Why Jimmy Carter lost in 1980--and why Obama should take note.

[BurtWorm]

Right Star Rising by UCSB history prof Laura Kalman is due to be published this summer. I don't know if it will be a best-seller, but it happens to pick up exactly where Rick Perlstein's http://books.simonandschuster.com/Nixonland/Rick-Perlstein/9780743243025">Nixonland left off, just after Nixon's resignation in August, and follows the country's right turn through the Ford and Carter years. Kalman's is more of a straightforward bird's eye view of history than Perlstein's termite's perspective. I'm hoping Perlstein treats the same period in his painstakingly methodical fashion. But in the meantime, Kalman's history jogs the memory over why Jimmy Carter was such an unpopular president even in his own party.

Carter's high-minded career post-presidency has done much to elevate public esteem for him. He is a model ex-president for all time. But the Carter whom Democrats need to be mindful of now and forever is the one who muddled through three years in power, confusing his allies, enemies and anyone watching with mixed signals, half-measures, and an inability to project decisiveness (based on an actual indecisiveness apparently) in any policy area, before finally finding his spine-strengthening cause in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, Afghanistan proved too tempting a distraction from the hostage crisis in Iran that ultimately did Carter in with the voters. Worse, it distracted him from an economy that only sank during his entire term.

Teabaggers and their brethren on the right like to think of Carter as a liberal and thus tar all liberalism with Carter's weak and vacillating style of management. In fact, Carter's politics (when they were readable) were centrist at their most left-leaning. Democrats may forget that his first attorney general Griffin Bell echoed in action Carter's voiced wish for Alan Bakke to win his case in the Supreme Court against UC Davis Medical School in the case that undermined affirmative action. They may forget his push for easing certification requirements for nuclear power plants before Three-Mile Island stole his thunder. They may forget that many of the policies that Reagan took up whole-heartedly--cutting social spending toward balancing the budget, funding anti-leftist governments in Central America and the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and Pakistan's ISI, instructing Americans to expect less from government while actually shifting resources from the north and east to the the south and west, from the middle to the top and bottom, from social goods to defense--were begun under Carter. We tend to forget that it was Carter who derailed detente almost from the first day of his presidency, who used the Olympics as a political weapon, who rhetorically blew up an insignificant training camp run by Soviets for Cuban soldiers on Cuba into a "Soviet combat brigade" in the Western hemisphere.

In fine, this is the Carter whom Obama should pay heed to and learn his lessons from if he wants to be an excellent president for one or preferably two terms--not to focus on, and react against, Carter's deficiencies at the exclusion of Obama's own strengths. But it would no doubt pay to attend to those traits that made Carter a particularly poor and unpopular leader: his lack of clarity, his attempted aloofness from the work of politicking in Washington, his failure to focus on issues relevant to most people, his specializing in reactionary foreign policy (as a means of projecting the "manliness" his domestic leadership supposedly lacked), and perhaps most of all, a tendency to try to ride the center, which wound up angering and alienating people on the left and the right. That's the recipe for one-term mediocrity.

[Peregrine Took]

1. Very interesting, Thanks for posting. n/t

[Betty Karlson]

34. My thoughts exactly. Thanks for posting.

It was to that effect that I posted this two days ago:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x204375

[DavidDvorkin]

2. Iran hostage crisis and the related media drumbeat

Even on the part of CBS and Cronkite.

The media destroyed Carter. They set to work on him from the beginning. During the 1980 presidential campaign, they adored Reagan and licked his boots constantly.

That's what destroyed Carter.

[Echo In Light]

4. October Surprise

http://www127.pair.com/critical/myth-07.htm

[troubledamerican]

33. October Suprise: Correct. Unfortunately, it looks like

for most DUers, they're reading the history books written by the Neocons.

[BurtWorm]

41. Laura Kalman is not a neocon.

She's a liberal Democrat and an excellent historian of legal and political history.

