RIP Jimmy Carter

[HanSenSE]

Deserves his own topic.
Jimmy Carter to begin receiving hospice care | CNN Politics

 

[X-Hack]

This is very sad news. I was a kid during his presidency, but like many others, I laughed at him and thought he was a joke at the time and that Reagan was the man. With maturity, experience and perspective, I grew to see him as a truly great man, arguably one of the best living Americans. He embodied the true spirit of Christianity and the Jewish ideal of tikkun olam (repairing the world) -- unfortunately this country was too selfish to respond, preferring its own gospel of selfishness, fear of the other and contempt for the less fortunate, as represented by the election of his charlatan of a successor. And much of the economic success Reagan grabbed credit for was a result of Carter's appointment of Paul Volcker to the Fed.

I remember my late step-grandfather, who I was close to, driving my brother, my stepbrother and me through a North Florida rainstorm back around the summer 1979 or 1980. I must have been 9 or 10. We were being annoying as ****, singing “Jimmy Carter is a farter” and “My president has a 1st name it’s J-I-M-M-Y ... I like to say it every day and if you’ll ask me why I’ll say that Jimmy Carter has a way of screwing up the USA.” That’s pretty much the only time I ever saw him get angry -- he scolded us, told us this was the President of the United States we were talking about and it was unacceptably disrespectful. He was right. What was unsaid is that my grandpa must have felt a real kinship with President Carter as a fellow liberal Southern Democrat with a sense of compassion, morals and hope for a post-racial South and who, like Carter in his younger days, also risked his standing in his community by standing up to segregationists during the 1960s. and ordering that one of the patients in his pediatric practice -- who was mortally ill -- be admitted to the whites-only hospital where he had privileges, instead of sending him to the poorly equipped "colored" hospital where he would have died. From that point the whites-only hospital was integrated. I'm sure he took great pride that the nation had chosen Carter as its president. I was only a kid and I was just parroting what other kids were saying at school, but I feel bad when I remember that. I also feel bad about laughing on election night in 1980 when my dad shook his head sadly after Carter's concession speech and said, "that's a great man." 42 years later, I see that night as a disastrous turning point for this country.

 

[Jesus_Muscatel]

I hope the Carter family tells Cult 45 where to go. As in, away from them for President Carter's services.

 

[Spartan Squad]

He was a caretaker president if there ever was one. Not everything that happened during his presidency can be placed at his feet, but he just couldn’t inspire the people enough through it. But he’s been more than we ever deserved since. He’s served his country right until what appears to be the end. A Christian in the purest sense of the term. We need another Jimmy Carter in this world.

 

[UPChip]

This feels like something I've said before on this board, but the late 70s seemed like a time of major generational change where a lot of world leaders got swept up in forces outside their control. Carter vs. Reagan, Wilson/Callaghan vs. Thatcher, Giscard d'Estaing to Mitterand in France and the like. IIRC, Nixon and Ford both served in WW2, while Carter's submariner career was basically between that and Korea. So it's possible that even if he were better at negotiating and reading the political tides, he might have still been screwed.

 

[LanceyHoward]

This feels like something I've said before on this board, but the late 70s seemed like a time of major generational change where a lot of world leaders got swept up in forces outside their control. Carter vs. Reagan, Wilson/Callaghan vs. Thatcher, Giscard d'Estaing to Mitterand in France and the like. IIRC, Nixon and Ford both served in WW2, while Carter's submariner career was basically between that and Korea. So it's possible that even if he were better at negotiating and reading the political tides, he might have still been screwed.

I think Carter made one great mistake. He appointed a business executive named William Miller rather than Paul Volcker, who was on the short list, as Fed Chair. Carter latter moved Miller to Treasury so he could put Volcker at the Fed. Volcker would have jumped on inflation faster and more effectively than Miller and I think given a better shot at reelection in 1980.

Carter also suffered from the fact that unlike Reagan, he would not secretly pay the Iranians ransom for hostages.

 

[HanSenSE]

I hope the Carter family tells Cult 45 where to go. As in, away from them for President Carter's services.

Not sure what the protocol is here now that Trump is out of office. I expect Biden (or Harris), Obama, W and Clinton to be there. You'd hope he'd do the right thing and stay home, but we're talking Trump here. But recall he got a very cold shoulder from the other ex-presidents at Bush Sr.'s service.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

I don’t think you have anything to worry about

Jimmy Carter says a full investigation would show Trump lost in 2016 - POLITICO

 

[Starman]

Carter is anything but vengeful, but let's hope he and his family go to the lengths to ban Fat**** by name from any memorial services.
The Bushes and McCain already whiffed.

 

[UNCGrad]

I'd be interested in a well done Carter bio. Taking recommendations on what anyone would consider the definitive Carter bio.

 

[Starman]

I don’t think you have anything to worry about

Jimmy Carter says a full investigation would show Trump lost in 2016 - POLITICO

“I think a full investigation would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf,” the former president, who served between 1977 and 1981, said at a panel hosted by the Carter Center in Leesburg, Va.

