As we move through this Holiday week, I think it is good to give Jimmy Carter some serious praise. This is one remarkable man.
News came this week that he is on the verge of eradicating the horrible Guinea Worm disease. This is a parasite driven disease where water fleas–carrying guinea worm larvae–enter the body in contaminated drinking water. The larvae penetrate the walls of the small intestine and breed. The male dies and the pregnant female grows to a 3 foot worm that travels through the body to emerge out of a boil on the legs or arms. Once the boil comes in contact with water thousands of new larvae are released, the worm dies and the cycle begins anew.
Or at least it used to begin anew until Jimmy Carter decided to take the worm out.
Back in 1950 more than 50 million cases of the disease were reported each year. This was not a hard disease to prevent as straining water through a simple cloth filter keeps the parasites out of the drinking water. The key is to educate people about how to protect themselves and their drinking water.
When Jimmy Carter began his effort to take out this disease back in 1986 education efforts had reduced the number of reported cases down to 3.5 million. These were in the 20 Countries where education efforts were difficult to do because of remoteness, poverty and war. By 2009 Carter had reduced the list down to 3,200 cases in 4 Countries. And it looks like in 2010 the number will be below 1,700 cases in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Sudan.
Jimmy Carter hopes to live to see the day when this horrible disease is basically eradicated through education and hard work. Of the four remaining Countries, Sudan will be the hardest case because of Civil War. As Carter put it in an understatement: “War and good health are incompatible.”
Jimmy Carter is a bad ass. If all he had been doing for the last 25 years was this, that would be pretty impressive–but he has been doing so much more.
If you are moved to support the work of the Carter Center to eradicate these parasites you could follow this link.
Cheers
Xecky Gilchrist
Jimmy Carter is like the best ex-president evar. I thought of him just this morning as I turned down the thermostat and put on a Christmas sweater.
If America had listened to him instead of electing Reagan in a disgraceful society-wide tantrum, we’d be a shitload better off these days.
Phyllis
He lives his faith.
asiangrrlMN
Jimmy Carter is an amazing man. I hate that he gets ridiculed and mocked so much. We WOULD be better off following his path than that of Reagan’s.
OT: Football open thread, please? GO, Bears & Pack! (Nice thing about my team sucking is that I can root for the teams I actually like).
Dennis G.
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Word!
Loneoak
Don’t forget that he’s the only modern president to never fire a single shot, bomb anyone, or wage war at all.
Truly, history’s greatest monster.
asiangrrlMN
@Loneoak: Wow. That’s remarkable. How far back are we talking?
Linda Featheringill
Yeah, Jimmy Carter is cool. Remarkable human being, actually.
MikeJ
@Loneoak: Shots probably would have been fired in the hostage rescue, had the pooch not been prematurely screwed.
Uloborus
Can we have a ‘Jimmy Carter is the white Jimmy Carter’ tag?
Keith
@Loneoak: Damn, you beat me to the “history’s greatest monster” line.
calipygian
@Xecky Gilchrist: To play off of great post-Presidential presidents, how about great pre-Presidential presidents who were pretty mediocre (or perceived to be mediocre, like Carter) as President? My nomination for best pre-Presidential career for a mediocre President is Herbert Hoover.
Other people may have had as good, or better pre-Presidential careers as Hoover, but they were regarded as successful Presidents (see T. Roosevelt or D. Eisenhower). But Hoover was a pretty amazing guy before his presidency but really sucked as president.
Kind of like how Carter’s presidency is regarded as a failure, but, except in certain quarters of the hate-o-sphere which can’t abide his view of mideast politics, his post-Presidency is remarkable.
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve mentioned before that through my employer I have had any number of opportunities to work in partnership with Jimmy Carter and with The Carter Center’s initiatives. A few years ago about 25 colleagues and I spent a day packing up very simple kits to be sent to the few countries where Guinea Worm remained a health problem. Cheesecloth filters, exam gloves, tubes of ointment and gauze bandages to cover the exit wounds. As I think about my own retirement in the next couple of years, I’m more and more drawn to the idea of becoming a regular volunteer for The Carter Center — they truly do amazing work for global health, peace, and democratization, and make a point of filling gaps that the US government and international agencies can’t or won’t address.
