This guy makes his own space documentaries on YouTube — very deep dive into the Voyager program:

https://youtu.be/M62kajY-ln0

That's a nice sentiment. Suprisingly humble, coming from Reagan.

Except it was Carter...

People inexplicably hate Carter - not only was he a fantastic president… albeit unlucky but good, but also a genuinely amazing human.

There's a good PBS documentary series on all the modern presidents and it's worth a watch if you haven't seen it already. The Carter episode dug into how he was technically well qualified and capable, but just did not have the connections and support of Congress at the time and that ultimately doomed his administration to failure. None of his ideas were able to get funding or support in Congress so his administration just flailed.

Also naively didn't clean house of the "Nixon men," and paid for it dearly later. Nice guys do finish last at that level, and especially in that era.

It wasn’t naive so much as it was a genuine attempt at healing, forgiveness, and moving past the turmoil. But the corruption won.

It may seem that way if one knows little about the cutthroat Nixon administration, but those folks played hardball. The kind that prolonged a war (Vietnam), killing multiple thousands to ensure getting elected. Watergate, etc. Naiveté in a nutshell, although will allow that "company culture" may not have been as well-known a thing at the time.

Yeah

Cancel culture is dangerous, but being tolerant of some behaviours (which of course are much more specific and contextual in this case) was also his downfall

> did not have the connections and support of Congress

This applies to almost every job. You need soft skills to be successful.

The big problem. Policy is super interesting and fun and touches on so many diverse and stimulating areas. Politics though is awful and puts sociopaths at an advantage.

If you're in US Congress, your vote is incredibly valuable. Yet we want our representatives to vote for what is best for our nation. These two objectives are in obvious conflict. This conflict doesn't trouble me (it has always been so) but rather the loss of awareness that this conflict exists and must constantly be mitigated is what troubles me. Congress is now full of people who are overtly self-interested, and their constituents love it. This is evidence of a major structural breakdown of American society, and it's not clear what caused it or what might heal it.

There's a good argument to be made about the 1970 Legislative Reorganization Act as being one of the first places to look. Up until then, Congress voted on a secret ballot, and the congressional votes were not made public - so lobbying had a much higher hurdle to clear (since the lobbyists could not guarantee a return on their investment by verifying that the Congressperson kept their end of the bargain).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4kvUxQIJlA

> Politics though is awful and puts sociopaths at an advantage.

That's what the sociopaths want you to think. Look at the most successful people politically, who got the most done - Lincoln, FDR, MLK, etc. They weren't sociopaths. The recent sociopath at the top of the ticket underperformed their own party.

As my very conservative, East Texan father says, Carter is too good a man to have been any good as president.

Is it one side of the aisle that hates Carter? Because from what I've seen/read from the outside (Canada) looking in, I saw nothing but praise for his humility and humanity. I saw conflicting opinions on what he did or didn't do during his tenure, but only positive with regards to his person and character.

Well, he DID face a 1980 primary challenge from Edward Kennedy, and barely won his own party's re-nomination with 51.1% of the popular vote as a sitting President. He was pretty well eviscerated by both the left and right a decade or two back, when he published a book labeling Israel's policy toward Palestine as "apartheid".

Speaking as a left-leaning resident of Georgia, it seems obvious to me that Jimmy Carter is not all that well-loved by his own political party:

* Part of this is because he made the mistake of bringing his own people when he went to Washington, instead of populating his administration with more federal insiders.

* Part of it is because he lost, and no one likes a loser (I'd say that Carter's place in the Democratic Part is similar to that of George H.W. Bush, without the legacy of an heir going on to serve two terms).

* And I believe that part of it is because, on the heels of the Civil Rights Act and the re-alignment it ushered in, Democrats were never all that genuinely enthusiastic about having a white Southern leader. It took 12 years of futility for them to embrace Bill Clinton (see point above, about how people more fondly remember Presidents who win re-election). And even Clinton's legacy has picked up a lot of tarnish over the past decade.

Yes. Even to this day, high praise for Nixon and Reagan; and nothing but utter contempt for Carter. More telling of the people laying the condemnation than of the man himself.

Not sure. I was raised by conservatives (albeit somewhat middle of the road) and they and most conservatives I’ve chatted with really admire Carter as a person; just thought he was an incompetent president.

