1977 to 1981
The most forward looking President in modern times.
Our current crisis of governance in the democracies:
- Politicians who are in love with power but have no vision of the future or goal for the people they are leading other than serving as cannon fodder for commercial economic growth.
Jimmy Carter’s was a controversial presidency but he became one of the most highly respected men ever to hold the office. Nobel laureate, home builder, peanut farmer, peace negotiator and most admired ex-President in American history. He never stopped working for the public good.
He was the world’s should-have-been leader driving the move away from consumerism and the money market economy towards stable nation building on this dynamic and vulnerable planet. President Carter became a one-term president after badly losing the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.
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He had inherited pent-up inflation from the Vietnam War and the immense increase in oil prices which occurred in 1973 and 1979. These were two damaging events which, by themselves, represented substantial re-election challenges. But in addition, he faced the crisis of the American hostages being held in Iran. His apparent failure here and the failure of the rescue mission [2] sealed his fate.However, his re-election fate didn’t seal itself all on its own. It had help by way of a plot by several Republicans and candidate Reagan to prevent a peaceful resolution of the Iran hostage crisis.
“This was kept secret for 43 years until Ben Barnes confessed that he and former Texas governor John B. Connally Jr. met with several leaders of Middle Eastern nations to get word back to the Ayatollah Khomeini that Reagan would give him a better deal”: Baker P (March 18, 2023) A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election. New York Times.
Negotiating a return of American hostages held in Iran would have given Carter a genuine chance at a second term. Freeing them with a military rescue mission would likely have guaranteed his re-election. But neither event played out and Carter was portrayed as a weak and dithering leader.
Given the subsequent rapid deregulation of banking and the trillions of dollars this funnelled into a very few hands, perhaps it can also be asked whether all of the aborted rescue missions technical problems were “angels of God” as the Ayatollah Khomeini claimed.
Could the plot to delay or prevent the hostage transfer have had a second element? Were the military missions failures divine intervention or were more worldly hands at work? In any case, the high risk rescue mission[1] was thrown together and confused. It came to a fiery end before it even came within 300 kilometers of Tehran and Jimmy Carter’s prospects for re-election burned along with it.
For voters of the time, oil cost increases and stored up inflation were bullets too big for President Carter to dodge and the Iran debacle was decisive. Carter preached thoughtful conservation while Reagan promoted consumerism party-time. The public selected “B”.
President Carter had a biophysical worldview and a keen sense of social responsibility. He deserves to be recognized as the most forward looking President of modern times. He had a strong grasp of the underpinnings of the American success story – energy and resources per capita as well as climate – and he wanted to perpetuate that success.
Some excerpts of Jimmy Carter’s speeches:
- This (energy stability and transition) is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly. It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.
- We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.
- We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.
- The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind’s previous history.
- Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient.
- If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions.
- The cornerstone of our policy is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy.
This is hardly the mindless rah-rah hype of the growth lobby.
Global 2000 Report to the President
Jimmy Carter commissioned the creation of the groundbreaking Global 2000 Report which was a pivotal look ahead at population, resources, consumption issues which might affect the nation’s health decades in the future. It was a precursor to biophysical economics in that it looked at the nation’s options through the lens of real physical measures of real resources.
”I am directing the Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of State, working in cooperation with … other appropriate agencies, to make a one-year study of the probable changes in the world’s population, natural resources, and environment through the end of the century.”
Global 2000 Report to the President
”Compiled by more than a dozen Federal agencies, Global 2000 is not a prediction but a projection-and a conservative one at that. It presents so immediate a challenge to worldwide political stability and American economic security that even the most complacent new administration must recognize it as a priority issue for the President and Congress.” John B. Oakes, The New York Times
A Welcome Interlude of Sanity – a personal note
In the early 1990s I was in Washington for a conference and one day at coffee break I decided to try and reach Gerald Barney – the director of the Global 2000 report. I dug his phone number out of the white pages and called a number in Alexandria. The right Gerald Barney actually answered and was very happy to speak to about resource/energy/population matters.
He was so enthusiastic about meeting someone wanting to discuss what amounted to biophysical economics, he made the short drive up to DC for a lunch for which he insisted on paying.
In the discussion, Barney laid out the background of his experience with the Global 2000 Report and its worldwide reception.
In the discussion, Barney laid out the background of his experience with the Global 2000 Report and its worldwide reception.
He had traveled to many countries to discuss the report with governments and had used a simple Lotus 1-2-3 (the eras hot spreadsheet) with 20 variables for those specific countries to illustrate his points. Unfortunately this generated very little traction with the world leaders Barney met.
My question was: Why isn’t climate change in the report? Barney’s answer: “Because at the early stage of climate change awareness, including it would have meant “throwing all of your cards into the air” as far as projections were concerned.”
Director for the Global 2000 study, May 23,1977 http://www.geraldbarney.com/
The Global 2000 Report was decades ahead of its time and we have not made much progress since then in terms of political awareness and policy strategy. In fact, everything regarding the human predicament has become polarized, likely because powerful groups can identify their own interests and will take strong steps to protect them.
We can speculate about what might have happened if Jimmy Carter had been elected for a second term but we can clearly see what has happened since the US was diverted from his vision.
The Financial World Rips Nations Apart
The biophysical / common-good path is a radical departure from the one laid out by subsequent Presidents who chose to follow the allure rapid economic growth driven by truckloads of printed money.
Prior to Jimmy Carter’s Presidency, the money lobby was finding it tough sledding. The Kennedy’s weren’t going to deregulate the banking industry and turn speculators and money-printers loose. In fact they were questioning money economy metrics.
