Most people I’ve spoken to about Jimmy Carter who were alive at the time seem to say the same as you. I’ve heard that living in America at the time was depressing and embarrassing. I have a feeling a lot of the praise for the man is from people who weren’t even around when he was president but have been fed some story about how he was great. I see a lot of praise for him online yet it’s very hard to find from the lips of American who lived through it.

I know a far number who have come around on the rebudlican side - but most of them were just barely old enough to vote.

I was a kid when Carter was president. In the late 70s, the US was undergoing a series of shocks. An oil crisis where many gas stations ran out of gas. High inflation and high unemployment. People were literally talking about the biblical end times. They saw Israel fighting for its life. They saw the Iran-Iraq war (the US supported Saddam Hussein as payback against the new Iran government).

Carter was a good man. But he seemed to have no answers for a people who were desperate for leadership like FDR’s during the Great Depression.

Probably because he was the most humanitarian president post-campaign. His accomplishments done after presidency could be its own Wikipedia entry.

That gives me the impression that the 70's was simply a bad time with a good man in charge, when in those times people more or less want to be told "it's okay I'll fix it" with no plan in sight.

we're living through THAT in real time, so I guess history rhymes.

He appointed Volcker, who ended stagflation eventually. And his predecessor was appointed by Nixon so it’s hard to blame Carter for this.

He ended inflation by causing a brutal recession through extreme interest rate hikes, which resulted in an irreversible shift in economic paradigms which caused the US to abandon its industrial lead as we faced recession, idle capital accumulation, and mass unemployment. The US became a deficit economy after that point.

Nixon, though he caused the original shock, originally wanted to keep the Bretton Woods system intact, but that was impossible after what he did.

>He ended inflation by causing a brutal recession through extreme interest rate hikes, which resulted in an irreversible shift in economic paradigms which caused the US to abandon its industrial lead as we faced recession, idle capital accumulation, and mass unemployment

Neat. I'm born just in time for the sequel. I wonder how insulting it was back then to be told "we're doing fine" by the feds moments before disaster (that's where we are now).

wonder what we're moving to after the deficit economy. Can we do Coke bottle caps?

Stagflation was a result of the guns and butter policies of the Vietnam war and the oil crisis.

Carter wasn’t responsible for the Iran hostage crisis.

Did he create those problems or inherit them? The situations in Iran, OPEC, etc. long pre-dated Carter. Another problem was a military that was ruined in terms of morale and probably in wear-and-tear by Vietnam.

Mostly inherit them. However it is an open qusetion on if he handled them well. Would some other policy (that you get to think of in retospect and of course handwave away any bad parts that might happen with them) have done better?

Agreed, and that's always a problem when evaluating political (and some other) performance. It's easy to say 'they could have done better'; it's easy to say 'they couldn't have done more in the circumstances'.

Some problems he inherited. But Iranian crisis was his own making.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/10/ayatollah-khom...

There was that coup Eisenhower OK'd in 1953. I can see how Carter not supporting another coup would be taken poorly.

And yet he supported a coup. He was just too "blind" to see which one. And it's a little far fetched to call an armies call to take over the unstable situation a coup when the current head of the state is incapable to take any action because of a serious illness.

If you are talking about the 1953 coup, I've never heard that description. Everything I've read says the UK, with some degree of US support, overthrew the government.

> And it's a little far fetched to call an armies call to take over the unstable situation a coup when the current head of the state is incapable to take any action because of a serious illness.

That's exactly a coup. The people who conduct coups - and other crimes and violations - always have a smooth justification. Russia is protecting Russians in Ukraine! Hitler needed some 'breathing room', etc.

If the head of state is incapable, then the next civilian in line can take over. No advanced democracy has ever needed the military's help for such a situation.

That next "civilian" was an Islamic extremist who took over because the other leaders of the revolution were too weak and foolish and were eliminated by the Islamic extremists.

At that moment a military takeover would have resulted in a smooth transition of power to the next actual civilian government.

Things are not always simple and straightforward.

> That next "civilian" was an Islamic extremist who took over because the other leaders of the revolution were too weak and foolish and were eliminated by the Islamic extremists.

Are you talking about 1979? I was talking about 1953.

> At that moment a military takeover would have resulted in a smooth transition of power to the next actual civilian government.

If you mean in 1979, that's quite a prediction when nobody knew what would happen, and nobody now can confidently predict paths untaken. it's hard to imagine how the military wouldn't have just furthered a civil war, being closely associated with the Shah. What was the military doing in 1979?

Also, why would the Iranian military make things any more 'smooth' than another power base?

> smooth transition of power to the next actual civilian government.

As of 1979, there hadn't been a democratic civilian government since ~1953; it was a foreign-backed, and IIRC military-backed dictatorship. Why would they install an actual civilian, democratic government if given the chance?

I was obviously talking about 1979, as the topic is Jimmy Carter. The military could have stabilized the power transition. It's not about what military was doing - it was following the orders, and Shah was just too weak because of illness to give any. Iranian revolution destroyed the country and threw it into abyss of Islamic madness, forced millions to flee and forced the rest under inhumane control of theological dictatorship compared to what the regime of Shah feels like a walk in a park.

Iran was not a dictatorship but a constitutional monarchy. It was also like that before 1953. The only actual coup that really happened in 1953, was a coup by Mossadegh, who falsified the parliamentary elections to gain the power and then threatened Shah when he was not appointed as prime minister.

Now, perhaps he could have succeeded with his coup, but unfortunate for himself, he also made some very stupid moves, that removed the important support he needed.

While I disagree with your verdict, those are all valid points. I don't think stagflation can really be pinned on him, though.

Yes. Stagflation originated with the Nixon Shock, when he ended the Bretton Woods system and US Dollar-gold convertibility, because France and other countries wanted to pull their gold out of Fort Knox because we had the exorbitant privilege to finance the Vietnam War as well as Great Society programs.

Had never heard of “mayaguez” until now. It actually happened under President Ford not Carter.

“He was a bad president, a good man, and a great ex-president’ sums up Carter perfectly.

- Someone who lived through his administration.

All I get from this is that Amiercan doesn't want "good men" as president and crumble everytime their personal economy feels bad, clearly caused by whoever is currently sitting.