Statement on President Carter’s Health

> I don't think there's much evidence either that he fought big money or was driven out of office by them.

Although "big money" is different people and different corporations now, they've pretty much always, in last 70+ years, acted in concert with the Republican Party. And that is exactly who drove him out of office, with activities such as illegally negotiating with Iran during the election to withhold the hostages until after the election, so the GOP could lord the hostage situation over the American public. That's just the tip, and the situation is exponentially more advanced today. Big Business, as we know it today, didn't even exist during Carter's Administration. Mom and Pop, family companies were still the majority then.

I naively don't know why you say that.

* Initiated deregulation and an inflation-hawkish Fed.

* Very dubious energy policies - which were not dominated by environmentalism but by the search for alternate fossil fuel sources, all of them way more polluting than conventional fossil fuels.

* Mixed foreign policy record, failing badly in on Iran and Zimbabwe but helping with Egypt-Israel peace.

I hear this a lot but I think it’s kind of a cynical take. There are plenty of people who run for office because they genuinely care and genuinely believe they can make a difference.

Of course there are power hungry sociopaths who make it. But there are 535 members of Congress, 50 governors, thousands of mayors and city council members and state reps, etc. They can’t all be terrible, yet I feel like the popular refrain is still “no one actually good wants to be in charge.”

I don’t know. Just feels very self fulfilling and defeatist.

President Carter comes off as a nice enough person, but the historical reality is that much of the current neoliberal economic era really got started under his tenure. I suppose it was also a response to the oil price shock of the early 1970s and the institution of petrodollar recycling in the mid-1970s, itself something of a consequence of Nixon leaving the gold standard.

For the birth of the neoliberal economic movement, aka 'globalization':

> "Countries, like the United States and Germany, better equipped to face worldwide competition and in favour of policies that strengthened it, saw trade liberalization as the right path.... Eventually, under US President Jimmy Carter's leadership and with the key support of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the results of the Round reflected a vote in favour of liberalizing international trade. Thus, the Round was shaped by the globalizing economy but, at the same time, its results gave further impetus to the globalization wave that would reach full swing in the 1980s–1990s. The GATT talks took place in the shadow of globalization: while attempting to govern the process, also built it up."

That really marked the beginning of the end of the political influence of manufacturing-sector unions in the United States as well, and it's curious that a Democratic administration kicked that off, I think.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2017.1...

Also, Carter and Brzezinski played a central role in the destabilization of Afghanistan, done in the name of opposing the Soviet Union, by approving the initial covert action program in 1979. Of course it got much larger under Reagan. The Soviets were hardly blameless, they wanted control of Afghanistan to facilitate a direct route to move their oil to the Indian Ocean, a theme interestingly revived in the Bush/Obama era (Clinton's New Silk Road, another failure). Now it's what, China's Belt and Road? Sort of bypasses Afghanistan though.

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brz...

It's rather curious how public perceptions of public figures have been managed over time, but the reality is that every president since WWII has been engaged in empire-building of some sort or other, often in opposition to the Soviet Union, certainly, which was doing the same kind of thing.

A world without empires and superpowers would be a much more peaceful world, I'm pretty sure.