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May 21, 2007

Jimmy Carter: A Nation's Shame



There is a new generation of young Americans who have no idea of life was like during the Carter administration. The double-digit morgage rates, the hyperinflation, the gasoline shortages and lines, and the prolonged Iranian crisis.

Hardly anyone can imagine having to cut off your car engine and wait in line for three hours just so you could get ten dollars of gas for your car. But I remember it all too well. I also remember the terrible hopelessness and malaise an entire country felt when an impotent Carter could do nothing to free the hostages at the US embassy in Iran.

H. Ross Perot was so fed up with the impotence of the Carter administration that he had to organize his own special operations team as a private citizen in 1979 and go into Iran and rescue two of his company's employees. There is a book on the subject called "On the Wings of Eagles". I will never forget my grandmother telling that, that was the difference between a man (Perot) and a wimp (Carter).

I was in high school during Jimmy Carter's presidency and remember it vividly. The terrible malaise the entire country felt, and the feeling of the joy and relief that the entire nation felt when Ronald Reagan was elected president in a landslide election in 1980.

Jimmy Carter's comments about George W. Bush being the worst president in history are beyond bizzare and I'm sure the previously oppressed women in Afghanistan who can now attend school and vote would disagree with him so would many of the citizens of Iraq who so proudly raised their ink covered fingers finally free after so many years of living in a brutal dictatorship.



5 comments:

  1. I remember it oh too well, my father, a self employed plumber, had to go to work at a local factory. Due to high mortgage rates there were very few homes being built, bad times for us, we had lived quite well prior to Carter taking office. Surprisingly, not long after Reagan became the Commander and Chief, the phone started ringing again allowing my father to restart his business and rehire the employees that he had laid off. Bush has a long ways to go before he overtakes Carter as the worst president, even on foreign policy.

    Nice blog; I would recommend putting one of those big orange RSS subscription buttons around the top portion of the page.

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  2. This is the worst US Prez ever.

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  3. Nice to see you posting regularly. I hope the Pearl Beer hasn;t made you too regular...

    Anyways, here's my two cents worth. I remember the gas lines. To make it worse, I was living in Birmingham Alabama during that time. Being a white kid in b'ham at the time was not really ..well...normal.

    The inner city was not a "home-field". Having said that, I truly can't blame President Carter for what was happening during that period. If you want to get right down to it, Uncle Ronnie did "what had to be done", namely give-in and negotiate whereas Carter lived in his own little naive world where Right was Right and Wrong was Wrong.

    If we lived in a perfect world, than Carter would have been a perfect president. As it is, we don't. So that requires a perosn who can read 256 shades of gray.

    Our current dictator has a lot in more in common with Carter than many would care to admit.

    But I'll save that for when I finally get a chance to guest post...... :)

    LaoLao

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  4. Anonymous8:27 PM

    I evolved from a politically naive high school student to a slightly less naive college junior (with some conservative/libertarian princples) during Carter's reign.

    So the whole gamut of problems - gas lines, gas prices, gold at $800/oz, insane interest rates, high unemployment - didn't coalesce for me around Carter until his last year in office.

    By the time of his famous "malaise" speech I was awake and aware of Carter's malfeasance, and of his impulse to blame everything on someone else, anyone but himself and his crazy policies. So I sat there in shock and disbelief as he blamed the American people for just about every blundering error he'd made during his tenure.

    At his advanced age you might think Carter would have developed some self-awareness, self-restraint, and a capacity to avoid blaming others. Especially other Presidents.

    No, this man grows worse with age. He's a bigger loudmouth than 5 years ago, less tolerant and more deceptive, and his complete disdain for Presidential decorum and comity is a blight upon American political history.

    The only real question is whether, over time, Bill Clinton and Al Gore will outdo Carter in their utter disrespect for the offices they once held.

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  5. Ouch I almost forgot the gold at US800 an oz.

    Was a shame that so many school students couldn't afford a high school or college ring at those prices.

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