[HN Gopher] Jimmy Carter saved Canadian nuclear reactor after me...
___________________________________________________________________
Jimmy Carter saved Canadian nuclear reactor after meltdown
Author : georgecmu
Score : 122 points
Date : 2022-04-09 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.military.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.military.com)
| incomingpain wrote:
| Jimmy Carter is an interesting US president that I like and yet
| don't understand.
|
| After just 1 term he remarkably lost to Reagan. I just never
| quite understood why he lost so badly.
| indymike wrote:
| > After just 1 term he remarkably lost to Reagan.
|
| American voters are very unforgiving to bad economies and bad
| foreign policy outcomes. Carter was the victim of both, and
| Reagan was a formidable candidate.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Because in politics winning or losing elections has nothing to
| do with competence but with popularity and how good you are at
| moving the blame off yourself to your competitors.
| willnonya wrote:
| So, you're saying it has nothing to do with competence but
| everything to do with, competence?
|
| Just because the things that makes politicians successful
| don't make for particularly good people doesn't negate
| Carter's lack of proficiency in the field.
| jpgvm wrote:
| There is a big difference between being proficient at
| managing a countries affairs and being popular by the means
| you manage the countries affairs.
|
| In the modern age this is even more apparent because of the
| media and how stupidly polarising it is compared to the era
| of Carter, Reagan and Nixon.
|
| Best example that comes to mind is Kevin Rudd - Prime
| Minister of Australia. Supremely competent, both as a
| diplomat but also as a leader. However his popularity was
| destroyed by a campaign but Rupert Murdoch after he started
| to implement his campaign promise of a national fibre-to-
| the-home network. Ironically most people think it was his
| mining "super-tax" that turned the media against him but
| that was very much just a cover-up for the real reason
| Murdoch wanted him out.
|
| Carter is different because the sentiment at the time was
| such there really wasn't a lot he could do. No ammount of
| competency was going to rescue the mess Nixon created. By
| decoupling the worlds currency system from gold and
| simultanously creating a situation where domestic oil
| production peaked the oil crisis was bound to happen
| eventually. The devaluation of the USD caused real loss in
| incomes from the middle-eastern countries and they (perhaps
| rightfully?) used this leverage to ratchet up prices and
| secure their own futures at the expense of global economic
| activity. They both fucked up though because the resulting
| oil glut really screwed the middle east in the following
| decade.
|
| Either way, I don't buy the argument that Carter was
| incompetent because he didn't win a second term. I don't
| think anyone could have in those conditions and I also
| don't think he really had the power to change them. He did
| a decent job of implementing policies that would eventually
| shield the US from OPEC shenanigans but they took a long
| time to come to fruition, much too late to save his second
| term.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Campaigning is marketing. Governing is management. They are
| very different skills. Very few people, much less
| politicians are good at both. And diplomacy is its own
| special thing.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It was mostly due to the Iranian hostage crisis. Every night on
| TV there was a count "Day 123: America held hostage!" - this
| was when the ABC news show Nightline with Ted Koppel got it's
| start. Also, the economy wasn't great. We had inflation -
| though to be fair that started during the Nixon/Ford admins and
| was largely due to 1) Vietnam war spending and 2) the Arab oil
| embargo. Unemployment was also fairly high (around this time
| the term 'stagflation' was coined.) Carter appointed Paul
| Volcker as Fed chairman in '79 with the full knowledge that
| Volcker planned to significantly raise interest rates in order
| to curb inflation - in fact, Volcker did not expect to be
| chosen as Fed chairman because he made it clear to Carter in
| his interview that he would significantly raise rates. By the
| time of the election the Fed rate was around 13% which began to
| slow the economy significantly. Add to this that Carter was
| very honest with the American people that they needed to
| consume less and develop alternative forms of energy to become
| less dependent on authoritarian regimes.
|
| Well, it was all too much for most of the electorate. Carter
| did the hard things that needed to be done. Volcker raising
| interest rates was absolutely the right thing to do and it did
| quell inflation a few years down the road, but Carter bore the
| brunt of the immediate political fallout.
|
| Carter was thinking further ahead than probably any president
| in my lifetime (from JFK through Biden). He was the first
| president to take climate change seriously. If we would've
| listened to him I think we wouldn't be in a lot of the messes
| we're in now. But American politics is a short-term game... and
| it's even moreso now than it was then.
| pstuart wrote:
| And when discussing that hostage crisis we would be remiss if
| we did not include the October Surprise that ensured said
| crisis would hurt Carter:
| https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/ronald-reagan-october-
| surpris...
