Bill Maher’s entire interview with Jimmy Carter has been posted at HBO, and it’s worth watching just to remember the disconnect between the view of Carter that’s been cemented into pundit’s brains and the reality of the man, who was a smart, pragmatic and effective president. This interview spends a little time on Ted Kennedy’s role in undermining Carter’s presidency and giving us 8 years of Ronald Reagan, including Ted’s spiking of a healthcare bill that he felt didn’t go far enough. (Here’s the other side of that historical argument.)
Carter
by $8 blue check mistermix| 37 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Alwhite
What Carter fails to mention was that he was against health insurance reform & never actually proposed it. He instead offered a “cost containment” bill that did nothing to reform health insurance or provide additional coverage. Carter’s own HHS Secretary quit in frustration when it became obvious that Jimmy had no intention of producing anything even as tepid as the POS that was just enacted. He ws not anywhere near as bad a President as he has been painted but he gets no points from anyone paying attention for his dishonesty about the situation he had or Kennedy’s position.
BR
Forget health care – energy was the most important thing he worked on. We need to go back on the Carter energy crash program to become energy independent.
wilfred
Jimmy Carter is a decent man. His only crime was to recognize the existence and humanity of the Palestinian people – the only sin for which there is no forgiveness or political redemption.
Mike in NC
Carter was a decent president given the circumstances of the time (oil embargo, etc.). It was the Iran hostage “crisis” that the media fumed over that took him down. Imagine if they had FOX News, Internet and 24/7 cable back then.
Cat Lady
@wilfred:
His other crimes were 20% interest rates, talking to Americans like they weren’t all five years old, and not starting WWIII with Iran make him History’s Greatest Monster. Also.
DougJ
Killer rabbits! Bust out the cardigans! Malaise!
Pancake
Wow. That’s some kind of delusional rewriting of history. Even most Democrats who knew and worked with the man agree that Carter was a real dud in terms of knowledge, ability and intellect….truly one of the worse Presidents in all of US history.
Alwhite
@Pancake:
Your comment leaves me to assume one or more of the following:
You are under 30 & have no familiarity with US history
You believe the BS the wingnuts have been spreading in absence of reality
Pancake refers to your IQ
You forgot to put the sarcasm tag on your post.
If it was not the last of those please post the names of some of the vast hoard of Democrat that “knew and worked with the man agree that Carter was a real dud in terms of knowledge, ability and intellect”
WereBear
Yep, poor Carter. He told the truth!
And as we all know, we can’t handle the truth.
He was incredibly prescient about energy, but seemingly clueless about health care. But there wasn’t nearly so much dying in the streets at that time, to be fair. Big Pharma had not yet gotten a headlock on the process as they do now.
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve mentioned before on this site that I have had many occasions to meet and talk with Jimmy Carter. He is quite simply a *good* man — among the most decent human beings I’ve ever come across. He’s smart and well-educated, and never stops learning. The positive difference he’s made in the lives of millions can’t be overstated.
He’s flawed and complex, like most of us. I think he holds grudges a little too long, and his tendency to micromanage is well documented. But AFAIC these are small matters. He has done, is doing, and I hope will continue to do amazing transformational work around the world for a long time. I’m not a believer, but I think of Carter as pretty close to a human saint.
Svensker
I was a Repuke/Libertarian during the Carter years, but even to my idiot self, he seemed like a very decent, good man who really tried to do the right thing. He was never able to motivate people well, which was a major flaw. Oddly enough, I think his other flaw — at least in terms of acting in the political world — is that he believes in the best of people and that that trusting naivety comes back to bite him occasionally.
But, as Wilfred pointed out, his unforgivable sin for the neocons and Israel-firsters is that he thinks the Palestinians are human (which of course makes him an anti-Semite).
Omnes Omnibus
@Pancake: No one who graduated from Rickover’s nuclear power school could possibly be described as a dud with respect to knowledge, intellect, or ability. As others have noted, Carter had his own flaws as a President, but the ones you suggest are blatantly false. Honestly, your attacks on Carter seem to be pure wingnut projection.
Bill Murray
@wilfred: well he did start the funding for the mujahedin of Afghanistan to try to get the USSR to intervene in Afghanistan. That did not exactly work to his or our advantage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Svensker: Carter, to me, had two related problems in the way he approached his presidency. First, he approached problems as an engineer; he looked for the best technical solution and then tried to implement it. This often does not work in the political world. Sometimes you need to implement the fourth or fifth best technical solution because it is the one that you can get key players to buy into. I don’t think Carter was ever able to accept that. Second, Carter was a micromanager. I don’t know that he was ever comfortable delegating responsibility and that is a big problem for a President.
bkny
@Mike in NC: iirc, it was the iran hostage crisis that abc’s nightline was developed in response to — nightly counting off the days the americans were held captive.
