Reflections on Jimmy Carter as President

SUBMITTED BY GEORGE MCCLELLAN

Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter has at last, gone to his great reward at age 100. It’s debat­able that he had a good run and not sur­pris­ing to even the most casu­al observ­er, why he was­n’t allowed a sec­ond bite at the pres­i­den­tial apple. He made a crap mess of things. What’s sur­pris­ing is how fast Joe Biden relieved him of the title, worst pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. Com­par­isons are inevitable. When review­ing the record of a deceased past pres­i­dent one must be care­ful to under­stand the sources from which either praise or con­dem­na­tion orig­i­nate. Of course, the lega­cy media, now in its own death throes is not to be believed or trust­ed. Busi­ness­es that claim the roll of “fact find­ers” have turned out to be noth­ing more than rad­i­cal left-wing shills giv­ing the media plau­si­ble excus­es to cen­sor oppos­ing views. Then we have the peo­ple clos­est to the sub­ject, his admin­is­tra­tion staff, the house­hold staff and the pro­tec­tive staff, the Secret Ser­vice. Of course, open sources now avail­able if one search­es, reveals much about Joe the Lega­cy media strug­gles to hide. Jim­my admin­is­tra­tion was an open book. There is trans­paren­cy after death. We will be aghast of what was kept from us about Joe Biden.

Pres­i­dent Carter was an authen­tic Chris­t­ian in the true Bib­li­cal sense. His strict South­ern Bap­tist beliefs ren­dered him naïve on the ways of the world. He presided dur­ing the Cold War.  He was a US Navy nuclear sub­ma­rine offi­cer with an engi­neer’s brain who did­n’t get to see much of the world. His naivety and inex­pe­ri­ence in for­eign pol­i­cy caused him to mud­dle up Amer­i­c­as for­eign pol­i­cy for every pres­i­dent who fol­lowed. But, unlike Joe Biden, Jim­my did­n’t use his office to enrich his fam­i­ly or go after his polit­i­cal ene­mies. In short, Jim­my Carter had prin­ci­ples and fol­lowed ’em but, even after his sin­gle term, he con­sid­ered him­self a diplo­mate with unique qual­i­ties capa­ble of bring­ing peace to the world. His med­dling as a post president/ US cit­i­zen even took him to engage with North Kore­a’s Kim Jong il in polit­i­cal repar­tee that accom­plished noth­ing but give him a mea­sure of noto­ri­ety. He in fact left a loaded hand grenade for lat­er Pres­i­dents con­cern­ing rela­tions North Korea.

But, Jim­my hat­ed Israel and, one sus­pects Jews in par­tic­u­lar as he demon­strat­ed time and again in his for­eign pol­i­cy aims that did not favor the con­tin­u­ance of the Israeli state. Jim­my is giv­en some cred­it for appear­ing to be a for­eign pol­i­cy states­man but, it was all show. Do you remem­ber see­ing him on TV at his 1978 Camp David Sum­mit stand­ing between PLO leader Yas­sar Arafat and Israeli prime min­is­ter Men­achem Begin with his big grin, while the two bit­ter ene­mies shook hands over an accord intend­ed to end the con­flict then tear­ing the Mid­dle-east apart? I don’t doubt that he meant well but he still had this deep seat­ed dis­trust for Israel that he thought did­n’t belong in Arab Pales­tine. What Pres­i­dent Carter did­n’t under­stand, think­ing like the Chris­t­ian he was, was that he was con­firm­ing to our Islam­ics foes the weak­ness they sus­pect­ed West­ern Nations pos­sessed, a lack of strength and resolve. To con­duct nego­ti­a­tions with Islam, an under­stand­ing of Islam is essen­tial because those peo­ple, the Mohammedans,  only accept what is revealed to them on the pages of the Quran. Islam­ics do not believe that all peo­ple are equal in the eyes of God, or sought the same goals, peace and good­will and liv­ing togeth­er as human beings. Those notions sim­ply do not apply to Islam and clear­ly, Jim­my did­n’t under­stand what the Quran requires of its fol­low­ers. It isn’t get­ting along with Infi­dels, ie: Chris­tians and Jews, but con­vert­ing, enslav­ing or killing them. That’s it!

Unlike Joe Biden, Jim­my Carter could nev­er be accused of wan­ton crim­i­nal neg­li­gence or reck­less immi­gra­tion poli­cies that brought death and may­hem to the streets of Amer­i­ca at the hands of ille­gal crim­i­nal invaders. Biden, like Jim­my as we know, also did­n’t like Israel and did every­thing in his fee­ble pow­er to stop Israel from defend­ing itself while still look­ing like he cared. Nei­ther do we see pho­tographs of Jim­my shak­ing hands with Chi­na’s Com­mu­nist busi­ness­men as has been recent­ly revealed Joe Biden did. That’s evi­dence enough to sup­port charges of trea­son. Jim­my would nev­er have done it. But, ya can’t deny Jim­my did betray the Shah of Iran and look where that’s got us. Jim­my got caught between a rock and a hard spot when the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran staged a coup against the Shah of Iran then seized the Amer­i­can Embassy and took fifty five US hostages they held for 444 days. In a des­per­ate attempt to res­cue them and save face, Jim­my approved a mil­i­tary expe­di­tion to fly into Iran and  recov­er the hostages. It was an unor­ga­nized attempt that end­ed in a fire­ball of smashed air­planes on an Ara­bi­an desert. Jim­my was revealed as an incom­pe­tent fool. It took the strength of Ronald Rea­gan, with order and method, to cor­rect that mis­take. I haven’t even men­tioned Jim­my Carters domes­tic ener­gy pol­i­cy, man­dat­ing a 55 mph max­i­mum speed lim­it even on Inter­states, or his domes­tic mon­e­tary poli­cies that drove the cost of fuel and inter­ests rates sky rock­et­ing.  How did Jim­my phrase it, an era of malaise?

When he first entered the pres­i­den­cy, with only the expe­ri­ence of Geor­gia gov­er­nor­ship under his belt, this coun­try-boy from Plaines, Ga, became enam­ored with the pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy and of what he could do. First, he grew gov­ern­ment by cre­at­ing the Depart­men­t’s of Edu­ca­tion and Ener­gy, which have basi­cal­ly become cost­ly if not use­less bureau­cra­cies that still exist today doing more dam­age than good. Like all Cold War pres­i­dents, Carter’s han­dling of the Sovi­et Unions inva­sion of Afghanistan cou­pled with his ris­ing fed­er­al spend­ing were deci­sions that alien­at­ed Amer­i­can vot­ers. Aban­don­ing Afghanistan in the mat­ter Biden did, was his first dis­as­trous for­eign pol­i­cy step that ren­dered Amer­i­ca weak in the eyes of its ene­mies.

As a par­al­lel to today’s pol­i­tics, Carter’s com­par­i­son to Biden’s is to argue that Biden’s poli­cies have led to sim­i­lar vot­er dis­gust. Both Carter and Biden inad­ver­tent­ly laid the ground­work for the sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal shifts toward con­ser­vatism in their respec­tive eras. Jim­mie’s poli­cies ush­ered in the great con­ser­v­a­tive, Ronald Rea­gan. By con­trast, Biden’s poli­cies ush­ered in a return of the great­est fight­er for a great Amer­i­ca, Don­ald Trump!

Remem­ber, free­dom is the goal, the Con­sti­tu­tion is the only way. Now, let’s help Make Amer­i­ca Great Again! (31Dec24)

Hap­py New Year y’all!