BTW, did you know that the Guinea Worm is the “Fiery Serpent” of antiquity? It has been a terrible scourge for millenia, and it’s on the verge of being eradicated. That’s pretty damned impressive.
The Bobs
IIRC, Jimmy Carter started this effort after he saw a woman pulling a worm out of her nipple.
Ross Hershberger
Unfortunately Carter will be unfairly remembered by many for the (first) energy crisis, stagflation, economic malaise, peanuts and that swimming animal that menaced him in a boat.
(EDIT) and the Iranian revolution/hostage crisis.
What happened to the age when politicians were expected to become statesmen who used their experience and influence to make the world better?
Apparently pulling weeds on a dirt farm in TX and giving speeches for money is regarded as an acceptable modern substitute.
Thlayli
“Every day [since he left office], that man has gone out and behaved like a good Christian — for no money. Because that’s who he is, and that’s who he always was. But that was too simple for Power Town.”
— Molly Ivins on Carter, 1993.
Shadow's Mom
@Ross Hershberger: @Loneoak:
I voted proudly for Jimmy Carter in my first ever presidential electoral vote. What I remember is that he brought together Egypt and Israel to peace talks and a treaty signing at Camp David in 1978. Hmmm, isn’t that peace agreement still in effect? Hasn’t it lasted even through Egypt’s opening the Gaza border earlier this year?
I have always respected Jimmy Carter and feel that he has been underrated and ridiculed by those who support US exceptionalism and have been instrumental in our current political and economic challenges.
TaMara (BHF)
Jimmy Carter was my first vote for president, too.
Hey Limbaugh, Beck, et al, Jimmy Carter is eradicated a human scourge today. What did you do?
Another Bob
Watergate was the last time any Republican president has been truly held accountable by our mainstream press. Jimmy Carter’s presidency was when they seemed to start really pushing dishonest narratives to manipulate public opinion (almost always, since then, favoring the right over the left). Thus, Jimmy Carter, a whip-smart and well-intentioned man, was portrayed as a miserable failure whose main characteristic was stubborn pessimism, while Ronald Reagan, a largely clueless buffoon who allowed behind-the-scenes operatives to subvert the Constitution through illegal schemes like Iran-Contra, became the heroic “Great Communicator.” The mainstream press, with rare exceptions, has been pure bullshit ever since.
Through his humanitarian efforts since leaving office, Jimmy Carter has made me proud that I once voted for him. His actions have demonstrated what leadership and public service ought to be, which stands in such stark contrast to the shills and fraudsters who seem to be so over-represented in public office nowadays.
kdaug
Can you think of what this young President will do with the rest of his life once out of office?
kdaug
@kdaug: Damn it, the FYWP took my “o-bot” tags as literal.
TomG
I’ll chime in and add my support. Carter is definitely NOT the worst Democratic president we have had and it staggers my mind that people think he sucked. No president is perfect and he did quite a few decent things.
ruemara
Jimmy Carter has been my unabashed favourite president since I was a little girl. If I could have voted, at the tender age of 8, I would have chosen him over Reagan. Reagan was a liar, anyone with eyes like this kid could see that. Jimmy wasn’t. It was funny, I could feel Carter was trustworthy and Ronnie didn’t make sense. I could not, for the life of me, see what was so great about Reagan. Obama is the first presidential candidate I felt the same level of forthrightness from since Carter. But Carter will always be my favourite expresident/humanitarian.
Xecky Gilchrist
@calipygian: My nomination for best pre-Presidential career for a mediocre President is Herbert Hoover.
Ha! I was just talking to my dad about Hoover yesterday, in exactly this context. Agreed.
Joey Maloney
Are we going to get a football thread or not? Because complaining that the Bears suck while everyone else is talking about eliminating a disease that’s been a scourge of humanity for thousands of years makes me feel like an overprivileged jerk.
And I should have the privilege not to be made to feel that way.
Loneoak
Oh shit, start buying up shares in mixed metaphors, because Tommy “The Mustache” Friedman is going on book leave.
asiangrrlMN
@ruemara: Weird. I thought the same thing when I first saw Reagan on TV. I couldn’t understand why this man was president of our country. It was really strange to see no there there.
