Source: Patriot Post | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
As with the passing of all presidents, many fitting tributes have been written about Jimmy Carter. He was 100 years old at his death on December 29th, the longest-living president in American history, and a man who had a very active post-presidency.
What follows is a more personal assessment by one who “came of age” during his presidency.
Carter is the second-place holder of the dubious distinction of America’s worst president since World War II. Fortunately for his presidential standing, his domestic and foreign policy failures have been far exceeded by the first-place record holder, the inept and vacuous Joe Biden. Biden’s legacy of failure is shared by his equally inept VP, Kamala Harris.
That being said, brace yourself: I voted for Jimmy Carter 48 years ago. Given the benefit of hindsight now, that is a shameful admission, but at the time, as a 19-year-old college freshman, he seemed like a better choice than Gerald Ford. But my perspective on Carter turned a corner soon after he took office.
Perhaps you, like me, made a few mistakes when you were young and naive. I still make mistakes, just at a substantially reduced frequency.
I have met Carter several times, the first being soon after his election. In the early 1980s, I traveled in close quarters with him and Rosalynn, and during that same timeframe, they were guests in our family home. I was honored to know both of them then as good and decent people, though Carter was an abject failure as our nation’s president.
For context, why did I vote for Carter?
The presidential election of 1976, ironically the bicentennial year of our nation’s founding, was the first presidential contest after Richard Nixon’s resignation, the result of his effort to conceal what he knew about the Democrat National Committee burglary at the Watergate building. Notably, the actions of the Nixon campaign’s black-bag team were amateur compared to the Democrat-controlled deep state collaboration and conspiracy to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump 40 years later.
Nixon had won a record landslide reelection in 1972, with more than 60% of the popular vote and 520 of 538 Electoral College votes — second only to Ronald Reagan’s historic 525 electoral votes in 1984. But the Watergate scandal led to his resignation in 1974 and the ascension of his vice president, Gerald Ford, to the presidency. Notably, Ford had not run on Nixon’s landslide 1972 ticket — that was Spiro Agnew, who resigned before Nixon under duress related to criminal investigations for corruption when he was governor of Maryland. Nixon replaced Agnew with the next person in constitutional succession, then-Speaker of the House Ford.
At the time of the Ford/Carter contest, I was an idealistic college freshman, and it was my first presidential vote. From my fledgling perspective, Ford represented the downfall of Nixon and the corruption of the Republican Party. On the other hand, Jimmy Carter was a “conservative Democrat” (yes, there was once such a thing), a man of devout faith, a Naval Academy graduate and Navy Veteran, and a grassroots political leader as governor of Georgia. The state line between Tennessee and Georgia divided my childhood home, and though we were residents of Tennessee (by the grace of God), I considered myself an honorary citizen of Georgia.
But at 19, I had yet to embrace my parents’ considerable wisdom and advice about many things, including not voting for Carter.
In a tribute to my father after his death, I noted an observation attributed to Mark Twain about maturing enough to recognize the wisdom of our elders: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
The summer after Carter took office, I graduated from a state police academy. I began working as a uniformed officer while in college — four years of experience that taught me more about life than my undergraduate and two graduate degrees ever could. I first met Carter when he came to visit the region where I worked. I was selected to walk perimeter gun with his protection detail — an armed college kid walking just a few feet from the president. It was a different era.
I note “walking” because when Carter was part of a parade, he often walked the route. Recall that after being sworn in as president, he and Rosalynn walked down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House — the first president to exit his limousine and lead the motorcade on foot.
Yes, this was two decades before we launched The Patriot Post in 1996, after which I most certainly would not have passed the background check for providing perimeter security…
Soon after Carter’s election, I learned a lot from his presidency.
For example, I learned what domestic and foreign policy disasters looked like long before Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden were elected.
I learned all about “national malaise,” blanket amnesty for draft dodgers, coddling of traitors like John Kerry, stagflation, double-digit inflation, and doubling fuel prices.
Despite the fact that Carter had a Demo trifecta — both the 95th and 96th Congresses had Democrat majorities in the House and Senate — he failed to unify that trifecta.
Carter came to DC, ironically, much as did Trump in terms of his commitment to make his own way doing what was best for America. He ejected the Democrat Party power centers, and they quickly rejected him, in effect crippling his presidency.
Carter was the Beltway version of “Mr. Rogers,” much too nice and naive for the office.