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| Anyone would have lost to Reagan. He was extremely charismatic.
| CalChris wrote:
| Reagan was an entertainer for people who wanted entertainment.
| Carter was a decent man replaced by a vain man.
| drewcoo wrote:
| They were both neoliberals who pushed deregulation. And both
| were union-busters. Carter was the beginning of that trend,
| in fact, putting an end to FDR's legacy. Reagan just did it
| more palatably, with a smile and a joke.
| CalChris wrote:
| Despite being a union member and president of the SAG,
| Reagan is well known for firing the air traffic
| controllers. In California, he was against the UFW's grape
| boycott. As governor, he vetoed the legislation which would
| have given the farm workers the right to organize.
|
| Reagan was unquestionably anti-labor despite perversely
| being inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame by Trump's Labor
| Secretary.
|
| Carter was the beginning of none of this.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Bad economy, high inflation, energy crisis, and pretty bad
| international context (Iran, Afghanistan).
| willnonya wrote:
| pyronik19 wrote:
| smt88 wrote:
| This is the correct answer. Carter would have lost to a
| significantly worse candidate than Reagan if they hadn't had
| Reagan.
|
| Studies don't show that Americans vote much based on foreign
| policy, but they certainly crush the current president and
| Congress when the economy is bad and inflation is high. It
| doesn't matter whether he did anything to cause it or not.
| adventured wrote:
| Which is one big reason why Biden's polls are so horrific
| presently (high inflation, negative wage growth, very
| serious concerns about the future including cost of living;
| so he's getting the blame and is viewed as being not very
| competent).
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yes, in many ways this is feeling like a re-run of the
| late 70s. Biden has done a competent job, especially
| given the hand he was dealt. But the electorate is
| blaming Biden for a lot of things that are outside of his
| control - this inflation, for example, it's mostly due to
| the pandemic, but the trade wars started by the previous
| president would have led to inflation even without the
| pandemic.
|
| Russia invading Ukraine seems to rhyme with the Soviet
| Union invading Afghanistan in 1980. Carter was not to
| blame for the latter and neither is Biden to blame for
| the former, but there was and will be political fallout.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >This is the correct answer. Carter would have lost to a
| significantly worse candidate than Reagan if they hadn't
| had Reagan.
|
| Do you feel like there's current events comparison of
| Carter vs Biden?
|
| >but they certainly crush the current president and
| Congress when the economy is bad and inflation is high.
|
| Economy is doing pretty good, starting to kick in post-
| pandemic recovery boost.
| https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gdp-growth-
| rate?co...
|
| Yes inflation is out of control but economy is looking
| great right now.
|
| >It doesn't matter whether he did anything to cause it or
| not.
|
| I find that the case. When the economy is doing well, both
| sides claim success. Current president claims his actions
| and previous president claims older actions took some time
| to work out. When the economy isn't doing well, both sides
| claim not me. It was the other guy's fault.
| recuter wrote:
| "I can't believe Reagan won. I don't know anyone who voted for
| him."
|
| Yes, I know the quote is paraphrased and was originally about
| Nixon. I just find this befuddlement why Jimmy Carter lost
| amusing.
|
| Man got very badly played:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter%27s_engagement_wi...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis
|
| He was also attacked by a bunny:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident
| incomingpain wrote:
| Thanks for the response. It's interesting, my focus was
| always the 1973 oil crisis; which is repeating in history
| again right now. I mostly dismissed 1979 as just a post-
| crisis fluctuation. #nixonsfault for price fixing. You're not
| allowed to price fix. You know what they're doing with
| insulin right now?
|
| In Canada we get taught more about the 1979 canadian embassy
| helped save the US diplomats.
|
| It's interesting I found this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/1979_Iranian_Revolution_conspi...
|
| If political wiki is calling it a conspiracy theory... it's
| probably true.
|
| That's a great bunny story. Goes to show a political bias in
| the media even back then.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_UFO_incident
|
| Check out this. He publicly admitted to seeing a UFO. You
| might think he was a crackpot or something but suddenly the
| navy started revealing UFO videos.
|
| https://www.space.com/ufos-videos-declassified-navy-
| release....
|
| There's some high ranking elected us politicians who upon
| this coming out they said there's so much more still
| classified. Yet nobody is talking about this.
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| How is the 79 oil crisis an example of Carter getting
| "played" exactly?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Or the sensationalized "killer rabbit attack" for that
| matter.
|
| The fact that someone would bend over backwards to
| misinterpret a sensationalized incident with a wild animal
| as Carter "being played" says more about that person's
| preconceived political ideology than Carter's, and
| identifies them as one of Carter's "political and
| ideological opponents". How exactly does a swimming rabbit
| "play" a human being, or frame him as hapless and
| enfeebled?
|
| >The incident with the rabbit became fodder for political
| and ideological opponents who wanted to frame Carter's
| presidency as hapless and enfeebled, although the event's
| proximity to the U.S. release of the comedy feature film
| Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which includes scenes of a
| killer rabbit slaying humans, led to some people describing
| Carter as having "fended off a killer rabbit" instead.
|
| To get back to the actual point of this discussion, why do
| you believe that the sensationalized story about Carter
| "being attacked by a bunny" is more indicative of whether
| Carter was hapless, enfeebled, or getting played, than the
| objective historical fact that he bravely and selflessly
| risked his own life and health by saving a Canadian nuclear
| reactor after a meltdown?