My childhood church group (all Republicans, I’d guess) used to build houses with Habitat. It’s kinda hard to think poorly of Carter when he built something that does so much good.

I wonder if the loud, vitriolic right wingers make it seem like the right thinks as a united, extreme block, when maybe there’s a large, quiet group that is not well represented? Not sure. I may also just be in a bubble of reasonable centrists. My left wing and right wing friends are pretty centrist in my estimation.

> maybe there’s a large, quiet group that is not well represented

Often referred to as the "silent majority".

> My left wing and right wing friends are pretty centrist in my estimation.

I think this is many (?most?) people's experience, whilst media (social/traditional) are geared towards demonizing both "sides", to increase engagement. I say "sides", because most people's opinions skew left/right depending on the issue in question, rather than fitting perfectly into the stereotypical archetypes.

> I wonder if the loud, vitriolic right wingers make it seem like the right thinks as a united, extreme block, when maybe there’s a large, quiet group that is not well represented?

They are all voting for Trump and the Trumpists. How moderate are they?

The folks I know were mixed on that. Some held their nose and voted for him, some voted independent, and some went Democrat the last go round. I went independent.

Not to dismiss your experiences, but we are talking about the claimed "large quiet group". It doesn't seem so large if Republicans are strongly supporting Trump and Trumpists.

Please stop.

I'm not really sure, but I do remember my parents *hated* Carter. I remember distinctly sometime in the '90s thinking "Look at all the amazing things Carter has done with himself after being president. I always thought he was an asshole!"

Carter is a fine human being. So was Hoover.

Johnson was a sociopath, who gave us Medicare, Medicaid, desegregation, and “standardization of computer communication.”

Crediting him with bringing about desegregation is giving him a bit much. He merely stopped pissing down the leg of his secret service detail long enough to sense which way the wind was already blowing.

Your point made, however: it takes a true monster to survive American politics.

Maybe now, but Carter was handed a bag of poop that soured the public.

His election was like Clinton and administration like Biden.

It’s not inexplicable, it was a manufactured consensus by the media.

I was a Carter fan before it was cool, seems like more and more people are coming around and revisiting his legacy.

Carter the President was terrible. Carter the Man, however, is admirable and one of my favorite people. Yes, both can be simultaneously true.

There are copious fine individuals one could name. This doesn't make them great Presidential material.

Nor should we care. It is of far greater significance to be a good parent or a Gary Flandro than to be President.

In case you haven't noticed, a substantial portion of Americans favor assholes.

Agree. The past 59 years have been particularly notable.

Carter is a really nice man. He was not a good president though. Granted much of the badness was out of his control, but such is life.

I think his presidency is stained by the impossible geopolitical and economic environment of his era.

How was he a bad president?

Mainly record high inflation and the gas crisis (which was way worse than today's).

Whether or not anyone could have stopped that doesn't matter, ppl attribute this to him.

He was also blamed for not bringing home the American prisoners that Iran kidnapped.

I never understood that. He authorised a mission to do it; it was hardly his fault the mission failed.

"Mission Accomplished!" Yes, they all get blamed for things not under their control.

His biggest issue was that he was a manager, focused too much on processes and policy detail.

A President usually sets the tone and direction of policy, but avoids personal accountability for the details for a variety of reasons.

I don't think anyone hates him as a person. He's a Mr. Rogers-level humanitarian.

Carter taught me that there are four ways to pronounce pecan.

An example of why Carter was a terrible President. Remember the looong gas lines? I sure do. For years, just getting gas was a miserable experience with arbitrarily long waits, up to hours.

Reagan's first act was to sign an Executive Order eliminating all oil and gas price and allocation controls.

The gas lines vanished literally overnight (and I'm not exaggerating) and never returned. Boy do I remember that.

Carter could have done that. But he simply didn't understand economics.

Sadly, Biden is considering having the government control fuel distribution again.

Do you indeed?

It was during the Nixon administration that price controls and rationing of gasoline were introduced, in response to the OPEC oil shock of 1973 (crude oil prices had been set by government since 1971). You mention Reagan's executive order, but that was just closing the stable door after the horse had bolted; Carter began the phaseout of the Nixon-era price controls in 1979.

