Many years ago I lived in a liberal neighborhood in Anchorage. We were the only conservatives on our block and I had a friendly rivalry with a lefty neighbor of mine. I wrote previously about the day Ronald Reagan died, how I lowered my flag to half-staff, and how he and I shared a silent moment of respect for the fallen President we each respected in our own ways.
I lowered my flag to half-staff out of respect for the office, not necessarily for the man. However, once Jimmy Carter began meddling in U.S. foreign policy in retirement, I vowed I wasn’t going to lower my flag for men who didn’t deserve it.
And yet, as I reflect on the current lay of the land and reevaluate the history of U.S. Presidents I once supported and now abhor, I’m forced to wonder: How bad was Carter while in office?
Compared to the other presidents in my lifetime, where does he rank?
He certainly had plenty of bonehead moves that we’re still paying for today—like creating new government agencies — but he also spearheaded peace treaties that we and many across the globe benefit from to this day.
When it comes to Iran, or Afghanistan, or foreign policy in general, what culpability do Henry Kissinger, Brett Scowcroft, Cyrus Vance, the CIA, and the military industrial complex share for the chessboard’s status in 1980 when Carter left office, and Reagan took over?
As we learned during the first Trump administration, there is no end to the amount of dirty, backstabbing tactics that the U.S. administrative state (Deep State) will go to to thwart the efforts of those whose first instincts incline toward the betterment of Americans and a reluctance for war. Like Trump, Carter was hyper-focused on bucking sacred establishment cows and brokering peace agreements. Unlike Trump, however, he wasn’t smart enough to do so in a way that improved America economically.
Don’t miss my message: President Carter was not a misunderstood champion; he was deeply flawed, even treasonous in his later years.
A Christian pastor with a messy record on abortion, like Trump. A farmer who muddied the relationship between private farms and the U.S. government.
But compare his legacy against those who came after him, and ask yourself how bad his career stats were.
A few things he didn’t do:
He didn’t create a Patriot Act, initiating a police state with unlimited power to subjugate Americans (Bush 43).
He didn’t weaponize the government, lock up and persecute Americans for political purposes, manufacture a race war, and eliminate due process (Biden, Obama).
He didn’t strip us of our gun rights, federalize voter registration, hand the keys to the economy over to China, or lie about everything under the sun, from interns to the environmental “crisis” (Clinton).
Nor did he bury the truth about the largest false flags in history, champion the expansion of government across the board while lying about it, pretty much ignore drug and human trafficking, print money like paper, and insulate the federal bureaucracy from any accountability (Obama, Bush 41, Bush 43, Clinton).
Historians are forced to take the long view and examine the data as we discover it. Sometimes this takes generations to uncover and we’re always assessing the past based on the best information at present. That said, taken as a whole, I have to conclude that within my lifetime Trump and Reagan—flawed as they are— would have to rank as the two best presidents so far, and probably in that order.
Time will tell.
On the butt end of the spectrum we’ve got Obama, Bush 43, and the mysterious team of misfits claiming to be Biden, all slopping around the pigsty vying for the trophy of Dirtiest Hands in History.
As for the soft belly in the center, it’s prudent to wait a few years. History is messy. Let’s see what revelations emerge as we go forward. These next few years purport to be a new era of historical accountability, and we historians are chomping at the bit to see who authorized what, when, and where, and let the chips fall where they may. How Carter fits into that mix, well…I suppose the jury is still out. In the meantime, I think I’ll continue to fly my flag at full-staff.
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