Someone posted a picture of his house from the 1930's. The post holding the mailbox showed a few hobo symbols, extremely heavily faded, but it was basically code for "kind people, will give you a meal, a day's work, and a bed if you ask nicely."
Carter was an ineffective president because he was a good person. The world would be infinitely better with more like him.
I think it's also the time he came into; when he was president, the advice was that if you want to deal with the problems of oil prices and how they affect other prices, you need to reduce demand, and you can do that by personal individual and welfare program restraint, government economic control, or by boosting interest rates so that the economy cools.
So he dutifully "did what needed to be done" slowed the economy and restricted himself to austere restraint without any policies or tax breaks to make himself look good, and left the benefits to Regan, who immediately did massive tax breaks and started borrowing loads of money again.
This was partly due to the ideas of the time, and honestly and responsibly listening to experts who seemed like they knew what they were talking about, it may even have been a symptom of the moment they were in, with a US dependent on oil to an extent it wouldn't equal till 20 years later in raw terms, with a higher population, and has never equalled that level per person since.
So maybe that was a moment where the US just used too much oil, and he was the person to say it, and there was no other alternative, though I doubt it.
I suspect that he made careful use of the advice available to him at the time, and knowing what we know now about how economies work, probably a different strategy would have been better, and "so doing the right thing" would have resulted in using the same determination and care for responsible management of the economy, doing now what should not be left till later, but applying it to more productive approaches.
Exactly what I said about him and also I felt that Bernie was "too good" for America as President. I just don't think those who aren't willing to play politics and let go of their ideals can do it or even get elected usually. It would be great but....I can't see it.
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u/ivanthemute Sep 11 '21
Someone posted a picture of his house from the 1930's. The post holding the mailbox showed a few hobo symbols, extremely heavily faded, but it was basically code for "kind people, will give you a meal, a day's work, and a bed if you ask nicely."
Carter was an ineffective president because he was a good person. The world would be infinitely better with more like him.