Posted on 02/24/2013 12:58:25 PM PST by Rennes Templar
Only a few weeks ago, Lincoln was assumed to be the surefire winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture. Not since Gregory Peck in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird has an actor performed with the unforgettable gravitas of Daniel Day-Lewis playing Abraham Lincoln in the months before his assassination. But a funny thing happened when the horses turned the bend at the Golden Globe Awards.
Argo, based on a CIA-led rescue mission in 1980 that smuggled six American diplomats out of Tehran at the tail end of Carter’s presidency, suddenly has all the Oscar momentum. And, in a serendipitous way, Hollywood is according some newfound respect to the Man from Plains. It is a happy coincidence that Argo came out within months of Carter’s grandson, James Carter IV, releasing Mitt Romney’s idiotic (and now infamous) 47 percent speech in Boca Raton. This political leak, combined with the release of the film, has turned the ex-president into a new cult favorite among many Democrats who had previously been disenchanted with him over some of his recent views on Middle Eastern affairs.
While it is true that there is no such thing as a Carter Democrat, historians are starting to see our 39th president as a flawed, yet visionary leader. Everyone knows he should have won a Nobel Peace Prize back in 1979 for negotiating the historic Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. And he has received a lifetime of kudos for injecting human rights into our diplomatic parlance. His post-presidential work with the Carter Center fighting guinea-worm disease, river blindness, and other plagues has likewise turned him into a global humanitarian folk hero. But a number of other aspects of Carter’s White House tenure are starting to likewise be favorably remembered.
In both his Second Inaugural Address and his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama evoked climate change as the ultimate challenge of the 21st century. But it was Carter who first crusaded for the U.S. to wean itself off of its dependence on oil. As president, he signed into law the National Energy Act and the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act (both of which championed conservation and domestic energy supply development). Long before it was trendy, Carter preached the gospel of alternative energy. He even created the U.S. Department of Energy, in part to inspire new wind-solar-fuel-cell alternatives to oil and coal. Stones were thrown his way in response. One of the first things Ronald Reagan did upon assuming the presidency in 1981 was to tear down the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House’s roof. Carter – Mr. Clean Energy – had become the butt of innumerable jokes. But, in hindsight, he was right to worry fiercely about our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.
What’s also making Carter’s rehabilitation interesting is the “I didn’t know that” factor. Carter, for example, almost doubled the size of the National Park Service as president. Only Theodore Roosevelt and FDR were his equal in the conservation realm. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 alone created or expanded 15 National Park Service sites, and 79.5 million protected acres. If it weren’t for Carter, wild Alaska today would be despoiled beyond recognition.
Carter also deserves credit for establishing Channel Islands National Park in Southern California, the favorite marine paradise of many in the movie industry, and for protecting the Dakota Badlands from ruin. Additionally, his Superfund law has led to the cleanup of dozens of toxic waste sites throughout the country. In my estimation, the greatest environmental speech ever delivered to Congress was Carter’s stunningly prescient May 23, 1977 message.
And Carter was the avatar of mass-transit. The railroad industry was collapsing from regulatory roadblocks, price controls and trucking lobby influence on Capital Hill when he became president. Carter's deregulation saved America's trains from bankruptcy. Perhaps, even more importantly, Carter deregulated the telecommunications world, spearheading the cable TV, cell phone and Internet revolutions.
~snip~
Douglas Brinkley is Professor of History at Rice University and CBS News Historian.
Ben Affleck is not up for the acting award... i think he should have been nominated for best director--but was not nominated... i don't care if Lincoln or Argo wins best picture... (i do want Lincoln to win, but if Argo wins, i'm okay with that)... however, Daniel Day Lewis had BETTER win the best actor award... he deserves it... while i liked Bradley Cooper's performance in Silver Linings Playbook, i don't think his role was as complicated as the Lincoln role... i would be sad if Day Lewis does not win... love that guy...
You know and I know who is going to win it, and why.
I just didn't think Argo was that great a movie. For me it was like watching a TV movie...somewhat entertaining but forgettable. And, like I said, his agenda was clear.
So, I see that Douglas Brinkley is just another revisionist.
I’ll never pay any attention to anything he says or writes in the future.
I cast him into the dustbin of American historians, alongside Doris Kearns Goodwin.
I don’t see how it helps Carter’s reputation. In the movie he’s ineffectual and almost kills the mission that works so they can get them in the big rescue mission (which we all know failed).
That was my reaction.
It must get to him that conservatives can ignore propaganda and enjoy a good story through it while the libs in Hwood probably hate this film.
They cannot destroy our memory of history. Carter was inept.
Any smart director or producer will grab this and get moving on a film about the 444 days with as much sincerity as was done with this story but they’re not smart, not about this wonderful country of theirs.
FEB, 2013 JIMSIN FIRST PRIZE CHICKEN DINNER
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Of course to diffuse Reagan's reputation for succeeding in the bolder rescue was the real agenda IMO.
do tell! you're scaring me!
btw—my second fave to win is Hugh Jackman... i wish he and Day Lewis could both win... :)
IT’s portrayed as his only having been there a day and a half.
The Canadians were great.
So were the embassy staff, probably true.
Few of them will want to help bolster Reagan's reputation but I agree it would be nice to see.
Imagine a University such as Rice University supposedly known for academic excellence would have a professor such as this teaching our children. Carter should have never been President. He was also being controlled by the Middle East.
Carter was such a damn disgrace that we had Ross Perot and Bull Simons rescue the EDS workers of Perot. “Bull” Simons led the Son Tay Raid as a full colonel in late 1970. Carter was/is a damn joke. Carter served in the navy, but; he never saw any action. Carter disgraced this nation for months.
In real life he OKed it. In the movie he OKed it then rescinded at the last minute and then got “overridden” by Tony and others at the CIA. Not very good for his reputation.
The “bolder rescue” failed. Reagan got a negotiated release. I think the real agenda was to put a good story on the screen. I’ve seen the movie twice, once just last night, and there’s none of your”agenda” in it, it’s not just in your opinion, it’s from your head. Carter looks like an idiot in the movie for putting the state department in charge of the rescue in the first place then canceling the mission in the second.
A lot a liberals hate Carter too. Remember that “The Swimmer” hated his guts.
“Carter in the left’s view (he caused us to have 8 years of (Reagan))? Yes!!!!”
Begs the next question, Obama will have caused us to have 8 years of______?
And Bush gave us 8 years of Obama.
Haha! Good one!
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