I think he had a bit of bad luck with the economy of his time and also with the Iranian hostage situation. If freeing them had worked he would have been a superhero. Or he could have done it like Reagan with Iran-Contra: talk tough in public but secretly pay off the Iranians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_th...

That’s not to say it didn’t happen, but it hasn’t been proven by any means.

Before you say things like this maybe you should ask yourself something like "Is this my personal opinion I invented on the spot without any evidence."

That's pretty much the way it goes with every president, good or bad luck, even though very little is the result of a small four-year window - it started well before that.

I wonder if that is a fair judgement or whether he was just the victim of the economic cycle and external forces.

Perhaps one of the better statements we can most accurately make is that his administration was pretty poor at covering things up, spinning - perhaps to the extent of lacking the confidence Americans required.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/books/review/president-ca...

And make no mistake: the partisan hackery is strong in criticism (more commonly, vacuous dismissal) of Carter. I know a Republican who calls him "that man", a la FDR's detractors.

Fighting to defend a dictator the West effectively installed to suppress a populist movement was unlikely to have a better outcome than the Shah being ousted.

People in the West seem to forget the Iranian Revolution was _extremely_ popular in Iran.

Why was it popular?

Because the Shah was a corrupt and oppressive regime that was hated by the Iranian people. The Iranian Revolution wasn't the first time he was forced out of Iran either.

This delusion that Iran could be "ruled" by the Shah as a positive outcome needs to stop. It isn't borne out by the facts and it would have ended up collapsing eventually. Popular leaders don't need organizations like SAVAK to torture its own people.

What makes a president memorable is what they do when they’re dealt a “bad hand.”

Obama may not be quite the boy scout that Carter has been, but my expectations are that he’ll become an elder statesmen of the republic that we’ll cherish similarly.

People aren't great in and of themselves. They are great within an environment.

So everyone is a "victim" of externalities.

He had lots of really nice things to say about Chavez and Castro when they died, for instance. Even if you're left wing, you need to acknowledge they did some pretty awful things to their people as leaders.

Lots of really nice things? What he said about Castro: "We remember fondly our visits with him in Cuba and his love of his country."

Those would indeed be funny accusations for an ex-POTUS to make.

As polarization has increased, views of former presidents have become more partisan and whether you hold this view now more closely tracks political affiliation.

I really like that story! You'd be a few years older than me, but we would have gotten along well as kids/stupid smartasses...:)

Nah, not if you talk to any craft brewers or beer enthusiasts. They are basically inches short of having his portrait hung in every craft brewery and pub due to his H.R. 1337 bill. If it wasn't for political partisanship, this might have already happened.