Jimmy Carter wants to go fishing and forget that he was ever president of the United States. His fellow Democrats are ready to hand him his tackle box and push off his row boat. Meanwhile the engines are gunning in the Reagan fleet. But before the wallpaper is changed, statues are torn down and history is rewritten, I propose a quiet lament for the passing of James Earl Carter, warts and all.
This is a lament, not a panegyric; I do not want to ignore the manifest faults of the man as president. A loner, he Commanded intense personal loyalty, but he failed to forge lasting political loyalty. He regularly violated the basic rules of politics. He forgot his friends, misjudged his enemies, ignored his allies and seldom cultivated consistent or enduring political support. When he sporadically tried to act politically, friends and allies were often left in the lurch by his mercurial shifts. More often, however, foreign and domestic policy was initiated with a cogenital lack of consultation.
Carter ignored his party and subordinated it to his needs; he presided over its disintegration. As a result when Carter did make hard or courageous decisions, he made them without adequate support or with badly articulated reasons, paving the way for sudden reversals. His presidency remained relatively open and fluid, but he was not above waspish loyalty purges and was correspondingly blind to the faults of his loyal subordinates. His halting cadence chopped speeches into incoherence. As he chewed his best lines, he never communicated a clear vision of politics or persuasively justified his policies. While capable of anger, even meanness, he was unable to convey a passionate commitment to the common good. This lack of passionate vision combined with a picayune approach to problems encouraged open war among his advisers and further intensified his vacillation. A decent man, a tireless campaigner, a better than average administrator, he fumbled as a leader and practical politician.
An honest and sympathetic account of Carter's leaving requires not just an enumeration of his faults but also an appreciation of the harsh constraints of his political world. As long as legitimate American leaders accept corporate capitalism, colossal problems of social and economic inequity will not be tackled and any leader must bow to the demands of high capital just to keep people employed and provide basic services. To judge Carter as if there were any significantly different or less hamstrung realistic alternatives on the left is an act of bad faith.
Carter confronted an aging, inefficient, and energy-vulnerable economy dominated by transnational conglomerates. Twenty years of bottom-line corporate management had grossly distorted American investment patterns to a preference for short-term gains, easy mergers, and high returns rather than long-term research and modernization. Flabby and inept management in mature sectors such as steel and autos weakened the companies and left them poorly prepared for increased international competition. Neanderthal opposition to ecological controls generated brittle and sometimes excessive counter-regulation; accreted regulation both helped and aggravated the situation.
This ill-prepared economy then had to absorb the successive shock waves of a five-fold increase in oil prices over the last five years as they rippled through the most energy-inefficient economy in the world. Similar raw material increases beyond any United States control accelerated the inflation. Unions amplified the effects as they demanded wage increases to match the inflation. American currency hemorrhaged and hundreds of billions of dollars gushed to the Middle East, further drying up investment potential. Runaway energy catalyzed inflation; compounded by long-term economic weakness and mismanagement and further distorted by some regulation, this made the economy immune to classical Keynesian and Democratic strategies. This was Carter's "inheritance."
The time thus required cohesive and strong action, but Carter also inherited a presidency terribly weakened by the ordeals of Watergate and Vietnam. With his institutional powers limited, he presided over a two-party system whose discipline had slipped to an all-time low and a Congress balkanized into committees. The committees were protected by "iron triangles" of bureaucratic and interest-group collusion almost impervious to consistent executive leadership-indeed, no president had effectively led Congress since 1966.
Carter was also bequeathed a chronically understaffed, undertrained "professional" army buffeted by low morale. The expensive and ineffectual non-conscript army was led by an unimaginative and bureaucratized officer corps wedded to vulnerable and expensive technologies and seemingly always preparing to fight the last war. Regardless of whether he pared, improved, or hurt the military, he did not start with much. Red-baiting aside, little could have been done to stop the Soviets from entering Afghanistan or from intimidating their satellites. Marginal Russian calculations might have been affected, but the sea change in Russian intervention capabilities and attitudes occurred before Carter was elected.
