News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
PLAINS, GA—In a rare interview with the media from his tiny dollhouse living room, former president Jimmy Carter expressed hope that he will no longer be considered the worst presidential failure in his lifetime.
“I’ve been seen as one of the worst modern presidents for a long time,” said Carter, “but something tells me my luck is about to change. I’m not sure what it is, really, but the last few months or so have me thinking that I’ll no longer be considered in last place– and that’s a great feeling.”
Carter didn’t name names or say why he feels this way, only that “it feels good to finally be in second-to-last place.”
Some have suggested Biden may now be considered the worst president due to unspeakable damage his policies have done to the economy, the Middle East, and people’s hopes for the future.
Others have suggested Trump should be considered the worst president ever due to the fact that he’s literally Hitler and his skin is orange.
In honor of Jimmy Carter’s accomplishment, local Democrat leaders will be throwing him a “not last place” party.
Go here to read the rest.
No one better captured the spirit of the Carter years than the late, great Jeff MacNelly, master cartoonist, who passed away far too young at age 52 of lymphoma. He continued to draw cartoons from his hospital bed until the day of his death on June 8, 2000.
the Richmond Times Dispatch comics papes has Shoe every Sunday and the humor is still spot on.
It was in January ’73 that I started working for city government, one of two new hires who passed the civil service exam. I was sure I’d be changing the world for the good. The other guy did me one better–he left a couple months later to go to work for Governor Jimmy Carter. He bragged that he was going to be the next President. All of us–nearly all liberals–laughed. Three years later I read “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail” in Rolling Stone and I was mesmerized (literally). I voted for him in “76 and he’s the last Democrat I voted for Federal or State office. He was almost solely responsible for my becoming a staunch conservative. (Maybe government employment had a little to do with it. And frontal lobe growth. Yeah…that’s the ticket.)
“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail”
A classic. I never looked at politics the same after reading it. I was in college at the time and took a class on Carter at the U of I from Professor Betty Glad in 1977. Glad was the expert on Carter and a liberal Democrat. However, she was an honest scholar and predicted most of the problems he had as President.
Few people today know that Carter was considered a country bumpkin and a political neophyte by the DC establishment, including Katherine Graham, owner of the Washington Post and doyenne of the DC party scene. He remained an outsider for his entire presidency and was treated with a certain amount of ridicule, particularly by Dan Aykroyd of Saturday Night Live. Nothing on the level of President Trump, but still pretty rough. Eventually he deserved everything he got and then some.
Few people today know that Carter was considered a country bumpkin and a political neophyte by the DC establishment, including Katherine Graham,
The gassy complaint offered by Daniel Patrick Moynihan was that Carter and his camarilla were ‘full of themselves, but lacking in any real understanding of the world’. More particular complaints about him were that he lacked the people skills to work Congress, ignored the counsel of Tip O’Neill and Walter Mondale in his dealings with Congress, gave unsuitable assignments to people he trusted but who were out of their depth trying to do those things (among those so misused were Mrs. Carter, Hamilton Jordan, and the hapless fellow who was his liaison to Congress), had terrible trouble delegating authority, and had a tendency to get bogged down in minutiae. For a successful politician, he had a remarkably tin ear at times. The malaise speech was the cardinal example of that, but there were smaller examples. (A minor example was the ballyhoo which accompanied re-arranging the diplomatic deck chairs in re Mainland China and Taiwan and abrogating the security treaty with Taiwan; Carter thought that merited a speech from his desk and pre-empting network programming. One thing Tip O’Neill told him was that elections weren’t won on foreign policy).
Oh, and his macroeconomic policies in re all the inflation were a series of feints. He then appoints Paul Volcker to run the Federal Reserve, who is determined to re-stabilize prices by controlling the growth of monetary aggregates; Carter insists he abandon the policy five months later).
Note the tiresome scolding in the sweater speech, a rhetorical strategy favored by the blockheads who write New York Times editorials. And the repair to the language of national economic planning. And the usual liberal trope which begins, “We’re the only western country which has not…”. There are people who are inspired by that. They’re the sort of people in your social circle that you tune out.
The Killer Rabbit, an actual newspaper story wherein a large swamp rabbit attacked Carter’s canoe and he defended himself with an oar.. “Bash it, Jimmy!” Funny and somewhat true.
SNL skit titled The Pepsi Syndrome featured Dan Akroyd as Carter (“I’m a nuclear engineer”) and Garrett Morris as Violet the maintenance worker. A soft drink has been knocked over onto nuclear power plant controls causing a serious radiation leak. Both Carter and Violet after exposure to high levels of radiation become enormous giants. Funny stuff.
The media culture was in that era less of a component of social nexus around the Democratic Party and some of the immunity Democratic pols had did not apply to Carter. They did not apply to his daughter, either, who was subject to lampooning that Chelsea Clinton and the Obama girls never had to face.
Probably because a grade school Amy Carter was seated a State Dinner. Quite inappropriate..
“Mar 24, 2016 · Amy Carter attended what seems to have been her last state dinner hosted by her parents, on December 17, 1979, for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but it is unclear whether she read any books during the course of dinner.” As she had at other State Dinners.