@Joey Maloney: Seconded on all accounts. Jackass Cole forgets when his Steelers don’t have the early game. We were just fortunate last week that he thought the Stillers had the early game last week, so he threw up a post.
@Loneoak: Aaaaaargh! But, that means another epic Taibbi takedown…still not worth it.
Ross Hershberger
@ruemara:
You’re too young to remember when Death Valley Days was on TV. That’s all I got.
Brick Oven Bill
Jimmy Carter truly is a remarkable man. Both he and Barry have Nobel Peace Prizes.
aimai
The guinea worm is one of the scariest parasites I’ve ever read about–worse than schistosomaisis which was described as eradicated in China (possibly mere propaganda) by a massive snail killing program under the early communists.
I agree with everything everyone here has said about Carter. I think he was my first presidential vote too–but I have to admit I voted for Anderson in the primary (!). Reading this GOS post by Mark Sumner who reflects back on Kennedy’s spoiler run at Carter has really helped me come to terms with my own limitations as a political thinker. We can only go forward, politically, with very limited perspective. Looking back we see that we would have been better off with this or that choice that at the time we rejected as imperfect, or annoying, or dangerous. Carter’s like that. He did the best he could and better than most. His life since, when he can more fully choose where he puts his energies and his intellect, reveals that.
I guess what I’m saying is that we won’t know what Obama is really capable of until he is in his post presidency–because at that point he doesn’t simultaneously have to solve all the world’s problems before breakfast while running the gauntlet of Republican opposition. Bet Jimmy Carter thinks eliminating the Guinea Worm was a way easier proposition than retreiving the hostages from Iran! Because hard as it is to put your hand to a massive public health problem its harder to solve an international crisis.
I expect great things from Obama after he finishes his presidency, and i think, on balance, we’ve seen pretty great things from this first two years. If he and the Dems can hang on and come sweeping back in 2012 I think we could have a massively great second term.
aimai
kdaug
@aimai:
I’d bet on an impressive list of accomplishments post-President for this one.
Ruckus
@TaMara (BHF):
Hey Limbaugh, Beck, et al, Jimmy Carter is eradicated a human scourge today. What did you do?
Become human scourges.
Dennis SGMM
@Ross Hershberger:
But, but, but, he was the Gipper. When he was first elected I despaired because it meant that we’d lost the battle of shadow over substance.
Just Some Fuckhead
Major fan of President Carter. My only issue with him is he was the first presidential candidate to run explicitly as a Christian and thereby turn every presidential contest into a best Christian contest.
change
Wow, liberals still trying to defend the record of the Carter administration.
Did any of you children actually live through Carter’s “Malaise” of gas lines, preachy sermons from the Oval Office, hyper-stagflation, chronic unemployment, and the weakening of America in the world?
WereBear
@Ruckus: Most awesome.
I’ve always loved Jimmy Carter. He meant it.
That, I think, scared his opposition most of all.
Also, focus on kitties in the White House! (Amy Carter’s Siamese. Who was of course, a dirty commie.) Always cool.
change
calipygian
@change: @change: Dickhead, have you actually READ the “malaise speech“?
If you don’t think the “malaise” speech wasn’t the most precient piece of Presidential oratory, possibly ever, then you are the dumbest trolly troll ever to troll a blog.
change
LOL!
Yes, surely malaise will go down in history with the Gettysburg Address, Kennedy’s Inaugural, and Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speeches! It’s THAT good!
God, you can’t MAKE up the stuff that liberals believe anymore.
calipygian
@change: Shorter Reagan:
What a fucking asshole. In fact, Reagan is pretty much a dirty fucking hippie in his outlook – do what you want and don’t worry about the natural limits of growth or how it impacts society.
geg6
@Dennis SGMM:
Totally agree with this.
Carter was my first presidential vote and the first campaign for which I volunteered. I could not, for the life of me, understand how ANYONE could vote for Reagan. It was Reagan who finally made my dad, a lifelong Republican (though one who hadn’t voted GOP since Nixon’s first win), change his registration to Dem. He loved Carter and despised Reagan.
