Back in the early days of our friendship, when the Milhous guy was still in the White House, my friend Bill Madden and I discovered something interesting.
We knew someone named Munzell — the only person I’ve ever known bearing that name — who had a tendency to be sort of annoying. When discussing him, both Bill and I had a tendency to say, “I like Munzell, but …” and then say something about him that irritated us.
We soon came to realize it was a silly statement.
We really didn’t like Munzell at all.
It reminded me how annoyed I get when I hear Republicans say that Jimmy Carter may be a great ex-president, but he was a terrible president.
He is … and he wasn’t.
He was, however, a very unlucky president.
First of all, he was a Washington outsider. Carter was the first president since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s whose political background didn’t involve elected or appointed office in Washington, and Coolidge had actually been elected vice president before becoming president.
In addition, he was the first president who came directly from the old Confederacy since the Civil War.
Second, after bringing down the Milhous guy in Watergate, the press was bending over backward to show they weren’t the liberals Republicans claimed they were. While Carter was not a liberal Democrat, he was the first chance since Watergate for the press to go after a Democrat.
Third, economic policies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon (the Milhous guy) in financing the Vietnam War had resulted in stagflation. Prices had soared for years when Carter took office and inflation wasn’t really conquered until Ronald Reagan’s policies in the early ’80s forced a deep recession.
Actually, Carter accomplished one thing that helped win the Cold War. He started saying that U.S. foreign policy should be based on human rights, not on strategic importance of allies.
That’s why he made one of the most controversial decisions of his presidency, reacting to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by announcing that the U.S. would boycott the Moscow Olympics in 1980. It made him hated by many Olympic athletes, but it destroyed the Russians’ hopes of wonderful publicity from the Games.
In fact, while Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev said that American right-wingers’ claims that Reagan’s defense buildup had won the Cold War was something of a joke, he said things really started going downhill in the USSR with Carter’s emphasis on human rights.
In the end, it was probably the Iranian Hostage Crisis that sunk Carter, but there’s one important thing to remember about that.
Every single hostage came home alive.
It has been more than 40 years since Carter’s term ended, and every year adds more luster to his reputation as a great man. In less than seven weeks he will be 97 years old, and he has been married to the love of his life for 75 years.
He is perhaps the best example we have of a good Christian, someone who truly follows the teachings of Christ.
He has won the Nobel Peace Prize for hiswork supporting free and fair elections around the world, and despite his advanced age, he still helps Habitat for Humanity build houses for people who need them.
If we were to rate the 44 men who have been president strictly as men, James Earl Carter would be on a very short list as possibly the best.
And no matter what Republicans tell you, he was a much better president than we give him credit for.
Especially when compared to some of the ones who came after him.