I get raised eyebrows whenever I voice MY opinion that the 2016 election was flipped by Russian electronic means with the aid and assistance of MAGA sympathizers among local election officials.

"Why wasn't Hillary screaming it from the treetops? Why hasn't the Democratic Party screamed about it coast to coast?"

Because:

1) They really don't want to believe it's true;

2) If it's true, it calls the whole legitimacy of the government into question. Everything from dog catcher to POTUS is now open to doubt. The MAGGAT Trump****s are nihilists, they're deconstructionists, they want to burn it all to the ground. If the presidential election is rigged, they win.

So that's why no major Dem figure even breathed the idea out loud. It's the truth they dare not speak. Carter has no ****s left to give.

Plus undoubtedly he remembers the October Surprise treason conspiracy by the Reaganauts that tanked him in 1980.

 

[Driftwood]

In either '78 or '79, my family was traveling through Georgia one weekend, and I guess my parents heard on the radio that Pres. Carter was going to be attending his hometown church on Sunday morning. We make a detour to Plains.
We get there, and everything is cordoned off, and there is a crowd. As a young boy, I was far more interested in the Secret Service than some dude getting out of a car.
Don't forget, we are only a couple of years removed from two women trying to cap Ford.
Some woman jumped under the police tape and ran toward Carter. The Secret Service straight bulldogged her ass to the pavement. I clapped and cheered, "Do it again. Do it again!"

 

[micropolitan guy]

I remember election night 1976, when some of the older men in my newsroom were thinking the world was ending. At 22, I was thrilled.

I remember election night in 1980, when Reagan was elected and I felt as badly as the old Republican men did in 1976. Another unelected Republican, like Nixon in 1968, who backchanneled with foreign leaders to sabotage an existing administration and alter an election.

Recent bios have shown his administration accomplished far more than he was credited for; had we listened to him on energy dependence we'd be much better off today.

Egypt and Isreal have not gone to war since Camp David. That's something to be proud of even if he accomplished nothing else.

 

[Neutral Corner]

Carter was the first President I voted for. He had been my governor in Georgia. I watched as he tried to push through good legislation, but Georgia has 159 counties and the rednecks they elected ****-blocked him at every turn. Then he got elected President, and went up there with a bunch of his guys from Georgia and tried to push things through the system, and the insiders in D.C. (both parties, pretty much, as much fellow Dems as the R's) knifed much of that.

He was elected in the face of inflation/stagflation. He tried hard to reduce inflation through cutting government spending and the deficit. He tried to start a Federal energy conservation program, and the country likely be better off had he been able to succeed.

He got hung with the label of "peanut farmer" with the unspoken "Georgia cracker dirt farmer" that accompanied it. He graduated from the Naval Academy and worked on nuclear submarines. Trust me, nuclear physics isn't for dummies.

He has certainly been the best ex-President of my lifetime

 

[MileHigh]

I too was a child of his presidency and remember inflation, the poor economy and of course the hostage crisis. My parents weren't big fans of his, as I recall. And they both certainly loved Reagan.

Carter of course did a ton post-presidency and is a great American.

 

[Neutral Corner]

18% home mortgages are hard to forget. As ever, the President gets too much blame and credit for things that happen while he's in office.

 

[Starman]

Inflation was off and roaring under Richard M. Nixon, who also presided over the first gas crisis.

The Shah of Iran, whose despotic regime led more or less directly to the uprising of radical Islam in that nation, was installed in power by the CIA under ... gasp ... Dwight D. Eisenhower.

 

[tapintoamerica]

Inflation was off and roaring under Richard M. Nixon, who also presided over the first gas crisis.

The Shah of Iran, whose despotic regime led more or less directly to the uprising of radical Islam in that nation, was installed in power by the CIA under ... gasp ... Dwight D. Eisenhower.

I would have guessed Truman on the POTUS when the Shah came to power. He was in there for a long time.

 

[tapintoamerica]

Carter was the first President I voted for. He had been my governor in Georgia. I watched as he tried to push through good legislation, but Georgia has 159 counties and the rednecks they elected ****-blocked him at every turn. Then he got elected President, and went up there with a bunch of his guys from Georgia and tried to push things through the system, and the insiders in D.C. (both parties, pretty much, as much fellow Dems as the R's) knifed much of that.

He was elected in the face of inflation/stagflation. He tried hard to reduce inflation through cutting government spending and the deficit. He tried to start a Federal energy conservation program, and the country likely be better off had he been able to succeed.

He got hung with the label of "peanut farmer" with the unspoken "Georgia cracker dirt farmer" that accompanied it. He graduated from the Naval Academy and worked on nuclear submarines. Trust me, nuclear physics isn't for dummies.

He has certainly been the best ex-President of my lifetime

His presidential failing was thinking that the first post-Watergate election meant everything outside of Washington establishment was OK. One of my dad's friends and colleagues was very well connected in DC politics, and the word was that Carter was unnecessarily disdainful of Congress and that he overplayed his hand. And when he lost, he realized that. He became determined to be remembered for something good. Mission accomplished.

 

[garrow]

Visited his presidential library a few years ago on my first trip to Atlanta. Wish I could have seen him there/then.