|
| Edit: I saw that. You just edited your comment to tell me
| that editing my comment (to add more information) is bad
| form, then you quickly edited your comment again to remove
| that remark after you remembered that was exactly what you
| were doing and have already done several times in this
| discussion, yourself (to change the meaning of your post).
| And that shows your intellectual dishonesty. So please
| stick to the discussion topic and reply to the points I
| raised, instead of hypocritically admonishing me not to do
| exactly what you've already just done repeatedly (like your
| "Racism bad" addendum -- we all already know that, but your
| original "So?" post sounded like you didn't believe that,
| so you had to add that obvious disclaimer, followed by more
| racism apologetic non-sequiturs, attempting to excuse
| Reagan's racism by pointing out that he used to be a
| Democrat). Denying and making excuses and carrying the
| water for racism is much worse form than editing comments,
| but "there you go again", to quote Reagan.
| recuter wrote:
| The same way choking on a pretzel would..
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| Ah, so it made him look uncool. It was something that
| comedians could make jokes about. Because that's how you
| judge presidents.
| recuter wrote:
| Here are some judgmental British skinheads laughing their
| asses off about it and carrying water for racists, viewer
| discretion is advised:
|
| https://youtu.be/gwgzTsO46yc?t=26
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| What is it that you think this proves?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It proves that's the kind of stuff he spends his time
| watching on youtube, and recommends that other people
| spend their time watching too.
|
| On the other hand, I'd rather spend my time watching and
| recommend other people watch stuff like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30969388
|
| (For whatever reason, that's not available on youtube. My
| conspiracy theory about why is that the Pepsi Corporation
| suppressed it because they don't want anyone to watch it!
| ;) )
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "I just never quite understood why he lost so badly."
|
| The hostage crisis probably broke him (the rescue attempt was a
| total disaster. Not his fault but it looked terrible) plus the
| inflation fighting Volker did. Reagan was also an excellent
| communicator. Hard to campaign against a guy like him.
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| Because voters reason like language models, not like symbolic
| ais.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Jimmy Carter will always be my favorite Amazing Colossal
| President, as Rodney Dangerfield described in the SNL "The Pepsi
| Syndrome" sketch:
|
| https://m.facebook.com/tapewrecks/videos/the-pepsi-syndrome/...
|
| https://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/78ppepsi.phtml
|
| Dr. Casey: "It means, Mrs. Carter, your husband, President
| Carter, has become [camera zooms in on Dr. Casey] the amazing
| colossal president."
|
| Mrs. Carter: "Well, how big is he?"
|
| Dr. Casey: "Well, Mrs. Carter, it's difficult to comprehend just
| how big he is but to give you some idea, we've asked comedian
| Rodney Dangerfield to come along today to help explain it to you.
| Rodney?"
|
| [Rodney Dangerfield enters]
|
| Rodney: "How do you do, how are you?"
|
| Denton: "Rodney, can you please tell us, how big is the
| president?"
|
| Rodney: "Oh, he's a big guy, I'll tell you that, he's a big guy.
| I tell you, he's so big, I saw him sitting in the George
| Washington Bridge dangling his feet in the water! He's a big
| guy!"
|
| Mrs. Carter: "Oh my God! Jimmy! Oh God!"
|
| Rodney: "Oh, he's big, I'll tell you that, boy. He's so big that
| when two girls make love to him at the same time, they never meet
| each other! He's a big guy, I'll tell you!"
|
| Mrs. Carter: "Oh no! Oh Jimmy! My Jimmy!"
|
| Rodney: "I don't want to upset you, lady, he's big, you know what
| I mean? Why, he could have an affair with the Lincoln Tunnel! I
| mean, he's really high! He's big, I'll tell you! He's a big guy!"
|
| Mrs. Carter: "No! No! No!"
|
| Denton: "Rodney, thank you very much. You can go."
|
| Rodney: "It's my pleasure. He's way up there, lady! You know what
| I mean?"
|
| --Saturday Night Live, Season 4: Episode 16, "The Pepsi Syndrome"
| skit, Apr. 7, 1979
| DSingularity wrote:
| Jimmy Carter. A great president treated like an outcast. If you
| fight for things like fair elections or against things like
| apartheid you will be demoted despite your credentials.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| "It's the economy, stupid"
|
| If people are unemployed and/or face high inflation and energy
| costs they won't vote for you whatever your stance on
| apartheid...
| blululu wrote:
| Republicans like Eisenhower, Nixon and Bush all got re-
| elected after first terms of job losses. (Reagan is the only
| Republican post WWII to post first term job gains). If the
| economy were the end all be all, then there would be no need
| to have a disrespectful slogan to score ideological points.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The situation was especially dire under Carter, not least
| when the energy crisis struck at the end of his term. The
| humiliation that was the Iran Hostage Crisis (also towards
| the end of his term) did not help.
|
| And so Reagan moved in and vowed to "make America great
| again".
|
| This has nothing to do with ideology and my comment was not
| an ideological attack. People are first and foremost
| concerned about their lives and livelihoods.
