Average guy: "Trump is better than Hillary."
Trump fan: "YEAH! That's right!!"
Average guy: "Trump is doing well with the economy."
Trump fan: "Damn straight!!"
Average guy: "He's controlling the situation in Iran."
Trump fan: "I agree with you! You're on a roll there!"
Average guy: "He's gotten NATO allies to pony up more money for collective security."
Trump fan: "Right again!!"
Average guy: "He's very divisive and encourages confrontation and hate within the U.S. public."
Trump fan: "NO!! Wrong! You're full of shit!! Trump can do no wrong! That is just blasphemous!!"
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
I like the seventies white t shirt with a red neck. I bet that was a fucking transfer print too.
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.
This definition of divisive shit is a little played. We can hang on carter but he was just one example I brought up as many people who lived through the carter regime speak of it. In the end if you want to stick to trump being the most divisive president and use whatever definition you care to it is fine with me.
Do these people you speak of say that Carter was an egotistical, vindictive son of a bitch who encouraged people to hate each other because of color or nationality?
Because if they did, that's news to me.
Was Carter hated by many? Damn straight. I myself think he was a weak President.
But being a divisive person and reveling on other people's hate is something else altogether.
But we'll never agree, so ces't la vie.
I mean I get that some people don't like Trump which is fine, more power to you.
Vindictive son of a bitch? Maybe..depends on which person he's talking about. He doesn't seriously diss someone unless they've hit out at him.
"Encouraged people to hate each other because of skin color and nationality"....That's odd considering Trump has done nothing but attempt to sway Black voters who typically ONLY vote Democrat. Trump has said mean things about a certain slice of illegal immigrants and IMO rightfully so. Not everyone coming to the United States illegally is some kind of angel. The whole "very fine people on both sides" comment was seized upon by the media and spun into a folklore....what President Trump said was rather Presidential at the time, yet people got emotional about it and only hear those words through that filter of emotion.
He did get a raw deal with the public perception of him. This is because the public judge things via peculiar metrics. Try and explain GDP growth or monetary policy to ninety percent of the electorate and their eyes will glaze over after thrity seconds. But they understand high petrol prices. They understand inflation. And Carter wrongly got all the blame for these things. And while he was strong enough to resist an easy reelection by going to war the fact that he wouldn't go to war and was therefore weak was used, again wrongly, as a stick to beat him with because the public are unfortunately susceptible to being scared into wars by politicians.
Interestingly Carter was the last time America saw broadly shared prosperity. Storng unions and a top tax rate of 70% meant that CEO pay was only twenty times that of the average worker. Reagan came along and slashed the top rate and smashed the unions and wages haven't increased in real terms ever since, the proportion of national income claimed by labour has shrunk away, CEOs now earn three hundred times what the average worker makes, and debt and deficits have grown exponentially, the national debt trebling just in the eight years of Reagan. Inequality has skyrocketed and the anger created by all this has been channelled and used by -- another fucking right wing Republican who will wrongly get the credit for an economic expansion he had nothing to do with and this will be used, like Reagan's nonexistent economic achievements, to sell an ignorant public on future tax cuts and deregulation which will impoverish them even more in the decades to come. It's a bugger isn't it.
He gets petty, sinking to whatever level he feels he needs to in order to get that famous New Yorker payback all his fans seem so proud about. Problem is, the people didn't want to elect a schoolyard bully. They wanted to elect a dignified President who they could look up to. At no level has Trump provided a good example for how people should behave toward one another. Hate groups have gotten bolder and louder under Trump. The only ones who don't complain are the ones on the "right side of the line."
"He doesn't seriously dis someone unless they've hit out at him." How is that the acceptable new norm for a President? To engage in tit-for-tats with whatever singer, actor, reporter, or plain old Joe Blow who says something mean to him? That's a psychological sign of someone who's petty and vindictive. Look how he's going about the post-impeachment period. Instead of looking to fix the hurt, he's out looking for blood. To you that might be acceptable, but not for me. People want someone whose entire focus is on running the country, not on what nifty Tweet he can come up next.
Like I've said before, Trump is feared.... not respected. Big difference. If you want a President who rules by fear and divides the country even more than it already is, that is your prerogative. That's not the way I see it.... and that's fine. Trump can do more to try and fix the wounds of this country.... we all know that. Whether a person cares about that or not depends on which side of the line they're standing in.
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