Jimmy Carter is a great and heroic man, in office and as a humanitarian. One of my personal heroes and one the few Christians out there that I respect.
change
@calipygian:
Yes, because optimism is a horrible, horrible thing.
I guess you must REALLY hate FDR! FDR should have told us to put on a sweater instead of saying we only have to fear “fear itself”.
At least the old school libs didn’t whine about how the future would be a dark, dark place where we all pay for our “sins”.
change
If Carter had been President in 1861, he would have given a preachy speech about how we have to just learn to live in a world where the US is divided and slavery is legal, and learn the “limits” of freedom.
calipygian
@change: Fuckwad, do you know the difference between “inspiring” and “prescient”?
Obviously not, because then you would understand that I didn’t think the “malaise” speech was inspiring. It was prescient in that Carter keenly understood where America was at the time and was absolutely dead on correct in his diagnosis of where Reagan’s Sunshine “do what you feel” hippie conservatism would take the country.
change
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/ElectoralCollege1980.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1984
That’s how much people loved Carter and Mondale, liberals. Blow your revisionist history out your ass.
change
@calipygian:
He told us it would lead to an economic boom (that had only two brief, minor interruptions from the 80s until 2008) and final victory in the Cold War?
inkadu
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m guessing that’s the worm that’s the origin of the medical symbol of two snakes wrapped around a staff. Doctors of old used to pull the worms out by wrapping the worm around a stick and very slowly twisting until the worm was out.
Chyron HR
@change:
To recap, Change is an ardent supporter of: Communist China, Vladmir Putin, and Guinea Worms.
America, not so much.
Angry Black Lady
@Uloborus: Bwahahahaha. Brilliant. Maybe the nutters at FDL and MyDD will start calling Carter “White Chocolate Carter.”
Alison
@change:
Optimism is fine if it doesn’t deny reality. Pretending everything is great isn’t “optimism” anyway, it’s fucking willful stupidity…something with which you seem quite familiar.
change
Next up:
Liberals tell us that Michael Dukakis was an inspiring orator and brilliant campaigner!
Ross Hershberger
@change:
Don’t forget that colossal Star Wars boondoggle. Vastly expanded government spending to create a magical Missile Shield. And how did that turn out, other than as a black hole sucking up taxpayer dollars?
change
@Ross Hershberger:
Since liberals refuse to intervene in Iran, a missile defense shield may be our only line of defense in the future form places like Iran and North Korea.
Can’t blame liberals for hating Reagan, though. After all, thanks in large part to him, they no longer have their beloved Soviet Union.
I suppose in the 40s you would have written off space rockets as a “massive boondoggle”.
Chyron HR
@change:
Of course! By the way, had you even heard of your beloved Guinea Worms an hour ago?
change
@Chyron HR:
We’ll see who wins what in 2012, won’t we?
Ross Hershberger
@change:
To a moron.
How did you learn to type with your head up your ass? By feel?
Montysano
Because less always = bad here in Murika.
Then off we went on our 30 year binge, building the non-negotiable American Way Of Life, using money borrowed from the future, and wound up exactly where we are today.
licensed to kill time
I don’t know why anybody bothers responding to change. It lives in fantasyland just like Reagan did, the poor befuddled old bastard. Plus it’s a boring troll that uses Rush’s anal cystian talking points.
:::yawn:::
Chyron HR
@change:
No, really, Change. Here you are, sitting at your computer and throwing psychotic shrieking fits because fewer people have a horrible disease.
And why are you so upset by the potential eradication of this disease? Because liberals say being sick is bad. My god, what is wrong with you?
trollhattan
@change:
What are you, fucking twelve? Stagflation was a Nixon-Ford “invention” as was the first, bestest gasoline/energy crisis. God, what a maroon.
Here, I have a WIN button you can shove up your cloaca.
calipygian
@change: Gee, Change, when we DO intervene in Iran, I hope you are the first person down at the recruiting station.
TomG
Geez, I thought the last thread with “change”, people figured out that it’s just a troll. A bad one, at that. Ignore his comments, PLEASE.
Woodrowfan
Let’s see, Carter gave in to none of the Iranian’s demands. Reagan sold them arms, which was a) illegal b) might well have been turned against US servicemen c) resulted in more hostages being taken (in Lebanon) and d) lined the pockets of corrupt members of his own administration.
