Jimmy Carter Man from Plains

The nostalgia for Carter by the media is based on a false premise that Carter's world in the late 1970's is like 2025, which of course it isn't.

After the bright light of Camelot being violently extinguished with the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, the pain of the Johnson presidency with the Vietnam war, the Nixon administrations cynicism in Washington that ended in the Watergate scandal and finally Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon, in many respects, Carter was the right person at the right time to be President. The Democratic party was in chaos at the end of the Johnson administration and in 1972 after abandoning the Truman doctrine, the Richard Nixon won the Presidential election with a thumping 49 state landslide - there seemed no way back . Yet only four years later a decent and charming former Governor of Georgia was able to ride the coattails of goodwill for change after the loss of the Vietnam war in 1975 and what happened the previous year with Watergate and the political unreast that brought in 4 presidents in 15 years (unbeknown that he would be the 5th president in 19 years). He easily won the nomination and beat incumbent President Ford in the general election in November 1976. However, that was the easy part, President Carter would face serious head winds once in office figuratively, and literally as in January/February from the mid west to New York were in the midst one of the coldest, windiest and snowiest winters for years and landed on Carter's lap as soon as he entered office. Perhaps an ironic symbol forcasting what his administration was going to endure.

Foreign policy would be a big priority in his administration and Carter himself had a vision for the USA which was completely different from the previous 15 years. He understood that the US had no real fear of being over run by anybody and that there huge military had no real challengers, with the exception of the Soviets in eastern Europe. He wanted to abandon the doctrine of realpolitik and believed that the USA should embark on a mission to create peace in the world rather than continue with a balance of power approach in international affairs. Carter was also uneasy about cozying up to right-wing regimes or illiberal countries even though they were vehemently anti communist and supported US foreign policy.

There was a greater emphasis on arms control, human rights and a determination ease tensions with the Soviet Union and a less hostile approach to communism. His thinking was probably shaped by the events in the Vietnam war which led him to conclude that there was considerable overreach with the Truman doctrine that led the US being ensnared in Indochina for 14 years and in the end had nothing to show for it.

It's generally accepted that a big plus on Carters ledger was the camp David accords in 1978 between Israel and Egypt where Israel gave up seized land in exchange of security guarantees. Ironically enough it may have been Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy during the 1973 war that laid the foundations for this agreement. Both belligerents were confident of Kissinger's sincerity acting as an honest broker during that conflict which later gave the Carters administration a lot of credibility in the negotiations with both governments.

This is all seen as the high water mark for President Carter as domestic and international events were going to overwhelm his administration. At home, high inflation, high borrowing costs, gas lines, a poor economy and a general malaise in the US dogged his presidency. That would have been bad enough, but it was international events that tripped him up.

Carter's overtures for a less antagonistic approach to the USSR and an attempt to ease the tension of the cold war in general didn't work out as planned. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979 which took the administration by surprise. Conservative critics of Carter lambasted him for being duped by the Soviets with his more conciliatory approach and claimed that the Kremlin viewed this as sign of weakness and simply used it as an opportunity with the US embroiled in the hostage crisis in Iran to make a strategic foothold into Afghanistan.

Although this is possible, the Soviets may have got nervous about the Iranian revolution and were worried about a hard line Islamic state spreading to Afghanistan and eventually destabilizing some of the Soviet Unions own Islamic population that bordered both countries. This is something the US didn't appreciate and Carter was easily persuaded to change course and provide military aid to the anti Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Carters naivety was mostly a lack of understanding that the USSR didn't relish having another revolutionary regime on their border and consequently an invasion was necessary. That being said the USA wasn't going to side with the USSR, they didn't see radical Islam in the middle east spreading and thought that it was just a passing phase that wouldn't last long or else could be dealt with later, they were more focused on confronting the Soviet Union and global communism.

It's doubtful that Carter could have stood up to the hawks in Washington and was forced to embark on a more hostile approach to Moscow. Carter himself led the calls for the USA to Boycott the 1980 summer Olympic games in Moscow a totally unnecessary and idiotic gesture. In the light of the massive moral boost of the USA's ice hockey team beating the USSR in the Olympics, the equivalent of David slaying Goliath, it would have been a great opportunity to have struck back at the Soviets using athletic and sports power of the USA. Never the less the conservative charge stuck and the notion that the Soviets wanted to go further after Afghanistan was given credence.

The Afghanistan war would go on for a number of years but it was the events in Iran that would be the greatest challenge to the Carter presidency. What's clear now is that even with third party's involved in diplomacy as direct communication between Iran and USA didn't exist a diplomatic effort to end the crisis proved to be illusive with ultimately the hard liners and the Ayatollah as the supreme leader calling the shots. There were a couple of occasions when it appeared that a diplomatic effort would suffice but there were compelling reasons for the hard liners to keep hold of the hostages.

One was the presidential election in the autumn of 1980, the Iranians were obviously aware of how the crisis was playing out in US politics. Secondly, a US military attack although satisfying to the USA would have played into the hands of the revolutionaries, it would be to their benefit.

An attempted rescue in April of 1980 was a failure and ultimately sealed President Carters fate in the election in November. Any further rescue attempts were out of the question as the hostages were dispersed to different locations in Tehran, but politically any military action later would have been seen as an act of desperation and even counter productive. Carter was a decent person, was no fraud and his heart was in the right place but he had a lot of misfortune in his presidency most of it he couldn't control. The Pentagon the CIA and the NSA were vehemently anti communist and anti Soviet Union and although Carter was right that the USA had no real danger of being defeated and overrun by it's adversaries, he couldn't come to terms with the issue of cold war politics in Washington DC and took a passive view to America military might whose lobby was very powerful.

Carter was probably true to his convictions but international events got the better of him. President Teddy Roosevelt was quoted as saying "speak softly but carry a big stick", but Carter wanted to speak softly and carry no stick, a lesson he learned the hard way in international politics. No President had aged so badly in office over a four year period than Jimmy Carter. I have no doubt that he was sincere in his charitable work, unlike the Clintons and the Obamas who did nothing but enrich themselves with their foundations.

However, I wonder if Carter would fit in to the modern Democratic party which has now embraced war and got on board with the neo-conservative determination for unending conflict. When Trump became President in 2017 the US was involved in fighting in Syria, Afghanistan, they still had troops in Iraq. Also the was potential conflicts in Korea, with China in the South China sea, Russia in Ukraine and Iran. Trump was also being encouraged to use military force in Venezuela to side with the opposition who wanted to oust the sitting president, something he which he declined to do. Both political parties in Washington DC seem to have an insatiable appetite to get involved in wars. What's happened is a conflation of the state department and the Pentagon walking in lock step over policy, initially using sanctions and then military force or sending arms to one side or the other with the help of the CIA all on the grounds of national security.. After Jimmy Carter losing his reelection bid in 1980 to challenger Ronald Reagan it wouldn't be till 1992 when another Democrat would win the white house. So maybe the praise for Carter is because he was the only democrat to win the oval office between 1968 and 1992, a gap of almost 25 years.