Dear Reader,
It is Dec. 31 — New Year’s Eve — an evening of high revelry.
Yet the nation’s flags run halfway up the mast today. And black crepe drapes beneath official windows.
That is because the Archangel Gabriel has blown his horn.
He has blown his horn for James Carter, that is… 39th United States president… aged 100 years.
What is the man’s legacy?
I believe it is a poor legacy — as far as United States presidents run.
Inflation was amok under him. Gasoline lines stretched for blocks and blocks.
Iran thumbed its nose at him… and seized American hostages.
The presidential election of 1980 represented a referendum of sorts.
And the American people delivered him a severe trouncing — a 489-49 Electoral College rout.
Yet the man’s broader legacy depends upon who is asked about it.
The Bad and the Good
Here is National Review’s answer:
- Carter’s true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage. He left the country in its weakest position of the post–World War II era. After being booted out of office in landslide fashion, the self-described “citizen of the world” spent the rest of his life meddling in U.S. foreign policy and working against the United States and its allies in a manner that could fairly be described as treasonous.
- His obsessive hatred of Israel, and pompous belief that only he could forge Middle East peace, led him to befriend terrorists and lash out at American Jews who criticized him.
Yet there is always the other hand to consider.
Here is Boston University — speaking for the liberal establishment, so-called:
- Long after his time in the White House, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for establishing the Carter Center, whose motto: Waging peace, Fighting disease, Building hope, is emblematic of his life. He drove the effort to eliminate Guinea worm disease, which once afflicted millions, served as an election monitor around the world, and built houses with Habitat for Humanity well into his 90s.
Thus Mr. Carter was a better man than president.
It is true, he believed in the nurturing power of government. I disbelieve in the nurturing power of government.
But I let it pass. I say this for him as president: He could have been worse.
“We Suffer Most When the White House Bursts With Ideas”
The “Sage of Baltimore,” H.L. Mencken, certainly hooked onto something when he wrote:
“We suffer most when the White House bursts with ideas.”
It is the “deep thinkers” who think the republic into its deepest fixes.
Woodrow Wilson — for example — was the only doctor of philosophy to ever seize the White House.
He presided over Princeton University before he presided over the United States.
And the nation is still afflicted with his lovely ideas…
Who signed the Federal Reserve Act into law? The answer is Mr. Wilson.
Who signed the federal income tax into law? The answer again is Mr. Wilson.
The same Mr. Wilson ordered the doughboys “over there.” 116,000 of them will remain forever over there.
And the Versailles Treaty that closed the “war to end all wars” spawned the “peace to end all peace.”
WWI was “the Great War” until a greater war imposed a numerical arrangement upon it.
Don’t Just Do Something. Stand There!
In contrast to the intellectual president, we find Wilson’s successor once removed — Calvin Coolidge.
In Mencken’s telling, Coolidge:
- Slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night… He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.
Note the phrasing. It was not “He had no ideas, but he was not a nuisance.”
It was rather: “He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.”
Loftier praise for any president is scarcely imaginable: He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.
President Carter had some ideas. He was a somewhat slight nuisance.
Yet he was no Wilson.
American Presidents and the Sixth Commandment
Humanity, by most accounts, was James Carter’s larger concern.
The milk of human kindness was in him… and he radiated the Christian beatitudes.
When he stood before St. Peter’s Pearly Gates this week? He likely presented a sound case for entry.
Of how many United States presidents can the same be said? Consider Commandment number six:
“Thou shall not kill.”
How many United States presidents have transgressed it? More have than have not, in every likelihood.
A president may not kill directly. Yet he often mandates indirect killings — of uniformed foreigners in particular.
Is a mafia director less culpable than his goons who execute the wet work?
Under criminal law he is not. He is equally culpable. And under biblical law?
I am inadequately trained in the divine sciences. I can therefore hazard no answer.
Judgment Day
I do not know if Peter grants presidential waivers. I do not know if he entertains moans about the practical realities of office.
I am merely relieved that I shall never be compelled to argue that case before St. Peter.
That is because I shall never be a United States president. I shall never mandate indirect killings.
Yet it is New Year’s Eve… and my mind turns to cheerier affairs. It is time to go.
Thus I conclude by saying:
Rest in profound and permanent peace, James Carter.
I pray you got past Peter.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