Janet Strange
@bkny: I was in Europe during the first part of the Iran hostage situation and was stunned when I got back by the contrast between the serious but matter of fact way it was covered there vs. the “America held hostage” whipping up of emotion here. It was one of my first clues that there was something very wrong with our media.
Chris
@wilfred:
Jimmy Carter is a decent man. His only crime was to recognize the existence and humanity of the Palestinian people – the only sin for which there is no forgiveness or political redemption.
Bingo. Anything else could be forgiven or excused, but in today’s world that’s the ultimate sin. It’s one of the sickest, most despicable parts of our political landscape – imagine if questioning Apartheid had been this kind of taboo.
No, Carter was not a dud, though he had quite a bit of bad luck in office; he also had to pay for the sins of some of his predecessors. The Iranian Revolution and its aftermath, the thing that sank his presidency, could have been easily avoided if Eisenhower had chosen to support democracy in Iran twenty-five years instead of destroying it.
Janet Strange
@Chris:
I often wish that there was some way to prevent anyone from opining about anything in the Middle East if they don’t know this story. 1953 Iranian coup d’état. Especially this part.
Kermit Roosevelt’s description of how he bribed thugs to riot in the streets had, for me, an eerie resonance with the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000.
Janet Strange
OK, I’m in mod hell. I took out one of the links in an effort to make it work. (obligatory FYWP). If the original comment ever shows up, here’s the link I took out Brooks Brothers riot.
ice9
Take any, oh, 15 of Carter’s descriptions of his accomplishments in office–reduced oil imports by 50%, for example–and ask a wingnut who did it. Carter would be the last choice.
We’re stupid.
ice9
Jewish Steel
I agree with what The White Jimmy Carter says about the “element of freedom” Obama will enjoy should the midterms result in an R house.
@Pancake: Are you sure you’re not projecting your own diminished capacities onto a public figure? How anyone can listen to an 86yo man spit facts, figures and analysis like that and come up with “dud?”
Cacti
@Pancake:
Yup. Those nuclear physicists are real dummies.
Dan
I have one wingnut friend who complains endlessly how liberals blame Bush for the current economic problems and then in the same conversation, he blames Carter for the real estate bubble. good times.
chopper
@Bill Murray:
see also ‘the carter doctrine’.
Cain
@SiubhanDuinne:
Carter is the gold standard of a christian. (if you believe in that kind of thing) But he is spiritual and he’s used his position only for the betterment of human kind. He’s a good man.
cain
monkeyboy
I think Carter is the first modern example of the assassination of the character of the president – he left office being painted as a wimp.
Republicans might say that the honor belongs to Nixon, except Nixon actually did have numerous character flaws.
Anyway, I think there was a serious campaign to dishonor Carter by the Republicans as payback for the mean things said about Nixon, and they got the press to pick up their narrative.
policomic
Everybody who was too young to vote in 1980 needs to at least read that “other side” link. Carter is indeed a good man, and has been an excellent EX-president, but liberals had a lot more to legitimately beef about with him than they do with Obama.
And here are some other phrases and phenomenon you might want to research: Carter’s campaign use of the phrase “ethnic purity,” his “symbolic” change of the part in his hair from left to right (see also Doonesbury’s mockery of his pre-Reagan attempts at stagecraft via a character designated the “Secretary of Symbolism”), airline deregulation, reinstatement of draft registration. Yes, he is unfairly maligned by the right, but let’s not compensate for conservatives’ distortions of history by misremembering him as more progressive than he actually was.
None of this is to deny that we would have been a hell of a lot better off with four more years of Carter rather than Reagan, or even that Kennedy should have resisted the urge to challenge a sitting Democratic president. But PRESIDENT Carter was, in most respects, far more conservative than Obama is, or (I think) Gore would have been.
EconWatcher
Wow. If anyone is reading the comments but did not watch the interview, go watch it. 86 years old, and the man sounds like he’s ready to run for office again right now. That’s a guy I’d like to have a beer with.
The contrast between him and Mondale is remarkable. These days (and certainly since his ill-fated Senate run against Coleman), Mondale is really something of a buffoon, and maybe he always was.