|
| Considering the economic situation over Carter's term it
| was always going to be an uphill struggle to be re-elected.
|
| PS: that quote is by an adviser of Bill Clinton's during
| his successful campaign against Bush and, I believe, was on
| the wall of their campaign HQ... I'm sure no-one felt
| disrespected or insulted.
| blululu wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying. Carter was dealt a bad hand and
| his re-election prospects were never good. But one could
| easily imagine that if Operation Eagle Claw had succeeded
| and the American Hostages had been rescued, then he would
| have been re-elected inspite of stagflation. My point is
| that it is not always so simple.
| hsnewman wrote:
| Only by people who don't want fair elections and apartheid. He
| was a good president.
| recuter wrote:
| _Only_ , huh? You know it is quite tiresome this attitude of
| "if you don't vote like me you're literally pro terrible
| thing". It is just as annoying as people who would accuse
| Carter voters of being limp wristed champagne communists.
|
| A lot of the people who voted for him the first time around
| did not vote for him the second time around for a variety of
| reasons. Primarily his perceived job performance.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| "To watch that thing on television, as I did, to see those,
| those monkeys from those African countries - damn them,
| they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes!" Reagan tells
| Nixon, who erupts in laughter.
|
| A lot of those people voted for Reagan primarily because of
| his perceived and actual manifest racism and dog whistles,
| the exact same reason they and the racist children they
| raised also voted for Trump.
|
| How Ronald Reagan's Racism Helped Pave the Way for Donald
| Trump's
|
| https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a34733508/reagans-
| s...
|
| >"The Republican Party has consistently used Reagan for
| their moral authority, but I think that there are many
| aspects of the Reagan presidency that do not hold up under
| scrutiny and cannot be used as the basis for a moral
| argument for Republicanism," Tyrnauer tells Esquire. The
| "huge amount of dog-whistle racism that came from Reagan's
| own lips," he says, "was under-reported in the time and has
| been virtually erased from the popular imagination."
|
| >Using archival footage and interviews with journalists,
| experts, and members of the former president's circle,
| including his son Ron Reagan, Sunday's episode examines the
| ways in which Reagan utilized racism that tapped into the
| nation's oldest bigotries while being just subtle enough to
| be denied. He kicked off his run as 1980's Republican
| presidential nominee with an appearance at the Neshoba,
| Mississippi county fair, where he professed his commitment
| to states' rights. Lauding federalism at a campaign could
| seem reasonable enough, but the subtext is insidious.
| Neshoba county was infamous for the 1964 Freedom Summer
| murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew
| Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, and appeals to states'
| rights have long been used to justify southern states'
| refusal to enact civil rights measures. By touting himself
| as a states' rights candidate near the site of one of the
| nation's most famous hate crimes, Reagan offered voters a
| racism that was both obvious and unspoken.
|
| Ronald Reagan: No defence for 'monkeys' remark, says
| daughter
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49207451
|
| >The daughter of the late US President Ronald Reagan has
| said there is "no defence" for racist comments he made in a
| 1971 phone conversation.
|
| >Newly unearthed tapes reveal Reagan - then Governor of
| California - described UN African delegates as "monkeys".
|
| >His daughter Patti Davis condemned the remarks in a
| newspaper article.
|
| >"There is no defence, no rationalisation, no suitable
| explanation for what my father said," she wrote.
|
| The Myth of the Welfare Queen
|
| https://newrepublic.com/article/154404/myth-welfare-queen
|
| How a Historian Uncovered Ronald Reagan's Racist Remarks to
| Richard Nixon
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-a-historian-
| uncov...
|
| >In a taped call with Richard Nixon, from 1971, that the
| historian Tim Naftali recently made public, Ronald Reagan
| described the African delegates to the United Nations in
| luridly racist terms.Photograph from Bettmann / Getty
|
| OPINION: Ronald Reagan is a symbol of systemic racism. It's
| time to rename our high school.
|
| https://milwaukeenns.org/2020/07/16/opinion-ronald-reagan-
| is...
|
| Ronald Reagan's Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With
| Richard Nixon
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-
| rea...
| robonerd wrote:
| It isn't hard to show that Reagan was a racist. But you
| haven't connected all the dots. Particularly, you haven't
| shown any convincing evidence that people who voted for
| Carter in '76 and Reagan in '80 were motivated by
| Reagan's racism.
| petre wrote:
| Racist or otherwise, the USSR has fallen during his
| second term. Reagan and Gorbachev are heroes in Eastern
| Europe. Just further proof that US democracy is working
| regardless, even with an 80 year old president with
| Alzheimer's disease or a person like Donald Trump which I
| don't even know how to characterize.
| recuter wrote:
| So? Read my comment again.
|
| P.S. - Racism bad. When it comes to dog whistles and
| political parties, well... Reagan used to be a democrat.