In short, Jimmy Carter possessed grave weaknesses, but he faced insurmountable obstacles. Now as the first glimmerings of a Reagan world appear, many of us, petulant liberals included, will miss Carter more than we know. The constraints screamed "retrenchment," but he gamely fought a consistent rear-guard action to preserve and strengthen gains of better years, and in a number of areas he even significantly extended them. We will miss him not only for the things he refused to do, things which Reagan waits anxiously to do, but for what he accomplished.
Foreign policy offers the most immediate reasons to regret Carter's passing. Alexander Haig's plans to purge the State Department of moderate and progressive elements combines nicely with the administration's announced predilection for moderately repressive regimes." Such regimes, of course, do not disturb the "rhythms" of poverty, exploitation, and helter-skelter urbanization, which subsist at the pleasure of the international economy. The Reagan election has touched off gleeful repression by the right in Latin America and been welcomed by such human rights luminaries as President Marcos of the Philippines.
Such dark auguries of the new order sharply outline Carter's, accomplishments. He worked hard to make human rights a central issue in American policy. Of necessity that policy was often inconsistent or only cosmetic, but countless political prisoners benefited and, as the new Latin American violence demonstrates, certain regimes did restrain themselves and initiate changes under American pressure. Human rights rhetoric dominated international forums, seeped into the rhetoric of third world countries, and under United States odding became a factor in handing out international aid. For the first time in a generation the United States took the aspirations of the majority of people in Latin America and Africa seriously and helped, although tentatively, to midwife the possibility of progressive leftist regimes not beholden to the Soviet Union. America crossed a watershed not only in third world power but also in United States attitudes.
Domestic consensus and support for entitlement programs and the civil rights initiatives of the past twenty years have shattered. The decline in real income and the attempt to recoup ' it through tax revolts make calls for social progress even less palatable. Nonetheless, Carter consistently fought to adequately finance and reform entitlement programs. Food stamps were humanely reformed and will probably survive Reagan, thanks to Carter's rescue. The cities actually function despite severe depression. Remarkably, violence and despair have been warded off in northern and midwestern cities, thanks to careful and well administered federal aid. A number of cities, rather than being left to die, even struggled successfully to renew themselves with judicious combinations of local initiative and significant federal aid. Education bore the brunt of shock-trooper tax tactics across the country, but Carter increased its share of the budget and gave educators a fighting chance to defend themselves with their own department.
Carter's legacy to women and minorities is even greater. Working on borrowed time, he fully supported affirmative action and placed the government behind the critical precedents of Bakke and Weber. Under his management the bureaucracies pushed affirmative action as far and as fast as possible in policy and law even as disenchantment mounted. As the Senate begins to "Hatch" at the programs, the laws, personnel, and policy are securely in place. Likewise Carter exerted a consistent effort towards integration. Busing was modified to encourage magnet schools and accommodate integrated neighborhoods and voluntary efforts. Carter vetoed a cowered Congress's attempt to gut busing before any reasonable alternatives were in place. His appointments of women and minorities have created a whole generation of officials whose training and experience will increase their penetration of the nation's elite. As feminists lost momentum, he fought for the extension of the ERA deadline but wisely refused to use the government, to blackmail state legislatures. The government vigorously pushed to enforce equal pay provisions.
Although mocked for his expansion of cabinet departments, Carter hands the country a much leaner and more responsive bureaucracy. His milestone civil service reform, gained after a fierce fight, enabled merit to be rewarded and incompetence finally to be penalized. For the first time, the government possesses upper-echelon pools of qualified and mobile managers unencumbered by parochial interests. New whistleblower legislation complemented these reforms and tried to protect public servants who report government malfeasance.
Striving for a more competent and humane bureaucracy, Carter also stole thunder from the right with his careful deregulation of the transportation industry. Efforts to castrate the FTC and other agencies were headed off with decisive action, and still other agencies such as OSHA were saved by timely reforms and sensible administration. The bureaucratic and regulatory apparatus stands leaner, tougher and better prepared to endure the assaults about to be launched upon it.
Carter's finest legacy may be his judicial appointments. The quality, political beliefs, and minority mix of the appointees have helped transform the lower levels of the judiciary, and they will help resist the depredations of the Supreme Court. The Justice Department has been depoliticized and has made extensive headway in attacks on crime, organized and white collar. These gains will be jeopardized as cronyism returns to Justice and the Judiciary Committee prepares new witch hunts against former student radicals while the Teamsters take their rightful place in the Reagan administration.
