“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” said Former President Jimmy Carter.
With this utterance, Mr. Carter has finally stepped through the looking glass and entered his version of Wonderland. Surely, if any presidency deserves the appellation of “worst in history”, it is his.
Entering the White House in 1977, following the Watergate scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation and Gerald Ford acting as caretaker-in-chief, the nation had high expectations for the Man from Plains. A peanut farmer, a former governor, a man who admitted in Playboy magazine that he had lust in his heart, Mr. Carter promised open government and the highest ethics the office had seen.
What we got was an amateur hour that left the country and the world in financial shambles. America was viewed as an empty shell, incapable of stepping on to the world stage. No longer did we wield the big stick, we relied on the big boycott.
Other than the high-water mark of the Camp David Accords, what composes Mr. Carter’s legacy?
Mr. Carter’s colorful crew of advisers found themselves under a media microscope that uncovered cocaine use and financial chicanery worthy of a Little Rock, Arkansas commodities trader.
Who can forget the sweater? During the energy crises that rocked the country, Mr. Carter held his fireside chats a bit more literally than his recent predecessors. Dressed like the avuncular Mr. Rogers, he enjoined us to turn our thermostats down to 65 degrees. A beautiful, but slightly chilly, day in the neighborhood.
During the Carter administration interest rates soared to nearly 20%, inflation raged, and unemployment grew, spawning a new term in the lexicon of economists: stagflation. Ronald Reagan’s debate team coined the term “misery index” to drive home the economic failure of Carter’s policies.
When the Russians invaded Afghanistan, Mr. Carter announced a boycott of the Moscow Summer Olympic Games.
When “students” took over the American embassy in Iran, Mr. Carter relied on diplomacy devoid of consequence. An eleventh hour hostage rescue mission by Delta Force failed because of equipment problems, an apt, though tragic metaphor for the Carter years.
And that brings us to the Carter administration’s most far-reaching failure. Policy wonks tipped the human rights scales against the Shah of Iran in favor of the Ayatollah Khomeni. In that reversal of foreign policy, Mr. Carter’s State Department transformed one of strongest allies in the turbulent Middle East into a feared enemy and a state that sponsors terrorism. Their sheer naiveté gave the world its first Muslim theocracy in centuries. Muslim fundamentalists now had a road map to achieve their goals. Here, indeed, is a domino theory worthy of discussion.
The resulting wave of global terrorism can be laid squarely at the door of the administration that is truly the “worst in history”, that of Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter has spent the last 26 years burnishing his legacy and his image. He has written enough memoirs to suggest that he has led multiple lives. He has penned sophomoric poetry. Hammer in hand, he builds homes for Habitat for Humanity. He is available as an observer at elections, a peace broker, and he samples Paula Dean’s southern food specialties. Denied any relevance as a president, he seeks a world-wide stage as he strives to become the greatest ex-President.
Yet even in this effort, Mr. Carter has stumbled mightily in the past year. His most recent literary offering Palestine: Peace not Apartheid offers more than a whiff of anti-Semitism. Mr. Carter also chose to keep a monetary award from the Zayed Foundation, supported by the rabidly anti-Semitic Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan. Harvard University returned a $2 million gift to its Divinity School from the Zayed Foundation, sponsors of the Zayed Centre for Co-Ordination and Follow-Up that declared that Jews are “the enemies of all nations.”
Jimmy Carter, himself no stranger himself to Saudi Arabian oil men and money, counts Sheikh Zayed as a personal friend.
Perhaps more troubling is that Mr. Carter’s pronouncement is merely the latest in the alternative universe of foreign policy being practiced by the Democratic Party. Whether it’s Senator Moharry ibn-Reid (D., AQ) spluttering that the war is lost, or burqa- sporting Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi making nice with the Syrians, there seems to be a collective amnesia regarding the separation of powers.
As Jimmy Carter backpedals from his statement and the White House dismisses him as irrelevant, perhaps it is time for Mr. Carter to pick up his hammer and go quietly in a self-imposed retirement from public life.
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While no one can quibble that the CIA overthrew the Shah during Carter's term at the helm, it wasn't exactly the first time our president had authorized a covert overthrow of a government deemed "hostile" to our own. Similar moves in South America resulted in a virulent anti-American sentiment down there. If this always seems to backfire, why try it again, one might ask.
At any rate, by all accounts, Carter, well, sucked. But you're forgetting James Buchanan who basically cowered in the corner with his hand in the cookie jar while the Civil War become completely innevitable. He hoped the Supreme Court might settle the problem (it didn't, of course) and called the escalating feud between the North and South "happily, a matter of but little practical importance." Oops.
Obviously, you can't make a historical judgement of something that's still happening. So, bad move Carter. But I'm at a loss for any positives, foreign or domestic, achieved by this administration. Not a one. I'm not trying to be argumentative here, either. And if you can actually name a couple (no small feat), it seems fairly obvious the scales will be tipped by the far more dubious achievements on the opposite side.
Thing is, every issue taken with Carter can be taken with our current administration.
- A cabinet filled with crooks and theives? Sure. We've got that. And pedophiles too.
- Energy crisis? Gas is $3.75 a gallon here.
- Bungled foreign policy? Please. We're left without allies, mired in a war without a real plan, and, although Carter's policies essentially installed a theocracy in Iran, our war in Iraq has exacerbated sectarian divisions and prompted Iran to think "they can't do that to us if we've got the bomb."
I'm essentially saying: just because a shitty president called Bush a shitty president doesn't mean Bush isn't a shitty president. I'm sure there's a neater way to say that, though.
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