Assessing the political life of Jimmy Carter

I think we have to ensure we don't overstate Carter's presidency in light of what followed. Erik Loomis, who got his PhD in History at University of New Mexico, where I am currently seeking my Master's in History, and is a respected historian back east, wrote a great political-historical obit on Carter immediately after Carter's death at the ripe age of 100. I also appreciated this essay from a man who was a major player at the Carter Center, who loudly and unfairly resigned after Carter published his prescient and prophetic book, "Peace, Not Apartheid" in November 2006. Yeah, Steve Berman, you definitely needed to apologize to Carter, and I am glad you did so while he was alive.

However, the following need to be recalled about Carter's presidency:

1. In retrospect, Carter may be best described as the first post-New Deal Democratic Party president or first modern Democratic neoliberal president. Carter never understood the importance of labor unions, first off. He helped kill what was the last moment for the rest of the century and through now to pass important labor law reform legislation. He refused to intervene and speak publicly and strongly for the deeply labor law reform bill, and let right-wing Republicans in the Senate win a filibuster by one vote short of cloture to end the debate. The labor law reform had already passed the House. At one point, Carter's staff threatened to veto the bill if it came to his desk. I know that last one because I was a congressional intern in that summer of 1978 and was listening in to meetings of what were called The Irish Mafia led by Tip O'Neill and Ted Kennedy and their staffs (they would appear at meetings, but not stay for long). I worked for a lower level congress member of that group, Eddie Pattern (D-NJ). There is a reason why Teddy Kennedy finally decided to primary him, and this refusal to push for labor law reform was a major factor in that decision. There is also now reason to understand machinist union leader, Bill Wimpisinger's acid comment. When asked, "What can President Carter do to restore union people's faith in the Democratic Party," Wimply responded, "Die."

2. Carter appointed Paul Volcker to head the Fed to crush the economy with high interest rates. Carter strangely thought that would help him in his re-election campaign for 1980. Carter didn't really believe in New Deal type of legislation and instead supported tax cuts. This leads to number three...

3. Carter, the same summer he said the Congress should not take up the labor law reform bill because he was pushing for the Panama Canal Treaty, pushed for and got the first capital gains tax cuts, beating Reagan out on the topic by three years. Again, I was there, and was shocked at what I saw, because I was a Jimmy Carter fan, especially after reading Hunter Thompson's famous essay in Rolling Stone.

4. Carter's administration had released his proposed military budgets for a second term of 1981-1985. If one reads it, one sees the Reagan military build up would have occurred anyway. Carter's defense chief, Harold Brown, was a major war hawk (meaning war criminal for the rest of us).

5. Carter dithered while the oil companies reaped tremendous profits in the last two years of his term. He simply accepted the oligopoly in oil as capitalism, and, like another one term engineer, Herbert Hoover, believed there was little he could do.

6. Despite placing human rights at the center of his rhetoric, Carter presided over the rise in Central American death squads, and funneled money to Guatemala through Israel, when the Guatemalan death squads became too hot a topic in the US Congress. One needs to at least skim the late journalist Penny Lernoux's "Cry of the People" (1980 edition), which shows the continuities from Nixon through Carter in this regard. I will give him props for Robert White, his El Salvador ambassador, who saw how horrible the death squads were and how the El Salvadoran government was ultimately behind those squads, no matter their denials. And with regard to Iran, he had no business listening to David Rockefeller and the Cold War Establishment in having the Shah return to the US for medical treatment--which was true this time, but which Iranians believed was the same lie told in 1953 when the US was plotting its infamous coup against Mossedegh to reinstall the Shah. Carter brought on himself what became the Iranian hostage crisis--though it is now fairly clear Reagan's people interfered with the hostages' return in 1980 to ensure Reagan could make Carter look weak.

7. Despite the above, as with Clinton, Obama, and Biden, there are bright spots to be sure. They start with judicial appointments, and a few brave souls who Carter appointed to administrative roles who tried, in good faith, to do good business regulatory work. There were increases in the minimum wage, but those were hard-fought with a Carter White House which gave the rhetoric but wondered, in the meetings with Congressional leaders, why increases were necessary. Again, as stated at the start, Carter did not really understand the New Deal or the utility of labor unions.

So, please. It is more than appropriate to mourn the end of Carter's long life, and describe him as the greatest ex-president since John Quincy Adams. One may state in that regard how he was so often a force for peace, post-presidency, and his gallant work with getting Israel and Egypt to peace (mostly pushing Israel, one must add). But, please do not overstate what was a failed presidency. He was not hampered by a bad faith Congress the way John Quincy Adams was, for example, which opposed Adams even on things they agreed with him about in order to make him a failed president. Carter had much more ability to make good things happen, and his micromanagement and his inability to get beyond neolib nostrums that opposed New Deal politics ultimately did him in.