The other striking thing is how similar Carter and Obama seem to be. Both of them come across as decent, thoughtful, and just a little bemused at all of the folly around them. Astonishing that either of them ever got to the White House; they just don’t seem dirty enough for the game they’re in (in contrast to Clinton, for example).
Sorry to say, but in both cases their election may have been a fluke, the result in both instances of total Republican implosion.
Chris
@Janet Strange:
Kermit Roosevelt’s description of how he bribed thugs to riot in the streets had, for me, an eerie resonance with the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000.
For me, it’s an indication of what a complete phony puppet the Shah was.
I mean, most coups are indigineously driven on some level (e.g. they’re ginned up by local institutions like the military, church, business sector, etc, even when they don’t have popular support). But in this case, no one in Iran would move a muscle until the CIA had filled their pockets with gold.
How they ever thought something that artificial would be stable or last long, I don’t know.
gene108
The hostage crisis, from what I’ve read (which isn’t much), was a direct result of President Carter allowing the Shah to get medical treatment in the U.S.
The Iranian Revolutionaries really wanted to Shah back in Iran for whatever show trial and execution they had planned. The U.S. aiding him to get medical treatment blew up an already volatile situation.
President Carter – for better or worse – didn’t get into the realpolitik of the consequences of allowing the Shah to get treatment in the U.S. (I think the U.S. was the only country that had whatever procedure the Shah needed), but decided it as a matter of Christian compassion.
Also, listening to Carter and his staff talk about the Iranian Revolution is interesting because one of the main themes that comes out is they totally couldn’t believe, in the late 20th century, people would willingly set up a theocratic state. They didn’t see religion as an underpinning of revolution as something that’d happen 7 decades into the 20th century.
@bkny:
Walter Cronkite (the most trusted man in America) also ended his CBS Nightly News show by counting the number of days Americans were held hostage in Iran. Keith Olbermann’s “xxxx days, since President Bush, Jr. declared Mission Accomplished in Iraq” is a direct take off with how Cronkite ended the Nightly News and back in those days the network nightly news casts were how most people got whatever news they knew about the world.
AB
is there a better link for that video…? it’s not loading at all, I hate how HBO is ridiculously anal about their copyright for things that are of public interest.
dww44
@Alwhite:
Thanks for this defense of the “Man from Plains”. Perhaps Pancake is not Southern and has thus succumbed to judging those from the South based primarily on his/her accent. But your defense is very much appreciated.
Thanks too to Mistermix for posting the video.
mai naem
It really bothers me when conservatives cut down Carter. I can handle them maing fun of WJC but Carter? For what? The guy actually displays Christian values, through and through and all they can do is make fun of the guy. Screw you mofos. Oh, and BTW there is no ex-President on the Republican side that comes even close to Carter. Reagan just kept on making money till he got Alzheimers. Bush 1 sits on corporate boards and gets his bribes. Bush 11 will be doing the same. Bush 1 did the tsumani thing but only with WJC. Bush 11 did the Haitian earthquake thing but only with WJC and the chickensheet had to wipe his hand on WJC’s shirts after shaking hands with those dirty colored people in Haiti.
Alwhite
@dww44:
Before you get too excited with my defense please read comment #1.
Shell Goddamnit
Carter’s Latin American policies weren’t particularly pretty either. Continued aid to military dictatorships and various thugs, as long as they made anti-communist noises. Not new with Carter, no, but there was no real break with those long-term policies.
Did hand back control of the Panama Canal, another reason the wingnuts consider him a monster. We stole it fair & square and he gave it back, horror. Also refused to turn Nicaragua into Cuba II by isolating and ostracizing it & instead accepted the Sandinista government.
mouth
@Pancake:
“one of the ‘worse'”, huh?
Daddy go away and leave you by the laptop again?
How’d you make that comment with crayons?
Moishe Pippick
@Bill Murray: THANK YOU!
I was shocked that Maher didn’t ask him about that as his first question.
Carter was a cold warrior who conspired to deliberately provoke the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. He dragged the Olympics, the ultimate peaceful competition of nations, into the cold war by boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics, in reactoin to the USSR invasion of Afghanistan which Carter himself had hoped for!
Carter has been an exemplary ex-President since then, but he can never make up for the damage he and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzinski did to Afghanistan and ultimately America by their wreckless actions, all in the name of giving the Russians ‘their own Vietnam’.
Carter is never called on this, and Maher failed epically by not asking him.