Everyone has been talking since the new broke today about how decent and honest and an actual faith-faithful Christian Jimmy Carter was, as well as his being essentially the anti-Trump when it came to post-Presidential behavior, and that’s all true. He was also very unlucky in the timing and tactics of the Iranian revolution (and Reagan representatives who colluded with him to delay the hostage release); in running into the buzzsaw of Teddy Kennedy’s puerile narcissism; and in the Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker’s intentionally driving the economy into a ditch, ostensibly to rid the economy of inflation but knowing full well that it would likely ruin Carter’s presidency and elect a Republican.
All that’s true, but when I met him while working as a Deputy Campaign Manager on his son’s Senate campaign in Nevada, something else is what struck me: his sincere personal face-to-face charisma, which I think outshone Reagan, Clinton, and Obama.
Reagan had a screen actor’s mostly “wholesale” rather than “retail” charisma; Clinton was warm but unctuous; Obama was cool and cerebral. Carter, despite his having flown out to Nevada because his son was in intensive care from a terrible blood infection, war suffused with grace, intelligence, and courtesy.)
What’s also forgotten in descriptions is that Carter was also fantastic political analyst — on par with Obama and his running rings around Hillary in 2008 — as his competitors learned in 1976 when he became the first candidate to really figure out how to game the modern Presidential primary system. He camped out in Iowa for a year before the primary, dispatched his adult children to meet with people extensively in especially the more rural of Iowa’s 99 counties, and benefitted greatly from the impression that he was the only moderate among a large number of liberals, much as Clinton would do 16 years later.
I’ve also read people’s remarks that he was ahead of his time on solar panels, the environment, and the politics of the Middle East: both pursuing the Camp David Accords between Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Egypt’s President Sadat, and then post-Presidency in particular when he was one of the main political figures willing to criticize the betrayal of those accords.
But having been involved in politics for a long time, something else less prominent in his eulogies is what impresses and amazes me about Carter: his personal probity and his attempts to reform the ethics — and ethos itself — of American politics. There is no greater example of this than the fate of the U.S.S. Sequoia — the “Presidential Yacht.”
The Sequoia was used by presidents beginning with Herbert Hoover, through Gerald Ford, to bring Congressmembers out to the Potomac for savory meals and unsavory deals, where the President could both lobby and form bonds with them, learning and taking care of their personal (and even pecuniary) interests. Staffing, supplying, maintenance, etc. of the Sequoia was on the taxpayer’s dime. Carter thought that this was wrong — and that the White House should lead by example in removing the President’s floating lobbying palace. So he sold it and deposited the money in the U.S. Treasury.
I cannot overemphasize how much politics is driven by appealing to the appetites of legislators for money, power, favors, and other rewards such as time with attractive lobbyists. This is considered to be “how things get done” — and Carter understood that it was part of the reason that citizens distrusted their government on all levels. And he did what he could — by order when necessary, but always by personal example — to put a stop to it (or at least impede and restrain it.)
When we say that he was a religious man, that is better evidence of it that his years as a Sunday School teacher or even his time with Habitat for Humanity. Those were good deeds — and lots of people do them. But having the guts to take on the evils of corrupt and selfish governance — that takes bravery and steel. That’s the “throw the moneychangers out of the Temple” flavor of Christianity that is all too rarely seen. And if I overlook his flaws in doing so — he was cozier than I wish with some special interests, and often gave up when faced with a compromised Congress (that happened to be Democratic) — he is as good as a role model in this respect than has dwelt in the White House since Lincoln.
He lived to be 100, to cast his final vote for President for a Black woman, and he also died at the right moment: less than 30 days before a Presidential inauguration. By federal law, American flags are to be flown at half-mast for 30 days after a President dies. So when Trump is again sworn into office, the flags will still be at half-staff in honor of a man who was and is his moral opposite, and in all of the photos thereof. Trump’s first official act may well be to break the law and order the flags raised to full-staff as a show of power in violation of that law — and that insult to the country, documented for history, will itself be a tribute to the life Jimmy Carter lived.
Imagine the world with more people like The Peanut Farmer and less people than the fist black president not named Obama and the Orange One.
He was the best human in my lifetime.
Prior to Joe Biden, Carter was the worst President ever. Sky high interest rates, massive inflation, Gas lines, a feeble commander in chief, giving away a strategic asset ( the Panama canal) in the name of just being a good guy… Carter sucked.
Carter had sky-high inflation because the bills from the Vietnam war were finally coming due. He had high interest rates because he was essentially forced by the markets to appoint a Fed Chair, Paul Volcker, who had no liking for Carter’s Presidency and was willing to take extreme measures to squeeze inflation out of the economy after the second OPEC oil shock even though it was likely to destroy his re-election chances.