President Richard Nixon was faced with the ugly choice of overtly raising taxes to pay for the Vietnam War or scrapping the gold standard and allowing the American public to be taxed invisibly by inflation. Tricky Dicky went with invisible taxation.
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This was the door cracking open to an unbridled financial system. But Jimmy Carter was never going to allow the quasi-bankers loose and so he had to go. Once replaced by President Reagan, the money lobby’s choice, low tariffs and unlimited dollar printing were legislated pushing the US into a condition of perpetual trade deficits.
Making the US $ the effective world oil currency allowed the false boom to take off. Elites called attention to the spectacular economic numbers (via the cashflow GDP metric) while the debt and job quality losses were ignored.
The subtleties of debt were not easily absorbed. Charles L. Schultze, a Top Economic Adviser to Jimmy Carter “warned that U.S. debt is like termites in a foundation, not a wolf at the door.”
But the middle and working classes couldn’t ignore the decline in their standard of living; they just couldn’t find anyone who would listen to their pleas for help. It took a disruptive force in the form of Donald Trump to put their plight on the national stage.
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Debt delivered immense profits for those in control of the US banking system. The massive transfer of wealth from the productive workforce to the now parasitic finance sector elites is clearly shown in these graphs. Bernie Sanders cites analysis which puts the scale of this – does the term fraud apply? – at $50 trillion. https://www.instagram.com/berniesanders/reel/DDIQuLqyXaK/
The Canadian amount is likely more than 10% of that and it scales nicely with the graph of Canadian bank profits here:
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The trickle started in 1973 when President Nixon effectively pulled the US out of the Bretton Woods agreement and the US $ was free to float. The money printing started then and, post-deregulation, bank profits soared. Isn’t it amazing how profitable an industry can be when they print their own money?
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The same scam was choreographed in Canada with the same results – the gutting of the middle class and the young.
Reagan’s deregulation of the banking industry in the 1980s drove money printing, inflation and the transfer of wealth. Americans have been paying for “the Reagan Miracle” for 4 decades. The export of high paying jobs, huge debt and the massive transfer of wealth from productive people to unproductive elites assured the destruction of the American dream.
Contrasting current politicians with the best of the past.
A life of service or self-enrichment?
If a politician’s aim is to retire to juicy directorships and book deals they first have to make the people who will be paying them rich. This is the delayed reciprocity plan.
In Canada, we have now seen 40 years of abysmal government by future directors culminating in the incomprehensible incompetence of Justin Trudeau, Canada’s head imagineer. Given the level of bank/developer control of the MSM, prospects for improved leadership from any party are dim.
Post-Presidency
Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn “retired” to their humble home and a peanut farm run into debt while in a blind trust.
The Carter family’s net worth is now estimated at around $10 million, reflecting a lifetime of prudent financial management. Much of his wealth came from the publication of numerous books, including memoirs and works on politics, faith, and human rights. And a presidential pension couldn’t have hurt.
“When Carter left the White House in 1981, he returned to his hometown of Plains, Georgia. There, he lived in a modest home—a stark contrast to the opulent residences of many other former presidents. This choice underscored his commitment to humility and public service.” – Economic Times
- Ronald Reagan, as a movie star, was already at least very well-to-do with $16 million and genuinely didn’t have the greed gene. He actually believed in bank deregulation.
- The two President Bush family is currently worth some $100 million.
- The Clintons went from middle income entering the White House to $240 million.
- Obama as well saw his wealth skyrocket from a professional’s income to $250 million.
No politician after Ronald Reagan has dared to bring the finance industry back into the realm of public service.
Last Honest Man Standing
Jimmy Carter’s presidency was brought down by a fatal combination of biophysical dynamics and political intrigue. Yes, you can keep a good man down – at least keep him from fulfilling his leadership potential – but Jimmy Carter rose from the political ashes to establish himself as the one of the finest men ever to hold high office.
As President, Jimmy Carter sought to secure the American dream for future generations. His successors profited from selling that dream off. Who deserves to be remembered?
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Notes
[1] The rescue mission plan in detail from a US special forces veteran insider. The segment relevant to Iran starts at the 11:00 minute mark, YouTube Link
[2] Wikipedia Operation Eagle Claw (Persian: عملیات پنجه عقاب) was a failed operation by the United States Armed Forces ordered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter to attempt the rescue of 53 embassy staff held captive at the Embassy of the United States, Tehran, on 24 April 1980. The operation, one of Delta Force’s first, encountered many obstacles and failures and was subsequently aborted. Eight helicopters were sent to the first staging area called Desert One, but only five arrived in operational condition. One had encountered hydraulic problems, another was caught in a sand storm, and the third showed signs of a cracked rotor blade. During the operational planning, it was decided that the mission would be aborted if fewer than six helicopters remained operational upon arrival at the Desert One site, despite only four being absolutely necessary. In a move that is still discussed in military circles, the field commanders advised President Carter to abort the mission, which he did.
As the U.S. forces prepared to withdraw from Desert One, one of the remaining helicopters crashed into a transport aircraft that contained both servicemen and jet fuel. The resulting fire destroyed both aircraft and killed eight servicemen. In the context of the Iranian Revolution, Iran’s new leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, stated that the mission had been stopped by an act of God (“angels of God”) who had foiled the U.S. mission in order to protect Iran and his new Islamist government. In turn, Carter blamed his loss in the 1980 U.S. presidential election mainly on his failure to secure the release of the hostages. The American hostages were released the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.