| Throwing that card at everybody who votes differently
| from you is just childish.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Attempt to whitewash history and carry the water of
| racists all you want, but the fact that Reagan used to be
| a Democrat is no defense or counter argument of the fact
| that both Reagan and Trump were/are racist, and voters
| clearly understood and sympathized with that fact,
| responded to their dog whistles and klaxon alarms of
| racism (like "Blacks are Welfare Queens", "Africans are
| Monkeys", "Mexicans are Rapists", and "Very Fine People
| on Both Sides"), and voted for both of them because of
| it, because they were racist too.
|
| Do you say "So" because you disagree that Reagan and
| Trump are racist, or because you don't believe it matters
| if US presidents like Reagan and Trump are racist?
|
| You're carrying Reagan's water by presuming it was more
| about Carter's performance than Reagan's racism, and
| dismissing the fact that Reagan and Trump are racist by
| asking "So?"
|
| Exactly what have I said or done by citing historical
| facts that's worse than the actual racism of the people I
| deride? Is hurting the feeling of racists by reminding
| them of their racist history and acts even meaner than
| that racism itself, in your view? That's exactly why
| Republicans are currently having such conniptions about
| Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project.
| recuter wrote:
| drewcoo wrote:
| He was an outcast in his own party. [1] With not just the
| Republicans but also the Democrats against him, he wasn't
| terribly effective. What he did post-Presidency is no way to
| measure his tenure in office.
|
| [1]
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/21/camelots-...
| quanto wrote:
| Disheartening is to hear that people view Carter as a nice guy
| but incompetent. "Nice guys finish last." Perhaps it is ingrained
| in our Western culture that we expect leaders to be aggressive
| and aggrandizing.
|
| Carter is the only modern president to have a successful second
| career after presidency -- through the Carter Center. He has
| detractors as all politicians do, but to call him incompetent
| belies his long and varied career, including the one in this
| article.
| kmlx wrote:
| > "Nice guys finish last." Perhaps it is ingrained in our
| Western culture that we expect leaders to be aggressive and
| aggrandizing.
|
| one could argue that it's mostly a feature of the US.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _one could argue that it's mostly a feature of the US._
|
| Only if one was unfamiliar with pretty much every British
| prime minister, and almost every king or emperor on the
| planet in the last 3,000 years.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| When you have gas queues, high inflation and a weakening
| international stand...you will blame at least some of it on the
| president.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The inflation rate might have peaked under Carter (13%), but
| not by a lot. The annual inflation rate was 11% in 1974.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
| states/infl...
|
| It blows my mind to think that Nixon, in an effort to combat
| inflation, unilaterally decreed that there would be price and
| wage freezes across the board. There was certainly dissent
| and discussion about it, but nobody stormed the capital,
| nobody called for blood. Imagine what would happen today if
| Biden tried the same edict.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Nobody would storm the capital, nobody would call for
| blood.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Both of those things have already happened
| js2 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The completely 100% ordinary process of certifying the
| election on Jan 6, 2021 resulted in people storming the
| capital and multiple people dying; others had mace and
| restraining cuffs and have been filmed seeking out
| targets, including Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi.
|
| In Michigan, a group of armed men stormed the state
| capital because they thought asking people to wear masks
| during a pandemic was tyrannical government overreach.
| Another group were arrested for plotting to abduct the
| same governor for the same reason.
|
| Imagine Biden decreed what Nixon did: nobody can raise
| the price of any goods or services and nobody can get a
| pay raise until I say so. You really doubt that there
| wouldn't be an armed rebellion?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| The gas queues started well before Carter. They started in
| '73. And Carter was calling for the US to move to alternative
| energy sources that would make us less vulnerable to
| undemocratic states - this was well before any other
| prominent pols were calling for this. Had we listened to him
| we wouldn't be in a lot of the messes we're currently in.
| Tao331 wrote:
| If you believe Hunter S Thompson (I realize that's a big "if")
| he was one of the most calculating and mean people he'd ever
| met.
| kzrdude wrote:
| This here seems to be the context of what you said, even if
| Thompson is not offering much of an argument in his
| elaboration. https://www.openculture.com/2012/07/hunter_s_tho
| mpson_rememb...
| toyg wrote:
| I think Thompson there was suffering from buyer's remorse.
| His Rolling Stones article, instigated by a speech that
| probably lost Carter a few important friends, significantly
| contributed to selling the candidate to the hard left,
| which was large and influential at the time. A year later,
| I think he felt the classic sense of "betrayal of the
| revolution", or maybe was just trying to distance himself
| from the promises he had helped popularize in '76. The sort
| of things he said, beyond the showmanship, basically apply
| to any post-Kennedy politician, and possibly even the ones
| before: they will sell their mother if it gets them
| elected. In this respect Carter was not really different,
| or he wouldn't have been elected US President.
| robonerd wrote:
| During Carter's presidency, you had the Iranian hostage crisis,
| the '79 energy crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and
| the subsequent end of Detente.
|
| I think Carter has relatively little blame for these things,
| but nevertheless, it's easy for me to see why people think
| Carter was a nice guy but too weak.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Carter ended the Iranian hostage crisis.
| https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-
| hostage-n...
