Posted on 12/29/2024 4:08:18 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Jimmy Carter’s melancholy fate was to be a largely derivative figure: He was a reaction against his elected predecessor and the precursor of his successor. Richard Nixon made Carter tempting; Carter made Ronald Reagan necessary.
The deceits and crimes of Nixon’s imperial presidency bred Carter’s pompous crusade against pomp. Carter proclaimed “I’ll never lie to you” while claiming that he was a “nuclear physicist.” He denied saying what a tape proved he said about Lyndon Johnson’s “lying, cheating and distorting the truth.”
Carter’s signature achievement, peace between Israel and Egypt, diminished the threat of another conventional Middle East war. In his post-presidency interventions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, his hostility toward Israel was proportional to his admiration for the terrorist Yasser Arafat. Here Carter was mostly harmless because the “peace process” was mostly chimeric.
But for President Gerald Ford’s debate blunder in 1976 — “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” — Carter probably would not have become president. He won 50.1 percent of the vote, lost the vote outside the South, and a switch of a total of 18,000 votes in Ohio — home of many of Eastern European origins — and Hawaii would have elected Ford (disregarding a faithless elector in Washington state).
Carter was the first non-incumbent elected from the South since the Civil War and the most conservative Democratic president since Grover Cleveland, which is why the liberal post-Watergate congressional Democrats would have despised him even if he had disguised his contempt for them. With airlines, he began the deregulation project inimical to progressives and excellent for the nation.
Candidate Carter proclaimed himself “optimistic about America’s third century” and promised “a government as good as the people.” As president,...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Nixon’s imperial presidency”
what a dirtbag mf’r Will is
lol...he was an abortionist, who allowed the murder of children in the womb...he ran as a pro-life fundamentalist, as a good ol boy, born again from the south and did the devils work as a deceiver to all then supported abortion...
At least he lived long enough to see the rise of Trump/MAGA and the imminent demise of most of what he believed in.
Barrack Obama is the President who made Carter the Second Worst President in history, and then Obama’s 4th term with Biden pushed Carter to 3d place for worst all time president, just ahead of Jefferson Davis.
Uhh..dude...
I was in the military under cahtah..
We had sailors on welfare...
Our aircraft had no fuel...
We had no spare parts for our aircraft...
Our squadron had 4 aircraft, there was never more than 2 systems ready...
Cahtah DECIMATED Our military.
He was so bad that I still, to this day, don’t qualify for membership in the VFW, or the American Legion.
I don’t know what planet you were living on, but it wasn’t here.
It’s amazing that anybody pays George Will for his thoughts and thinks people should read them.
I was discussing how he responded to Afghanistan, which was late in his presidency. I know it sucked prior, but he then went after the problems in a FAR MORE coherent way than Biden’s people - who continued to push Woke and shrinkage of our military, even as they were careening into WW3 on at least 2 fronts. Carter’s response at least made some sense.
He didn’t live long enough to see Trump clean up the mess Carter started with IRAN.
Oh dear lord, reading a precanned obit about Jimmy Carter by George Will is as tiresome, pedantic, and predictable as reading an “Unplugged NextRush” post.
Ouch !
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I seem to remember a gambling Debt!
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/$
No matter what anyone says about Jimmy 100 years old is amazing
Jimmy was a decent chap. About all I can say for him.
Good point. But, to be nice, rip jimmuh.
George Will - I remember when he was considered conservative. Now he’s just another establishment relic, reminiscing about ancient history.
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”
He had exquisite taste in bow ties back then. 🤡
BS. Mosaddegh was no Jeffersonian democrat. He was supported by the Communist Tudeh Party that was aligned with the Soviet Union, which had a huge embassy in Tehran. It was all about oil and Soviet expansionism.
In 1953 we were in a major struggle with the Soviets and their surrogates in Korea, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere.
I disagree with you one one point, being the military was allowed to deteriorate under Carter. Reagan is the one that got it back up to par.
“I disagree with you one one point, being the military was allowed to deteriorate under Carter. Reagan is the one that got it back up to par.”
We’re not far apart. The deterioration of the military began under Nixon as we started pulling out of Vietnam, then Ford, then Carter. This country has a habit of celebrating the ‘Peace Dividend’ with a lot more booze than we should (example, we virtually had no military when the Korean War started).
But with Afghanistan, Carter learned (the hard way, but did learn) that the Soviets meant business, and so, at the end of his term, he did move to massively increase defense spending. Carter even admitted to not understanding the Soviets (actually not trusting those who kept warning him), but to EVER hear a mistake admitted from the Democrats now, crickets.
“....The deceits and crimes of Nixon’s imperial presidency ...” (Added to include some truth and logic) were outdone by the end of the Biden Crime Family’s first month. Get serious, WaPo, Biden is pure slime, excrement, putrescence, and ooze wrapped into a low IQ child sniffing excuse for a male body. It will take our country years, if not decades to recover from the damage he and his fellow loathsome pretenders have done. Journalism - when one fails their studies classes.
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