[troubledamerican]

63. Nope, I'm talking about

the people who deny the October Surprise. Nothing else. Reagan-Bush sold arms for hostages, and made a backchannel agreement with the Ayatollah to hold the hostages until Reagan was sworn-in. Period.

There are many DUers who call Gary Sick's & Barbara Hoenegger's two insider books "Conspiracy Theory" even though they were there.

[BurtWorm]

5. Not really.

It took a while for the media to warm up to Reagan. They definitely fell out of love with Carter before he even got into office. But so did a lot of Democrats.

[blogslut]

7. Carter's fall had many causes

But the Iran Hostage Crisis was pretty damned high up on the list.

[BurtWorm]

10. Without a doubt.

If the economy hadn't stunk and the odor of his prior three years weren't fresh in people's nostrils, though, he might have survived the histage crisis on a "don't change horses in midstream" platform all around.

[blogslut]

15. I'm not convinced

And frankly, it doesn't matter. That hostage crisis drained every remaining drop of hope left after the soul-sucking Nixon/Vietnam Era. It was the straw that broke Carter's back.

[BurtWorm]

17. Read this book when it comes out, or look at the history.

You'll see that Carter's presidency was a dog until the hostage crisis. He was hugely unpopular. If you lived through that era, you'll remember.

[blogslut]

19. I lived through that era

And I remember just fine.

[DavidDvorkin]

29. Same here.

[BurtWorm]

39. You're probably not remembering it as well as you think

if you think the hostage crisis was Carter's only area of blundering. And if you think it didn't enhance his standing with Americans at least superficially, you really do need to freshen up on your history, if history is important to you. (Maybe it isn't. To his each his or her own.)

[blogslut]

50. Now you're just acting like an ass

I said that several things contributed to Carter's fall but the hostage crisis was the fatal blow. Initially, the crisis rallied the nation around the president but as the days became weeks then months then over a year, respect and support for James Earl Carter diminished simultaneously. Whatever sympathy the American people had for the president, it died incrementally with each nightly Ted Koppel broadcast.

I'm sorry that your theory isn't flying here but insulting me personally is only going to win you points with the petty-minded.

[BurtWorm]

51. I think the only sticking point between my 'theory' and your memory

is that I think Carter's own inadequacies as president and leader were more significant a factor in his unpopularity than you seem to think. I grant that the media telescoped and telegraphed (not to mention televised) these qualities and their opinions about them, especially as the election approached. But when the hostage crisis began, Carter already had very little money in the bank with any constituency in the country, including people on the left.

One other factor in Carter's defeat that neither you nor I have mentioned: John Anderson, 1980's Ralph Nader, who gave the Fed-ups of all political stripes a place to take their votes to.

[Uncle Joe]

16. Nightline owed it's existence to the hostage crisis, I also believe their actions delayed the

release of the hostages.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6 Day 7 etc. etc. etc. every telecast started counting the days from time the embassy was overrun while giving continuous voice to the Iranian "leadership" or pundits whether they had anything useful to say or not.

This was during a time before the Internet or even cable T.V. had come on strong and while most of the nation still relied on the three major broadcast networks.

This was a free public relations platform for the Iranians so long as they held the hostages and they played it for all it was worth.

[theoldman]

3. Carter lost because he was a weak leader.

He was not a good speaker either. Don't forget that most of the South leaned toward Republican values.

[BurtWorm]

6. The South, arguably, got driven further toward Republicanism

when Jimmy Carter didn't know how to hold on to it. But Carter had trouble holding on to any constituency that supported him before the election of 1976.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. Carter Lost Because Of The Iran Hostage Crisis And Incipient Inflation

Either one would have torpedoed any incumbent.

[liberal N proud]

9. Carter was taken down by a hostage crisis in the middle east

One that suddenly resolved one he was out of office.

That coupled with the energy crisis of the 70's did him in politically. Imagine how great he had been if the M$M had been on his side?

