Posted on 01/09/2025 3:51:35 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Since his death, Jimmy Carter has been lauded for brokering the Camp David Accords and for his post-White House mission to help the poor and battle disease. But glossed over amid all the tributes is the burdensome legacy that Mr. Carter left for his Democratic Party: a presidency long caricatured as a symbol of ineffectiveness and weakness.
This perception has shadowed the party for nearly 40 years. It was forged in the seizure of American hostages by Iranian militants in 1979 and the failed military attempt to free them, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. And it lingered in memories of Mr. Carter wearing a cardigan as he asked Americans to conserve energy, or bemoaning what he called a “crisis of confidence” in an address to the nation that became a textbook example of political self-harm.
Over the decades, these events have provided endless fodder for attacks by Republicans, who reveled in invoking Mr. Carter’s name to deride Democrats. And that mockery, in turn, influenced the way Democrats have presented themselves to voters. Without Mr. Carter’s image of weakness on national security and defense, for example, it is hard to imagine the party’s war-hero candidate for president in 2004 introducing himself with a salute at its nominating convention and saying, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.”
Mr. Carter’s political legacy produced what many analysts argue was a kind of conditioned response: an overreaction among Democrats anxious to avoid comparisons to him on foreign policy issues. This was evident in the roster of prominent congressional Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who voted for the 2002 resolution that authorized President George W. Bush to take the nation to war in Iraq, a vote many said they came to...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Actually Woodrow Wilson was the worst.
Carter’s grandstanding during the Clinton administration wasn’t very helpful either... Showing up in North Korea in 1994 and negotiating with Kim Il-Sung... The result... North Korea violated the agreement Carter had dreamt up and continued to develop nuclear weapons. The Clinton administration gave North Korea piles of money to ‘not’ do what they actually ended up doing... So that whole fiasco was just another foreign policy failure by Carter.
Always was and always will be a POS to me- though i must thank that POS- i was in high school during those disastrous years and Carter was the one who turned me into a full fledged Conservative.
Got up at 0500 to drink coffee and watch the news, getting ready for work.
Turned on the TV and there was ole Jimmy, standing on a tarmac in Egypt and left behind as the helicopter carrying off the diseased body of Yasser Arafat flew away to the W Bank.
Best Funeral Ever; had everything going on.
Former US president that got snubbed.
Helicopter that had it’s rotor blades shot up.
People failing down from bullets raining down.
Arafat’s body being thrown into a hole in a parking lot.
Nothing could top the body of the Ayatollah Khomeini falling out of his coffin during his funeral procession.
The Victor Davis Hanson Show 1/7/25 | Life Under Carter and the Immigrant Mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvgMpP9WNv0
In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Jack Fowler examine election to the speakership, diplomacy under Jimmy Carter (hostages in Iran, inflation), farming in the 1980s, corporate v. small farming, Islamic immigrant attitudes and psychology, the choice to go back home, and wishy-washy woke companies and the insurance market.
My comment: VDH nails Jimmy Carter by recounting his failures using Victor’s deep historical/political understanding. Worth listening to.
Camp David Accords = U.S. sends $2 billion annually in “aid money” since 1979 to Egypt to pretend not to make war with Israel, while Egypt builds secret tunnels to Gaza to arm Hamas.
Jimmy Carter gave the Panama Canal away for $1. Now, the Panamanians have given much of the operation over to China.
However, his most egregious act was to betray the Shah of Iran and allow Mullah Khomeini who had been exiled to France to return and take over Iran, turning it into an Islamic Republic. Since then, thousands of Iranians and other people in the Middle East have been killed. The mess in Israel with Hamas and Hezbollah, is only part of the result.
Today, all we read about is Carter’s work building homes with Habitat for Humanity. Tell that to the families of all the people who are dead thanks to Carter.
Until the arrival of Obama, Carter was our worst President. Of course, Biden has taken over that No. 1 spot.
“Nothing could top the body of the Ayatollah Khomeini falling out of his coffin during his funeral procession.”
The jeep carrying Castro that broke down is up there.
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