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Jimmy Carter has died

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#71

Post by readthenotes1 »

jmclnx wrote: post #20

Looking back, to me he was a much better president then people believed in the 80s. I believe if he got re-elected in 1980, the US would be in a much better place. One thing, it could be argued real work on Climate Change would have begun in 1981 as opposed to where we are now, which is just watching the average probably blowing past 3C in around 70 years from now. For his loss in 1980, I still blame Kennedy. RIP, he…

Look a little harder.

The people living through the 1970s knew how bad he was and chose to put him out. He had bad staff, bad relations with the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, and we got the Mayaguez, iran hostage, stagflation, and other troubles too many to list.

He was a bad president, a good man, and a great ex-president.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#73

Post by benatkin »

neom wrote: post #30

If you didn't follow what Jimmy Carter did after his presidency, this short habitat for humanity vignette highlights it well - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajWLdawnCPU (11 mins)

Hard for me to draw inspiration from that, at least compared to Al Gore. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-f...

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#74

Post by [deleted] »

siltcakes wrote: post #15

Carter was the most pro-Palestinian president of the 20th century. It's worth reading his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine:_Peace_Not_Apartheid

[deleted]

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#75

Post by amazingamazing »

As a former president I wonder why he voted for Harris and went as far to tell others that he did so, but didn’t officially endorse. Seemed strange. A vote is tacit approval no? Was he against endorsements in general? He endorsed Mondale and Clinton iirc

Regardless at least he wasn’t as divisive as 45.

RIP.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#76

Post by macrocosmos »

I wasn’t alive for Carter’s presidency, so can someone explain how his handling of the hostages in Iran was positive at all for the United States?

To me as an American even this many years later and as a young person who didn’t see it, ending your presidency while another nation holds your citizens seems extremely embarrassing.

And all I see is extreme praise of the man. I’d honestly like to see some discussion here.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#77

Post by bb88 »

hylaride wrote: post #50

One could argue he set the stage for the 1980s economic boom by making short term sacrifices that cost him re-election. It was his administration that did market-oriented deregulation around airlines and trucking industries (meaning you didn't need to have a licence to ship goods across state lines and go through monopoly trucking companies to get your goods to market) as well as appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chair w…

And Reagan also had the Iran Contra controversy which was selling arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. When asked in a deposition about what he knew, Reagan famously said, "I don't remember". It may have been a legal tactic to avoid culpability, but it could also have been real and highlighted the man's cognitive decline. Or worse, his advisors knew about the cognitive decline, kept information from him, and then ran their own foreign policy in the basement of the pentagon.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#78

Post by echelon »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #45
gadders wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The West didn't win the Cold War; the USSR lost it on its own.

And now its successor state is on a warpath and has seemingly free reign.

It didn't fail. It just regrouped and waited for western hegemony to grow weaker and indecisive.

I'd say we're back to where we started with a much tougher set of adversaries.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#79

Post by jfengel »

christianqchung wrote: post #36
jmclnx wrote: post #20

Looking back, to me he was a much better president then people believed in the 80s. I believe if he got re-elected in 1980, the US would be in a much better place. One thing, it could be argued real work on Climate Change would have begun in 1981 as opposed to where we are now, which is just watching the average probably blowing past 3C in around 70 years from now. For his loss in 1980, I still blame Kennedy. RIP, he…

After Ted Kennedy killed a woman[1], he never should've tried to run for president. And I say that as a Cape Cod native. When he finally died in 2009 he was literally replaced in the Senate by a Republican, throwing the Democrats into chaos. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident

That replacement didn't last long. The Democrats had an absolutely historic filibuster-proof majority. It's a bit odd that blue Massachusetts would choose a Republican, even a relatively moderate one, to replace Kennedy, but for the Senate as a whole it was something of a reversion to the mean. He did not win re-election, and was replaced by Elizabeth Warren.

It did derail the Democratic agenda, but mostly because Republicans made it their mission to ensure that Obama was a one term President. That has been policy ever since, and effectively zero legislation has come out of Congress since.

Democrats did manage to finesse the sole legislative accomplishment of the last couple of decades, the Affordable Care Act. In a lot of ways it was a fairly trivial change to the health care system, but getting anything passed at all was, in the Vice President's words, "a big [effing] deal".

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#80

Post by xrd »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #56
hylaride wrote: post #50

One could argue he set the stage for the 1980s economic boom by making short term sacrifices that cost him re-election. It was his administration that did market-oriented deregulation around airlines and trucking industries (meaning you didn't need to have a licence to ship goods across state lines and go through monopoly trucking companies to get your goods to market) as well as appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chair w…

I’m really worried that we just elected a president who clearly fixates on short term gains rather than long term planning. Biden did not mess that up, even if he is a one term president like Carter. It is nice to have adults in control, even if that is increasingly politically untenable.

You said it better than I would have. Biden put a lot of smart people around him, and together they made many long term investments in states that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. He will be remembered differently than he is now.
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