RIP. I’d have a lot to say, but for now, de mortuis nil nisi bonum.
[Update while later]
I’m watching the Packers/Vikings game (rooting for Green Bay to get the division championship for the Lions), but Ed Driscoll has a lot of links.
[Monday-morning update]
The under- and over-appreciated Jimmy Carter.
And there is no love lost from Sarah Hoyt.
[Update a while later]
He was a terrible president, and a worse former president.
I’ve always considered Jimmy Carter to be one of our best ex-presidents.
…and when it came to enabling that, glad I could help…
Helping Strother Martin place as many Reagan body snatching pods on SNL as I could….
It shows that even a man with integrity and good intentions does not necessarily get good results.
He was a terrible ex-president, too. Habitat for Humanity was virtue signaling. He was a Jew hater. And funny how he could “certify” the integrity of elections where a thug was kept in, or came to power. But here he was able to excuse the vote fraud of his beloved Democratic party.
It’s too bad he couldn’t stick around long enough to see his beloved Iranian mullahs finally collapse.
Gone to Hell’s Cardroom to join the three bozos who preceded Lincoln and the other bozo who followed him. He will not be missed.
I was in the military under Carter. He was a lousy CinC. At a time of double-digit inflation, he decided to “set an example” by giving us pay raises 10% below the rate of inflation two years in a row. I was stationed in Germany at the time, so I also got to “enjoy” low currency exchange rates with no cost of living allowance in addition to the 20% pay cut. F Carter. He sucked.
My father was a Navy chief, then senior chief, under Carter. With four kids, by 1978-79, our family qualified for reduced price school lunches and some other program. There was no question of applying. “That’s for people who really need it. We’ll get by.” We did get an earful about Carter and his priorities from Dad, though.
I was just a week elementary school tyke in 1980, but I can remember a lot about that year. I remember the waits in line for gas. I remember the hostage crisis update every single night on the news with Frank Reynolds, and the yellow ribbons everywhere (one of the Marines was a local town boy, too). I remember the shock of EAGLE CLAW going belly-up and Afghanistan. I remember just how much inflation was crimping mom’s grocery store runs (a regular topic of conversation). I remember the debate. I remember the naughty little songs and jokes we kids would make up about Carter, in what was a pretty unpleasant year in many ways. Maybe not einsatzgruppen-clearing-out-your-town unpleasant, but by the measure of previous years, well, it was all bad enough for even a kid to notice. Childhood memories are fallible and all that, but I think the documentary record really does sustain what I remember seeing at the time.
The school had a mock election for the students the day before. This is the sort of thing that actually can have some predictive value, since at that age kids are mostly reflecting the attitudes of their parents. It turned out that Carter (who had apparently won the 1976 mock election at the school) only got votes from six kids out of about 300. Granted that this was an almost all-white exurban school, with blue collar or lower end white collar households, but….it was my first sign that Carter was going to get absolutely clobbered.
All of which is to say that even kids at the time could understand that Carter got whipped for pretty good and pretty obvious reasons. As I got older I discovered even more on further digging. No amount of house building for the poor in the years after should obscure that. And yes, as Steven Hayward says, he had his dark side, too; but today I’m willing to say no more about that, and pray for his soul.
My bologna has a first name
It’s J-I-M-M-Y
My bologna has a second name
It’s C-A-R-T-E-R
Oh we love to hate him everyday
If you ask me why then I’ll say
Because Jimmy Carter has a way
Of screwing up the U.S.A.
Yup! We had a variation on that one!
Similarly, my elementary school had a mock election in 1972 and Nixon won in a landslide, as he did in the real election not long afterwards. I certainly remember the sense of relief and optimism following Reagan’s win in 1980. I wasn’t quite old enough to pull the lever for Reagan, but would’ve if I could’ve. I experienced the same feeling of relief in 2016 when Hillary was kept out. I wasn’t sure of Trump then, but guardedly hopeful. The last four years have been one long reprise of the Carter years, but amplified. I was ecstatic the Democrats screwed the pooch so badly with Biden, then Harris and Walz, that they couldn’t cheat enough to make up for the sheer awfulness of their candidates and campaign
Ashamed to say I voted for Carter in 1976. I was young (26) and foolish (and a Dem). It was only my second Presidential election. I didn’t make that mistake twice. I never voted Democrat again after that one time.
I switched back to being for Ford after Fred Harris lost to Carter. Boggled my mind Harris lost to Carter in the primaries, but then again I was young and naive…
I was an undergrad then grad student at Purdue during Cater’s reign. It seemed at the time to consist of one, long, dark, cold winter night. I’ll always remember it as such.
Gee how close we were, I was at UIUC in Urbana. Should have invited you over for Jazz night at Trenos: nachos, popcorn and beer and the UIUC Jazz 4 improv band churning out Maynard Ferguson tunes when they weren’t working gigs in Chicago. Remember when regular gasoline broke the $1.00/gal barrier and all the pumps had to be physically switched out to add a digit. I remember Carter all giving us a pep talk in a sweater next to a fireplace in the WH. Probably why you have that persistent memory of the Carter years.
He was a man of good intent. But his over-built sense of self-worth doomed him.
This was back when SNL actually was (a) funny and (b) non-political:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wvoQ2n80lc