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Let's not forget how Carter was robbed of the credit, and
| likely the election, due to the rather suspicious timing of
| its end.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_t
| h...
| buildbot wrote:
| AKA Treason
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > the '79 energy crisis
|
| Which was a continuation of the energy crisis (and rise in
| oil prices) that began with the '73 Arab oil embargo.
| opo wrote:
| The 79 oil crisis and rationing was caused by the
| disruption of oil from the Iran, but the US suffered much
| more from the disruption of the oil from Iran than other
| countries that also relied on this oil. It would be wrong
| to ignore the role the government played in making this oil
| disruption significantly worse.
|
| From "TheU.S. Petroleum Crisis of 1979", PHILIP K.
| VERLEGER, JR.
|
| >...On February 28, 1979, DOE published the following
| notice in the Federal Register: "It is essential that
| refiners enter the spring driving season with adequate
| gasoline stocks to meet seasonal demand requirements. We
| recognize that gasoline stocks are currently at adequate
| levels for this time of year, which is usually a period of
| low demand. Recent industry data indicate that total stocks
| are now in excess of 265 million barrels, which is less
| than last year's record high levels during the same period
| but above the average levels of previous years. Our concern
| is that these stocks not be drawn down precipitously as
| soon as the impacts of the Iranian shortfall are felt by
| refiners. Refiners are urged to keep stocks high enough to
| meet expected demand during the 1979 summer driving season,
| even if it is necessary to restrict somewhat the amount of
| surplus gasoline that is made available to purchasers
| currently"
|
| >The implementation of these instructions had the effect of
| restricting the volume of gasoline available to service
| stations to between 80 and 90 percent of 1978 levels. This
| reduction was greater than the reduction in total gasoline
| supplies.
|
| >...In April 1979, DOE ordered the fifteen largest refiners
| to sell 7.8 million barrels of crude oil to smaller firms
| that were unable to obtain supplies on the world market at
| competitive prices. ...These transfers probably reduced the
| volume of gasoline produced in the second quarter because
| the refineries that purchased the crude oil had only a
| limited capacity to produce gasoline, while the refineries
| that sold it could have produced more. ...In addition to
| reducing the supply of gasoline, the buy/sell program
| appears to have affected the geographic distribution of
| crude oil and gasoline. This is because the primary
| recipients of the crude oil were refineries in the Midwest
| and the gulf coast areas, while the sellers were companies
| that were marketing throughout the nation.
|
| >......In April, DOE turned its attention to the low stock
| of distillate fuel oil ... Two impacts were observed on
| domestic markets. First, excessive stocks of heating oil
| were accumulated. Second, companies may have been
| influenced to increase gasoline stocks in anticipation of
| the mandator yield controls that DOE threatened to impose.
| These controls specified the percent of refiner output that
| had to be heating oil. Such controls were designed to
| curtail the output of gasoline. By building higher gasoline
| inventories, refiners could smooth out the month-to-month
| distribution of gasoline despite the controls.
|
| >...Price controls on gasoline may have also created an
| incentive to withhold gasoline from the market when the
| prices of crude oil were rising rapidly. ...In summary, the
| refiners had the capacity and the knowledge to take
| advantage of this opportunity. Ironically, the instructions
| from DOE to the companies were to do precisely what was
| most profitable.
|
| >...In addition to encouraging the buildup of stocks, DOE
| may have added to the shortages by creating an incentive to
| reduce the output of crude oil. Although it is difficult to
| estimate what domestic supplies of crude oil might have
| been in the absence of any restriction, a DOE announcement
| in November that control levels of the base period were to
| be reviewed may have constrained production in the first
| half of 1979.
| robonerd wrote:
| What matters is how the public perceives the issue at the
| time of the election. Ditto the Iranian hostage crisis.
| Those hostages were not yet free by the time of the 1980
| election. You can argue their eventually release in 1981 as
| a result of Carter's actions and that Reagan doesn't
| deserve credit for it, but that doesn't change the way the
| public perceived the situation in 1980.
| lupire wrote:
| That's what mattered for the election. Not what matters
| for understanding history and trying to stop repeating
| the same terrible mistakes.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| Carter is a deeply moral man who successfully fought off a
| killer rabbit. While his presidency was unsuccessful, he is my
| favorite president in my lifetime. Didn't Willie Nelson smoke
| dope at the white house during the Carter admin?
