this is some funny stuff. Basically, you say he was bad, but it was everyone elses fault he was bad. NO. He was a terrible, TERRIBLE President and it was his fault. Double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, double digit unemployment rate and the best he could come up with is to turn down your thermostat.
And as bad as a POTUS he was, he is even worse as an Ex POTUS.
He is simply a poor manager, a non-leader, and an anti-semite.
All that said, I wish him well in his sickness.
@chilladahun: I respectfully disagree with you, Carter
was given a pretty poor economic situation from his predecessor, Gerald Ford and a number of factors including many adverse global conditions.
Oil prices were around $10 in early 70s. By late 70s it was close to
$100 [both in today's dollars]. This was due to a major crisis in the
Middle East and the end of the gold standard under Nixon. Carter tried to advocate
conserving energy and for a public used to cheap oil that transition
proved very difficult.Furthermore Carter took the political risk of appointing Volker. Carter knew that Volcker would raise interest rates sharply probably causing a
recession but told his counselors who advised against the appointment to
let him worry about the politics. In the end for Carter it may not have been the safest choice but once rates had stabilized after the recession they came back down and the economy greatly improved. It was Carter not Reagan who battled for two years to pass legislation that
gradually expanded competition in natural gas, oil, and electricity.
U.S. inflation was fueled by rising energy prices between 1972 and 1979
linked to OPEC and instability in the Middle East. The public blamed
Carter for high prices while Reagan benefited from their long decline
after 1980. Carter
was an "outsider" with an explicit mandate from the people to cleanup
Washington - especially after Nixon's fiasco. However, his zeal put him
at odds with the Congress and prevented him from enacting things he
wanted. He threatened to veto all the Pork Barrel spending and that angered a lot of established interests.Price fixing had been a fact in the case of railroads since the 1880s,
and since the 1930s for trucking and airlines, but no president until
Carter had the political courage to take on the incumbent interests. In
doing so, Carter faced the ire of not only business interests like the
truckers who were a constituency in every state, but also the railroads,
air carriers, and AT&T. These anti-competitive business interests
were backed by the Teamsters, the Railroad Brotherhoods, the airline
Machinists and the Communications workers who also wanted to maintain
regulated limits on competition. As a result of what Carter did to open
these markets, price increases have been restrained ever since.As for Carter being an anti-Semite I also strongly disagree, The Camp David Accords was perhaps his greatest foreign policy achievement. It surely wasn't anti-Semitic. Depending on one's perspective one can argue about his support for the Palestinians and how that relates to support for Israel but there are 2 sides to the story there! And painting him anti Semitic is using a broad brush. One could claim Menachem Begin was a criminal and a terrorist because he was a member of Irgun and being involved in their criminal actions against the British but that would not be the real story either. Name calling is too easy. The majority of recent Presidents have retired and mostly just played golf or walked at their private ranches or beaches. I'd challenge you to name me any other President in the last century or this one that has done more after their turn in office. The Cater Center which opened in 1982, has developed dozens of programs to alleviate suffering and
improve lives around the world. His peace
work includes conflict resolution, election monitoring, and the
promotion of human rights and democracy. Health programs include
agricultural initiatives to eliminate hunger in Africa, Rosalynn
Carter's mental health task force, and programs to control or eradicate
preventable diseases afflicting the world's poorest people. The best
example of the latter is the Guinea worm program, which has so far succeeded in reducing this debilitating
disease by 98% world-wide, making it potentially just the second disease
after smallpox to be wiped out by human effort. In all, Carter Center
programs have reached 65 countries, with the greatest impact on the
developing world. That is a record to stand on. As for the worst US President your memory or historical knowledge is way too short. Most historians and experts agree that that based on a variety of factors the 5 worse were:1. James Buchanan2. Warren G. Harding3. Andrew Johnson4. Franklin Pierce5 Millard Fillmore 4951