One of America’s Worst Presidents, Jimmy Carter, Dies at 100
Jimmy Carter was such a disaster for America and the free world, the only good thing that came out of his catastrophic presidency was the Reagan landslide.
WATCH: Anti-Semite Jimmy Carter accuse Israel of being an ‘apartheid state.’
WATCH: Jimmy Carter deliberately flew to Syria to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Mashal
Jimmy Carter Was a Terrible President — and an Even Worse Former President
By Philip Klein, National Review, December 29, 2024:
A popular narrative surrounding the legacy of Jimmy Carter is that as president he was a victim of unlucky timing that impeded him politically but that he excelled during his long post-presidential career. The reality is that he was a terrible president but an even worse former president.
Carter’s true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage. He left the country in its weakest position of the post–World War II era. After being booted out of office in landslide fashion, the self-described “citizen of the world” spent the rest of his life meddling in U.S. foreign policy and working against the United States and its allies in a manner that could fairly be described as treasonous. His obsessive hatred of Israel, and pompous belief that only he could forge Middle East peace, led him to befriend terrorists and lash out at American Jews who criticized him.
A former governor of Georgia who had little charisma and national name recognition when he began campaigning for president, Carter ended up in the White House as a fluke. He presented an image as an honest, moderate, and humble southern Evangelical Christian outsider — an antidote to the corruption of the Watergate era. He also benefited from the vulnerabilities of the sitting president, Gerald Ford.
Once in office as an unlikely president, Carter spent his one and only term showing the American people, and the rest of the world, that he was not up to the job.
When he took the presidential oath in January 1977, the unemployment rate was a high 7.5 percent; when he left office in January 1981, it was just as high. Meanwhile, inflation, which was already elevated at 5.7 percent in 1976, the year he was elected, went up in each of his years in office — and reached a staggering 13.5 percent in 1980, the year he was booted out. The only year in the post–World War II period in which inflation was higher was 1947, when the economy was booming and unemployment was minuscule. Put another way, to maintain the buying power that $100 had on the month Carter was sworn into office, you’d need $150 by the time he left the White House just four years later. Under Carter, gas prices doubled, and the supply became so scarce that Americans had to endure long lines at stations to fill up their tanks.
On the international stage, Carter showed weakness, and America’s enemies took notice. Rather than recognize the true nature of the Soviet threat, he preached the defeatist ideology of “peaceful coexistence,” and the USSR steamrolled into Afghanistan. Also under his watch, radical Islamic revolutionaries took over Iran, holding Americans hostage for the last 444 days of his presidency.
It is telling that the defining speech of his presidency was known as the “malaise speech,” in which he spoke not as a leader but as an essayist writing on the “crisis of confidence” in America. He observed: “For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.” As he built a legacy of scarcity, he criticized Americans for wanting plenty, lamenting that “too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.”
It should be no surprise that Ronald Reagan’s message of strength and optimism turned 1980 into a complete rout. Carter not only lost 489 electoral votes to 49, but he got trounced by ten points in the popular vote — even though an independent candidate, John Anderson, drew 7 percent.
AUTHOR
Pamela Geller
RELATED ARTICLES:
Jimmy Carter Brought Malaise to America [And We Ran Out of Gas]
How Jimmy Carter Misread UN Resolution 242, to Israel’s Detriment
Jimmy Carter’s Obsession with Israel
Jimmy Carter’s Friendly Visits with Assad and Hamas
Years marked by crisis — from gas shortages to Iran
POSTS ON X:
EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Carter brought us terrible Stagflation and implimented wage controls only on the US Military hurting soldiers especially enlisted. Terrible foreign policy. His ill-advised, failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran, operation Desert Claw resulted in unnecessary death of 8 Americans. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hostage...
He selfishly wanted a Navy presence so used a carrier and Marine cargo helicopter pilots to make the attempt. These HH 53s had no mid-air refueling capability requiring landing in desert to refuel from gas drums brought in by C 130. Bad decsion when USAF Air Recovery and Rescue HH 53s with mid-air refuleing capability and trained crews were available and should have been used instead.
As mentined above, Carter was no friend of Israel.