Carter was a failed president?

[and-con]

So, I am now working with a couple other guys on a job and they are both die hard right wingers. One of them was saying that Obama is the worst president since Carter, and that his poll numbers were setting records for just how low they can go. Of course I pointed out that the record lows set by Bush remain the lowest poll numbers yet recorded (if I recall correctly). I generally try to avoid politics, one of these guys signs my checks, but really it's getting ridiculous. The radio was set to fox all day, it is beyond belief the things that are stated as fact. I was not alive for Carter, but I can't imagine he did anything anywhere near as bad as Bush, or Reagan, but of course, Reagan is still looked at as a god by these guys. but fortunately there's only exterior paint left to go and then onto the next job.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Only if you are a wingnut

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

2. get an i-pod

[kentuck]

3. Do you want the truth?

The Vietnam War ended disastrously. There was Watergate. People had lost faith in their government. This was just a few years after the assassinations of Kennedy and King.

The country needed someone they could trust once again. They elected Carter. Figure it from there.

[BurtWorm]

4. One thing Carter did that made him a failed Democrat

He started the triangulation trend. He moved the party further right nationally than it had been since before Roosevelt. And he was not a particularly talented leader. But he is an excellent ex-president and a better man than he was when he was in office, in my opinion.

[KingFlorez]

5. Carter was hurt by circumstances

He was in over his head on some things, but he wasn't a failure because he didn't leave long lasting damage to the country. On top of that, he's been very successful in his post presidential career and that counts for a lot.

[dkf]

6. All I remember about the Carter days is kruggerands, crazy CD rates,

And alternating gas days.

[Gaedel]

7. Carter came into office with a lot of hope

Things were pretty bad under Ford and so Carter ran against him using a "misery index" which was a manufactured number being the sum of the interest rate, unemployment rate, and inflation rate.

Unfortunately, in 1980 when Reagan ran against Carter, the "misery index" was worse than under Ford.

Despite having solid majorities in both the House and Senate, Carter got very little legislation through. His relationship with congress stunk. His staff (Bert Lance, Hamilton Jordan, etc) wasn't much to write home about.

His "malaise" speech just depressed everybody.

The Carter years were pretty grim. They were my worst years economically.

He and Herbert Hoover were the smartest, best-educated, and most decent pair of men ever to be president. The two of them made more contributions as ex-presidents than anyone else in the past 150 years.

[Greyhound]

8. Actually, Obama's are higher than Raygun's were at this point. Clinton wouldn't approach Obama's

highest rating so far until after the election of Idiot Frat Boy. There's an excellent http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/Presidential-Job-Approval-Center.aspx">interactive chart at Gallup to quickly show them what assholes they are.

ETA; Oh, and overall Carter was more popular than either Raygun or Obama this far.

[pnorman]

15. Thsnks for that Gallup link!

n/t

[hfojvt]

9. a month ago or so, I looked up some stats about his term

Kinda surprising really. I lived through it, and I remember the media generally spent 4 years bashing Carter. Of course, I was also a Ford fan from the start, I am not sure why. Then Kennedy ran against Carter in a primary, and lost a tough fight, and Carter lost big to Reagan in 1980.

Also, I cannot find my stats now. I need to search some more because the Carter = failure and Reagan = great are strong Republican memes and need to be fought. As I remember it in general, it is sorta widely accepted that the economy sucked under Carter. Reagan famously asked the voters "are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?" There was a bit of a stagflation problem in the late 1970s, meaning both unemployment and inflation were both high. Prior to that economists had a concept they called the "Phillip's curve" which showed a measurable trade-off between inflation and unemployment, such that you could have low inflation and high unemployment or low unemployment and high inflation but not the best of both worlds - low unemployment and low inflation. Stagflation, on the other hand, was the worst of both worlds - high unemployment and high inflation.

However, looked at 30 years later, the numbers of the late 1970s were not that bad, and things got worse in the 1980s. After his landslide victory and big Republican gains in Congress (they captured the Senate in the 1980 elections) Reagan's tax cut (ERTA) was passed fairly rapidly, im early 1981. However, the employment situation got worse through most of 1982, and although there was good job creation in 1983 and 1984, things were still not very good by 1984. But strangely enough, the media did NOT spend 4 years bashing Reagan. Perhaps, then, as now, the highly paid corporate news loved their big tax cuts.

That's a rough outline from memory, until I can find, or re-look-up, the actual stats.

[rufus dog]

12. If you compare the economic stats for all Presidents in the past 50 years

Then Reagan does a bit better than Carter, If graded on a curve both would get C's.

One guess who gets an F?

Oh and Ronnie along with Nixon are the best Repubs with Cs and Carter is the only Dem to get a C.

[Scuba]

25. Can you provide anything to back that up? I'd like to use it.

[marybourg]

10. Not in the same sense that Nixon was a failed president. That's what

the publicans are trying to achieve: a failed democratic president, to match the failed Nixon presidency.

