Impeachment

[TitoFan]

Well tits this quite differs from your first post on the subject. If you are calling Trump the most divisive president are you leaving aside the war presidents?

War presidents? Because half the nation doesn't want war and the other does? Well.... that's kind of unavoidable, isn't it.

We're not talking about differences in basic philosophies here. Even Presidents who have chosen to go to war have tried to unite the nation behind them.

We're talking about a POTUS who can barely hide his glee when people are going at each others' throats. The worse the carnage, the happier he is.

Historically I don’t think he is the most divisive president. Shit look at Carter and he didn’t use any bad words. I see all the hate, I think it gets a little overboard. I really don’t see any of his policies or deregulation’s as bad. He says stupid stuff it doesn’t really bother me that much. I do have some serious concerns over a certain faction of the democrats. Funny we don’t hear much about it but when the tea party was first around damn they were torn up and targeted by the IRS etc. now we have a group of people holding office that call certain parts of our law enforcement bodies evil. I’m not big on law enforcement I think they have too much power and don’t always use it properly but I wouldn’t call ICE workers Nazis and want them abolished. Anyway things are what they are, I get annoyed with Trump sometimes but the squad and the radical arm of the Dems seriously scare me. They want to do some frightening shit. I’ll take bad words and stupid tweets over that anyday. Talk about divisive

How was Carter divisive?

Yeah..... I'm kinda waiting to hear the tall story on how Carter was divisive. TBH, I think people just make shit up as they go along. I've never had that talent.

Ahhhh. You don’t think the nation was divided under carter? It wasn’t his bad words it was a little more than that. How about Nixon or Johnson or Lincoln or are we just talking about presidents who talk gruff and not policies. People were burning Carter effigies in the streets of America. People don’t like 18 percent interest rates and no gas in their car, Carter was very divisive in the country.

Twenty percent interest rates. How was Carter responsible for twenty percent interest rates? How was he responsible for petrol shortages? Significant numbers of Americans are going to react badly to negative externalities like soaring nterest rates and petrol shortages. This does not make the president at the time a divisive figure. Anyway two questions need answering here. We have a teachable moment.

U.S. history is littered with not-very-well-liked Presidents. Lousy economies... unpopular wars... overwhelmingly negative social issues. Whether or not an individual POTUS is to blame is the subject of never-ending debates. It doesn't make any one of them divisive figures. A divisive person is one who sets out to create conflict for conflict's sake. One who thrives at the creation of conflict, and fans the flames of confrontations. Up until now, all Presidents sought to unite the nation at one point or another. Call it love of country, or call it looking at the poll numbers. Whatever. No past President has blatantly thumbed his nose at his enemies, real or imagined, and thought more about payback and revenge rather than mending and moving forward. Carter may have well been to blame for many of the economic woes of the country during that time. He certainly got a horrible grade at foreign affairs, having been widely perceived as a wimp. Many saw Reagan as a welcome respite. But again..... Jimmy Carter was not a divisive person. Only blind Trump groupies cannot accept the fact that Trump is the most divisive POTUS in history.

We agree entirely about the divisive thing. Carter equalled Reagan's economic record though despite the oil price quadrupling overnight during the Iranian revolution. Back then the US economy was far more geared to the price of oil than it is now and it was disastrous. Carter appointed a Fed chairman to sort out the inflation the oil price rise caused and the Fed chair was responsible for the interest rates. Carter was called a wimp on foreign policy because the real tough guys wanted to invade Iran and Carter wouldn't. America failed to deal with an insurgency derived from five million Iraqi Sunnis, imagine how well things would have gone against fifty million Iranian Shiites boiling with anger at the country who kept the Shah in power for decades then invaded them for having overthrown him.

All Carter had to do to get an 80+% approval rating and guaranteed reelection was to hold interest rate increases for twelve months and invade Iran in the summer before the election. He held back from this. I can think of at least one subsequent president who wouldn't have done that. Carter basically resigned himself to being a one term prez to do what was right for the country, not himself. That's the opposite of weak. Oh, and he had to sell his fucking peanut farm before he took office because it could have caused a conflict of interest when he was president. Yeah.


Oh and just recently we find out that a GOP emissary was plotting with the Iranians not to release the hostages until after the election. You have Carter being called a wimp by the GOP for not invading Iran while they're plotting with Iran to try and fix the fucking election using American lives as bait. And of course Reagan did later trade arms for hostages, lie about it and eventually had to admit it. Maybe things haven't changed that much after all.


The hostage crisis doomed Mr. Carter’s presidency. And the team around Mr. Rockefeller, a lifelong Republican with a dim view of Mr. Carter’s dovish foreign policy, collaborated closely with the Reagan campaign in its efforts to pre-empt and discourage what it derisively labeled an “October surprise” — a pre-election release of the American hostages, the papers show.
The Chase team helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release, a propaganda effort that Carter administration officials have said impeded talks to free the captives.
“I had given my all” to thwarting any effort by the Carter officials “to pull off the long-suspected ‘October surprise,’” Mr. Reed wrote in a letter to his family after the election, apparently referring to the Chase effort to track and discourage a hostage release deal. He was later named Mr. Reagan’s ambassador to Morocco.
Mr. Rockefeller then personally lobbied the incoming administration to ensure that its Iran policies protected the bank’s financial interests.
The records indicate that Mr. Rockefeller hoped for the restoration of a version of the deposed government.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/29/w...se-papers.html

One thing about past Presidents. It's hard to erase baked-in impressions. The fact of the matter is, rightly or wrongly, that Carter is mostly remembered by many as a wimpy President who got "pie-in-the-face'd" by Iran. National self-image was at a near all-time low during those years. Skyrocketing oil prices, for whatever reason, didn't do much to help Carter's image. Now.... I don't pretend to know the details you mention behind these issues. But the cold fact is that Carter got the raw end of the stick in public opinion. Only later has he been appreciated as the elder statesman he became.

What I laugh about is the contention that Carter was somehow divisive because of those very things. It seems like a matter of convenience to interpret the word "divisive" in whatever way suits your fancy. As I said before, choosing a restaurant for a family outing can be divisive. Choosing a TV channel to watch can be divisive. A divisive PERSON is something else altogether. But I can't seem to get that point through.... not even with a jackhammer.

But back to Carter, he may have very well chosen to do what he thought was best for the country at the time. There are always going to the second-guessers who will see it differently.