[BurtWorm]

11. The case could be made that the hostage crisis actually nearly saved Carter.

The Carter people thought it might. That's why they played the "Rose Garden strategy," sticking close to the WH so as not to appear to be deigning to do mere campaigning during such an urgent crisis. That was a nut the Reagan people struggled to figure out how to crack. During foreign crises, the American people as a rule tend to be forgiving of their presidents. Especially then, it was considered bad form to attack the president.

PS: There really wasn't much about Carter's presidency that could remotely be considered "great." He apparently didn't have that kind of greatness in him. But he is a great ex-president.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. The Rose Garden Strategy Worked In The Primaries Against Ted Kennedy

But when it looked like the hostages weren't about to be released he looked feckless.

Just bad luck. Trying to rescue them would have probably resulted in their death and the end of Iran as we know it.

[BurtWorm]

14. He was feckless. Feckless was his middle name.

True he had bad luck. Some people--some presidents--are better equipped to deal with bad luck than Carter was.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. Respectfully, you said he was feckless

I don't want to open that can of worms.

[BurtWorm]

24. What a mysterious thing to say,

[DemocratSinceBirth]

27. Well

There are some sacred cows on DU and I prefer to let them rest to mix metaphors.

But if there was no hostage crisis and incipient inflation Carter would have won re-election but so would any incumbent running in a time of "peace and prosperity".

If this economy doesn't improve by 2012 what do you think President Obama's prospects for re-election are?

[BurtWorm]

28. Ah, I see...

I can't predict the future (obviously), but it seems clear to me that Obama will need some powerful (memorable) demonstrations of his leadership abilities. If he seems to be sitting still while the economy crumbles and then gets hit with a foreign policy crisis, his chances for re-election are seriously impaired. Carter provides the model for that kind of Democratic presidency.

[hughee99]

12. If Carter made all his decisions the same, but had the M$M on his side

he still wouldn't have been a very good President, he just would have been perceived better.

[paulsby]

20. the bakke case did not "undermine affirmative action"

it undermined racial preferences

huge difference.

racial preferences are a subset of AA and one can be a firm supporter of AA while being opposed to racial preferences.

fwiw, i am strongly opposed to racial preferences and strongly in favor of AA

otherwise, great post

[BurtWorm]

23. Thanks.

I could argue that the Bakke case undermined affirmative action by conflating it with racial preference in the public's mind. It would be naive to think Bakke did not reflect a white backlash against civil rights, a sort of "that's enough justice already" moment.

[paulsby]

31. alleged white backlash aside

affirmative action in california, at least as applied to college admissions was more discriminatory against asian americans than whites.

whites as a much larger group in california, were of course more negatively affected in the aggregate, but it was actually asians that suffered by having to outperform the most in order to get into berkeley etc. prior to racial preferences being banned.

they routinely score(d) the highest in SAT's and had the highest grades, and thus had to be discriminated against the most in order to meet the desired "racial balance".

which is a bunch of crap imo

i am for AA. i am strongly against racial preferences. treating people differently based on their race is wrong.

[BurtWorm]

37. I understand your points. They're well taken.

But in my memory, the context of Bakke v. UCD was more of a backlash against civil rights in general--specifically against African American civil rights. It was as though white middle Americans were saying, we've done enough for those people. Now how about our civil rights? I know this is not your point. As I say, your points are well taken. But this was the mood in the country when Bakke was hot news.

[Jax]

38. You got it right BurtWorm

all of it.

[BurtWorm]

40. Thank you.

:toast:

[Jax]

43. Thank you

you are another one of my DU treasures.

You have ALWAYS gotten it BurtWorm.

:yourock:

Alyce

[BurtWorm]

46. Now you're making me blush!

:blush:

[Jax]

48. Get used to it BurtWorm

You have gotten it from day one.

THANK YOU!!!