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Being viewed as a good president is often luck. Carter had very
| bad timing. Iranian hostages, inflation and other issues.
| Reagan on the other hand had lucky timing with the economy
| going up and Gorbachev coming in which sealed the end of the
| Soviet Union. Clinton was lucky riding the .COM bubble and
| which then blew up on Bush. Bush also had bad luck with 9/11
| and the real estate bubble blowing up during his presidency and
| not two years later under Obama. Trump was lucky that the
| upturn from 2008 on kept going during his 4 years. Seems Biden
| has bad luck that the bubble created by easy money seems to
| finally cause negative consequences.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Reagan is viewed as good while the Iran Contra affair was
| entirely illegal and immoral. There certainly is no fairness
| in these common reputations.
| philjohn wrote:
| See also the utterly disgraceful handling of HIV/AIDS under
| his watch, throwing long standing gay friends of Nancy and
| himself under the bus to woo the evangelical vote.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| > Bush also had bad luck with 9/11
|
| Certainly 9/11 was a national tragedy, but Bush's ratings
| skyrocketed after 9/11, so I would disagree that it was bad
| luck for Bush.
| Grazester wrote:
| I often wonder if Bush would have been reelected if the
| U.S. was not attacked. There is nothing like "war" to bring
| a country together.
| JshWright wrote:
| The Iraq war still would have happened.
| toyg wrote:
| It is almost a given that he wouldn't have. He had
| squeezed through on the technicalities of the electoral
| college (not unlike Trump), significantly losing the
| popular vote (also considering that the hard-left Nader
| had his best result ever, attracting 3m votes and forever
| discrediting the wisdom of voting for a third-party
| candidate). GWB's ratings pre-9/11 were consistently low
| almost from the start. He set up a cabinet of old-school
| industrialist cronies, led by Dick Cheney, focused
| largely on exploiting energy markets and neutering
| antitrust laws, and substantially expanded the doctrine
| on executive privilege to block laws he didn't like or
| hide Cheney's shenanigans.
|
| Then 9/11 happened, he made the best of the photo ops,
| and then rode a wave of proto-fascism all the way to
| Katrina.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| He would not have. He was an unpopular buffoon, and a lot
| of the population viewed him as illegitimate due to the
| Supreme Court effectively appointing him over Gore. (In
| fairness, Gore did win the count once all of the counting
| was complete, so the population had a point here.) Before
| 9/11, there was a sitcom about how incompetent he was
| [1].
|
| And no, there would not have been an Iraq war, because
| even if hypothetical President Gore hadn't been able to
| ramp up security after the "bin laden determined to
| strike in the US", he wouldn't have immediately invaded a
| country that had nothing to do with 9/11. The Bush
| administration pushed the lies that sold it to the world.
| And they knew it was bullshit. Gore definitely wouldn't
| have done that bit.
|
| 1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That's_My_Bush!
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > a lot of the population viewed him as illegitimate due
| to the Supreme Court effectively appointing him over
| Gore.
|
| That may have been the perception, but that's not an
| accurate reflection of what the Supreme Court actually
| decided. They decided two things.
|
| First, the Supreme Court ruled (by a 7-2 vote) that Gore
| could not _selectively_ recount. Gore was very carefully
| asking for recounts in precincts where he was likely to
| gain votes, and _not_ asking for recounts in precincts
| where Bush would be likely to gain votes. The court ruled
| that he couldn 't do that. He had to recount generally,
| not super-selectively.
|
| Second, the court ruled (by a 5-4 vote) that he couldn't
| keep recounting forever. Florida had to have an answer to
| give to the Electoral College; if they missed the
| deadline, that would disenfranchise the entire state of
| Florida. The court ruled that they had to stop recounting
| and produce an answer.
|
| Look at Trump's attempts to recount in Arizona and
| Wisconsin months to years after the vote was over. Think
| what would happen if those were _official_ recounts, and
| we were having to wait on them. That 's what the court
| voted against.
|
| > In fairness, Gore did win the count once all of the
| counting was complete
|
| When the _unofficial_ recount done by the press was
| finished - months after the Electoral College vote - yes,
| Gore won... by _two_ votes. Would that have been the
| result of an official recount? Hard to say, but I bet the
| margin of error of the press operation was higher than
| two votes.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| You have left out some details.
|
| Even though the closeness of the initial results
| triggered an automatic recount across every county in
| Florida, not all of them did.
|
| The infamous "butterfly ballot" in Palm Beach diverted
| something like 15% of the vote to Pat Buchanan. Even
| Buchanan said his votes were unearned due to the
| construction of the ballot. Bush was listed first and
| voting for him was unambiguous; Gore was listed second
| under Bush, but to vote for him one had to punch the 3rd
| hole down. Buchanan was the first name on the right hand
| page and the hole corresponding to him was the 2nd one
| down.
|
| The Florida Republican party (and the GOP broadly) did
| everything to stop the recount, attempting to run out the
| clock. The Florida supreme court ultimately sided with
| Gore's claim that the stoppage was illegal, but weeks had
| already gone by. In your telling Gore kept counting over
| and over.
|
| Finally, there is the way Florida scrubbed the rolls of
| "illegal" voters. By Florida law, ex-felons were not
| allowed to vote, even though they had completed their
| sentences. However, the scrubbing wasn't in good faith.