As the landmark pollution laws come up for renewal against Reagan's genial opposition and drawn knives in the Sena, Carter's environmental accomplishments will become increasingly obvious. Tacking to the requirements of a recession, Carter's administration developed flexible and imaginative enforcement strategies compatible with faster growth. He stood firm on the fifty-five mile speed limit, battled to encourage conservation, and provided firm but limited support for alternative energy sources. Even as westerners demanded their right to plunder federal lands, Carter steadily increased the acres of protected lands, and his obdurate support helped enshrine the capstone Alaska Wilderness Bill. The western water boondoggles were challenged at great political cost. His nuclear compromise, however, satisfied no one. Even as he fought for the primacy of conservation, his attempt to push coal faltered, and no clear intermediate alternatives existed except for limited use of nuclear power.
The nuclear power issue demonstrates that Carter's environmental policy cannot be assessed without looking at energy dilemmas. After three presidents had failed to get a rational energy plan, Carter manhandled a plan through. Deregulation was inevitable and necessary, especially to encourage conservation. At considerable political cost, Carter engineered the emphasis upon conservation and minimized the social costs. The windfall profit tax not only assured the enmity of Reagan's beloved oil companies but ensured that some money would be rationally allocated for long-term energy goals. Carter's new Energy Department became the one consistent advocate for conservation and alternative energy. The department also minimized interest-group pilfering of federal land and disparate energy programs.
These energy battles took place in a surreal atmosphere because many Americans still do not believe in a crisis. Tremendous ideological and special interest opposition was mounted against any initiative. Carter's leadership could have been more politically effective and consistent, but he took courageous and hard actions in areas such as oil imports and through sheer doggedness finally got a reasonable and fair plan in place; a plan which is being vindicated by energy conservation figures and the stunning declines in imported oil.
Finally Carter strained to give voice to the cultural conservatism of the increasingly volatile middle- and working-classes but also to demonstrate that these issues were compatible with civil liberties and a commitment to social justice. No progressive agenda can presently be defended and few liberal politicians will survive unless they can address a whole series of issues which affect the quality of life and safety in the family, schools, and neighborhoods and unless they possess historically informed sensitivities to the role of religion in public as well as private life. Carter bore witness to the fact that a religious man can participate in politics guided by a religiously informed conscience but not bound by exclusivist authority—a point misunderstood by most liberals and ignored by Falwell and his ilk.
Carter's family life exemplified a remarkable degree of sharing and mutual respect and when he spoke of the family, he meant what he said. He worked for day-care tax credits, sought to make family welfare support more humane and initiated a conference to develop a consensual framework for more sensible government attitudes toward the family. This last was undermined as much by a pincer movement of the right and the left as by his own ineptness. He carefully sought a compromise on abortion, something the issue desperately needs, but satisfied neither feminists nor pro-lifers.
Had Carter succeeded in the creation of a new consensus linking the cultural conservative concerns with those of social justice, he would have done a great service to his party and to politics. As it is now, liberals and the left cannot seem to speak seriously to issues like the quality of education, drug abuse, pornography, bureaucratic intervention in the family, the moral anguish over abortion, or safety in the schools and on the street. Bewildered and angry ex-senators want to create liberal hit squads, a move which will not be terribly successful, rather than carefully thinking through the issues on which they seem to be so vulnerable. There are many politicians who need to take heed of Carter's rhetoric and attempt on this score. His way certainly offers more cogency than that of Jerry Brown's splashing in to catch each new media wave or Edward Kennedy's eloquent resuscitation of a barren and discredited rhetoric.
Many people benefited from Carter's presidency; they should not forget. Many will continue to benefit as the legal and institutional legacy of his administration holds out against Reagan's onslaught; they should not forget. Many others are appalled by the new right but disillusioned by avant garde or bureaucratic liberalism; they should not forget. Others believe that the legitimate issues of the cultural conservatives can be addressed and constraints can be accommodated while pursuing a personal and institutional commitment to social justice; they will not forget.