That “strategic asset” was not ours — we had more than made back the money we spent to build it — and it was always supposed to go back to the nation of Panama (or, originally, Colombia.) This was to honor treaty obligations — a good idea both then and now.
And you are a human slime mold.
Paul Volker saved the nation’s economy. Reagan benefitted when interest rates were choked down. Then he went on a military spending spree and created the no-fault deficits embraced by everybody ever since.
Here’s a thought experiment for you, Zenger: if it had been Reagan who was elected in 1976 (as he tried!) and Carter who was the insurgent coming on the challenge him in 1980, do you think that Volcker would have been able to go hell-bent on wrecking the economy and rocketing the Misery Index knowing that it would likely lead to Carter’s (or worse, Birch Bayh’s or Frank Church’s!) being him?
I do not think so. I do not think that you would think so. Volcker didn’t just floor the accelerator to drive the economy into a ditch because of it was (under monterarist theory the correct thing to do, but also because he was not averse to the implications of his action. He would not have done that to blow up Reagan’s Presidency. But hey, make your contrary case!
Bob, Bob, Bob. This angry MAGA gasbag has completely taken over the Liberal OC’s comments section, though we pretty much nipped him in the bud over here.
Well, guess who it really is? (Blast from the past.) HB’s Chuck Johnson! (who, nine years ago, we nicknamed the “morbidly obese hate-vessel.”) Funny him popping up all of a sudden after all these years, and suddenly so prolific on the blogs. Where has he been? I seem to remember some legal trouble with substance abuse (meth, natch.)
https://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2016/09/chris-epting-sends-suicide-bomber-into-vern-concert/
I was already thinking it sounded like him, and then in a comment he tried to post under a couple different names, on Greg’s HB airshow story, he referred to Gina Clayton Tarvin as “Tarvin.” Yeah, Chuck Johnson is the one who does that! He hates Victor Valladares too, and me. And I guess Jimmy Carter (one of his fake e-mail addresses is “jimmycarterrots@hotmail.com”)
The pink turd deserves Bob. They can race to the bottom.
Isn’t Chuck Johnson what Lorena Bobbitt did?
“morbidly obese hate-vessel.”
Nice phrasing.
We’ve all known one or two.
You know what they say about opinions, Bob.
And some would argue Harding takes that honor.
This “Bob” clown hates Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and ME, and loves Trump – I am so sad to be in such company! And he has found a new home at the Liberal OC where Dan prints every last drop of his drooling.
Keep on Bobbin’, weenie!
Don’t touch the pink toad.
Well he sure went radio silent tout suite when I informed him a Republican was arguably the worst U.S. president in history. Absolutely no resistance. Crickets!!’
uh… I didn’t know what party Harding was till you told me. Don’t know much about Warren and I’m sure “Bob” doesn’t either. (Interesting choice anyway when there are Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, James Buchanan and Donald Trump to lament.)
And the only reason you think he went radio-silent is because I started trashing him. Most of his comments are lies about me. But now he and “Tito Watch” can Bob on each other all day in the trash folder!
Notice I never said I believed Harding was the worst U.S. prez in history but only that some would argue that.
But his presidency was so bad he couldn’t survive it. Literally.
He had the worst Administration pre-Trump, but mostly that was due to out-of-control underlings.
Now there’s only going to be one answer ever to who the worst-ever President was. How lucky we are to experience it personally.
He would respond to me on the turd’s bowl er blog. And its been over 48 hours since I rebutted him.
Possibly, he is pre-occupied wanking? “Just sayin.”
Meanwhile you see where Dan has printed some dreary A.I. piece on Remote Work, and proudly calling it a Liberal OC exclusive? So sad, no real people want to blog there.
I get those e-mails all the time, robots wanting to “provide content to your blog.”
Dan had a decent piece up on the travails of the OCPA (and another reprinted in whole from a substack about why the race to replace Agran is city-wide) — and had the fortitude to make it all the way through the piece, blasting Probolsky and such — without EVEN ONCE mentioning Melahat.
The someone (no idea whom) commented about Probolsky being in place because of Melahat, and he huffed that she had absolutely nothing to do with OCPA, despite her close ties to Farrah and Carroll (and the Probolsky Brothers) — which is again a bold statement!
I think that he thinks that she has the ability to implicate him in some crud and so is being EXTRA-NICE to her these days. The FBI should be asking Melahat about every single action she took that implicated the OCPA and Probolsky — and if they’re curious, they can ask about what communication she had with Chumley. Not for the first time do I wonder why his archives are so hard to navigate and why he doesn’t archive his site with the Wayback Machine the way we do … just kidding, I think we can all figure out why a PR professional would want to avoid leaving a digital paper trail!