Today’s question: which one do the teatards consider the model for how the US should handle Iran??
WereBear
Reality, agree with Republicanism, it does not.
/yoda
Shadow's Mom
@trollhattan: Yes, well, don’t you see? The energy crisis and stagflation were Carter’s fault, just like the current recession and unemployment belong to Obama.
After all, effects always occur concurrently with causes, don’t they? There can be know decisions made years earlier that lead to negative effects. It it ALWAYS the fault of the Democrat who is or was most recently in the White House.
/:snark
Thank you, @Woodrowfan
Dennis G.
@change:
You need to get some new material. Your act is old, your memory is faulty and your arguments are just silly.
Still, you seem to be operating at the outer edge of your ability for cognitive thought and as a liberal I find that I can tolerate your ill-informed rants. It is clear that you are just a person of limited skills lashing out with a rage you do not understand. Poor thing. You are locked into the fables of your youth and have no ability to learn or discuss anything outside of your box. Every post from you seems to be a cry for help. How sad you are. Good luck with that.
trollhattan
@Shadow’s Mom:
Thanks for being an order of magnitude more mature than I. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand around silently while shouty people lie, unchallenged.
calipygian
@trollhattan:
If you stand around silently while shouty people lie, unchallenged, the lie becomes accepted. I can’t do that anymore myself. I will never, ever let atrocities like the health care debate of 2009 happen again without bending down and getting in the oxygen masked face of the scooter driving liars shouting about death panels while demanding that the government stay out of their Medicare.
Shadow's Mom
@calipygian: Yes, this. I’ll still try to be tactful and courteous in my responses to shouty lying people, but I try to NOT let their lies stand unchallenged.
My apologies for my stupid fat-fingered ‘know’ should be ‘no’ at #64 above.
Cain
As I said in a previous thread. You guys need to fuck change harder and faster. That’s what he is here for. Don’t correct whatever he’s saying just smack him around some.
Hey change, I hear you blow goats when you’re idling in your 4 wheel toy truck! Did mommy not spank you enough when you were little?
cain
henqiguai
@TaMara (BHF) (#17):
There, FTFY.
Comrade Baron Elmo
Didn’t Jimmy Carter recently top some right-wing poll for Worst American Ever? As I recall, even the conservatives who set the poll up were puzzled by that result.
So why is it that wingnuts despise Carter so intensely, anyhow? Not a great president (a good man out of his element, essentially), but I’ve never understood the intensity of conservatives’ hatred toward the man.
Mike in NC
Today Jimmy Carter is helping eliminate a gruesome disease caused by worms. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, is merely feeding worms.
Death Panel Truck
@change:
What Ronnie meant to say:
History sucks for you, dude. Reagan was a fraud. Deal with it.
Rick Massimo
@change: You’ll do and say ANYTHING to keep from actually reading it, won’t you?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html
P.S.: Carter cut our oil imports by a third, because he had the crazy hippie notion that basing our entire economy on the stability of the Middle East was not such a great idea. Then, of course, Reagan came along and doubled our imports, because what could possibly go wrong?
Lee
I am pretty sure that Carter was the one who initially got us involved in Afghanistan.
Rick Massimo
@Comrade Baron Elmo: For one thing, he was a Democrat who had the temerity to think he deserved to be President, and even worse, he pulled it off.
Secondly, they were dead wrong about him. And they cannot STAND that.
Third of all, the Wingnut Bible says that Reagan’s America was a place of wine and roses and unicorns and full employment and things were never better for anyone ever. And when you’re a four-year-old at heart, it’s not enough that your favorite president be good; he must be the BESTEST EVAR. And it’s not enough to be the BESTEST EVAR; the other guy must be the WORSTEST EVAR. And the fact that things were way worse the first couple of years of Reagan than they were the last couple of years of Carter MUST be erased.
chopper
@change:
you’re one of those guys who’s going to be telling his retarded kids about how the ‘great recession’ was caused by obama before he was even elected, aren’t you.
ThresherK
@Woodrowfan: Here it is in easily digestible form. (Hint: If one has to read this disclaimer, no hint will suffice.)
