How Jimmy Carter became a post-White House progressive hero

The hill ^ | 02/26/2023 | HANNA TRUDO

[SuperLuminal]

Carter was. already, a progressive hero while he was “in” the WH...😀

[ProgressingAmerica]

Carter was a true progressive in every sense of the word.

He even gave a speech known as the “Moral Equivalent of War” in ‘77. That’s foundational in progressive ideology, going right back to Wilson and TR. William James was a towering figure for progressives everywhere for this notion. The way progressives saw it, you no longer needed an actual war in order to grab war emergency powers.

FDR also used moral equivalency when declaring his war on the economic downturn. One of his very first laws (Emergency Banking Act) was based on WW1 legislation.

[doorgunner69]

“And you excuse for Bush Junior?”

To prove you are not an αsswipe, quote where I said anything about Bush....

[doorgunner69]

“Great guy, lousy president.”

Richard Marchinko famously said of Carter:

Nice guy, I would vote for him as parson.
For president, never.

[nicollo]

I’ve not studied the Carter presidency much, although I did a lot of research/articles on the 70’s gas crisis and auto industry. So I’m familiar with that aspect. That entire decade was a mess churned upside down and over again by Watergate and the growing government Leviathan. If you spend any time in the newspapers / mags during the decade, you’re like, “Damn, boy, no wonder Reagan arose!”

[x]

Carter was a true progressive in every sense of the word.

In his own day, Carter was not a hero to the left of the Democratic Party, the progressives of his day.

A case could be made that Richard Nixon, an admirer of Woodrow Wilson, was also a progressive, but he wasn't a hero to those on the left in his own day and he isn't a hero to the people we call progressives today.

This explains his admiration for Wilson, which is not a casual matter but a deep personal bond of sympathy and understanding. Nixon knows he is defying traditional party lines when he adopts a Democrat as his “patron saint.” He was proud, while serving as Vice-President, to work at the desk Wilson used in the White House, and when he reached the Oval Office at last, he had Johnson’s large desk moved out and the Wilson one brought in. He televised his November 1969 speech on Vietnam from that desk, and referred to this fact in stressing that this policy was based on Wilson’s principles. He likes to quote Wilson, sometimes without identifying his source: in his inaugural address, he referred to “peace with healing in its wings,” a Wilson coinage (the kind Mencken derided when calling Wilson America’s Doctor Dulcifluus). Nixon’s tracing of similarities descends even to the trivial: he has publicly remarked that Wilson, too, liked to watch football. Wilson is the only Democrat whose picture hangs (with Theodore Roosevelt’s and Dwight Eisenhower’s) in the cabinet room.

Nixon seems to liken himself to Wilson not only in terms of principles but of temperament—Wilson was a lonely misunderstood leader. Nixon considers himself an introspective intellectual somewhat out of place in the gladhanding world of politics. (Wilson, it is true, was a formal academician for a long period, but he was not as good a student as Nixon—he had difficulty getting his doctorate.) Both men had a pious, provincial upbringing—Nixon in Hannah’s Quakerism, Wilson in his preacher-father’s Presbyterianism. Both remained personally ascetic, abstract in their thinking, sensitive to criticism, sheltered by their family and entourage (both men had daughters only, and lived cushioned in feminine solicitude—Rose Woods has been, in certain periods, as protective as the second Mrs. Wilson). -- Garry Wills

[Reno89519]

Wasn’t that Reagan and others that actually carried out getting the government out of the way, supposedly so that commercial companies could do the work? And isn’t that what everyone seems to harp about on FR that the government can’t do anything right and should do anything. For you folks, Carter should be your ultimate hero by your telling.

[Reno89519]

My point is that Bush Junior skipped out on military service, what little he did was arranged by daddy or because of daddy Bush. Carter actually served. And consider who he worked for, Rickover. That's a big deal and a big difference.

I put Bush Junior down with Clinton and Cheney.

[Reno89519]

...and I never thought I'd be spending the day defending Carter. But I think his military service is above reproach and should be respected and honored. As a veteran myself, I find it sad to see people, maybe veterans maybe not, trashing him for his service. What a shame.

Carter served, he may not have been a good president (though he's looking much better compared to many of his successors), and he been a remarkable, dedicated, and devoted Christian and ex-president that should be honored and respected. Where's Bush Junior? Clinton? Obama? Trump, for that matter? Nothing, nada.

[DPMD]

Agree that the Messiah has accomplished his mission of getting rich while all else devolves. And you may have a point about Carter’s “Christian work” post-presidency. And the Venezuelans who chased him out of a Caracas restaurant after he legitimized another Chavez “fair election” also had a point. He had a pattern.