Michael Barone: Give Credit to Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States and longest-living, has entered hospice care at the age of 98. It’s a good moment to put his presidency in historical context. We are actually more years away in 2023 than we were in Carter’s office, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s in 2023.

They were not the only ones who were separated. Carter stated once that he had never met a Democratic president while Roosevelt did meet every Democratic president who lived during his lifetime, with the exception of Jimmy Carter.

Carter took office during a time when there were raging problems. Many of these problems resemble the confusing problems we face today. They were also times when electoral politics performed very differently than it has in the past decade.

The partisan lines were less clear, the voting patterns more fluid, and there was much more room to maneuver on substantive issues. Carter’s best was his ability to take creative stands on complex issues and make lasting improvements.

Today, the problems he faced in campaigning in 1975, 1976, and when he took office in 1977 have a familiar ring. The decade saw inflation raging in a way that conventional economists could not understand or fix. The nation was still recovering from a prolonged wartime military defeat.

Violent crime was on the rise in central cities. Domestic terrorists have been setting off bombs and devastating property for many years, almost without any consequences. These negative trends were both more severe today in terms of their impact on the population and quantitatively.

Partisan preferences were changing, and far from the red-and blue patterns of the 21st Century. Jimmy Carter won every Southern state, except Virginia, in November 1976. He also lost every Western state with the exception of Hawaii. California voted Republican, Texas Democratic. Thirty one of the 50 states voted that year for a different party from what they did in 2016, 2020, or both. Only one of today’s 10 largest states backed the same party then and now — New York.

This is partly because the two parties’ nominees, incumbent President Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, were from their party’s respective historic heartlands — outstate Michigan, south Georgia — which had both been trending the other way in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Ford was elected a Democrat from his former congressional district after he became vice-president.

Carter’s Georgia gave John F. Kennedy the second highest national percentage in 1960 (Sherman had walked through Georgia only 96 year before). Sherman voted for Republican Barry Goldwater and George in 1964.”segregation forever”) Wallace in 1968. Carter was a rural candidate in Democratic primaries for Governor. He lost in 1966 and won in 1970. Then, he beat an Atlanta-based Republican in general election.

Carter, as governor, surprised almost everyone when he hung a portrait by Martin Luther King Jr. at the state Capitol. Today, this seems quite normal. It was national news. This was a sign of acceptance by rural white Southerners that racial discrimination had ended and they were moving towards a future with biracial people.

It showed that Jimmy Carter could learn from his mistakes, something he continued to do as president. He learned the lessons from Ralph Nader, free market economists, and supported deregulation for airlines, trucking, freight railroads, which resulted in a significant drop in costs for consumers.

Carter was a young man who cried early on. “inordinate fear of Communism,” However, after the invasion Afghanistan in 1979, his father said that he had resigned. “opinion of the Russians has changed more drastically in the last week than even the previous two and a half years.” The result was covert operations in Afghanistan and a defense buildingup that, thanks to Reagan’s acceleration, eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire 12 years later.

Carter made the same mistakes in inflation and learned from them. He also changed his policies. In August 1979, he appointed Paul Volcker to the position of Federal Reserve Chairman. Volcker’s strict, high-interest-rate policies kept inflation at bay and led to quarter-century of low inflation growth.

Carter’s top assistants — Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell — were often brash and disrespectful of Washington insiders, but they were also highly competent and admirably loyal. Stuart Eizenstat, a quieter but equally talented aide, was also featured in his 2018 book “President Carter: The White House Years,” The Carter administration’s achievements are defended with great depth, even though he admits to some mistakes.

Enoch Powell, a British parliamentarian, said that all political careers end with failure. Carter’s was no exception. The late Pat Caddell was Carter’s pollster. He had to inform Carter on Monday morning that he had lost 10 point over the weekend, and that he would lose. It was a difficult phone call on both sides.

Today, it is rare to see voters change their minds so quickly in November. We don’t often see our presidents change their minds as a result of events. Give Jimmy Carter credit for this, to the country’s benefit.

Michael Barone is a Washington Examiner senior political analyst, resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute, and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

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