A Legacy From Carter That Democrats Would Prefer to Escape

By Free Republic | Created at 2025-01-10 00:14:05 | Updated at 2025-01-15 05:43:30 5 days ago

A Legacy From Carter That Democrats Would Prefer to Escape
The New York Times ^ | Jan. 8, 2025 | Adam Nagourney

Posted on 01/09/2025 3:51:35 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

Since his death, Jimmy Carter has been lauded for brokering the Camp David Accords and for his post-White House mission to help the poor and battle disease. But glossed over amid all the tributes is the burdensome legacy that Mr. Carter left for his Democratic Party: a presidency long caricatured as a symbol of ineffectiveness and weakness.

This perception has shadowed the party for nearly 40 years. It was forged in the seizure of American hostages by Iranian militants in 1979 and the failed military attempt to free them, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. And it lingered in memories of Mr. Carter wearing a cardigan as he asked Americans to conserve energy, or bemoaning what he called a “crisis of confidence” in an address to the nation that became a textbook example of political self-harm.

Over the decades, these events have provided endless fodder for attacks by Republicans, who reveled in invoking Mr. Carter’s name to deride Democrats. And that mockery, in turn, influenced the way Democrats have presented themselves to voters. Without Mr. Carter’s image of weakness on national security and defense, for example, it is hard to imagine the party’s war-hero candidate for president in 2004 introducing himself with a salute at its nominating convention and saying, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.”

Mr. Carter’s political legacy produced what many analysts argue was a kind of conditioned response: an overreaction among Democrats anxious to avoid comparisons to him on foreign policy issues. This was evident in the roster of prominent congressional Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who voted for the 2002 resolution that authorized President George W. Bush to take the nation to war in Iraq, a vote many said they came to...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...

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Thanks to FJB, Peanut Boy is no longer the worst President in history.

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Actually Woodrow Wilson was the worst.

2 posted on 01/09/2025 3:52:10 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Carter’s grandstanding during the Clinton administration wasn’t very helpful either... Showing up in North Korea in 1994 and negotiating with Kim Il-Sung... The result... North Korea violated the agreement Carter had dreamt up and continued to develop nuclear weapons. The Clinton administration gave North Korea piles of money to ‘not’ do what they actually ended up doing... So that whole fiasco was just another foreign policy failure by Carter.

3 posted on 01/09/2025 4:05:13 PM PST by jerod (Nazis were essentially Socialist in Hugo Boss uniforms... Get over it!)

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Always was and always will be a POS to me- though i must thank that POS- i was in high school during those disastrous years and Carter was the one who turned me into a full fledged Conservative.

4 posted on 01/09/2025 4:07:48 PM PST by God luvs America (6young 3.5 million pay no income tax and vote for DemoKrats...)

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