Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Ford called Carter a 'disaster'
AP on Yahoo ^ | 1/12/07 | AP

Posted on 01/12/2007 1:45:53 PM PST by NormsRevenge

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - In 25 years of interviews with his hometown paper that could only be released upon his death, former President Ford once called Jimmy Carter a "disaster" who ranked alongside Warren Harding, and said Ronald Reagan received far too much credit for ending the Cold War.

"It makes me very irritated when Reagan's people pound their chests and say that because we had this big military buildup, the Kremlin collapsed," Ford told The Grand Rapids Press.

The best president of his lifetime, Ford said, was a more moderate Republican: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Harry Truman "would get very high marks" for his handling of foreign crises, Ford said. He also praised Richard Nixon as a foreign policy master, despite the Watergate scandal that drove him from office.

Ford considered John F. Kennedy overrated and Bill Clinton average. He admired George H.W. Bush's handling of the Persian Gulf War and had mixed opinions of Carter, who defeated Ford in 1976.

In 1981, Ford said: "I think Jimmy Carter would be very close to Warren G. Harding. I feel very strongly that Jimmy Carter was a disaster, particularly domestically and economically. I have said more than once that he was certainly the poorest president in my lifetime."

But two years later, he praised Carter's performance on the Panama Canal treaty, China and the Middle East. And in 1998, he said Carter "will be looked on as a better president than some comments we hear today."

"He was a very decent, fine individual," Ford told the paper. "There were no major mistakes. There just weren't a lot of exciting results."

Ford's gave the interviews on the condition that his remarks be withheld until after his death.

According to the newspaper, Ford declined to rate George W. Bush, saying he did not know him well enough.

Ford said Reagan, who challenged him unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination in 1976, was "a great spokesman for attractive political objectives" such as a balanced budget and defeating communism, "but when it came to implementation, his record never matched his words."

Reagan was "probably the least well-informed on the details of running the government of any president I knew," Ford said. In a separate interview, he said Reagan "was just a poor manager, and you can't be president and do a good job unless you manage."

Ford contended his own negotiation of the Helsinki accords on human rights did more to win the Cold War than Reagan's military buildup. Other key factors were the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II and the establishment of NATO, he said.

"When you put peace, prosperity and human rights against poverty, a massive unsuccessful military program and a lack of human rights, communism was bound to collapse," he said. "No president, no Democrat or Republican, can claim credit for those programs. I'll tell you who deserves the credit — the American people."


TOPICS: Breaking News; Foreign Affairs; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: apbias; carter; carterlegacy; deathofford; disaster; duh; ford; geraldford; jimmuh; jimmycarter; mediabias; worstexpresident
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 161-180181-200201-220 ... 261-267 next last
To: Admin Moderator

I wonder if it would be possible to add this to the title:
(also called Reagan a 'poor manager')

The topic might get more hits that way.


181 posted on 01/13/2007 12:31:16 PM PST by EveningStar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: All

A moose eats berries from a tree in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, Saturday, Jan. 13, 2007, as the Alaska flag, in background, flies at half-staff in honor of former President Gerald R. Ford. (AP Photo/Al Grillo)


182 posted on 01/13/2007 2:50:49 PM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ...... California 2007,, Where's a script re-write guy when ya need 'em?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 181 | View Replies]

To: Stultis
What I criticize was the magnitude of Volcker's rate hikes and the severity of the recession. Reagan also commissioned a blue ribbon panel to study a return to the gold standard, but they rightly rejected it, which I'm sure disappointed many supply siders and Austrians.

The best way to restore confidence in a currency medium and long term is for a government to stop wasteful spending and to let its economy grow, and Reagan did that. Hiking interest rates and currency interventions can be a good short term measure to change the direction of a currency. But induced recessions and other forms of economic pain are simply unnecessary. They do make the Federal Reserve look powerful and satisfy the sadist side of many.

183 posted on 01/13/2007 3:57:06 PM PST by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 179 | View Replies]

To: Moonman62
What I criticize was the magnitude of Volcker's rate hikes and the severity of the recession.

