re: #441 SteveMcGaziBolaGate

I disagree. He wasn’t a great President, but he wasn’t all that terrible. He had the misfortune to be President after Nixon, after Watergate, and after Vietnam. The inflation that marked the era wasn’t his doing, and in fact what he did fixed it - appointing Paul Volcker. Gas prices also weren’t his doing, but rather OPEC flexing its muscles. Iran? There was no way to win there. The Shah was going to fall, regardless. The failure of Desert One was not his fault either. But the hostages were all released, alive.

Carter’s biggest problem was that he tried treating Americans like grownups. America preferred to be treated like children, by a guy pushing rainbows and unicorns and ‘Shining City On The Hill’, promising simple solutions like tax cuts to get rid of the deficit, and magical laser weapons in the sky to thwart those nasty nukes we’d all grown up in the shadow of.