Alyce

[paulsby]

42. bakke addressed racial injustice

the fact that there was a backlash was unfortunate, but it was a wrong that needed to be righted.

what rosa parks did caused a backlash TOO

she still did the right thing

and so did bakke

[BurtWorm]

45. If Kalman is right, Bakke should have lost his case.

Kalman is a legal historian, so I presume she knows what she's talking about. She explains the major flaws in the Bakke case, including the fact that he had been denied admission at other schools and that he had scored lower than several other candidates to UCSD who also didn't get in (so was it really Bakke who was discriminated against?). According to Kalman, Bakke won because Davis hired shitty lawyers. Their heart wasn't in winning. Furthermore, the USSC decision was a patchwork. The justices were split and wrote several separate decisions. This was not a pretty moment in American judicial history.

[paulsby]

47. i am sure we could get into "battling legal historians"

but to put it simply, kalman's opinion is not shared by many legal historians

regardless, the larger issue is (imo) that racial preferences were simply wrong. i ALSO think they are unconstitutional, but the fact that they are ALSO imo bad and unjust policy is important to me

[supergreek50]

21. Oh I thought it was just because he was a dumbass

[Tommy_Carcetti]

25. Nice way to start off your DU experience.

:eyes:

[BeFree]

26. bush was a dumbass

...how did he get re-elected?

Carter was the best real president this country has had since Kennedy.
Ignore the rewrite of history in the OP.

[mikekohr]

30. to the tenth power squared nt

[smoogatz]

22. When Carter took office, the country was still burdened

with post-Vietnam, post-Watergate cynicism. Remember, the U.S. had just lost its first war, which dragged on for a decade and seriously undermined Americans' faith in their own government. Watergate had a similar effect--people were genuinely shocked that the President had lied to the public, had conducted secret wars, had conspired to undo his enemies, had conducted a series of illegal coverups. As a result largely of Vietnam, we were also struggling with inflation AND interest rates topping out around 18% in 1980, plus high unemployment, driven largely by Vietnam era deficits, as well as a second-wave, OPEC-driven energy crisis and record-high gas/energy prices (which spawned some very unpopular austerity measures, including the universally hated 55 mph speed limit)--all adding up to the so-called misery index, most of which Carter had little control over, and much of which was hangover from Nixon's monetary policy and a decade of fruitless war spending. You also had a pretty terrifying cold war going on, plus the Iran hostage crisis which others have mentioned. That crisis, which Carter dithered over for months before cobbling together an ill-planned, ill-fated rescue attempt, was probably the straw that ultimately broke the camel's back--but the American people were already in a foul mood, and when Reagan came along with HIS message of hope and change, people were ready to hear it.

[BurtWorm]

44. What you say is true. It's also true that Carter was ineffectual.

A leader who acted decisively, who understood the mood of the country (without having to read Christopher Lasch and Robert Bellah), who communicated more clearly, may have had just as bad a time earning the public trust (and respect of his peers in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Soviet Union) as Carter. We'll never know. It certainly seems that a stronger leader would have had an easier time than Carter as president. (As ex-president, he's the best.)

[smoogatz]

52. Fair enough.

While it's true that Carter was handed a big old Republican-hangover shit sandwich, it's also true that he didn't learn anything from history. You have to take dramatic steps when times are hard, and make sure that people understand how your policies are different from the ones that got us in all that trouble in the first place. And in that case I think Obama could learn from Carter, indeed. But the guy he really needs to study is FDR, who came into office with guns blazing. Of course times were considerably worse: unemployment at 25%, no functioning banking system, a catastrophic loss of national wealth and capital, massive displacement of farm families and workers across a big chunk of the country, illiteracy, malnutrition, rural poverty so stark it could have been happening in Kazakhstan or China. But FDR understood, politically, which side his bread was buttered on, and who his natural constituency was--the people he called "the common man." That's Obama's constituency, too--or it ought to be. The question is whether he really gets that, and whether the people around him (talking about you, Rahm) are actually interested in serving that constituency.

[BurtWorm]

57. It's too late for Obama to come into office with guns blazing, but...

I hope he becomes more like FDR as he goes along.

:patriot:

[Zomby Woof]

32. Carter was a nuclear engineer in the navy

That was an important part of his push to ease certification, and less a function of his moderate political bent. It was his bread and butter, in terms of familiarity and expertise.

