Posted on 01/23/2006 6:45:21 PM PST by HonduGOP
CARTER UNMASKED "Jimmy Carter's reputation for idealism has been one of the great swindles of American politics for two decades." -- The New Republic
The Real Jimmy Carter by Steven F. Hayward The Nobel Prize is just the beginning: Jimmy Carter is enjoying a new day in the sun, with left-wing historians taking a "fresh look" at his disastrous presidency and trying to bamboozle Americans into thinking that it was actually successful. This ongoing Saint Jimmy campaign would be laughable if it weren't part of a larger strategy to whitewash the records of failed Democrats and justify Carter's outsize influence on today's Democratic party. Although the voters decisively dispatched Jimmy Carter in 1980, his legacy lives on in potent form today and is likely to survive his death. But now in The Real Jimmy Carter Steven F. Hayward demolishes the Carter myth once and for all.
Hayward knows a real leader when he sees one (he's the author of The Age of Reagan, 1964-1980 and Churchill on Leadership) and in this book he provides a wealth of devastating new information that proves that Carter was and is one of the worst American leaders in history. He explains why Carter's presidency really was as bad as we thought at the time, or worse. Turning to today, he details how Carter's lasting and dominant impact on the Democratic Party -- the party of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton -- has been calamitous, and why his supposed status as a "model" ex-president is the reverse of the truth (unless your idea of a model statesman is Jesse Jackson). Steven F. Hayward reveals:
How Carter's political persona amounts to little more than an odd combination of Machiavelli and Mr. Rogers
Why the editor of the Atlanta Constitution called Carter "one of the three or four phoniest men I ever met"
How Carter has again and again shown himself bereft of a solid intellectual foundation for his political views
Carter as a politician: his habits of exaggeration, disingenuousness, and outright deception -- belying his claim to occupy the moral high ground
Carter's weak, vacillating position on school desegregation as a member of a Georgia school board in the 1950s
Carter's 1970 run for Georgia governor: after conducting an appallingly cynical race-baiting campaign, he immediately proclaimed that the time had come for the South to repudiate its racist ways
Why Carter the renowned liberal moralist once declared that "Lester Maddox is the embodiment of the Democratic Party" and "George Wallace and I are in agreement on most issues"
Jimmy's loopy side: who's the only person elected to the presidency to have filed a UFO-sighting report with the Air Force? You guessed it
Why the national media ignored Carter's race-baiting and made him one of the darlings of the Democratic party in the early 1970s
How, despite claiming to be "above politics," Carter used the traditional weapons of power as Governor: patronage appointments, attempts to maneuver his supporters into key legislative posts, and more
False: Carter's claim, made during his 1976 presidential run, that he was a nuclear physicist
Abortion: how Carter's 1976 position on this issue vividly displayed his ability to stand on both sides of an issue
How Carter's 1976 election as president was not a fluke of the post-Watergate moment, but the fruit of his own carefully planned five-year effort
Why even Carter's notorious use of foul language in his mid-campaign Playboy interview may have been the result of careful calculation
Carter: born again? Disquieting evidence that he was not as much "one of us" as evangelical Christians assumed in 1976
The massive blunder Carter committed as President -- that was repeated by Bill Clinton in 1993
President Carter's foreign policy: "McGovernism without McGovern"
The Camp David accords: why Anwar Sadat exclaimed, "I'd just spent two years throwing the Soviets out of the Middle East, and now the United States is inviting them back in"
The Carter executive order that Barry Goldwater blasted as "the most disgraceful thing a president has ever done"
Inside the Carter White House during the disasters of the Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua, the energy crisis and the Khomeini Revolution and hostage crisis in Iran
The "malaise speech": why Carter made it, and the effect it had on his failed presidency
Global 2000: the doom-and-gloom study that Carter released shortly before leaving the presidency -- how most of its predictions have turned out to be wildly wrong
Why the Carter Administration believed that the old Cold War strategy of containment was no longer necessary
How Carter made direct contacts with Soviet officials to try to subvert President Reagan's anti-Communist policies
Revealed: the shocking extent of Carter's clandestine efforts to sabotage the first Gulf War in 1990
The Clinton Administration: how it became Carter's virtual second term, despite Slick Willie's disdain for Carter
How Carter's perspective has become dominant among contemporary liberals and his Democratic Party successors
Carter's Nobel Prize: how a Nobel official inadvertently revealed that it was actually meant as a slap in the face of the American people
Carter the meddling ex-president: how, in the words of Time magazine's Lance Morrow, some of his "Lone Ranger work has taken him dangerously close to the neighborhood of what we used to call treason"
Bank robber Willie Sutton's assessment of Carter: "I've never seen a bigger confidence man in my life, and I've been around some of the best in the business" Steven Hayward demonstrates again and again that Jimmy Carter's failures weren't just accidents of history. They're rooted in the character and ideology of the man himself. This wouldn't concern anyone except Rosalynn and Amy if it weren't for the fact that Carter continues to insert himself in the nation's business, both at home and around the world. But The Real Jimmy Carter proves that the Emperor from Plains has no clothes -- and never has.
While Carter was President, he was out fishing and claimed that a vicious rabbit swam out to attack him. I am not kidding.
Sounds good. Could anyone recommend the best anti-Kennedys book?
For years, when presented with the tired old adage that "oh, he's a good man, he just wasn't a good president," I've disagreed vehemently.
MM
If one lists the bad things each did in his official capacity, I think Carter's got Clinton beat by 5280'. Clinton's unofficial actions during his term may have been worse that Carter's during his term, but looking at official acts there's no comparison.
I'll disagree on that. At least Slickmeister has the Republican congress keeping him somewhat in line during his terms. Carter had the whole enchilada during his term.
In the book "Reagan's War" the tale is told about how Fidel Castro did not want the US the do miltary exercises at Guantanomo, so Fidel had a few protesters protest and sure enough Carter called it off with Castro laughing his head off.
Does anyone have a good link for the Rabbit story?
The only good thing in the Carter White House was brother Billy.
Wow! BUMP!
Carter sounds like an early version of Bill Clinton, but without the sex and drugs.
Jimmy Carter is one of the top 2 or 3 greatest traitors ever to have soiled the WH.
Actually it should go to LBJ.
Chuckle.
"Carter was the worst President - Clinton was the worst man ever to become President"
Excellent quote.
BTW, someone just pointed out that Kennedy was also a bad man for his many sexual exploits in office. However, I still rank the impeached liar Clinton far below Kennedy, any day of the week.
I no longer think that Carter was only incompetent. His decisions as president added to his present-day speeches tell me he is something worse; a man who doesn't believe in his country and one who is willing to say so in time of war.
You have also forgot that his wife took a picture with John Wayne Gacy.
You know, in another thread I remarked how I always regret missing the Reagan years. However, I must admit to being very happy not to having had lived through the Carter years.
No, it should go to Carter simply because he was such an inept politician. Clinton at least had some political savvy (at least when his pants were zipped up)
I think Carter was more malicious in that he convinced so many people that he wasn't.
The massive blunder Carter committed as President -- that was repeated by Bill Clinton in 1993
The Carter executive order that Barry Goldwater blasted as "the most disgraceful thing a president has ever done"
I've been trying to think of the Goldwater thing ALL DAY!
Probably federalizing half of Alaska for the National Parks.
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