This is a semi-takedown obit, but since I didn't have a chance to do much when he passed away, I'm timing it for his state funeral.
Pieces by Chris Hedges and Counterpunch are good starting points. Counterpunch puts his Nobel Peace Prize in snarky context next to other U.S. presidents who have been so honored. Hedges talks about Carter's human rights failings, beyond Central America, but also his neoliberal domestic failings, including but not limited to deregulation of trucking and airlines. My review of "Everyone Who is Gone is Here" adds more to Hedges' foreign policy angle on Carter, specific to the Northern Triangle.
And, below, are selections of my review of Stu Eizenstat's bio of Carter's presidential years, Stu having served as White House domestic policy advisor.
President Carter: The White House Years by Stuart E. Eizenstat
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
After I recently read Kai Bird’s somewhat disappointing bio of Jimmy Carter, I saw other reviewers of it mention Jonathan Alter’s bio as better. Well, I’ve not read that, but my library had this book, and so I checked it out. (Alter's turned out to be a 3-star meh.)
And, it is better indeed.
This book is at its best on two issues: The “malaise” speech and the Iranian hostages. I’ll give the basics of both without full-on detailed spoilers.
On the speech, he first notes Pat Caddell’s Rasputin-like hold over both the Carters. And, yes, he uses the word “Rasputin.” Then he describes where the “malaise” came from, since Carter never used the word. It was in Caddell’s notes and talking points, that eventually got to Elizabeth Drew at the NYT.
As for its effect? Eizenstat says Carter initially boomed UPward in public polling. 17 percentage points. What happened? Carter’s Cabinet firings and how they were done undercut this.
(All probably needed to go, but only Schlesinger out in the cold. Michael Blumenthal? Find another economics position for him … assistant head of the Fed? Califano? Move him inside the Oval as a White House counsel; in some way, clutch the scorpion closer.
On the hostages? He notes that the biggest failure, after they were taken, was Carter making an ironclad “no harm” commitment to their families, closely followed by too personalizing their situations. Both became lead anchors on his political future.
On how this happened? Ignoring both Ambassador Sullivan and George Ball, who I did not know before had been involved with analyzing the situation before Khomenei solidified control. Before the Shah vamoosed, even, Ball, like Sullivan, recommended reaching out, and QUICKLY, to non-theocratic opposition and cutting a deal. (Ball, per Counterpunch, had been Carter's original choice for Secretary of State, but the Israel lobby, already on the rise, nixed this. Perhaps Cold Warriors butt-hurt over Vietnam did too.)
After the hostages had been taken? Eizenstat says their continued holding wasn't so much an FU to the US as it was pro-Khomenei Islamic Republic types wanting to get the upper hand over the quasi-secular, theoretically official government. He notes US efforts to negotiate with government officials went nowhere, even when seeming to go somewhere, because none of them had Khomenei's sign-off, an issue that continues with Iran's dual government today. (Counterpunch discusses this briefly.)
This relates to the taking of the hostages, Eizenstat says. He says that from what we can tell, Khomenei did not order this, but knew it in advance. Although Eizenstat doesn't use the US presidential phrase of "plausible deniability," it seems this is exactly what was at stake.
On domestic stuff? Eizenstat is right on Carter’s legacy on energy, and the difficulty in getting his energy policy bill passed. He’s right on not wanting national health care without cost controls, still an issue today. He’s right on Ted Kennedy refusing to compromise with Carter any more than he had with Nixon, and being wrong there.
He also praises to the point of overpraising on airline and truck/railroad dereg. On the former, dereg is not the only reason airline costs dropped. On the latter, some things should have been retained; don’t just blame Reagan and others later than Carter.
The chapter on how Andy Young, and his promoted deputy, influenced the 1980 Dem primary is interesting. Had Kennedy not won New York, he would have dropped out, but the US supporting an Arab resolution at the UN, falling through several cracks, backfired.
The book is also good overall on Carter’s personality and his political personality and the problems it caused.
Although five-star overall, it misses addressing two of those problems from the previous paragraph. One is that Carter’s engineering micromanagement personality, not just wanting to be the anti-Nixon, is why he refused to have a chief of staff for two years. Related? Despite being warned about it, he hired both Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski because, IMO, he thought he could engineering-manage both of them. (Hamilton Jordan, per Counterpunch, said he would resign if that happened. Hah! We know he didn't.) If we could half-star, I'd cut to 4.5 because of not going deeper into just how self-injurious Carter really was.
View all my reviews
Per Hedges, and per my own knowledge, yes, Begin rolled Carter at Camp David. But? At that time, maybe Carter was halfway willing to be rolled and let Begin be the fall guy. (Begin, of course, simply saw himself as doing what he thought needed being done for Israel.) Hedges notes that Camp David had no enforcement mechanism on Israeli settlements. In big hindsight, no Camp David deal at all might have been better than what actually happened.
As for Carter the peace candidate? As president, long before the Soviet Union moved into Afghanistan at its then-government's (free? unfree?) request, he did an about-face and started asking for more defense spending, per this second Counterpunch piece. As for that request? We started arming the mujahedeen BEFORE the USSR moved in.
As for Carter in the White House as a person? I've read Secret Service claims those self-carried suitcases were sometimes empty. That famous smile looked like a Duchenne's smile quite often.
Beyond Pat Caddell as inventor of "malaise," per Wiki, don't forget that he was an informal advisor to Trump in 2016, and a regular collaborator with Steve Bannon, so a semi-insider even if he didn't have a formally defined role. After Trump was elected, Caddell was among those pushing his calling of the media "the enemy of the American people."
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