[Hekate]

27. The RW spinmeisters and MSM are going for false equivalency 24/7, aren't they?

[still_one]

11. Carter gave us airline deregulation, which created a whole mess of problems. /nt

[Hekate]

28. And St Ronnie busted the back of the air traffic controllers' union, which made things far worse

[still_one]

31. reagan was one of the worst presidents ever. He started the ball rolling

on financial deregulation which gave birth to the S&L crisis, and a whole mess of issues

I was pointing out that Carter, who preceded reagan, was also contributed to the mess, I was not comparing them

[The Midway Rebel]

13. Failed presidents don't need to steal elections. nt

[Motown_Johnny]

14. Carter put solar panels on the White House, Reagan took them off

'nuf said?




(water heating solar panels, not electric generating ones)

[sandnsea]

16. Twelve years of Republican Presidents

They ran the country into the dirt which got dumped in Carter's lap.

And keep in mind the number of baby boomers no longer going to war, and entering the job market. I don't think there is any way that could have gone smoothly. Lots of jobs were created under Carter, just not enough for the increased population.

I don't think he was a failed President. He was just ahead of his time and Americans do not look to the future.

[Hekate]

17. It's a RW meme. Oddly, also a DU meme.

I remember Jimmy Carter -- he was not half-bad. In fact, I considered him damn decent at the time.

After he left office I read that the Washington DC inside-the-beltway crowd froze out Jimmy and Roslyn, because they were considered too small-town and unsophisticated for the likes of the insiders.

And then -- there were the Republicans. We know them, don't we?

And then -- there was the Iran hostage crisis, which Carter tried mightily to solve. The Iranians waited until minutes after Reagan was inaugurated to release the hostages. Rumor has it that a secret deal was cut behind Carter's back to bring that off.

I never thought he was a "failed" president, but he lost the election, didn't he? To St Ronnie. x( And I am sure there are those here who will be glad to fill you in on just why he is supposed to be a failed president.

Hekate

[Sherman A1]

20. Agreed

[Quantess]

18. I like feta cheese and black olives on mine.

Meat toppings are too greasy, and vegetable toppings are too watery.

[snot]

19. I think he was among the best.

He inherited a bad economy; and the media absolutely crucified him.*

And I thought it was well-established that the Repubs did in fact negotiate with Iran to get them to hold onto the hostages until after Ronnie's election.

*E.g., I remember he was roundly ridiculed after he admitted he'd lusted for women other than his wife -- ridiculed for being a prude, by the same media who later crucified Clinton for succumbing to temptation!

[Mudoria]

21. Decent man that was in over his head as President

Good part of that was the economy, which I blame neither Carter nor Ford, it was just a bad economic cycle and it doomed both of them. Neither could get it back on track and it cost them at the polls.

[BlueIris]

22. IMO, Carter's reputation was doomed by the economic conditions of his term.

I can't call his time in the White House a "failure," but as far as whether or not his presidency was sustainable...he was up against triple digit inflation, stagflation, a stalled out job market, plus the energy crisis. I can see why it was and is hard for people to view his presidency as a "success" considering the state of the nation during his day.

[BlueIris]

23. Oh, and as far as the "lowest approval rating" thing goes, Wikipedia

claims Truman had the lowest (22% in February of '52). Nixon had the second lowest, (24% on August 2, '74) and the third lowest goes to W. (25% throughout October of '08). Evidently, that page is listing the Gallup poll numbers. Presidential approval ratings can vary quite a bit per polling group, of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating

[HughBeaumont]

24. Carter had a better job creation record than Reagan's first term.

[CBGLuthier]

26. Between the shit economy he inherited from Ford

and the traitorous acts of Ronald Reagan involving the Iranian hostages, his presidency was fucked. It was fucked the same way they are trying to fuck over Obama's presidency. Blame him for not cleaning their shit up fast enough. I wonder what traitorous RW future presidential candidate he will have to face.

[Hekate]

29. That's kind of how I see it. Get a good man in there to clean up after the elephants...

... and make damn sure that everything he does is scorned by the media, mocked by the Repubs, and lied about continuously -- and then look all baffled when he "loses his base."

Hekate

[Ted_White]

30. Carter gets a bad rap. Despite supporting dictators, he was a very good President.

He inherited a lot of problems that were simply out of his control, such as inflation, oil shocks, the Iran hostage crisis.

Him and Volcker bravely fought inflation. Thanks to them, Reagan was allowed room to appoint the interest-rate slashing Greenspan.

Carter still managed to pay off our WWII debt, unlike Reagan.

Carter also slashed government jobs, unlike Reagan.

Carter also deregulated a bunch of much needed industries, such as telecom, energy, and transportation. If we were still living under the old transportation, oil, and telecommunications regimes, then economic growth would have been stymied.

If Reagan didn't kill his energy plan and rip the solar panels off the White House, then America would be much better off. We would be a leader in alternative energy and not such a slave to oil which allows us to support dictators and look away regarding human rights violations.

[Fla_Democrat]

32. No, he only wanted to serve 1 term

:smoke:

[spanone]

33. ask them about iran contra...when reagan illegally sold weapons to iran

bet the idiots don't have a clue about that reality