As I noted earlier, apologists for the Bush administration have been actively trying to burnish his legacy as the reign of error comes to an end. One talking point consistently stressed is that “only history can judge” the merits of a presidency and, like Harry Truman, over time Bush will move from the ranks of the lowly regarded to one of the greats.
Methinks not.
In the last 100 years there are three parallels for potential redemption Bush can draw from, Carter, Truman, and Wilson — Nixon was unredeemable and Harding, having died in office, had no opportunity for redemption — and I’ll go through them in reverse chronologic order, starting with Carter, whose redemption at this point remains outstanding.
Like all presidents Carter had personal traits, and presidential results, both good and bad. One thing that surprises me when discussions of his legacy arise is that people seldom cite the single most positive act of his presidency, pardoning the Vietnam draft resisters. If you think the culture wars have been bad these last thirty years, imagine them with that festering sore. Unfortunately, Carter took that action his very first day in office and it was downhill from there. Once you get past the pardons, along with the Panama Canal treaties and some decent moves on the environment — he more than doubled the size of the national park system — you're pretty much done with the asset side of Carter's ledger. Arguably some fraction of the Camp David accords should go to him, but it was Sadat who made the bold move that set the stage. Similarly, Carter made an early and forceful stab at making the US energy independent, but once he left office the effort evaporated.
As for the negatives, sigh... For those not old enough to remember it's almost impossible to describe how bleak the late 70s were. There were three separate recessions in the decade, two major oil crises, and economic productivity barely budged. Starting in the late 60s inflation began to undermine the overall economy and grew steadily despite the highly distinct approaches of three different administrations, hitting close to 20% in the first two quarters of 1980. (I had a part-time job in the local college package store and remember Tuesday as "price day" when it might take my entire shift to go through the shelves putting new price tags on all the bottles.
The Summer of Sam, the hostage crisis (and bungled hostage rescue), the air traffic controllers strike, the Olympic boycott, Three Mile Island... it goes on. And let’s not even talk about the hangover of Vietnam. In almost every way it seemed the age of American ascendancy was over. To be sure, Carter wasn't personally responsible for most of these events, just a victim of circumstances and bad luck. But his histrionic and melodramatic approach to the presidency — in my lifetime he's the only president to complain (repeatedly) "the job is too big for one man." Can anyone imagine Reagan or Clinton or Margaret Thatcher saying that? — meant he was going to take a lot of the blame.
And in foreign policy he was utterly feckless, piously lecturing countries about "human rights" while cozying up to the Shah and other autocrats, failing to get the SALT II treaty through the senate, saying "the scales have fallen from my eyes" after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, having his secretary of state resign in protest after the failed hostage rescue, saying he wouldn't leave the white house until the hostages were freed, and then changing his mind when he fell behind Kennedy in the polls.
History has been kind to a couple of 20th century Democratic presidents (Truman and, amazingly, Wilson) but I doubt it will extend the same benefit to Carter.
He has (like John Quincy Adams) been a remarkably positive “ex-President” through his books, charitable efforts, and on the ground work monitoring elections in emerging democracies. But (a) that doesn’t change the borderline failed essence of his presidency and (b) doesn’t provide George W. with a realistic template for rehabilitating his image. Can anyone really picture W with a hammer in his hand building a house for a poor family? Or traveling to some third world country to help monitor elections?
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