Abandon Ship

The dedication of the attack/special ops submarine USS Jimmy Carter has prompted many a look back at the Carter Administration, from the hilarious to the furious.

I'm going to add my two cents. Eventually.

Paul "Deacon" Mirengoff sums up the growing realization - or re-realization - on the right that not only was Carter a vacuous failure as president; he actually worked to advance evil:

Some folks think that Rocket Man owes President Carter an apology for saying that "Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side." In my view, Carter owes the American people an apology for the actions cited above, and others. Carter, it seems to me, subscribes to the view that America is, and generally has been, more a force for evil in the world than a force for good. Accordingly, he believes, I think, that the world would be a better place if the U.S. were weaker militarily and less influential. Carter also holds our enemies in higher regard than he holds our friends, particularly in the Middle East. And, as Rocket Man notes above, he is particularly fond of anti-American dictators and, at times, has actively assisted such dictators to our detriment. I'm not sure whether all of this places Carter "on the other side," but it's difficult to understand in what sense he's on our side.

I have a lot of lefty acquaintances who respond "Why are you slandering Carter? He was a good man! He works for habitat for humanity!

Rocket Man shuts that line of thought straight down, citing :

Soviet diplomatic accounts and material from the archives show that in January 1984 former President Jimmy Carter dropped by Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's residence for a private meeting.
Carter expressed his concern about and opposition to Reagan's defense buildup. He boldly told Dobrynin that Moscow would be better off with someone else in the White House. If Reagan won, he warned, "There would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power."

Using the Russians to influence the presidential election was nothing new for Carter.

Schweizer reveals Russian documents that show that in the waning days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter White House dispatched businessman Armand Hammer to the Soviet Embassy.

Hammer was a longtime Soviet-phile, and he explained to the Soviet ambassador that Carter was "clearly alarmed" at the prospect of losing to Reagan.

Hammer pleaded with the Russians for help. He asked if the Kremlin could expand Jewish emigration to bolster Carter's standing in the polls.

"Carter won't forget that service if he is elected," Hammer told Dobrynin.

Summation:

And most recently, of course, he invited the execrable Michael Moore to sit with him in the former President's box at the Democratic National Convention. Moore is best known for calling Iraq's terrorists, who take sadistic delight in capturing innocent people and decapitating them on camera, that country's "Minutemen," and gleefully predicting that they would defeat the armed forces of the United States. Carter's public embrace of Moore can only be seen as an endorsement of his views. That puts Carter squarely "on the other side."

So: On the one hand, he conspired with the greatest butchers of history, the Soviets, to try to influence the 1980 election, and he's spent the 24 years of his blessed retirement flitting about the globe giving aid and comfort to everyone that burns an American flag.

On the other, he builds houses.

You the the judge.

And yet I have to express my gratitude to Jimmy Carter. Without him, I might still be a liberal.

I grew up in a Democrat household; Dad was a high school teacher, and I'm pretty convinced that if Mom hadn't had three kids by 1968, she's have been some kind of flower child or another. And I followed suit: for "Boy's State" in 1980, I wrote a platform that would have made Paul Wellstone blanche.

But I read a lot of history, even then. And I'd absorbed some of the lessons of Churchill; one doesn't deal with dictators from a position of weakness. And Carter was all about weakness, diplomatically and (almost until the end of his term) militarily.

And as a leader? Oy.

I remember the "Malaise" speech today as clearly as the night I sat there at age 16, dumbfounded for the first time at the sheer idiocy of a "leader".

...after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our Nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

I heard the speech - which ended in a resounding call for more bureaucracy - and felt...

...depressed. To me, the message between the lines was "We got ours. You young 'uns aren't going to get quite as much. Deal with it". And I resolved to make a change.

No, I didn't become a conservative that night. I was a month too young to vote in the '80 election, and if I could have I'd have voted for John Anderson, because he was basically a liberal. But he wasn't Carter. The Hostage Crisis was a further nail in the coffin of my liberalism.

The next years were a slow evolution for me, ending with my taking a deep breath and voting for Reagan in '84.

Without Carter and his depthless idiocy - a judgement confirmed over and over since he's been back in "private" life - who knows what might have happened? Not I. But I do know that realizing Carter's unfitness for office was the first time I really questioned the assumptions I grew up with, leaving me open to changing my mind.

For that I thank you, Jimmy Carter. And the next time you fly overseas to coddle some genocidal humonculus, may your plane encounter unintended crosswinds and land at the wrong airport, so the grownups can do their jobs.

Posted by Mitch at February 17, 2005 08:05 AM | TrackBack