Was Jimmy Carter the most underrated president in history?
I thought this was an interesting article in the NYT. It is a review of a book about the Carter presidency by Stuart E. Eizenstat, Carter's White House domestic policy adviser. Eizenstat argues that Carter's presidency was more consequential than is typically thought.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/books/review/president-carter-stuart-eizenstat.html
I thought some DUers might find this interesting.
= new reply since forum marked as read
High Interest Rates were not Carter's fault. They had to go up to combat Nixon's inflation.
is exemplary? If I sound like one of the many people who've crossed him off my list it's because I had several last straws from him in 2016. As it turned out, my respect for his toolbelt Christianity couldn't carry him until the grave. And that's entirely his deplorable doing.
When Bernie Sanders and his eternal, zealous badmouthing of Democrats arrived on the national stage, I thought, oh, my god, a far-left Jimmy Carter. Carter's not easy to categorize. Some have seen him as far left at times, as a Rockefeller Republican, but as president he was small-government conservative in most respects and liberal in many but not all respects.)
Carter and Sanders are both intensely arrogant and intolerant of any viewpoints but their own. It's a righteousness thing, and their superiority of both intellect and principle is illustrated (to themselves) by the inferiority of others. Read about Carter, and you'll find he's one of those people who are both very admirable in some ways and very not at all in others.
Carter's single term was a sadly wasted opportunity. He was a Democratic president with a Democratic house and senate (!!!), but he was a moderate conservative who believed in small government and that he knew better than everyone else. He was always quarreling with his Democratic-controlled congress, and a good part of what little was accomplished was done by congress, whose job also included rescuing him from the hot water he occasionally got into.
Like Sanders, Carter of course had had no support among his colleagues for running for president, but his belief in himself more than made up for the lack of respect he'd earned from others. Sanders almost certainly studied how Carter managed to get elected because there are striking similarities. Carter ran by appealing to idealism, ignorance and populist resentments. Above all, he loudly ran on what he claimed was the corruption of the (rest of the) Democratic Party and promises to fix it. Carter also funded his campaign by small donations from "the people," not because he wouldn't accept big donations but because for the most part knowledgeable donors wouldn't back him. The biggest differences between the two are that Carter was a more skilled politician and that he won.
Although Carter's presidency is considered mediocre at best, he since has always publicly criticized other presidents for not following his advice -- including badmouthing both Clinton and Obama during their campaigns against Republicans, billionaire extremists, Russia. When gathered with other presidents, he's usually wandering around the stage alone while the others chat. Carter, as we know, always also believes he alone knows how to achieve "world peace," or whatever, so he often offers his unsolicited services to heads of state, who also don't want them. Including recently both Koreas.
'Nuf said about being an underrated president? For sure, though, both his achievements and failures are very under-known. He had admirers among those who knew him in his political time. Most biographies about him are fairly quick reads for anyone who's interested.
a good big-picture book, and I know I haven't read it before. Thank you for calling my post thoughtful. 
It's looking more like a bunch of simplistic spouting to me now that I find someone actually read it. I went from liking and respecting him for what I did like and respect to terminally ticked off in one leap, both of them together a doubled-down OD, and this is the result.
But I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on him and his era, LisaM. As you say, very much a mixed bag.
New Deal era ended and a strongly conservative one began, and I'm looking forward to reading about the much bigger events it was part of. Carter's abortive presidency illustrated, didn't cause, an end he couldn't have prevented if he'd tried. But he didn't try. The New Deal era's last presidency, blessed with Democratic control of congress, wasn't even a last gasp of progressive liberalism.
Lol for your creeps response. I can feel-understand it, though zealots with their tunnel-visioned capacity for ruthless casting off of principles in pursuit of their supposedly higher goals, are the ones who tend to give me little chills. Even though none of that type who've risen have ever come close to cutting society's controls, usually just contributing destructive gadflyism, something in me always looks for them. I can't see Trump as capable of strong ideology, much less a zealot, whatever he is, Yeat's "rough beast" in democracy's china shop, but at best channeling the destructive ideology of others.
The only biography I've read of Reagan was Morris's authorized Dutch. Although he spent many hours over years with Reagan, he always found him cold and distant, Reagan's enormous charm something he turned on, then back off. I never came to like him while reading, but I figured that wouldn't change with authors. This reminds me of Morris specifically saying Reagan had no wit. All those humorous, good-natured comments he's noted for, like his charm and that good nature, were performances, lines he developed ahead of time.
and yes, wingnuts jumped all over that.
Compare that to, uh, present day. 
What a crock! The reason that Carter was not a two term hero of the people is the traitorous dirty tricks the Reagan cabal pulled to steal the election!Look up Iran-Contra (Treason pure and simple).They also defined the template the pukes have used since-A slightly bumbling and stupid figurehead fronting for traitors working in the background to steal and scatter the wealth of our nation throughout the world. The whole time dumbing down the populace until they gladly accept a tyrant.
The book that is the topic of this thread will be worth reading, I would think,though I have yet to get it
impression. If there was an article available, I would have read it...long time ago.
