191–200 of 879 posts
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.
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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.
What's frustrating is that a few years ago a recession was predicted, and we avoided that. But no one seems to have even mentioned it during the election. Am I just misremembering this? At least in the tech sector, lots of layoffs seemed to be attributed to the coming downturn.
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What’s your reasoning there? The Soviet economy wasn’t especially dependent on the American presidency.
By announcing a complete vaporware known as SDI, while making a good impression it was very real, Reagan hinted at the possibility of changing the balance of power squarely to the American favor. The Soviets could not afford losing that balance, and they bought the Star Wars story -- hook, line and sinker -- so they went down the path of developing a similar system, and by doing so diverted even more money from the w…
> In 2014, a declassified CIA paper stated that "In response to SDI, Moscow threatened a variety of military countermeasures in lieu of developing a parallel missile defense system".
The Soviets had very capable scientists who could figure out - like Bethe in the US - that SDI was not feasible, and the easy work-around is to launch more missiles, not build their own SDI.
Or for something more scholarly, from "Did Star Wars Help End the Cold War? Soviet Response to the SDI Program" at https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs25podvig.pdf Science & Global Security, 2017, 25.1: 3-27.
> The evidence on the Soviet response to SDI that emerges from the internal documents largely corroborates the view that the Soviet Union eventually realized that this program did not present a danger to its security because it could be relatively easily countered with simple and effective countermeasures.
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When you compare Carter with the guy who's going to take office next month it shows how far we've fallen as a country. The previous era was already passing since about 2016, but with the death of Carter it seems like that era has died with him and it just feels very depressing.
While I agree with the general sentiment, I think the same could have been said regardless of which candidate won. It feels like the left moved left, the right moved right, and instead of catering to moderates, threatening them to pick a side. Said another way, I think a young Jimmy Carter type candidate would have wiped the floor with either side this election.
I don't disagree. It's a matter of degrees, though. The post-WWII era was always going to go away when everyone who remembered WWII (or were children of those who fought it) passed away. That's kind of where we are now.
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For these reasons, Jimmy Carter is my third-favorite president of the 20th century, behind my favorite, Calvin Coolidge, and my second-favorite, Dwight Eisenhower. I am a very big fan of Paul Volcker and I’m glad Jimmy Carter nominated him as chair of the Fed. I wish Reagan kept Volcker as chair during Reagan’s second term.
FDR doesn't make the cut?
He hardly ended the depression, economic conditions were poor until WW2 (eg look at the 1937 downturn, well into his tenure).
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.
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Ironically he did more deregulation than Reagan yet somehow we don’t remember it that way. For his electoral loss it’s just that Carter was never interested in the political manoeuvring. He was never going to have a good chance.
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As president, Carter gave the green light for Doo-hwan Chun to use force against the pro-democracy protests in Gwangju, S Korea. Later, sent to N Korea by president Clinton, he massively exceeded his authority and made a sweetheart deal that guaranteed N Korea would eventually build nukes. President Clinton found out about the deal on CNN with everyone else and never used Carter again. He also sandbagged president Re…