Nbadan
12-06-2005, 02:36 AM
The number one nonfiction bestseller in the country is Our Endangered Values by--Jimmy Carter.
It's parked above Frank McCourt's Teacher Man, Joan Didion's grief memoir, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lincoln tome (and comeback vehicle), Al Franken's latest, and Maureen Dowd's Who Needs Men when Dildos Come in So Many Shapes and Colors?
Think about it. For thirty years Carter has been mocked and derided as a loser president, a feeble, ineffectual, careworn chief executive who, yes, presided over the Camp David accords, but whose single term of office was liver-spotted with the Iranian hostage crisis, Bert Lance, the "malaise" speech (though the word itself was never used), and a close call with a killer rabbit. For conservatives, the only good thing about the Carter presidency was that it provided the springboard for the glory and majesty of Ronald Reagan, and the American Restoration.
-snip-
Yet the perserverence and idealism with which Carter has pursued his post-presidency have not been for naught. His good works--especially through Habitat for Humanity--and unimpeachable integrity have not been lost on enough people who admire his tireless example and care enough about what he has to say to put him atop the bestseller list. It must madden right wingers. Thirty years they've flogged his name with a shitstick and he goes into the Christmas season with the country's bestselling nonfiction title. Whereas the only conservative book on Times' top-fifteen list hanging on at #14, Peter Schweizer's Do As I Say (Not as I Do), by Peter Schweizer, a hodge-podge of "profiles in liberal hypocrisy."
James Wilcott (http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/12/1.php)
Although the media has portrayed him as such for the past 25 years -- the facts simply don't back that up.
Everything that went south during the Carter presidency was a result of the inflation spiral of the preceding decade.
Interest rates went up -- and as a result people stopped borrowing and started saving. Small investors and people with CDs got a great return on their money. Carter appointed Paul Volcker to the Fed. Reagan kept him on and Reagan got credit for Volcker's "turning the economy around".
The Bert Lance scandal was NO scandal. Lance got popped for unsecured lending to farmers. This was the way it had worked for decades in the rural communities where farmers got seed money and paid back their loans when the crop came in. The Lance deal was a pitiful attempt to find something, anything to smear Carter's ethics.
Carter's malaise speech analysis was a distortion -- same thing as the "Al Gore invested the internet" meme that the press distorted in 2000.
Carter was polling way ahead of Reagan at the beginning of the campaign. Several things transpired to change that:
1. The Democrats were split due to the Ted Kennedy challenge in the primaries. Many party activists sat on their hands during the campaign.
2. The press failed to report anything negative about Ronald Reagan.
3. George Will stole Carter's briefing book before the debate with Reagan and Reagan was prepped for responses to everything Carter would say. The "there you go again" stuff was totally rehearsed.
4. George Bush and Bill Casey were working alive to assure that the hostages would not be released during the campaign -- and making promises to sell the Iranians spare parts for their missiles in the event of a Reagan win.
5. The oil industry spent an unknown fortune to defeat Carter because of the "Windfall Profits Tax".
So Carter loses in a landslide and the conventional wisdom is that Carter was a bad president. Nothing could be further from the truth. Carter was all about human rights and dignity; peace and understanding; civil rights and tolerance; economic justice and judicial fairness. He was defeated by a regime that began ushering in the perverted Democracy we now live under.
It's parked above Frank McCourt's Teacher Man, Joan Didion's grief memoir, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lincoln tome (and comeback vehicle), Al Franken's latest, and Maureen Dowd's Who Needs Men when Dildos Come in So Many Shapes and Colors?
Think about it. For thirty years Carter has been mocked and derided as a loser president, a feeble, ineffectual, careworn chief executive who, yes, presided over the Camp David accords, but whose single term of office was liver-spotted with the Iranian hostage crisis, Bert Lance, the "malaise" speech (though the word itself was never used), and a close call with a killer rabbit. For conservatives, the only good thing about the Carter presidency was that it provided the springboard for the glory and majesty of Ronald Reagan, and the American Restoration.
-snip-
Yet the perserverence and idealism with which Carter has pursued his post-presidency have not been for naught. His good works--especially through Habitat for Humanity--and unimpeachable integrity have not been lost on enough people who admire his tireless example and care enough about what he has to say to put him atop the bestseller list. It must madden right wingers. Thirty years they've flogged his name with a shitstick and he goes into the Christmas season with the country's bestselling nonfiction title. Whereas the only conservative book on Times' top-fifteen list hanging on at #14, Peter Schweizer's Do As I Say (Not as I Do), by Peter Schweizer, a hodge-podge of "profiles in liberal hypocrisy."
James Wilcott (http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/12/1.php)
Although the media has portrayed him as such for the past 25 years -- the facts simply don't back that up.
Everything that went south during the Carter presidency was a result of the inflation spiral of the preceding decade.
Interest rates went up -- and as a result people stopped borrowing and started saving. Small investors and people with CDs got a great return on their money. Carter appointed Paul Volcker to the Fed. Reagan kept him on and Reagan got credit for Volcker's "turning the economy around".
The Bert Lance scandal was NO scandal. Lance got popped for unsecured lending to farmers. This was the way it had worked for decades in the rural communities where farmers got seed money and paid back their loans when the crop came in. The Lance deal was a pitiful attempt to find something, anything to smear Carter's ethics.
Carter's malaise speech analysis was a distortion -- same thing as the "Al Gore invested the internet" meme that the press distorted in 2000.
Carter was polling way ahead of Reagan at the beginning of the campaign. Several things transpired to change that:
1. The Democrats were split due to the Ted Kennedy challenge in the primaries. Many party activists sat on their hands during the campaign.
2. The press failed to report anything negative about Ronald Reagan.
3. George Will stole Carter's briefing book before the debate with Reagan and Reagan was prepped for responses to everything Carter would say. The "there you go again" stuff was totally rehearsed.
4. George Bush and Bill Casey were working alive to assure that the hostages would not be released during the campaign -- and making promises to sell the Iranians spare parts for their missiles in the event of a Reagan win.
5. The oil industry spent an unknown fortune to defeat Carter because of the "Windfall Profits Tax".
So Carter loses in a landslide and the conventional wisdom is that Carter was a bad president. Nothing could be further from the truth. Carter was all about human rights and dignity; peace and understanding; civil rights and tolerance; economic justice and judicial fairness. He was defeated by a regime that began ushering in the perverted Democracy we now live under.