| The Secretary of State intentionally did the scrub weeks
| before the election so there wouldn't be enough time to
| fix any problems that came up. The majority of the
| scrubbed votes were not ex-felons, and overwhelmingly
| those affected were likely to vote D (if they voted). For
| instance, if your name was D'Andre Weber born in 1975,
| your name was removed from the list if Florida found
| _any_ D 'Andre Weber born in 1975 anywhere in the
| country; no effort was made to be more specific. Kathrine
| Harris was not only the Florida Secretary of State, but
| she was also co-chair of Bush's Florida reelection
| committee.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Gore _did_ keep counting over and over - but only in
| certain places. They had a recount. Then Gore asked for a
| recount of the recount in certain... at least counties,
| and maybe down to individual precincts. I forget whether
| he took a third bite at the apple; he definitely took at
| least two.
| willnonya wrote:
| It's a fallacy to believe that intelligence or competency in
| one field translates to competency in all fields.
|
| An admittedly intelligent and nice guy he wasn't a particularly
| competent president. Looking at his term through the lense of
| sympathy rather than history gives a distorted picture.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Herber Hoover is a brilliant example of this. Great engineer.
| Terrible president.
| darksaints wrote:
| Carter successfully deregulated the railroad industry, the
| trucking industry, the airline industry, and the craft
| brewing industry. A huge amount of the economic growth often
| attributed to his successors is actually due to his success
| in identifying sources of stagflation and systematically
| eliminating them. Carter was better than a good president, he
| was just a victim of shitty politics.
| toyg wrote:
| Also one of the many victims of the short-termism that
| 4-year mandates inevitably produce.
|
| A US president never gets to see the results of his
| policies in the first mandate. Realistically, it takes a
| year just to get to grip with the duties, and by the time
| they're productive the midterms arrive and dramatically
| reduce space for bipartisan compromise. Once that's done,
| soon after it's time to gear up for re-election. Even if
| they manage to pass anything significant in those short
| windows of activity, new laws have to get into force (which
| can take a year), kickstart the various first-order and
| second-order effects (again time passes), and then go
| through some sort of statistical collection - itself
| typically a process that gives results over 6-18 months.
|
| US Presidents effectively get judged first and foremost on
| the day-to-day executive orders, which is why they tend to
| be keen on starting wars. If they secure re-election, _only
| then_ they 'll get to be judged on the actual legacy of
| their policies.
| kzrdude wrote:
| The stories people tell of politicians are not exactly always
| fact-based. Well-known people, especially those who don't
| speak for themselves (in social media) they get a reputation
| that sticks.
| coolso wrote:
| > Looking at his term through the lense of sympathy rather
| than history gives a distorted picture.
|
| In light of comparisons of the current President to him, the
| current meme seems to be to consider Carter "an actually very
| good, misunderstood President" in the hopes of neutering the
| insult.
| throwaway936592 wrote:
| blantonl wrote:
| I would imagine that in military and defense circles, there are
| hundreds of highly classified nuclear incidents that we'll never,
| ever know about in our lifetimes.
|
| The work and materials that these folks worked with in the 50's
| and 60's were probably so outrageously dangerous that it would
| bend the mind to think what they were capable of accidentally
| doing and how much destruction and mayhem that was/could have
| been caused due to a mistake.
| robonerd wrote:
| Close calls can certainly be hidden, but serious nuclear
| accidents that result in appreciable release of radioactive
| materials are another story. Those are very hard to hide for
| long (there have certainly been attempts though.) I think by
| now we know about about most of the accidents.
|
| For instance, the British government initially tried to cover
| up the Windscale fire, but they couldn't hide the release of
| Polonium.
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| Jimmy Carter rocked -- the image of him as weak or mealy-mouthed
| is the complete opposite of correct. Read about how he dealt with
| the Iranian hostage crisis, he had iron principles and nerves of
| steel. Reagan, on the other hand, got utterly played by the
| Iranians.
|
| The fact that Carter was a genius is pretty cool too.
| drewcoo wrote:
| I don't think the October surprise was "getting played by the
| Iranians." Nor was Iran-Contra. Reagan was connected, with a VP
| ex-CIA chief, no less.
|
| Carter is known for his "crisis of confidence" speech:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IlRVy7oZ58
| antattack wrote:
| Carter's administration supplied US arms to Indonesia fighting
| East Timor:
|
| "I saw intelligence that came from hard, firm sources in East
| Timor. There were people being herded into school buildings and
| set on fire. There were people herded into fields and machine-
| gunned. ... We knew the place was a free-fire zone and that
| Suharto was given the green light by the United States to do
| what he did. We sent the Indonesian generals everything that
| you need to fight a major war against somebody who doesn't have
| any guns. We sent them rifles, ammunition, mortars, grenades,
| food, helicopters. You name it; they got it. ... None of that
| got out in the media. No one gave a damn. It is something that
| I will be forever ashamed of. The only justification I ever
| heard for what we were doing was the concern that East Timor
| was on the verge of being accepted as a new member of the
| United Nations and there was a chance that the country was
| going to be either leftist or neutralist and not likely to vote
| [with the United States] at the UN."[1]
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_invasion_of_East_Ti
| ...
| wallfacer120 wrote:
| What is it that you think this proves?
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