Moreover, Carter presided over the Iran hostage crisis during my junior year in college. That was my inspiration to volunteer for military service — much as many young people were inspired to raise their hand after the 9/11 Islamist attack on our nation. That was the second of many oaths I have taken “to support and defend” our Constitution since being sworn in as a law enforcement officer in 1977.
To best put Carter’s endless loop of foreign policy malfeasance into context, consider this anecdote from a national security briefing a decade after the 444-day Iran hostage disgrace. The briefer was COL “Chargin’ Charlie” Beckwith, who in 1980 was the Army DELTA SF regiment commander preparing to lead “Operation Eagle Claw” — the mission to free the 52 American hostages being held by the Islamist regime in Tehran.
Beckwith recounted the operation briefing he gave to Carter’s then-deputy secretary of state, who asked what he would do if he encountered student revolutionaries guarding the American hostages. Beckwith replied in his inimitable tempo: “Sir. Anyone who is holding a hostage, we intend to shoot him — and shoot him right between the eyes. We intend to shoot him twice.” That spineless deputy secretary, taken aback by Beckwith’s response, replied, “Would you consider shooting them in the leg, or in the ankle, or the shoulder?”
And that, folks, adequately sums up our failed foreign policy under Jimmy Carter — and Bill Clinton. You see, the deputy secretary who posited that absurd question to COL Beckwith was none other than Warren Christopher, who served as Clinton’s secretary of state. Christopher, Hillary Clinton, and Biden Secretary of State Tony Blinken are in a historic three-way tie for worst SecStates ever.
However, if there were ever an indication of a foreign adversary contemplating the return of a powerful American president, it would be the fact that on 20 January 1981, as President Ronald Reagan was 10 minutes into his 20-minute inaugural address, the Iranian regime announced that all of the American hostages were being released.
Similarly, the contrast between Trump’s considerable and well-documented record of domestic and foreign policy successes stands in stark contrast to the abysmal Biden/Harris record of policy failures, especially their long list of disastrous foreign policy decisions over the last four years.
Correcting the disaster the Biden/Harris regime is leaving in its wake will be a long uphill slog for Trump.
Frankly, comparing Biden with Carter is an insult to Carter.
Tracking Carter’s public approval ratings from the 70s when he first entered office to the 30s in his final year charts the details of a failed presidency — much as does Biden’s approval rating collapse.
However, what I learned most from Carter’s presidency is the contrast between a failed president and a truly great president by any historical measure.
We had to endure four years of Carter for the rise of Ronald Reagan, for whom I had the privilege of voting — twice — and serving in a national security capacity. Reagan set the gold standard for both domestic and foreign policy, and more than any Republican since, Trump modeled his policies after Reagan.
In the years since Carter’s presidency, he devoted his life to humanitarian service. His name is synonymous with Habitat for Humanity, building homes across the country for those unable to rise above poverty. Ironically, that systemic poverty is the direct result of decades of failed Democrat social policies.
Notably, Carter’s name has been co-opted for many leftist causes. I guess that was predictable, given that his national finance director in 1976 was the prolific and corrupt hate-hustling profiteer Morris Dees, founder of the leftist SPLC.
Over the last decade, as Carter became more infirm with age, he has been propped up by leftists and used as a mascot for their agenda.
To that end, in his last years in the public eye, Carter, like Biden, even became an “election denier.” Of the 2000 presidential election, he said in retrospect, “There’s no doubt in my mind that Al Gore was elected president.” Of the 2016 presidential election, he insisted, “I think a full investigation would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”
That notwithstanding, in a gracious tribute to Carter, Trump wrote: “Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as President understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the Greatest Nation in History. The challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.” He added: “While I strongly disagreed with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our Country, and all it stands for. He worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my highest respect. He was a truly good man and, of course, will be greatly missed. He was also very consequential, far more than most Presidents, after he left the Oval Office.”
For his part, Biden said of himself in relation to Carter, “I’ll always be proud to say that I was the first national figure to endorse him in 1976 when he ran for president.” Assuming that is true, that should have been a harbinger of what was to come.
Unlike his Democrat successors, Jimmy Carter was a man of integrity, a person of good character and faith, and he never lost that as president. He was preceded in death by his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, in November 2023. She was known in Washington as his “Steel Magnolia.” They were genuinely kind, decent, and humble people, and that is how I will remember them best.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.
Thank you for supporting our nation’s premier journal of American Liberty.
