RESETTING THE BAR: Jimmy Carter Was a Better President than You Think.
To fight stagflation, Carter appointed tight-money advocate Paul Volker to head the Federal Reserve Board, and Volker pulled the brakes on inflationary monetary policy — hard. It solved inflation but sent the economy into a painful correction that probably cost Carter reelection.
And despite his personal big government sympathies, Carter’s most lasting legacy is as the Great Deregulator. Carter deregulated oil, trucking, railroads, airlines, and beer. (H/t Caleb Brown.)
At the Atlantic, Derek Thompson chronicles the dramatic and almost unnoticed impact of Carter’s airline deregulation over the last thirty years. The bottom line: per-mile ticket prices fell by over fifty percent. And the results have transformed American social life and travel:
— In 1965, no more than 20 percent of Americans had ever flown in an airplane. By 2000, 50 percent of the country took at least one round-trip flight a year. The average was two round-trip tickets.
— The number of air passengers tripled between the 1970s and 2011.
— In 1974, it was illegal for an airline to charge less than $1,442 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a flight between New York City and Los Angeles. On Kayak, just now, I found one for $278.The impact of beer deregulation has been similarly overlooked: In 1978, the USA had just 44 domestic breweries. After deregulation, creativity and innovation flourished in the above-ground economy. Today, there are 1,400 American breweries. And home brewing for personal consumption is also now legal.
As for civil liberties, Carter also signed the most significant reform of government surveillance powers since World War II in the original FISA Act, and in 1979, he called for the decriminalization of marijuana, well ahead of the cultural and political curve. His legacy is also significant for what he did not do: he did not start any wars.
As P.J. O’Rourke wrote in his classic 1993 American Spectator article, “100 Reasons Why Jimmy Carter Was a Better President than Bill Clinton:”
98. Carter let the Soviets have Angola, Ethiopia, and South Yemen. And, in retrospect, the Soviets deserved no better.
99. Carter wasn’t a throwback to the Carter era.
100. And let us not forget that Jimmy Carter gave us one thing Bill Clinton can never possibly give us—Ronald Reagan.
Perhaps as a result of that last item, it’s after Carter left the White House, that he really began to lose the thread, as Jay Nordlinger wrote in his classic 2002 NRO article, “Carterpalooza!”
In a 1997 op-ed piece entitled “It’s Wrong to Demonize China” (also for the New York Times), Carter wrote — and forgive the awkward prose — “American criticism of China’s human rights abuses are justified, but their basis is not well understood. Westerners emphasize personal freedoms, while a stable government and a unified nation are paramount to the Chinese. This means that policies are shaped by fear of chaos from unrestrained dissidents or fear of China’s fragmentation by an independent Taiwan or Tibet. The result is excessive punishment [excessive punishment!] of outspoken dissidents and unwarranted domination of Tibetans.”
Carter said that “ill-informed commentators in both countries have cast the other side as a villain and have even forecast inevitable confrontation between the two nations.” You see the exquisite moral equivalence between a giant and repressive Communist state and the American republic. He then said, “Mutual criticisms are proper and necessary [mutual criticisms, mind you: Communist China, America . . .], but should not be offered in an arrogant or self-righteous way, and each of us should acknowledge improvements made by the other.” Carter arrogant or self-righteous, ever? Improvements made by the United States, too?
That’s what Xi said.