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/06/archives/carter-to-end-pr...

"The President [Carter] said that he would set gasoline consumption targets for each state and would order mandatory steps, assuming Congress allows him to do so, if the states fail to save as much gasoline as they are supposed to do. One such step, he added, might be the weekend closing of service stations."

Gawd, what an awful proposal.

Carter dinked around for 4 years failing to get it done, and Reagan does it in a few minutes with the stroke of a pen.

All your article shows is Carter simply didn't understand the problem. Reagan did.

Not mentioned is the DOE also controlled allocation of gasoline to filling stations. That was quite a disaster. Reagan ended all that nonsense with the same EO.

Isn't it interesting that Biden is going down the same path? He'll fail just like Carter.

You placed all the blame for gas lines and price controls on Carter, when it was a policy imposed by Nixon and continued by Ford. Then you complain about Carter 'dinking around' because he opted to work with Congress and stick to the goal of trying to balance the federal budget. Many of the price controls had been dismantled by the time Reagan took office.

I might observe that Carter's 'dinking around' also reduced the federal government's budget deficit, which increased sharply under the Reagan & Bush administrations, along with the national debt.

When you're the President, you own it and it's your fault.

Let's go back to what happened - Carter didn't fix it in 4 years. Reagan did overnight as his first action. Reagan gets the credit.

Read also Carter's policy proposals for energy. All terrible, just like Biden's.

The 79 oil crisis and rationing was caused by the disruption of oil from the Iran, but the US suffered much more from the disruption of the oil from Iran than other countries that also relied on this oil. It would be wrong to ignore the role the government played in making this oil disruption significantly worse.

From "TheU.S. Petroleum Crisis of 1979", PHILIP K. VERLEGER, JR.

>...On February 28, 1979, DOE published the following notice in the Federal Register: "It is essential that refiners enter the spring driving season with adequate gasoline stocks to meet seasonal demand requirements. We recognize that gasoline stocks are currently at adequate levels for this time of year, which is usually a period of low demand. Recent industry data indicate that total stocks are now in excess of 265 million barrels, which is less than last year's record high levels during the same period but above the average levels of previous years. Our concern is that these stocks not be drawn down precipitously as soon as the impacts of the Iranian shortfall are felt by refiners. Refiners are urged to keep stocks high enough to meet expected demand during the 1979 summer driving season, even if it is necessary to restrict somewhat the amount of surplus gasoline that is made available to purchasers currently" The implementation of these instructions had the effect of restricting the volume of gasoline available to service stations to between 80 and 90 percent of 1978 levels. This reduction was greater than the reduction in total gasoline supplies.

>...In April 1979, DOE ordered the fifteen largest refiners to sell 7.8 million barrels of crude oil to smaller firms that were unable to obtain supplies on the world market at competitive prices. …These transfers probably reduced the volume of gasoline produced in the second quarter because the refineries that purchased the crude oil had only a limited capacity to produce gasoline, while the refineries that sold it could have produced more. ...In addition to reducing the supply of gasoline, the buy/sell program appears to have affected the geographic distribution of crude oil and gasoline. This is because the primary recipients of the crude oil were refineries in the Midwest and the gulf coast areas, while the sellers were companies that were marketing throughout the nation.

>...…In April, DOE turned its attention to the low stock of distillate fuel oil … Two impacts were observed on domestic markets. First, excessive stocks of heating oil were accumulated. Second, companies may have been influenced to increase gasoline stocks in anticipation of the mandator yield controls that DOE threatened to impose. These controls specified the percent of refiner output that had to be heating oil. Such controls were designed to curtail the output of gasoline. By building higher gasoline inventories, refiners could smooth out the month-to-month distribution of gasoline despite the controls.

>...Price controls on gasoline may have also created an incentive to withhold gasoline from the market when the prices of crude oil were rising rapidly. …In summary, the refiners had the capacity and the knowledge to take advantage of this opportunity. Ironically, the instructions from DOE to the companies were to do precisely what was most profitable.

>...In addition to encouraging the buildup of stocks, DOE may have added to the shortages by creating an incentive to reduce the output of crude oil. Although it is difficult to estimate what domestic supplies of crude oil might have been in the absence of any restriction, a DOE announcement in November that control levels of the base period were to be reviewed may have constrained production in the first half of 1979.