I always found it ironic that his boycott of the Olympics pissed off the right-wing. They TALKED about being tough toward the Soviets, but Carter actually did something material (don't forget the grain embargo), and the whined and pissed and moaned, like they do now.

Your comparison is horribly superficial though. You go on and on about how "Carter started what Reagan continued", yet miss the point entirely that Obama didn't start any of the crap he inherited - and most of what he continues is done with great reluctance. Plus, Carter was temperamental and not known for personal charm, whereas Obama owns the room whenever he speaks, publicly or privately.

You want to write off Obama as a mediocre leader, go right ahead. But this facile comparison to Jimmy Carter is vapid on many levels.

[BurtWorm]

35. Obama is still a rookie, so I wouldn't say he's comparable to Carter.

Reading this book about the Carter years has reminded me of how awful they were and how awful Carter was--how disappointing through and through from beginning to end, for me as a Democrat and a lefty. And an American, by the way. Carter didn't wreck the country (unlike Bush Jr., who drove it straight into the ground), but he was ill-equipped to lead it. Maybe no one could have led it through those years.

I do think these are similarily dangerous times to be a Democrat in power. I would like Obama to be a two-termer, mediocre or not, Anything would be better than letting Republicans anywhere near that office again while they're flirting with fascism. I would just advise Obama to think about why Carter was a one-termer in the interest of not repeating Carter's multitude of mistakes.

[anonymous171]

36. He should also take note of one of history's other "great compromiers":

James Buchanan

[Happy Friend]

49. Mostly not Carter's Fault

Whatever Carter did wrong, he did not deserve to lose to that corporate pitchman and senior simpleton Ronald Reagan. Reagan is the same shmuck who said Medicare was a communist plot. He also called a certain terrorist goon squad "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers."

The Vietnam era wrecked the economy. (And it caused, directly or indirectly, 5 million+ deaths in SE Asia, but only the blame America first crowd gives a shit about that.) The drastic cyclical downturn after the war combined with the effect of the oil shocks doomed Carter.

October Surprise was just the coup de grace.

Then comes Reagan who promised to get America goin again cuz it's morning in America and all that bullshit. It is embarrassing that Reagan is a hero to so many. He was clueless when he got off script. He dealt with this by never holding press conferences.

Worst of all he created these enormous deficits caused by ridiculous defense budgets and absurdly low taxes on multi-millionaires. Thanks Ron.

[BurtWorm]

54. Reagan did not have to win in 1980. He was as mistrusted by most Americans as Carter was.

He ran a lousy campaign. And as we all know, he was a shitty president whose policies (with the complicity of the media and "moderate" Democrats in power) are among the top reasons our economy and America's standing in the world is such as it is.

If only Carter had been better at governing or even campaigning, what a different world it might have been...

[WinkyDink]

53. The media brought Carter down. Cronkite's intoning, "Day 423, Day 424,.". Then the BushSaudi Oil

Cartel jacked up gas prices.

And THEN Ollie North gave treasonous info (IMO) about the weather conditions such that Desert Storm failed (North was syationed there).

Plus, the media did everything they could to make this brilliant Naval officer/Governor seem like a Mayberry weakling.

Ted Kennedy's insurgency didn't exactly help, either.

[Dawgs]

55. I was only ten at the time, but I remember it being because of inflation.

No?

[BurtWorm]

56. As many here have said, the causes were complex.

They can be listed:

• Carter himself (all those things about him and his leadership--his indecisiveness, his tendency to insinuate blame to ordinary Americans for the ills of the nation, his confusing stands on most issues and especially those dealing with foreign policy--that made him fail to connect with the electorate and lose voters who supported him in 1976--not to mention his inability to connect with Democrats in Congress)



• The failure of the economy to improve during his time in office and its tendency to get worse each year of his term



• The energy crisis, which affected Americans in all sorts of ways, economically, practically, psychologically, etc.



• Decline fatigue among the American people



• The Iranian hostage crisis and the way it was reported

I can't think of more, but these were certainly the major causes of Carter's defeat in 1980.