My only point is that you thereby criticize Reagan too. This was his policy also, or at any rate one that he fully agreed with and recognized the absolute necessity of, as the groundwork of and integral to the rest of his economic policy. (Of course I recognize that the President has no direct control over the Fed except in the appointment power.)

Look, there is just NO other way to kill inflation than by tightening the money supply (i.e. hiking interest rates). Nothing else works, and everything else had been tried by Reagan's predecessors; Nixon, Carter and Ford.

The availability of money is what drives inflation. Of course the availability of money is also (a necessary part of) what drives the growth of the economy. Inflationary economies are even more dependent on money to sustain economic growth, precisely because so much of its value gets eaten up by inflation.

If you tighten money sufficient to kill inflation you WILL contract the economy, temporarily, because you're also cutting the supply of money necessary to sustain growth in an inflationary economy. This however is necessary to create the conditions for long term real economic growth.

Every time and anywhere high inflation has been successfully conquered it's always been achieved by tight money policy, and the initiation of this policy has always and everywhere created significant economic pain in the short term.

But induced recessions and other forms of economic pain are simply unnecessary.

You are absolutely wrong about that. In the condition of an inflationary economy, recession, in the short term, is an absolutely unavoidable consequence of tight money policy, and tight money policy is the ONLY way to stop runaway inflation.

184 posted on 01/13/2007 4:15:07 PM PST by Stultis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 183 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge
So what? Ford was a left wing idiot. We already knew that.
185 posted on 01/13/2007 4:19:10 PM PST by Timmy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge
It is pretty well known, that he never got over the challenge he got from Regan in 76, then after he got bounced by Carter, to see Regan come in and attain icon status really irritated him.

What I will always remember about Ford was that he refused to meet with Soviet dissidents for fear of upsetting the Communists.
186 posted on 01/13/2007 4:28:43 PM PST by NavVet (O)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: sobieski; Carry_Okie
It must've been his refusal to meet Solzhenitsyn when he was expelled from the USSR that did the trick

Good point. And this is what makes Ford's claim bogus that it wasn't Reagan, but he (Ford), that should be credited with undermining the legitimacy of the Soviet Union because it was he (Ford) who had negotiated the Helsinki Accords.

But in the short term the Helsinki Accords shored up the legitimacy of the Soviet Union in effectively recognizing and securing their post WWII gains in Eastern Europe.

Ford never utilized the human rights aspects of the Accords to undermine the Soviet Union. It was Reagan who innovated in this respect. And it was dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, who Reagan supported at every opportunity (including MAKING opportunities), and who Ford pointedly ignored so as not to "provoke" the Soviets, who successfully pressured the international community to set up the organs, which Reagan then aggressively used, to implement the human rights aspects of the Accords.

187 posted on 01/13/2007 4:29:37 PM PST by Stultis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 180 | View Replies]

To: Tallguy

Disagree -- tax cuts are inherently anti-inflationary. They do not increase the money supply - they simply transfer resources from the wasteful, inefficient public sector to the much less wasteful, much more efficient and productive private sector. Thus tax cuts make the economy more efficient. The text book definition of efficiency says it is increased when outputs from a system (in this case, our economy) are increased relative to the inputs. As you noted, inflation is defined as too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. Tax cuts increase the outputs of the economy and thus are a perfect policy response to the problem of inflation.


188 posted on 01/13/2007 4:34:39 PM PST by WarrenC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 137 | View Replies]

To: Moonman62
the magnitude of Volcker's rate hikes

I suppose you can kill inflation s-l-o-w-l-y with very gradual tightening of the money supply, but this only lengthens the period of economic pain. You can't avoid it. Much better to do it quickly, like pulling off a bandaid. Volker did the right thing, as Reagan always recognized and affirmed. (Admittedly some of Reagan's aids and lieutenants went "wobbly" on monetary policy during the recessionary period, but to my recollection Reagan himself never did.)