He wrote that? It’s a press release from the City of Irvine, then some article he found, as usual it’s hard to tell where one thing starts or ends, but there are a lot of mistakes and typos in the last few paragraphs, so I assume that’s Dan there.
Also, as far as the Wayback Machine. People don’t archive their stuff there. Our blog gets archived because a lot of people read it. I didn’t realize the Liberal OC wasn’t getting archived. That is sad.
I dunno, boss — I think that my saying that there’s something decent at Chumley’s place and then your swatting it down is an entertaining recurring feature!
Re the Wayback: as I recall — vaguely, of course, as is my custom with things that are not that emotionally charged — there’s a setting that sites can toggle: archive on or off. We’re on; he’s off. I don’t use the Wayback much, but I did try Wayback way back when; I could find our articles (as I know you have as well) and I could not find his. QED.
The pink hued turd tried to get more prolific after you guys published your end of the year best stories article detailing articles including those by other contributors not named Vern or Greg.
Bob be loobin like Jeffrey Toobin.
You are on to something, counselor. In both your longer and shorter paragraphs.
Sorry to let this thread devolve away from the late great President Carter. He was the first President I voted for, for re-election in 1980 when I was 20. I WAS gonna vote for a third-party candidate (did Nader run that year?) like I did every time, in California, Texas and Connecticut, until Obama. I understood the electoral college. But the girlfriend I had at the time guilt-tripped me, “If you don’t vote for Carter, and that asshole Reagan wins, it’ll be YOUR FAULT!” So I was all okay, okay.
I knew he was a decent President, but I was 20, and his low energy and Georgia drawl got on my nerves, especially whenever he’d tell us how “impoadent” something was. I thought his wife Rosalynn was hot though. I was 20.
Now I think of it, like most of the country, I was obsessed with getting our hostages back from Iran. I even wrote a song for my punk band, “Tell the Ayatollah!” It’s kind of an embarrassing song now. I was 20.
My dark secret is that while I campaigned for him in 1976, I didn’t vote for him in 1980. First — and younger people may have trouble processing this — California was a red state at that time: between 1952 and 1988, inclusive, it voted only once for a Democrat for President (LBJ in 1964.) Second, the state was totally in love with LA County resident Ronald Reagan — and there was no way that it was not going to vote for him. Third, I was totally pissed off at his resuming draft registration after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and resisted signing up for over a year.
My girlfriend at the time (later first wife) voted for left-wing economist Barry Commoner (whom I’ll bet was the name Vern was reaching for above.) I voted for moderate Republican John Anderson, despite being closer in view to Commoner, because I wanted him to get enough votes that he could tap into the Presidential campaign fund. I appreciated that he was willing to run as an independent and take on Reagan from the center; and I wanted him to get an additional $3.50 (I think it was) — $830 in today’s dollars (no, I just made that up) as a gesture of thanks.
Carter was destroyed by three people: Ayatollah Khomeini, Fed Chair Volcker, and self-absorbed man-boy Senator Teddy Kennedy, whom reports eventually suggested failed to timely report the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick not because he was afraid people would accuse him of murder, but because he didn’t want his wife to know that he had been cheating on her (or at least intending to) that night. After losing the nomination to him at the convention, Kennedy refused to shake Carter’s hand while Carter pursued him around the stage expecting the usual show of party unity.
I became less angry over draft registration over time, but my vote only mattered to retiring Rep. Anderson’s debt. (And yeah, I do know about, and still rue, the Price-Anderson Act.)
California was a red state then? Then maybe I am remembering wrong, that I “understood the electoral college” at 20.
And I guess my girlfriend was right.
California went back and forth. Pat Brown was governor for 8 years, and Jerry, for another 8. Then there was Reagan, The Duke and Pete Wilson. We had Dem Senators and Rep Senators. Ditto the House.
The State legislature was reliably Democrat (think Unruh and Willie Brown) until the mid 90s when Curt Pringle got a short taste of glory (and liked it, apparently)
I’m talking about in Presidential elections. Here, check it out for yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_California
You and Vern and I grew up at a time when California was reliably red in Presidential races. True, this is because twice-elected Nixon and Reagan were running — but as stated that covers the Carter 1980 election. It wasn’t until Clinton that California became reliably blue.
No, you did understand the electoral college and you were right. Voting Democratic in California in 1980, if one disdained him (over draft registration) and preferred another candidate, was as without actual penalty as voting Green in California in 2024. Each result was baked into stone; we had a free pass. I sort of wish I’d voted for Commoner, but: $3.50! Commoner was nowhere close to qualifying for federal funds.