[roamer65]

68. Carter had to try to clean up Nixon's economic mismanagement

A monumental task, to say the least.

Nixon's breaking of the dollar-gold peg in 1971 condemned this country to years of rampant inflation, as the dollar adjusted to new floating rate "fiat" currency system.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

58. Let's not forget the role of Kissinger in the Shah coming to U.S, which resulted in hostage-taking.

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2003_01-03/dauherty_shah/dauherty_shah.html

From Carter's diary (before he caved to Kissinger et al.):

"I don’t have any feelings that the shah or we would be better off with him playing tennis several hours a day in California instead of Acapulco, with Americans in Tehran being killed or kidnapped."

[BurtWorm]

59. Brzenzinski probably played a role in that too, right?

It would have been best if Carter had made a different decision, that's for sure!

[A-Schwarzenegger]

60. And Rockefeller, but Kissinger was the driver.

The article's a good one. Carter caved, but Kissinger once again
shows up as a little satan in American history.

[BurtWorm]

61. That's an apt description.

[Happy Friend]

62. Actually... (+ Grand Unifying Theory of American Decline! )

The Iranians took hostages in the US embassy because the CIA used the American as the HQ for Operation Ajax in 1954 which overthrew the only true democratic statesman that Iran has ever produced. We replaced the democracy with a brutal dictatorship complete with a murderous, torture-happy secret police (Savak).

If you want to know what Carter was facing, watch the movie Network. The speech that the faceless corporate guy gives about the the new world where nations no longer matter and Petrodollars and multinational (anti-national) finance and corporate power is the new ruler.

Not to put too fine a point on it but this is a crude chronology that has more explanatory power than the accepted narrative that one would glean from the press or our educational system:

(Sorry for weird numbering)

0. JFK is at war with his own administration over Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Berlin... several of his generals were actually advocating a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union; despite this JFK is popular for economic policies and for averting (against his generals' wishes) nuclear war over Cuban missiles;

.5 In Early November of 1963, JFK proves powerless to prevent CIA orchestrated coup and assassination of Diem in Vietnam.

1. JFK is assassinated by a friendless Marxist

2. LBJ repeals JFK's NSM that was to begin a phased withdrawal and resumes the Dulles Eisenhower policies of CIA coups in Indonesia, Brazil, and the DOminican Republic.

3. Gulf of Tonkin made-up incident leads to actual Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

4. LBJ trounces Goldwater in 64 presidential election running as practically a peace candidate in the wake of Missile Crisis and JFK's murder at the hands of a friendless Marxist

5. Bombs away! Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia bombed back into Stoneage. War would eventually break the U.S. economy.

6. Social strife is caused by Anti-war movement, counterculture, and racial discord, all of which serve to strain the liberal New Deal coalition

7. Tet Offensive shows War is going badly - body counts mean nothing... Viet Cong keeps coming, American public starts to see Vietnamese hearts and minds as unwinnable; no amount of napalm or Agent Orange seems to be able to reverse this trend

8. Johnson decides not to run for re-election.

9. MLK is assassinated by friendless White Supremacist

10. Race riots break out across America; RFK is emerging as a political candidate with the gifts desperately needed to inspire the nation and unite white and black America for a higher purpose

11. RFK is killed by a friendless Jockey who for fun liked to put himself into a trance and write things like "RFK" must die in his little notebook.

12. Democratic convention in Chicago is marred by violence in the streets and chaos at the convention itself.

13. Nixon beats Humphrey narrowly by running as law and order man who will take charge of the drug addled, anti-American counterculture and the riotous uppity blacks.

14. Nixon protects America by continuing to drop bombs on Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia), even as troops are withdrawn; Defense industry cash registers keep ringing with every explosion.

15. As U.S. economy starts to collapse, Nixon ends the the Gold Standard, thus ejecting the economic foundations of the post-war prosperity established by the Bretton-Woods system.