Nobody ever seems to remember that the DOE also allocated gas to gas stations on a per-station basis. This was complete madness, as it did so based on the previous year's usage patterns. Of course, patterns never repeat themselves very accurately, and the result was gluts in Florida and shortages on the left coast.

A gas station had to apply to the DOE to get gas, and write a paper justifying this. I know this because a friend bought a gas station. He couldn't get a DOE allocation because the gas station across the street filed an objection with the DOE that no gas was needed for the new owner. So his gas station sat with no gas for 6 months or so.

That's Carter's energy policy. Well meaning, but completely wrong.

This is a much more substantive analysis, thanks.

Without going full conspiracy, is there any chance this was a pre Koch brothers example of industry undermining government authority until it gets the government it wants?

If Carter was making bad decisions because Koch told him to, then that still makes Carter a bad President.

Firstly, The Koch brothers are fiercely republican and were not making decisions through Carter. Secondly, I said pre-Koch.

Btw, the oil price controls were a Nixon initiative, continued by Ford. Carter did not invent them, he just didn't remove them.

Reagan was the beneficiary of the collapse of the OPEC price war internationally.

Funny how the OPEC price war collapsed the day Reagan took office and repealed those damned price and allocation controls.

Something Carter could have done at any time. But he didn't. Reagan did.

> he just didn't remove them

That's right, for 4 years he didn't. He gets the blame for it for those 4 years.

I’m trying to square how only [15% of oil price controls](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/29/us/president-abolishes-la...) remained when Reagan single handedly saved the day. Seems like Carter spent 4 years doing the hard work and Reagan was able to capitalize on the last bit, which as the article states, Carter would have accomplished by spring.

But Carter did not do it. You don't get credit for things you didn't do. There was no need for delay, as Reagan amply demonstrated.

Remember, Reagan did it on his first day in office. Carter could have done it the day before.

If you lived through that transition (I did) it was wonderful to have the gas lines disappear overnight and never return. Thank you, Reagan!

Genuinely amazing human sure, but terrible President. He didn’t get anything done and nearly lost the nomination from his own party for a second term, which is rare.

> “We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”

This is a lovely saying, but it feels like fairly strong false advertising. "We hope X", interpreted literally, implies that people physically engage in such forms of thinking. I do not believe this is actually true at ground level, rather, I think this is more of a story that we like to tell ourselves about ourselves.

It seems pretty narrow to assume that because _you_ don't engage in this thinking, that _nobody_ does.

Plenty of us do. The fact that we're not running the world is a detail.

  > Plenty of us do. The fact that we're not running the world is a detail.

I think that "we're not running the world" was the GP's point. It _is_ an important detail in the context of the President saying these words, to remember that he is not one of us who do really engage in this type of thinking.

The magnitude (quantity x quality) of people who do on planet earth is also highly relevant to the objective truth value of the claim.

I wonder if you do indeed engage in the specific type of thinking I am referring to. Would you be willing to compare notes?

SpaceX is actively working towards that goal.

SpaceX's own mission statement doesn't mention becoming part of a community of civilisations [1]. It mentions making humans multiplanetary, but that is a very different aim [2]. Further, it's a good idea to be skeptical of corporate mission statements generally.

SpaceX is doing exciting stuff in the field of rocketry; that's really happening and it's worth being excited about, but they aren't doing more. It's misguided and dangerous to treat them as utopian idealists.

[1] https://www.spacex.com/mission/

[2] https://www.gutenbergcanada.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-outofthesilent...

> but they aren't doing more

Criminy, aren't they doing great? I finally found a way to buy some shares of SpaceX. I don't even care if that investment does badly, I just want to share in a tiny bit of SpaceX.

> dangerous

?? On the scale of things that terrify me, SpaceX doesn't move the needle.

If Starship isn’t designed to go to Mars and back they’ve made some odd design choices.

Musk has acknowledged that he considers colonizing Mars a step to becoming extrasolar eventually, not that SpaceX plans to do that itself.

On a portion of it - I don't see any attention paid to discovering how to teach human beings how to be better at good will, which is part of the claim.