Jimmy Carter: The Original Barack Obama?

                As I have been reading and absorbing much of our Nation’s history from World War II on, I have been flooded with a thousand things to write about in this blog. Most of my reading comes from Oliver Stone and Peter Kusnick’s “The Untold History of the United States” and Robert Griffith and Paula Baker’s “Major Problems in American History Since 1945”.  I have read everything from Truman and the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. I have read about Eisenhower’s “Military Industrial Complex” and Kennedy’s assassination. I have read about Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon’s debacle in Vietnam. I have even read of the sexual revolution and the feminist movement and even the conservative movement up to and including the Reagan years. Then it hit me, we had President’s in between all of this, right? Ford? Carter? Stone and Kusnick’s book barely seem to mention these men and Griffith and Baker barely lend it part of a Chapter. Were these men not important? I wanted to understand so I did a bit of searching for some reading material on President Carter and I was shocked at what I found.  I found Barack Obama!

                Well, kind of. While it may be stretching it and I suppose if I took an entire class on the two, I may find more differences than similarities, I thought it would be an interesting topic to cover and one I could do more research than just my approved readings. After watching a magnificent almost 3-hour PBS DVD on the life of Jimmy Carter, I began to greatly sympathize with him, much like, and only like I have any other politician, and that is President Obama. Some similarities such as his relatively sudden rise to popularity and almost surprise victory as the party’s nominee and eventual president struck me first. Obama had come onto the national scene 4 years before but as a junior Senator, to anyone who did not follow politics daily (most of us) he was unknown until 2007. Carter was never in Washington until 1976 but did serve as Governor of Georgia for a term. Both men ran on platforms of honest, transparent government that would not only cut wasteful federal spending but also help out even the poorest of American families. In 1976 and in 2008 the country was fed up with Congress and the recent leaders of our nation.  Before Carter came Watergate and Vietnam and before Obama was 8 years of lies and terror under George W Bush. At both junctures the country needed a change; they needed a man with charisma and honest trusting character to believe in. They wanted change. Both men were elected by a very narrow margin.

                Once elected, both men inherited many problems. A bad economy and energy concerns along with foreign affairs complications gave both Presidents a daunting to do list from day one. The task of getting elected was the easy part. Both Carter and Obama had to deal with a much divided Congress that they failed to see eye to eye with. Sure, they had their programs and plans but neither was very capable of getting Congress on their side to get anything major accomplished. Our country was much divided both in the 1970s and in 2008 (and now!)  As Carter went deep into his first (and only) term, the endearing qualities that got him to Washington were turned against him and he was labeled weak and ineffective. Even the media jumped on the bandwagon. In August of 1980 the Washington Post made fun of Carter allegedly being attacked by a rabbit to claim he was weak and ineffective (Today In Georgia History).  In 2012, Florida Rep. Allen West said "President Obama has clearly surpassed former President Jimmy Carter and his actions during the Iranian Embassy crisis as the weakest and most ineffective person to ever occupy the White House." (USNews)

                Finally, the greatest foreign affair achievements of these two men may be overshadowed by domestic failures. The Camp David Accords were a monumental achievement that Americans were seemingly indifferent to and Obama’s hunting and killing of Osama Bin Laden was hardly the achievement it would have been had Bush done it years before. Both  men found themselves trying to do the best they could, at odds with Congress for the most part and trying to live up to the promise of a divided American people. Obama, however, got to serve a second term and it is believed by me to be largely more successful than the first.  As for Carter, I think in time he will be remembered with more positive than negative, especially for his work at the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity.  In fact, he kind of reminds me of Al Gore in that sense. Perhaps Carter would have been better served losing that election as Gore did to Bush. Maybe then, we could look at Carter for what he really was, a good, honest, humanitarian, not a politician.