16. Nixon visits China, eventually recognizes China and trades with them, despite China having committed Totalitarian/Communist atrocities far far worse than the worst policies of the governments of Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic (nations where the CIA ousted leaders in favor of U.S. business-friendly authoritarians).

17. Nixon, with a fully realized Southern Strategy, crushes Democrat George McGovern in the 1972 Presidential Election by depicting McGovern (a World War II hero) as the candidate of Acid, Amnesty, Abortion (not to mention anti-Americanism).

18. Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile is ousted and killed by a CIA sponsored coup on September 11, 1973; American copper corporations are pleased; Allende is replaced by General Augusto Pinochet who rules a new murderous authoritarian military dictatorship.

19. Oil Shocks hit the world; OPEC oil cartel forms to stabilize oil prices and help cartel members; OPEC ends up serving to increase the power of OPEC nations and oil companies; the US economy falls under control to a considerable extent, the power of the petrodollar; OPEC nations invest in U.S. corporations.

20. After committing many more unforgivable acts, Nixon gets embroiled in a scandal involving a minor burglary and wire tapping; information is given to journalists by people within the government; it seems more likely that the establishment decided to get rid of Nixon for some reason, perhaps to show the public that the U.S. is a nation of laws and that the government is sound and not at all a giant criminal enterprise.

21. Gerald Ford, an affable reliable establishment man becomes President without ever winning an election; falls down; gets confused about geography and world events

22. The U.S. Senate's Church Committee releases reports detailing CIA involvement since the 50's in political assassinations, domestic spying, mind control experiments, the training of agents to murder in ways that appear to be suicides or deaths from natural causes, chemically induce cancer in people, develop poisons that can kill people without leaving any trace in an autopsy, etc.

23. Americans are confused, disillusioned, and generally bummed out



Anyway, I would say that that's the situation that Carter inherited. The 1980 election was maybe still winnable for him, but the press was very friendly to Reagan even though he was obviously a lightweight. If the media or the political establishment had any courage or insight, the American public would have realized how much damage had been done by American elite military industrial complex + finance + big business + oil companies) who benefited by all of the events listed above.

But politically speaking, Americans were never clued in. As a consequence, despite enormous technological progress, the American people are very much in a precarious situation economically. Political and economic power have systematically been taken away from the middle class and delivered to an economic elite that controls the media, the government, and the economy to this day.

This power elite holds onto and expands its power by:

1) Stupifying the population with corporate media that sets the terms of legitimate political debate

2) Bribing politicians to deregulate the economy and cut taxes for the rich.

Nowadays, in our bizarro democracy, performing actual public service from an elected position DECREASES an official's chances of getting reelected (since they risk campaign contributions should they act in a way that displeases their overlords).

The problem is far more systemic than reducing it to this or that bad choice made by a politician. If creating bad policy was such bad politics, how come the Republican Party is not extinct?

[Happy Friend]

64. "Network" Quotes

This is America in 1976:

Newsman Howard Beale:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

Corporate Overlord Arthur Jensen:

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet.

That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU...WILL...ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.







This is the America that Carter inherited. Reagan took over at a time when an economic cyclical upturn was following the Vietnam/Oil shitstorm of the 70's. He was in the right place at the right time so American gave him some credit for the (somewhat) better economy.

But Reagan did a lot to hasten the rise of the corporatocracy that rules us now. I truly hope Obama proves me wrong, but I know that when Clinton earnestly tried to fix the economy and tax code he was put in check by the masters, to which he responded:

"You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?"


What, Mr. President? Did you think that your reelection hinged on some quaint notion of serving the public good? That's soooo JFK...

[Greyhound]

65. I'm glad you posted this and I found it, thanks.

:kick:

[ThomWV]

66. How quickly we forget Iran/Contra and Ronald Reagan's sabotage of the USA to win

[Happy Friend]

67. That's because

George HW Bush pardoned people (Poindexter and Abhrams) who should have been testifying against him.

And Ollie North became some sort of Rambo hero and a GOP Senate candidate for lying and breaking the law.

Taste the freedom, baby!