189 posted on 01/13/2007 4:36:31 PM PST by Stultis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 183 | View Replies]

To: NotJustAnotherPrettyFace

Re MCA; a small and little known fact is that in 1967 MCA funded a small group of Caltech grads and others to do some research on digital imaging, resulting in the very first digital disk being made and replayed with full color and sound from a TV program. The whole thing was done with a budget of less than 2.5 mil with the whole idea and patents sold to Phillips in the Netherlands.... now you know where your DVD's came from......


190 posted on 01/13/2007 4:39:58 PM PST by OregonRancher (illigitimus non carborundun)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

Jimmy Carter drinks toilet water.


191 posted on 01/13/2007 4:45:06 PM PST by YourAdHere (Buy My Book, "Bradypalooza," from Amazon. Com.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: LC HOGHEAD

"Jimmy Carter was the worst Prez of the 20th century without doubt !!!"

Lyndon Johnson was worse.


192 posted on 01/13/2007 5:10:05 PM PST by Clintonfatigued ("Appointing Earl Warren was the biggest damn fool thing I ever did." Dwight D. Eisenhower)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Clintonfatigued

How about FDR?


193 posted on 01/13/2007 6:16:55 PM PST by sobieski
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 192 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge
Sour grapes?

Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were both third-rate minds who were incapable of understanding economics. Their confusion was the result of laziness (all they had to do was read Milton Friedman), and hanging out with beltway liberals.

Their habit of publicly criticizing the Republican presidents who followed them showed they were brothers under the skin.

The only useful thing either of them ever did was pave the way for Ronald Reagan through their gross incompetence.

And, of course, neither of them ever forgave Reagan for succeeding.

194 posted on 01/13/2007 6:26:05 PM PST by Liberty Wins (Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of all who threaten it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge
Ford contended his own negotiation of the Helsinki accords on human rights did more to win the Cold War than Reagan's military buildup

LOL!

195 posted on 01/13/2007 7:10:38 PM PST by Rodney King (No, we can't all just get along.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

I'd just like to know what Ford was thinking when he allowed all those criticisms of Republicans to be released as soon as he died.

Did it not occur to him that the drive-by media would take advantage of the publicity of his death to highlight those criticisms?

Or did he intend it that way? If so, then he stabbed his fellow Republicans in the back.

He should have allowed the interviews to released a year after his death or something like that.


196 posted on 01/13/2007 7:20:29 PM PST by RussP
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: WarrenC
As you noted, inflation is defined as too many dollars chasing too few goods and services.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the government printing presses . . .

The classic short route to massive inflation has always been printing money without anything solid to back it up. (As in the American Revolution, the Confederacy, South American banana republics, and most recently the attempts by certain rogue nations to flood the U.S. with counterfeit currency to cause inflation.)

This was explained in easy-to-understand terms by Milton Friedman in his television series "Free to Choose" and book by the same title.

His writings, by the way, not only influenced Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, they were circulated underground behind the Iron Curtain before it fell in 1989.

197 posted on 01/13/2007 7:40:49 PM PST by Liberty Wins (Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of all who threaten it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 188 | View Replies]

To: Stultis
Ford never utilized the human rights aspects of the Accords to undermine the Soviet Union.

Yup. Kissinger's celebrated "pragmatism" enabled our enemies nearly as much as did Carter's unilateral capitulation.

198 posted on 01/13/2007 7:53:59 PM PST by Carry_Okie (The Grovelnator: fashionable fascism, one mirage at a time.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 187 | View Replies]

carter disaster


199 posted on 01/13/2007 8:24:48 PM PST by Coleus (Roe v. Wade and Endangered Species Act both passed in 1973, Murder Babies/save trees, birds, insects)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: samtheman
Mediocre and insignificant. A placeholder between elections, nothing more. Helsinki was a hollow shell of PR, like all "summit agreements" with the Soviets. The genius of Ronald Reagan was that he went to Reykjavik and had the sense and courage to walk away from a bad deal. First time it ever happened in the age of summitry and it tolled the death knell of the USSR. Ford was too obtuse to see this, even after the fall.
200 posted on 01/13/2007 8:57:42 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 161-180181-200201-220 ... 261-267 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson