I guess the WaPo is a full service editorial page. You get neo-con warmongering, establishment excuse-making and ass-covering, as well as sneering glibertarianism:
Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president’s approval rating now stands at 57 percent, down 11 points from April. Half of Americans think the recession will last an additional two years or more, 52 percent think Obama is trying to “accomplish too much,” and 57 percent think the country is on the “wrong track.”
Yeah- Obama sucks because the minority hates him, the economic crisis he inherited will last into next year, and because the decades of mistakes will take more than a few weeks to correct. I suppose the most annoying thing about the Carter comparison is that it comes around the anniversary of the malaise speech, and you should read it again to see how much of what Carter was right then about, he is still right about today:
What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.
I’d start by condemning Reason HQ and forcing sneering glibertarians to go Galt.
*** Update ***
I can’t tell you how much the cardigan stuff irritates me. “Busting out the cardigan” is a sane response to keeping your energy consumption down. It is something simple, efficient, and everyone can do it with minimal effort. I other words, it is a smart thing to do, like keeping your tires fully inflated. I suppose the libertarian ideal is wearing only boxers in January with your windows open and the thermostat set to nuclear.
El Cid
I Got What America Needs Right Here
By Jimmy Carter | The Onion | January 2008
…Oh, what’s that I hear? The weather’s all screwy? You got a global warming problem? Boo-fucking-hoo! I was telling you morons to turn off your lights and unplug all your shit at night to conserve energy in 19-fuckin’-75, for chrissake. Gee, I wonder what woulda happened if we’d all switched to solar power like I fucking did back when we had a fucking chance to do something about it. Think we’d still be sucking Saudi Arabia’s dick like a five-dollar whore? I sure as fuck didn’t get no fancy Oscar for that little spiel, though, did I?…
Napoleon
Who wrote the piece in the WaPo? (I refuse to click on a link to them)
John Cole
@Napoleon: Gillespie and Welch.
A Mom Anon
These nitwits do realize that only about 10 percent of the stimulus money has made it to actual projects and people,right? (no,of course they don’t,that would mean paying attention)
There’s also a little matter of conservative asshats holding up nominations in agencies that need to be functional in order to implement the projects in the first place. The Sec of Energy is pissed about this,I’m sure he’s not the only one.
And THEN,at the state level,idiot governors and legislators are redirecting money away from where it should be going and using it to pay off their own mismanaged budgets and who knows what else. Or,they’re grandstanding and turning down the money outright.
What a bunch of overindulged,spoiled assholes these people are.
The Grand Panjandrum
When I read this piece yesterday I literally laughed out loud. So-called libertarians, and of course the GOP rump, offer little in the way of real policy alternatives to what the Democrats now propose. As with the tweet from Senator DeMint it seems the only plan from those who do not like Obama is to stop him. They want nothing but to leave things as they are? That seems to be working out real well for all of us.
Shorter Gillespie & Welch: U SUK Prez d00d! AND a minority of the country agreez with me! Ha ha ha U got PWNED d00d!
PeakVT
I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?
Is it because the whole nation has been experiencing groundhog day for 32 years? Or because we’re (collectively) fracking morons?
After the Gulf War, I told some of my friends that unless we tax gas we would fight another war there. They laughed…
Napoleon
Thanks.
Carter’s speech sounds better and better with age (and I thought at the time he was spot on).
Serious question, how do people here think criticism of Obama that try to tie him to Carter plays with the under 35 crowd? I have to believe it 1) makes the person making the point seem out of touch and 2) I actually think it will help Obama with the younger set, Seriously, who would you trust more with the country, Carter or the Bush/McCain/Palin partisans?
By the way someone should point out to the nitwit who wrote that Obama’s popularity rating is “only” 57% that is he should happen to get “only” 57% of the vote in ’12 the Repulicans will be in a world of hurt.
Keith G
Sometimes when I am in the throes of a funk caused by a progressive’s view of the current world, I begin to feel that Obama has to fail. The bread and circuses have worked. Amerifolk would rather watch TV sports and reality shows than actually lift a finger in an attempt to advocate their own better self interest.
As others have noted, “Where is the outrage?”
Maybe if the status quo slaps down Obama’s all too modest reforms, things will get bad enough to get Americans off their lazy asses and actually fight for better policies.
/rant
Sunday morning’s dilemma: Work or Bloody Mary?
El Cid
Not that there’s any “reason” to do so, but I’ve been crawling around in the archives of Z Magazine, that angry ultra-left fringe extremist bastion, and looking what was being said about the U.S. economy 1997 – 2002 or so, and it’d be kind of fun to show a lot of the economic writing of such insane har har har dismissed moonbats to people today, because it holds up to reality a hell of a lot better than all the glibertarian crack pipe hitters and the ‘mainstream’ economists whose ‘these unstable speculative investments will grow forever!’ PR mentality helped us get into this mess.
For example, this 1999 essay from actually soci@list economist Robin Hahnel, which in part deals with the rapidly building speculative aspect of the global banking and credit system.
I’m sure glad I was reading things like that the last few decades than blowing my mind out on bulls*t about the ‘ownership society’ or Ayn Runt or sneering at Jimmy Carter because he was a real farmer and wasn’t a manufactured faux backwoods ‘anti-elitist’ Andover twit like George W. Bush and therefore wasn’t afraid of making sense on energy policy or making fun of Al Gore for being right ’cause he didn’t talk like an Alabama junior high football coach.
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
These assholes have been cheering for Obama’s failure since January 21st. They project what they believe onto everyone else, deluding themselves into thinking that everything they believe is universal. I’m fucking sick of the choir of whining naysayers, they’re boring and predictable and pathetic.
MikeJ
I was alive when Carter was pres and I still think it sounds like comparing him to Warren G Harding.
Why not both?
And I’m sick of George Hincapie’s whining.
henqiguai
@Keith G (#8):
Alas, as I have often muttered to anyone inattentive enough to be paying attention to me, we Americans don’t do anything, policy-wise, until we are nads-deep in the shyte of an existential crisis. It’s just The American Way™.
On edit. The editor is maliously dropping the rest of the excerpt from the blockquote. B@stard utility !
kommrade reproductive vigor
Carter? Really? I’m 40, come from a family I’d describe as more politically active than average and all I remember about Carter is he wasn’t as nasty, vile and unsympathetic to human beings (who weren’t millionaires) as his successor. And he sinned in his heart.
Other than signaling one is down with the Right Kids, I really don’t understand why people keep bringing up Carter as some sort of talisman of ultimate evil.
And when did they back off the Clenis? They used to blame him for everything.
kth
“Jimmy Carter is teh suck” is a total wingnut echo chamber talking point. He wasn’t 1/10th as bad as George W. Bush; snake-bitten as his administration was, he probably still would have been re-elected had not a once-in-a-generation political talent of Reagan’s caliber been waiting in the wings.
ronin122
Speaking of assholes and media, David Gregory was kind enough to respond to an email by a blogger concerning the released email he had with Sanford’s office while he was, ahem, hiking on the Appalachian trail. I won’t spoil it, but I bet you’ll either laugh or cry, whichever suits you more.
http://dailykos.com/story/2009/7/19/755087/-Exclusive:-David-Gregory-Addresses-Bias-in-Sanford-Scandal
aimai
John Cole! This post made me laugh out loud. Not because its not correct, but because you’ve actually become the reverse version of the dreaded “youstabee” democrat–you know, the guy who says “I ustabee a democrat but now I am outraged by Chappaquidick and floridation.”
Not that I don’t agree with you, and all our commenters: Carter was badly undervalued as a president and the right wing anger with him had much to do with their fixation on the president is macho-man-in-chief. But if you look back at what he actually tried to do, and what he said, he seems damned near psychic about the road we were going down.
Still, I’d like to know when you saw the light about Carter. Was it after Schiavo? Or after deciding that Michael Moore wasn’t all that fat? I mean, this is major, isn’t it?
Augustine
enh.
come on, they have to create this false duality to maintain a narrative arc (and their jobs).
this way, when something big goes right in the fall, they can dust off the “Plucky Obama Turns It Around” stories they have already written.
criminy. i’ve stage-managed worse scripts than this in my sleep.
Keith G
@MikeJ: Heavy equipment and sharp stuff, but it will be a short work day so I may pick up the celery on the way home.
Turi vodka…the bomb!
El Cid
Just to rub salt in the wounds, the economy was actually better for average Americans under Carter’s malaise and stagflation than it was under Reagan’s sunny restructuring.
El Cid
@aimai: It should be borne in mind that in American politics, the standard for genius prescient leader is that you can see what is obvious, rather than operate entirely within the bounds of whatever insane fraudulent right wing trend has sway at the time.
It didn’t take a genius to see what was obvious about energy policies and the American economy — it just took people who were minimally free of psychotic New Right aggressive irrationalism. What Carter said in the late 1970s had been conventional wisdom among the rational for the previous couple of decades.
The degree of unreasoning psychosis we suffered with the New Right / Reaganite movement, in every aspect of civilization — and all for the benefit of a tiny few ultra rich and a small class of evangelical culture freaks — can almost never be exaggerated.
Keith G
Semi related: Tracking Obama’s promises. As well as a general political truth squad – http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/
jon
Jimmy Carter could get elected in 2012 over the GOP’s field. He could pick Kucinich as his running mate and still win in the Electoral College. Hell, Mondale could do little worse.
Obama won’t give the GOP’s political operatives the ability to pillory him in the way Carter gave his opponents. Obama is happy with them spending their time on the birth certificate searches and their constant investigations of ACORN. If ACORN didn’t exist, Democrats should have made something like it just so the GOP would obsess about it.
As for the economy, yes it’s in the shitter. I really don’t see recovery as possible, since I’m one of those crazy “It’s all going to hell. No, really: we’re fucked in the short term in ways we’ll look back on with nostalgia when we’re really fucked in the future” kind of pessimists. I’m not really scared about our transitioned economy, since I can’t see only the negatives when there’s so much good about a return to a sustainable way of life. What I really fear is more Republican control, since their anachronistic “Let’s be concerned about the top tax rates” mantra really is all they believe in: not public health, debts, spending, or anything else.
demkat620
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/black_man_given_nations
I don’t know how to do all that fancy html stuff.
But this is about right. Just as much as that Carter piece.
Svensker
Carter was smart and sensible but a terrible leader. At the time, his “wear a sweater” speech just depressed the heck out of me. Reading it now it seems prescient. Too bad.
I don’t think most people who lived under Carter remember what Carter was like. For younger people, it must be a huge “huh?”.
geg6
Ummm, do these idiots realize that most people under 30 consider Carter to be the kindly and heroic former president who is the champion of their hands down favorite community service organization, Habitat for Humanity? The one they flock to volunteer for? That he is one of their role models? That they don’t consider him a failure at all, but a success story worthy of emulation? Of course they don’t. Because no one under 30 talks to them. Hell, the best they can do with the young is a 40-year-old racist as head od the Young Republicans.
Balconesfault
I suppose the libertarian ideal is wearing only boxers in January with your windows open and the thermostat set to nuclear.
Libertarian: if you can afford it, then nobody should ever suggest that society would be better off if you didn’t
Conservative: not burning every barrel of oil the Muslims will sell us is clearly a form of defeat
Derelict
Considering Bush’s approval ratings at about this same time in his presidency:
http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm
I think Obama’s doing pretty damn good! And, of course, Bush did not have to deal with the asswipe brigade that Obama faces daily: A hyper-vocal and obstructive minority party, an excessively timid majority party, and mainstream media that’s eager to reproduce every Republican talking point no matter how absurd.
Jon H
Gillespie’s been crying himself to sleep ever since Chess King closed.
Zandar
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh: Actually, our Liberal Media Village has been rooting against Obama since before he was elected.
Easy call. All the Villagers who cut their teeth on savaging Clinton back into like in 1993 want to do it again in 2009…not to mention the next generation of would-be Broders, Blitzers and Brokaws.
They figure it’s their job description, to keep America “fair and balanced”.
Johnny B. Guud
I’d be shocked to see if many people under 30 actually know who Jimmy Carter is…
El Cid
I remember that Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen had a discussion with Jonah Goldberg about “Librul Fatcysm, teh BUK”, and they clarified that while it was okay for someone to recommend keeping thermostats down, what made Carter “fascist” was that liberals had some sort of tone where they made it sound like you really ought to do that, while Jonah Golberg’s mommy never, ever made him feel bad when she told him he didn’t have to do his homework like the other, smarter kids.
Bill H
What gets me about the “Obama’s popularity is only 57%” thing is that Congress’s approval is a whopping, what 19% or so, up from 11% but on its way back down again. The sad thing about that is that individual congresscritters have 85% approval ratings and higher. “Everybody’s rep sucks except mine, so I’m going to reelect mine.”
We get all outraged about how awful Congress is, but we do keep reelecting them. We might need to look at the fact that only half of us vote and that, of that half, 90% vote without having the faintest idea what they are voting for.
DBrown
I am so sick of hearing about proper tire inflation – someone at work get buging me to over inflate my tire and I told him what a fool he was and how dangerous this was- just asking to hydro-plane.
So, of course, my electric tire pump gauge failed and I over inflated my tires (from 32 lbs/in2 to 40 lbs/in2). That week, using air-conditioning, my average MPG went from 43/44 to 49/51 MPG. The second week and careful following my trip odometer and fuel used, I confirmed the next week my MPG was 50.4 and holding.
Shocked and confused I realized that something was fishy and I checked the damn tire pump and discovered the pressure gauge was way off (Of course I had driven through a rainstorm before this.)
Now what? Lose 10% MPG or take my chances?
Greed or stupidity … difficult choice.
JMK
The first time I browsed through a copy of Reason at a local bookstore some years ago, I was treated to the brilliant insights that “Sgt. Pepper” is unlistenable and that people who choose not to have children were somehow bad, because “if everyone did that, we’d be in trouble,” or something of the sort. Very reasonable!
After a first impression like that, I haven’t been able to take Reason very seriously ever since, though I do like some of Balko’s work. Gillespie, though, is an annoying hipster-wannabe compulsive contrarian who’s best ignored.
mw
“glibertarians”
Funny. And pretty – um – glib.
I though it was the piece was spot on, but am less sanguine about the American electorate than the authors. I fear that – Abe Lincoln notwithstanding – you can fool most of the people most of the time.
Particularly when most Dems have decided that it is perfectly ok for Obama to institutionalize the Bush/Cheney unitary executive power grab. It becomes much more dangerous when there is no meaningful opposition in Congress. But I guess its ok to vest all this power in the executive because – you know – its our guy and we trust him and like him and he’ll always be President and the Dems have a permanent majority. Its all good.
demkat620
@Jon H: Wow dude, way to date yourself.
Chess King. OMG.
Bob In Pacifica
Is dressing in layers too liberal?
dmsilev
Sheesh. To people of my generation (I’m 35), Carter is the slightly goofy-looking elder statesman who spends a lot of his time helping Habitat for Humanity build houses, and most of the rest trying to broker peace deals and the like.
Oh, the humanity!
-dms
John Cole
@Jon H: That made me LOL.
Jon H
@DBrown: “I am so sick of hearing about proper tire inflation – someone at work get buging me to over inflate my tire”
Pssst. “over inflate” is not the same as “proper tire inflation”
aimai
El cid, while you are hanging out in comments here, I want to say you are one of my favorite commenters on these internets–anywhere, anytime, any blog. The threads are always really enriched by your comments.
aimai
geg6
Johnny B. Guud: Oh, they know who he is. But they have no conception that he’s considered this massive failure by some. They see a nice old man who was president back in the Dark Age of the 1970s who has helped the homeless and overseen iffy elections in foreign countries and brought peace between Irael and Egypt at Camp David. They have a better conception of him than they do Reagan, mainly because he has kept active in public and champions something they value. Fracking assholes in the wingnut echo chamber don’t talk or interact with these kids every day like I do. Believe me, they know Carter. And consider St. Reagan a deader than dead cipher. It’s hilaious to me when I hear Carter bashing, especially when coupled with Ronnie extolling, because the kids just look at me like, “WTF?”
different church-lady
Reason Magazine: it’s where I’ve read some of the least reasonable things I’ve ever read.
El Cid
@aimai: Jeesh, thanks.
El Cid
@aimai: I’ve always enjoyed yours too; we crazy moonbats must rely upon each other against teh hords.
Comrade Jakes
LOL at Chess King
David
It appears WaPo is getting ideas for editorials from FreeRepublic now.
We have first-hand-UFO-sighting accounts and 47-year long, faked-birth-certificate-conspiracy theories to look forward to.
Ash
@Johnny B. Guud:
I can assure you, we all (I’m 23) know perfectly well who Jimmy Carter is. And as others have said, yeah, when people go on and on about St. Ronnie at the same time as bashing Carter, all you get out of most of us is a giant “WTFFFFFF?” Reagan’s the one that started the bullshit we find ourselves in today. It’s understandable why he only got one term, with everything spiraling out of control like it was, but shit happens. Carter actually gives a damn about people and their problems.
Comrade Jake
Yes Carters words now seem prescient, but at the end of the day he was unable to move the ball down the field. At some point you have to attribute some of that to a lack of leadership.
El Cid
@Comrade Jakes: Chess King:
———————-
At the start of the decade, Chess King was a part of the Melville corporation, a conglomerate that also owned such retail properties as CVS and Thom McAn.
Throughout the early 80s, the store was responsible for outfitting sleazoid bar-hopping womanizers, wanna-be coke dealers, and various guys who pretended to be record executives.
By the mid 80s, any “culture” the chain once had began to dissappear, and the only people bold enough to step foot into Chess King were men who enjoyed excessive hair gel, wore several gold chains, drove Monte Carlos and fancied themselves as don juans/mob enforcers. With such a fantastic clientele, whatever happened to the King?
The 1990’s happened, that’s what. When they saw that the only people shopping at Chess King were walking punchlines, Melville, Inc. finally got a clue and decided to take action.
MikeJ
Most of that “lack of leadership” was because Teddy didn’t want to wait until ’84.
GregB
These GOP criticisms are not sinking in with Stacy McCain, because she was born after the Carter Presidency.
-G
MattF
It’s not surprising to see the wingers go back to attacking the ‘malaise’ speech. Carter was actually the first victim of the right-wing echo chamber– it was like the discovery of fire for the right wing. But, as we say, that was then,… and ‘then’ was thirty years ago. The wingers are going to continue to try all their old codes and whistles and rhetorical devices– but it just doesn’t work the way it used to.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Slightly OT: Johan Lœdedhøsen, necrophiliac.
Brett
@Bob In Pacifica:
Perfect.
Rick Massimo
Yeah, but now that there’s another Democrat in the White House they’re all about personal responsibility again.
And don’t tell them that Obama’s numbers are slipping because he’s not doing ENOUGH of that “socialism” that everyone in Washington is horrified about and everyone outside of Washington actually wants.
GregB
It’s too bad Ronnie didn’t live on for a long time after his retirement. He could have helped mine harbors of impoverished little South American countries, secretly arm the Iranians, blow up tents with children in them and gloriously invade nations the size of Nantucket in his golden years.
-G
GregB
Not to mention some of these media pudslaps were still using the Rovian frame: Bush is still personally popular.
Even when he was at a chimptastic 35% approval.
-G
dan robinson
@24
Carter was smart and sensible but a terrible leader. At the time, his “wear a sweater” speech just depressed the heck out of me. Reading it now it seems prescient. Too bad.
I don’t think most people who lived under Carter remember what Carter was like. For younger people, it must be a huge “huh?”.
——–
Carter had his problems, but one of the biggest was named Teddy Kennedy, who seemed to think that the desk in the Oval Office had his name on it, and Carter was just keeping it warm for him.
rs
I think one of the reasons Carter seems to be on everyone’s shitlist these days (remember, the Democrats gave him about 30 seconds of stage time at their convention) is that he’s one of the few mainstream American political figures with the balls to call out Israel.
DougJ
My impression is that everyone who lives in places where it gets genuinely cold in the winter does actually bust out the cardigan. Keeping your house cooler and wearing as wool sweater indoors makes it easier to adjust to the cold temperature when you go outdoors.
DougJ
Reminds me of Bruno asking if having brunch with friends was gay.
Anoniminous
The basic problem with glibertarians is they are made brain dead by their assumptions. I mean anyone who can swallow this:
without gagging – intellectually speaking – has the analytical skills of a kumquat.
And the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Premise: People have rational preferences
Glibertarian: I am a people
Conclusion: My preferences are rational
Therefore: anyone disagreeing with my preferences is not rational
Curiously it never occurs to them this conclusion destroys their premise.
Or, perhaps, not so curiously.
ANYWAY …
As it is impossible to argue rationally with a irrational person the only way to combat the position of an irrational person is with smears, jeers … the whole kit of emotive arguments.
Karmakin
PeakVT:To do anything substantial about the energy problem would be to admit that the DFH’s were/are right.
And that’s what they want to avoid. At any cost.
rachel
@rs: FWIW, Obama might be one of the few others.
geg6
rs: Again, another reason young people would say, “WTF?”. Most of those under-30s think Israel needs called out. We had a Palestinian speaker on campus last fall and an Israeli in the spring. If you attended both events, it was easy to see whose argument carried more weight. By the questions for the Israeli (who was less than a Bibi fan, but had the misfortune of having to defend or at least explain him and his policies however reluctantly), they were all like “WTF is with these settlements?” And “WTF is with no ability to move between Gaza and the West Bank?” And “WTF is with not only walling them in but stealing more land while you do it?” And “WTF with bulldozing their homes?” It was brutal. So calling Israel out would most likely be a positive for the under 30 crowd, IMHO.
JenJen
Ahhh, and I see our wonderful Washington Post also reprinted that infamous debunked photo of Obama and Sarkozy, aka “AssGate.”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200907180009
joe from Lowell
a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president’s approval rating now stands at 57 percent,
This reads like something out of the Onion. It looks like what a smart-ass writer would say if he was imitating someone making a fool of himself by making an up-is-down argument about Obama’s political popularity.
Look at the sad sack with the 57% approval rating!
Jon H
John wrote: ““Busting out the cardigan” is a sane response to keeping your energy consumption down”
And how lame is it that Gillespie of all people is criticizing it? Dude never takes off the damn leather jacket. Hello? Layer much?
Gillespie probably would approve if Carter had instead offered everyone a voucher for a faux biker jacket.
joe from Lowell
Funny you should mention that. When Obama was first inaugurated, Reason H&R had a blog post about the truth-o-meter, and promised to update on it regularly, to hold Obama accountable for his campaign promises.
I don’t believe they’ve ever had a follow-up post. I guess it isn’t telling them what they wanted to hear.
Nylund
John, you are talking about the same people who for Earth day go turn on all their lights and run their car on idle for hours on end. Your description is sadly accurate, but not because of libertarianism per se, but because the only guiding force behind any conservative thought is, “what can I do that will piss liberals off?”
A Squirrel
I just finished chapter 1 of “Limits of Power”. Carter/cardigan bashing now fills me with a new sense of despair. 30 years down the road, I fear we will follow this path to the bitter end.
liberal
@El Cid:
The guy to check out is Dean Baker, who has a blog over at Prospect.Org. While he’s relatively unknown, he called the housing bubble from near its very beginning. He also called the tech bubble. Furthermore, he gave in-depth details as to why each of them was a bubble.
Jon H
And if you think about it, isn’t “wear a cardigan” the ideal of glibertarian Presidenting?
No enforcement – no jackbooted thugs going around checking for cardigan compliance. Americans in Phoenix not required to wear cardigans they don’t need. Americans in Buffalo not fined for wearing a sweatshirt instead of a cardigan.
No taxpayer cost – no promise of cardigan assistance, no government-issue sweaters, no cardigan vouchers. You’re on your own to acquire a layering garment of your choice with your own funds. Cashmere if you want, acrylic if that’s more affordable.
Given that the glibertarian approach to health care reform is “don’t get sick”, you’d think the advice to “wear a cardigan” would have spurred the Cato institute to award a “Jimmy Carter Award For Self-Reliance”.
Screamin' Demon
Jimmy Carter’s big mistake was assuming America was a nation comprised of rational adults who could handle the truth about themselves.
We weren’t. We proved it the following year by electing a doddering old fool who promised Morning in America and other trite platitudes wrapped in the flag and served with hot dogs and apple pie.
Americans didn’t want the truth. They wanted lies. We still do. The country’s falling apart, Wall Street’s stealing my money, but hey, it’s all good. Mitch McConnell says so.
Marshall
Carter had, of course, the Iran Hostage situation. (Anyone remember how Nightline started – they took “Friday’s” off the air to air “XXX Days of Crisis” every Friday night.) There was also Teddy Kennedy’s scorched Earth primary campaign.
But what I most remember was how the Washington Establishment took this wealthy Southern gentleman and former Naval officer and treated him like he was white trash. Everything done to Clinton was done to him first. And the Democratic congressional party was complicit in it.
When Reagan occupied the White House, the solar panels on the roof were literally the first thing to go (on January 21st IIRC). Talk about a dog whistle. And, the entire energy independence R&D project followed soon thereafter. The EPOCH FAIL was with Ronald Reagan literally from his first week in office. It just took 27 years or so for the fail become too blinding to ignore.
kid bitzer
in thinking back to carter’s presidency, it’s worth keeping in mind that he had another opponent that most of y’all never heard of:
congress.
yes, that was back when the congress of the united states was a much more powerful body. and under tip o’neill, it threw its weight around plenty.
you see, carter had been elected in part as a reaction against the nascent imperial presidency of r. m. nixon. nixon had grabbed more power for the presidency than anyone before him; alas for him, when his minions screwed up the watergate break-in, they created an opening for congress to rein him in a bit. congress rode high throughout the watergate hearings; the president slunk lower and lower, and the country was in no mood for electing another emperor.
so we got carter in the white house, and a newly invigorated congress on the hill.
go back to those years, and you will find articles and books asking “is the american presidency too weak?” and “is it possible to be president anymore?” people were actually saying that the office just wasn’t functional.
(cheney was reading them, and croaking to himself, “it’s not too weak if you know how to do it right; but it is still too **accountable**. the ideal blend of power and unaccountability is actually right next door, in the vice president’s office. yesssss….”)
after years of a lickspittle congress under g.w. bush, it’s hard to remember that it was originally the first branch of government. and if you actually respect the constitution, the presidency is clearly second-fiddle. that was another of carter’s mistakes–trying to work within the constitution. no one since him has made *that* mistake again.
that’s part of what makes it hard to appreciate his difficulties–the entire institutional groundwork has shifted.
jon
I (re)painted my roof white last month, keep my tires inflated, try to ride my bicycle as much as I can, rarely use the cooler (and I live in Tucson,) never overdress, am considering installing a composting toilet, am building a strawbale guesthouse in my backyard, have looked seriously into solar power for my roof, will convert my second vehicle to be plug-in electric, and somehow I’m an enemy of America? What the fuck is wrong with those people?
El Cid
@liberal: Oh, of course, you’re absolutely right about Dean Baker. But I was purposefully curious about looking back at the views by actual leftists and soci@lists, not just those departing from the mainstream financial insanity. But the moonbat crazy ultra-lefties were familiar with and citing Baker’s work back then, too, not just now when it seems common.
b-psycho
The reason we see columns like this is because no “mainstream” paper would print a serious libertarian critique. Much safer to have meager complaining about stuff that all politicians do anyway (the broken promises section of their article — politicians claim to do something and then regularly don’t do it? No shit, sherlock!), combined with the use of “Carter! Cardigans!” as scare terms & yet more of the ridiculous claim that someone who thought billions in bailouts to the financial sector giants was a good idea is a friggin’ soshulist.
That’s how it works. Hold out hope for a Republican comeback inbetween jokes, and you get published. Indict the entire system as a fraud, with both “major” parties largely meaning zilch because the real issue isn’t their disagreements but how much they agree on that’s wrong, and you get ignored.
El Cid
@b-psycho: That’s true, but I don’t expect to see any major newspaper giving space to a participatory economics model of society, either. And it’s not like libertarians of the private property variant would deserve the exposure even the tiniest bit more than their left non-propertarian variant of liberatory thinking.
Except that there actually is a consistent economic incentive for wealthy interests to have backed private property based libertarians over the years, since they share a useful agenda of opposing many government regulations.
There is no comparable financial or ideological support of non-propertarian socialist democratic participationists from any sector of power. (And it’s not the same thing when Republicans give money to Greens so as to try and disrupt Democrats, any more than when Mexico’s PRI uses the ex-Green party PVEM to divide the left-liberal vote.)
Lola
@Keith G:
Keith G, your rant is similar in idea to the wingers who want another terrorist attack on US soil. The idea that people want to make things worse in the US to foment revolution is dumb. If Obama loses in 4 years it will not make future liberals more bold it will make them more timid. Their policies will be less progressive. Republicans would be in power and liberals will be silenced.
LD50
When Bush’s approval numbers went into the shitter post-Katrina (bottoming out ~27%), there surely must have been some prominent DC journalists who accused him of entering ‘Carter Country’, right?
LD50
The Villagers have no choice here. If they invoked Clinton, it’d remind people of the fact that his approval numbers remained strong despite the Village’s best coordinated efforts to make Americans hate him. They can’t admit that they don’t reflect American popular opinion.
Tony J
When Bush’s approval numbers went into the shitter post-Katrina (bottoming out ~27%), there surely must have been some prominent DC journalists who accused him of entering ‘Carter Country’, right?
Apples and oranges.
Only Democratic presidents can ‘Get Cartered’, because – as all prominent DC journalists know – it’s only when there’s a Democrat in the White House that Carter Rules come into effect. It’s a whole different game, which requires a different style of reporting. One that starts every question with “Was today the day it all started going wrong?”.
When the presidency is held by a Republican, however, the rules are very different. Low approval ratings are just another badge of honour they have to earn to win public approval by proving that they don’t care about approval ratings. Reporters have to take that into account when commenting on the game, and start every question with “Was today the day it all started coming together?”
You can’t be a prominent DC journalist if you don’t understand these fine distinctions.
Hob
@liberal:
Dean Baker is good from what I’ve seen of him, but this isn’t a great accomplishment. Plenty of people sounded alarms about the housing bubble all the way through. It was rotten on its face, and if you wanted the details, the Internet made it easier than ever before to find informed commentary. There was absolutely no excuse for anyone who gave a damn to think this wouldn’t end badly, even if some of the most outrageous details of secret business practices and regulatory malfeasance hadn’t been uncovered yet.
During the tech bubble, I wasn’t following business writing and the blogosphere wasn’t all there yet, so I can’t say whether the same kind of information was generally available… but I was working in the field, and I think it’s fair to say that anyone who knew what the hell they were doing (either as an engineer, or as a businessman) knew it had to be a bubble. There was just too much money being thrown at things that made absolutely no sense, and too many people depending on an endless increase in money-throwing. They just all assumed that when the bubble popped, their thing would be one of the things left standing– the market would clear out the dead wood, etc. Or if not, they would’ve at least cashed in their stock options before then. Or, they were like me and thinking “This doesn’t seem to make any sense, but everyone seems so confident, and I need this job. If we’re still here next year then I’ll try to learn something about economics.” Self-interest overrode common sense very easily. I don’t know if 10 or 100 Dean Bakers would’ve made much difference.
El Cid
@Hob: I think this approach is more worthwhile than people expect. I think it’s not impossible to have a decent intuition of when an economy is doing the kinds of things which logically appear to be sound, successful, and stable, and when you look around and see what appears to be a bunch of fairy magic work and things barely holding together, pay attention to that, and not people whose employment or political future or position in the punditariat depends upon telling you that your senses are wrong. And for me this goes for a lot more than ‘bubbles’ — it goes to wondering about what your nation’s and your world’s economy are devoting themselves to for decades.
Jonny Scrum-half
A few thoughts on the post and the comments:
1. Libertarians are not the same as conservatives.
2. I’m surprised that Matt Welch (who writes some very intelligent text) shares the byline. The piece reads like it was written solely by Gillespie. One of the commenters noted correctly that Gillespie is a reflexive contrarian, which sometimes can be a good thing, but which I think recently has led him to criticize Obama on a lot of inane grounds.
3. Anoniminous @ 64 — your own logic is completely flawed. Libertarians don’t accuse anyone who doesn’t share their preferences of being irrational. Rather, they take as a given that each person gets to decide for him/herself what he/she desires, and reject the idea that government or some other force should require certain things, or prohibit other things.
Jonny Scrum-half
One more thing. I was in high school during the Carter years, and I haven’t liked the guy since then. Only recently I’m coming to understand that he had some pretty intelligent ideas (the “malaise” speech contained many of them). I’m beginning to wonder if maybe the reason he’s so poorly regarded is that he’s generally despised by the neo-conservatives who have wielded so much influence over politics and the media for the past 30 years.
b-psycho
@El Cid: They oppose the ones on them & support the ones that fall disproportionately on their competitors, and support using tax money to prop up their own operating expenses. The Cato types are naive in that they think they’re being co-signed in good faith by corporatists.
BTW: when I refer to serious libertarian critique, I mean one written by people whose view of Republicans isn’t “well, they’re bad, but they might make a comeback!” or “if only they could be more consistent…”, but this:
Tony J
I’m beginning to wonder if maybe the reason he’s so poorly regarded is that he’s generally despised by the neo-conservatives who have wielded so much influence over politics and the media for the past 30 years.
The ‘poorly regarded’ tag is more one of those conventional wisdom things that the MSM created in the 80’s when they were trying to figure out a semi-credible reason why they wanted to tell everyone how the Republicans were – so – cool and electable while Democrats were so wussy and out-of-touch. They had to look at Carter that way because all of their stories about how great Republicans are and how the American electorate – so – share their way of looking at issues required it to make sense.
But, yes, Israel also.
gex
Clear evidence of how you hate them for their freedom, John.
El Cid
@b-psycho: No, I get you, and I’m of the libertarian variant that has me wanting to figure out ways of creating an economy based on voluntary cooperation rather than primarily on exchanges of private property and purchases labor.
gex
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henqiguai
@El Cid (#94):
And that would be one of the variants of Utopianism, I believe.
Mike
Matt Welch is such a douche.
Mike in NC
The GOP has been running against Jimmy Carter for the past 30 years. Among his flaws (as a product of the USNA and Rickover’s submarine program) was his being an absurd micromanager: supposedly he even had to review and approve who used the White House tennis court. But in the end it was the Iran hostage crisis and Desert One that did him in.
hummbumm
I love the wrong direction stat, as it basically has improved dramatically from January, but was so low from before. I think it bottomed at 85% wrong direction….
Seanly
John – as Americans, it is our God-given right to keep the house at 85 degrees in the winter and 65 in the summer. Coz anything else makes the baby Jesus & Dick Cheney cry.
Anoniminous
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Read my comment again.
I wrote “Glibertarians” not “Libertarians.”
Ash
You’re just BEGINNING to wonder this?
LD50
If we start saving energy, the liberals have won.
LD50
Yup, he doesn’t act afraid of Israel, and won’t kiss their ass like all American politicians are supposed to do. Remember when Malkin’s winged monkeys cleverly called him ‘Dhimmi Carter’ back around ’02-’03?
Oh yeah, plus he’s a Democrat.
J.J.J.J. Jameson
Because, as everyone knows, 15% inflation rates help the little guy.
So, well done, Cid, this qualifies as perhaps the single stupidest comment ever left on a blog.
Nazgul35
Umm…the wrong track numbers have fallen considerably since Obama took office.
How stupid are these people?
mai naem
One thing about George W. Bushv: He as the worst modern president evah has made everybody else look good. I was a kid during Carter so Carter for me is what I have heard about the “malaise” crap, the hostage crisis and ofcourse the mideast peace stuff he did. Beyond that what I really know him for is the Habitat for Humanity stuff , election monitoring stuff and ofcourse the Mideast stuff he’s been involved since. One thing I did hear Carter say during an interview on CSPAN which really impressed me was that he doesn’t sit on any boards. His income comes from his book sales and stuff related to his books and ofcourse his pension. He doesn’t do the big money speeches like Clinton. Doesn’t do the Carlyle stuff like GHWBush. The only comparable modern president in that regard is Truman who had to sell the family farm because he refused to take advantage of his former President status. Also can tell you I happened to be at the same shopping center where he had an appearance at a bookstore. There was not a parking spot to be found and this is not a small parking lot. The only time I have seen this was when Hillary was on her book tour. Dubbya may be able to pull this off but I have a feeling he would have a bunch of protesters, not fans.
El Cid
@J.J.J.J. Jameson:
First of all, that’s just not fair — each and every comment by a modern conservative counts as the “single stupidest comment ever left on a blog”.
Second, that depends on other conditions — which would you rather have, high inflation or economic collapse and deflation, which we’ve been skirting the edge of since the summer 2008 collapse?
Third, while not a high point of economic development, people also have a lot of illusions about various factors under Carter who, like Obama now, inherited an enormous amount of war debt from his predecessor.
———————–
Many people, even those who voted in 1980, are surprised to hear that as high as the unemployment rate was that year — 7.1 percent — it was actually 0.6 percentage points lower than it had been in the year before Jimmy Carter took office.
Real family income was 1.6 percent higher at the end of the four years of the Carter presidency than it had been at the beginning. By contrast, family income had risen by just 0.6 percent over the prior four years. (In eight years under Bush, real family incomes are up just 0.4 percent.)
Several measures, of course, clearly deteriorated during the Carter years. Inflation in the last year of the Carter presidency, for example, was 10.9 percent (because of a faulty measure, the inflation rate reported at the time was 12.5 percent). Real wages also fell 2.2 percent during the Carter years, although this was a smaller drop than the 2.9 percent decline in the prior four years.
—————————-
So, clearly not a banner error for anyone. And no one much cared for the early Reagan era unemployment, which you can certainly blame on Carter if you want.
Likewise, the drop in real wages began its steep descent in 1973, but, still, real wages were higher under Carter than under Reagan.
To be fair, they were higher under Reagan than they were under Clinton’s 1st term, but no one since has come close to Nixon’s peak.
LD50
Sounds like someone has never visited FreeRepublic.com…
MBSS
through the latter days of the nixon presidency and all throughout the ford administration there were stagflation and problems with OPEC. look at the ford administration, it was crippled by economic problems. carter ends up getting the brunt of the voters negativity by the mantra fabricated by the right, which chanted: “carter sucked.” unfortunately this meme is still being perpetrated today.
also, with respect to energy and diplomacy, carter looks absolutely prescient to modern eyes. also.
kay
@MBSS:
Reagan dropped below 50% and stayed there for two years. He was at 41% approval in the spring of 1983. Unemployment. He dropped to 40% again during Iran-Contra, when most Americans polled said he was lying about his role.
The lies about how much people hated Carter serve the bigger lie of the consistent popularity of Reagan.
They set up the Reagan myth with the Carter myth.
MBSS
@kay
I agree. and it’s amazing how repetition of those myths perpetuates them into perpetuity.
at least until someone calls bullshit.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“Third, while not a high point of economic development, people also have a lot of illusions about various factors under Carter who, like Obama now, inherited an enormous amount of war debt from his predecessor.”
Plus, Carter had one of the oil crises to deal with, wheras Reagan benefited from the decline in oil prices. Reagan also benefitted from 1984 having very rapid growth, even though Real GDP grew only marginally more under Reagan than under Carter.
Also, people forget that Carter appointed Volcker (who beat inflation, at a heavy cost) in 1979.
Before that, the Chairman was Nixon appointee Arthur Burns, who pursued an inflationary policy because of the oil crisis, political pressure from Nixon, Nixon’s need to deflate the debt, and a belief that a 6% rate of unemployment was unacceptable.
In other words: it took a Democrat to put a real inflation hawk in the Fed.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Balconesfault:
In another forum I frequent, we were arguing about gas prices and conservation and whatnot, and the question that kept getting asked was, “if I can afford it, why shouldn’t I be able to burn as much gas as I want,” to which I replied, “because it’s not always about you; it’s about maintaining adequate petroleum stocks to meet everyone’s needs,” and the response to that was, “nobody needs petroleum,” at which point I gave up in disgust.
gex
@Grumpy Code Monkey:Do these people have no idea how critical plastics are to our modern economy? And they feel free to just burn up the best raw materials for those products just because they can?
Sigh.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@gex: Yeah, basically. Hence why I gave up.
I mean, I’m a white kid from the suburbs, I was raised by indulgent parents, I never wanted for anything material, but they at least taught me that I was phenomenally lucky in that respect, and that the world was a helluva lot bigger than me. Most self-styled libertarians seem to forget that.
liberal
@Jonny Scrum-half:
False. Most so-called libertarians are quite happy to have the government decide that the land title they “own” is indeed theirs. And they like it when big bad guvmint enforces that title.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@J.J.J.J. Jameson:
Which is worse: losing purchasing power due to inflation, or losing purchasing power because you have no job?
Paulie Chestnuts
@liberal:
Great point. At some point, EVERY libertarian supports some sort of governmental authoritarianism that distinguishes them from true-blue anarchists.
Porlock Junior
Thanks, geg6 and others, for making it clear what the pre-middle-aged think of Carter. Makes sense. I mean, he could write the book on image building, if he weren’t too busy building useful things to think about it. Nobody could look at that benign hard-working grandfather and have negative thoughts, unless one were the Jerk di Tutti Jerki, which explains a lot.
Matter of fact, I was alive and voting when he was President, and I just can’t figure out what the guys think they have against him, to make him such a bogeyman. I even tried to find out once. While waiting at a bookstore counter (in London, oddly enough), I saw a copy of that book about the 100 people who are ruining America, and I picked it up just to look up Carter and see wtf all this was about. Grinning lopsidedly, I turned to the back to look in the index. I mean, I didn’t really expect one. So then I soberly undertook to find him in the table of contents; pretty easy in a mere 100 entries. Right, I really did expect a table of contents Was that stupid of me? All right, I could have flipped the pages while looking at the chapter titles at the top of the pages, but you can finish this sentence. So I never did find out.
What is it with stupid people, anyway?
Rhayader
Are you seriously responding to a harmless joke about cardigans? It wasn’t exactly the point of the piece. They joke about a man and his 70’s style sweaters, and you defend it as a “smart thing to do”? Get the heck over yourself. Something tells me Gillespie won’t be posting today in defense of “hipster specs, a leather jacket, and a knowing sneer.” (“I suppose democrats would just let the sun blind their eyes!”)
And to those of you who seem to be criticizing “so-called” libertarians for not being “true-blue anarchists”: nobody every claimed they were anarchists. Libertarianism very readily allows for a government put in place to protect the basic rights of its constituents (like the right not to be assaulted, or the right to keep one’s property). Libertarianism is not anarchism, and I’m not aware of any prominent libertarians who would claim otherwise (please correct me if I am wrong here).
Publius
wow, amazing intellectual depth in these comments