Seriously, though, somewhere the ghost of Herbert Hoover wants to tell the GOP (and conservadems, and the Beltway Inbreds) “We never had a Great Depression to learn from in 1929. What’s your excuse?”
ThresherK
(PS @ Woodrow fan, I meant to direct that at ‘change’, not you. Sorry, my copy edit fail.)
goatchowder
Jimmy Carter is a Christian in all the good senses of the word.
I’m an atheist, I don’t buy the whole religion thing, and the wingnuts and bible-thumpers have given Christianity a very poor image in my mind, but I gotta say, Carter is the real deal.
WaterGirl
If “change” comments, even if it’s over and over in the same thread, I just skip past comments by him/her/it. But when a bunch of people engage with “change”, then it takes over and makes the thread not worth reading. And then the terrorists win.
Here’s hoping for a bunch of new year’s resolutions about not engaging with folks like this.
andy
@Comrade Baron Elmo:
I think future historians will peg President Carter, whatever the faults of his Administration, as the man who framed the debate about how the United States would organize itself into the 21st century- this from his so~called “Malaise” speech:
Well, we all know how that shit turned out, now don’t we?
Reagan told us we didn’t have to pay attention to all that stuff- that that “mistaken idea of freedom” Carter warned us all about was just a lot of talky stupid fag shit.
Well, Reagan was fucking wrong, and Conservatives know that anybody with access to the Google machine can see Carter speaking from the fast, telling us “I told you so.”
Hence the Carter hate.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html
SiubhanDuinne
@inkadu #46: That’s exactly how they pulled the GW from its human host, but it never occurred to me that it might be the symbolism in the caduceus. Good catch there!
Mike Kay (Demcrat of the Century)
To think the lameo “left” primaried him in 1980 because…. wait for it….. he wasn’t liberal enough.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
To think the lameo “left” primaried him in 1980 because…. wait for it…. he wasn’t liberal enough.
Woodrowfan
@ThresherK:
I did wonder. 8-)
When the report on Iran Contra came out I did some math and found that the money that was actually sent to the Contras was enough to keep them in the field for….one month. Yep. 30 days more or less. Most of the money went into various American pockets, including Ollie’s//
Carol
@Rick Massimo: And my memories was that with Reagan, America began the long decay and the long screwing of the working class. It was Reagan who brought us homeless by cutting funds for mental health hospitals. They were snakepits, some of them, but there were pushes for reform, and they were housing better than living on the street. I think of the cuts for public housing which meant fewer places to live for struggling people. I began noticing that infrastructure was beginning to crumble because they believed spending on it was “pork”.
If we had listened to Carter, we would be miles ahead on energy independence-perhaps we would have gotten a President Kennedy Deux that would have pushed for even more. Just think, Iran/Iraq would be tourist traps of only modest significance now. We might have protected Sadat, and gotten a more comprehensive Middle East peace by now.
rikyrah
Carter was just too decent to be President. He definitely is a true Christian and lives his faith in practice.
change
See how the liberals hate the success of Reagan. See how they utterly despise him and his brilliance.
Lysana
@Carol:
So. Much. THIS.
PIGL
@kdaug: I guess the controversy about the motives, aims and beliefs of this President will be resolved by his post-presidency career.
If President Obama does not end up with a billion-dollar job at some bank, finance firm, or MIC conglomerate, but rather emulates Mr. Carter, I will be very pleased, surprised and ashamed.
PIGL
@change: Ha ha. Parody troll has defeated his governor.
PIGL
@Comrade Baron Elmo: they hate him because he stands in most unwelcome contrast to their bile and hatred. Little better than Guinea worms themselves (loathsome parasites bred in filth who spread dread, disgust and pain) , they probably hate him all the more for his successes.
Tehanu
Can’t blame liberals for hating Reagan, though. After all, thanks in large part to him, they no longer have their beloved Soviet Union.
Another idiotic assertion with no correspondence to reality. The Soviet system was doomed by its own internal contradictions. The only positive thing Reagan did was not drop the bomb before it did itself in. As for the rest of Reagan’s “brilliance,” the man was nothing but a talking head spouting everything his corporate masters told him to. And yes, I did live through that period, and I knew Reagan was a worthless piece of shit when he had the solar panels on the White House taken out to please his buddies in the oil biz. The only thing stupider than that is people like “change” arguing that he was smart.
