their balances. With Bernanke now, at close to 0% interest, not only is there no incentive to save or for small community banks to make loans, there is no income from existing savings accounts.

Reagan was popular because he was a fatherly, soft-spoken actor. He didn't do what he promised in a lot of ways- he really raised taxes and tripled the national debt in an arms race with the USSR. But that bankrupted the Soviets and destroyed their union, which history judges to be a good thing. By not using the fed to fool around with the economy, a lot of people gained personal wealth while he was in office.