Rick Perlstein's Reaganland is a fantastic book and an enlightening autopsy of administration of the first modern Democrat. Carter is an object lesson in the reality that you can't please everyone all the time, his policy on draft amnesty exemplifies this. He wanted to do just enough on it to please his voters, to whom he promised amnesty, while not overly alienating the right. The result was a policy that only pardoned a small percentage of draft-dodgers, which did not please his base and enraged the right, for whom any amount of draft amnesty was too much. Barry Goldwater called it "the most shameful moment of any presidency" like, two and a half years after Watergate, lol. That was Carter's whole presidency, just four years of trying to have his cake and eat it too before finding out that the cake was just made of shit the whole time
Seth, your analysis is insightful and Carter was a complete failure as I experienced how he destroyed people’s lives with runaway inflation. Just as an example I purchased a new 1975 Trans Am in 1975 for $4,100 in 1979 a new Trans Am cost me $10,000. And wages were not keeping up, as an Assistant Manager at Woolco in 1976 I was making $150 a week, in 1980 only $175. And need I mention mortgage interest rates were at 15 percent. The only accomplishment of the Carter presidency was it brought us 12 years of the greatest President of the 20th Century from 1980-1992.
Seth, your column makes an important point about Carter being the first Democratic president to come to power using the (then) new reforms enacted by the Democratic Party. As I was reading your column, it struck me that Bill Clinton had a lot of similarities to Carter- southern governor, not plugged into the Democratic Party established power structure. Clinton had an advantage Carter didn’t- the economy was already making a positive turn as he came into office. It’s a shame Clinton didn’t have Carter’s character. Carter was just a better human being.
Rick Perlstein's Reaganland is a fantastic book and an enlightening autopsy of administration of the first modern Democrat. Carter is an object lesson in the reality that you can't please everyone all the time, his policy on draft amnesty exemplifies this. He wanted to do just enough on it to please his voters, to whom he promised amnesty, while not overly alienating the right. The result was a policy that only pardoned a small percentage of draft-dodgers, which did not please his base and enraged the right, for whom any amount of draft amnesty was too much. Barry Goldwater called it "the most shameful moment of any presidency" like, two and a half years after Watergate, lol. That was Carter's whole presidency, just four years of trying to have his cake and eat it too before finding out that the cake was just made of shit the whole time
Seth, your analysis is insightful and Carter was a complete failure as I experienced how he destroyed people’s lives with runaway inflation. Just as an example I purchased a new 1975 Trans Am in 1975 for $4,100 in 1979 a new Trans Am cost me $10,000. And wages were not keeping up, as an Assistant Manager at Woolco in 1976 I was making $150 a week, in 1980 only $175. And need I mention mortgage interest rates were at 15 percent. The only accomplishment of the Carter presidency was it brought us 12 years of the greatest President of the 20th Century from 1980-1992.
Inflation was 9% under Ford and 11% under Nixon. It was about the era, not the occupant of the White House.
Seth, your column makes an important point about Carter being the first Democratic president to come to power using the (then) new reforms enacted by the Democratic Party. As I was reading your column, it struck me that Bill Clinton had a lot of similarities to Carter- southern governor, not plugged into the Democratic Party established power structure. Clinton had an advantage Carter didn’t- the economy was already making a positive turn as he came into office. It’s a shame Clinton didn’t have Carter’s character. Carter was just a better human being.
I highly recommend Paul Krugman’s column on economics during the Carter administration.
Krugman’s take is, essentially, Carter had to deal with a slew of unavoidable bad economic forces perfectly timed for maximum economic pain.
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/time-chance-and-jimmy-carter?r=2ctvo&utm_medium=ios