As for Jimmy Carter: heck, if he ran for President again, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat. As somebody upthread pointed out, there’s a big difference between optimism and acting like you don’t notice the avalanche sliding down on your head.
Robert Waldmann
Yes Jimmy Carter is a great man. I will note some additional additions.
Notably Ronald Reagan is the recent former president with the highest approval ratings after Kennedy and Carter is near the bottom. When AEI hacks attempt to explain what Reagan did right, they claim that, out of love of the free market, he eliminated regulations which helped incumbent “producer interests” avoid competition and hurt consumers. The best I can figure they are thinking of the very beneficial deregulation of interstate trucking and of airlines. Both the result of bills signed into law by Carter.
Semi sane Reaganauts try to claim that Reagan did what Carter did. That’s how great Carter is.
He is about the best ex president ever (well John Q Adams was the attorney who argued the Amistad case in front of the supreme court — see the movie).
He poll watched military dictator Noreiga trying to get elected in Panama. Noreiga said that Bush sent poll watchers who were out to get him, but Carter was honest. Carter was honest. He said the voting was free and un-intimidated. This took guts as it might have lead to him siding with Noreiga. Then when the votes began to be counted and it was clear that Noreiga lost so Noreiga stopped the counting, Carter’s denunciation was totally credible. He demanded entry to the headquarters of the electoral commission. A Panamanian national guardsman said “Let the gringo in. He has balls.”
Then he poll watched in Nicaragua. He said the election was fair. Republicans were outraged. Then not so much with Violetta Barrios Chammoro was declared the victor over the Sandinista Daniel Ortega. Then Republicans gave the credit to Reagan. By the way, Daniel Ortega is currently President of Nicaragua.
Then in Haiti he was part of the team that convinced military dictator Cedras to return power to elected president Aristide. Carter, in particular, refused to give up when the rest of the team wanted to bug out and hand the problem over to the US army rangers.
Jamie
well, he’s got a lock on the best ex-president prize.
mclaren
@ruemara:
I reacted exactly the same way to Reagan. Except that having lived in California, I’d had a chance to witness Reagan’s vicious hatred first-hand. Ronald Reagan made his political career on hatred — he whipped up hate for the counterculture, hate of young people, hate of Vietnam-era antiwar protesters, hate of anyone with long hair, hate for anyone who looked differently or dressed differently. Reagan rode a wave of savage hate to the governorship, and then to the presidency.
People tend to forget that Ronald Reagan was the original culture warrior, the man who first said “A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah.” Three months before the Kent State massacre, Reagan proclaimed in a speech about antiwar protestors “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.” When confronted with his quote by a reporter after the Kent State students were shot down by the National Guard, Reagan tried to claim he was “only joking.”
The truth of the matter is that Ronald Reagan was elected president because he was a liar.
Reagan told the American people comforting lies they wanted to hear. Jimmy Carter’s huge crime was that he told the American people hard truths they didn’t want to listen to (“There is a malaise in America…”), and as a result the American people banged their little spoons on their little highchairs like spoiled three-year-olds and shrieked until their little faces turned purple.
The result is what we see around us: a nation hopelessly addicted to oil, a nation of macho phoneys bankrupting themselves on a trillion-dollar-a-year army led by incompetent cowards and manned by rapists and gang members who can’t even manage to win a war against a bunch of barefoot fifteen-year-old kids in Afghanistan who are armed with bolt action rifles.
America has turned into Ronald Reagan: all show, no susbstance, all pose, no reality…all celebration of imaginary successes amidst a reality of abject failure.
bob h
Having a great post-Presidency is the best revenge.
someofparts
I drive by the Carter center every day after I pick up the dog.
A lot of us here in Atlanta have always been proud of Carter. Nice to seem him get some credit.
redoubt
@Shadow’s Mom: This. Imagine if Egypt and Israel were still shooting at each other.
@change: It also helps to have people stealing briefing books and sabotaging hostage negotiations.