I'm starting this essay on Presidents Day, appropriately enough. I have mixed feelings about Jimmy Carter. I've occasionally written in prior posts and tweets that I was a registered Democrat during my salad days, although a fairly unusual liberal who was a pro-life fiscal conservative. I recall in that general era a young Jerry Brown had been elected he decided to rent a sparsely furnished apartment forgoing the governor's mansion:
Gov.-elect Jerry Brown.... famously slept on a mattress on the floor when he was governor the first time...Brown’s fondness for low-budget living has long been interwoven with his political persona. During his governorship in the 1970s, there was the sparsely furnished bachelor pad and the blue Plymouth he drove, having spurned a state car.
I've always been somewhat frugal, especially spending other people's money. That doesn't I haven't had fights with bureaucrats over petty claims. I remember at UWM they booked my airflights to and from Las Vegas for an academic conference. I had the option of simply taking per diem for meals; I don't recall the exact amount but let's just say $35 daily. One of my senior faculty colleagues at the conference claimed per diem and made money by going to dirt-cheap buffets at say $3-5 a meal. I decided to simply expense the buffet costs and not take advantage of the situation. I ate one last lunch at a buffet before my flight back to Milwaukee. I hadn't known the airline advertised a meal on a flight. (Yeah, this was years back.) Even then it was never more than a glorified TV dinner, in this case more of a glorified snack, like a Jimmy Dean sausage & biscuit. I never saw that or knew the policy they wouldn't let you expense a meal if one was advertised on the flight. So, they rejected my $3+ plus lunch. Now today I would probably let it go; politically it's not worth it. I'm not getting anywhere with the administrative assistant, so then I abruptly said, "Fine! I want to claim per diem; I'm entitled to that." She was in utter shock, like I was Bernie Madoff. "But...but...but you can't do that: I've seen your receipts." "It doesn't matter. I'm entitled to exercise the option." She finally backed off and allowed the lunch. It wasn't the money but the principle. But it probably wasn't worth the loss of goodwill.
Back around 1997 I was closing on a Chicago tech manager position for a consulting company headquartered out of New Orleans. I was working through a recruiting firm. I was told they wanted me but had this formality of going to headquarters and meeting various higher-ups. So, this is like an expenses-paid campus visit (academia). The itinerary included business meals with company managers or employees, with the check picked up by the company. So, the dude who was supposed to meet me for breakfast no-showed. This is before hotels got on the free breakfast trend. It was like they charged like $7 for a bagel and a small glass of juice or you could upgrade to a $10 buffet. I wanted more than a bagel for a full day of interviews. I thought the day went well, but apparently, I got blackballed. I still had to file an expense report for other trip expenses. They paid the hotel and airline directly. Well, except for breakfast. The bean counter argued $10 is over their employee per diem. Dude, first of all, I'm not an employee; second, you guys were supposed to meet me for breakfast at the hotel and charge it as a company expense; third, no one mentioned per diem rates before the trip. It was UWM all over again. Like you guys pay $400+ for plane fare and a hotel, and you guys are bitching over a legit $10 breakfast check at the hotel you chose and were supposed to meet me? I think if I had gotten the job, I would have let it go, but I sarcastically suggested maybe I should invoice them for 8 hours of my time.
Oh, that got their attention; my recruiters got yelled at, and I think they (not the company) ended up cutting me a check for the difference. Think that's the end of the story? Nope.
I've recently mentioned my "job offer by extortion" to California in 1999. I ended up resigning the following summer. I did a short gig for what is now a Boeing subsidiary near LAX. The Chicago branch manager, for guess what company, heavily started recruiting me for a similar position; I don't think she was in place at that time when I interviewed. I still wasn't thrilled about working for thay company, but I would leave California for the first serious offer back to Chicago or almost anywhere else. Again, I had to go through a day of interviews, but I think they would settle for their nearest office in Denver. I ended up getting the offer. Think happy ending? One or 2 days later the offer is cancelled. Guess what bean counter remembered my breakfast expense and phantom invoice? And yeah, they stiffed me on some Denver visit expenses, particularly transport to and from their office building. But it's not worth the fight. I think I did mention interviewing them in the past earlier with the Chicago manager but not in detail. She thought things had changed and it was her decision. I'm still in shock I lost a 6-figure job over a breakfast check.
But the main point is I've been pretty tight on expenses. I've given plenty of examples in past posts. The "job by extortion" followed over 3 months of commuting from Chicago. Now the prior year I had a ton of frequent flier miles on United and I could have booked $700-1500 roundtrips on United to SFO from O'Hare, and the client wouldn't have said a thing. But I found a budget airline at Midway which would do it for about $450. I sometimes could rent a subcompact car at SFO for $19/day. The CEO's admin assistant called me in early in my tenure to say I was authorized for local (Santa Clara) hotels up to $199/night. I found an Extended Stay in Morgan Hill at about $43/night (a busy commute through San Jose). I bought local groceries and expensed them vs. eating out. This was on a gig that was projected for 5 weeks, and the controller told me his top priority was replacing me ASAP (I was working for a contractor that marked up my rate, but it turns out made serious invoicing mistakes my new hire supervisor, hired in the interim, could exploit to nullify the no compete clause in my subcontractor contract. I never sought a perm position with the client knowing the clause (plus I didn't want to move to California).
In other jobs, I've saved in various ways, although I was somewhat constrained by travel rules. For instance, for one defense contractor, I had to select from a number of hotels with varying rates. I was at an AFB in the Florida panhandle. The rates here are estimates and could be a little off in either way but the difference is not off by that much. I think there were hotels facing the Gulf of Mexico at corporate rates at $124-140/night, but I could choose one more inland at about $91/night. Why the hell could I justify an extra $30+ a night for a view? The hotel was for sleeping. My choice upset some colleagues: "Why the hell should you care? It's not even your money." In another case, I was in training at Malvern, PA, our home base (I lived in the Baltimore area so I was in a hotel.) I joined the guys/fellow trainees at a local sports bar on occasion (I didn't want to be perceived as anti-social). This one dude would always order the ribeye, the most expensive entree on the menu. I would order a pasta plate for like $12. Other times I might pick up a ready to eat entree from a supermarket deli section or a frozen entree to warm up in the microwave. Most employers don't allow any alcohol to be expensed, but I almost never drink on my own. As long as I've lived in Maryland. I've never been to a liquor store (in MD, you can't buy beer or wine at a supermarket. I remember when I did a gig at NCC on Long Island. We ran into issues finding a hotel willing to accept New York state rates. Lunch was hard to do because I had to park far from where I worked and the campus cafeteria was running limited hours during the summer. I don't recall the dinner limit (but I think in was in the $24-32 range and I recall going to Boston Market and spending in the $12 range.
Now I didn't intend this to be a brag sheet on my being frugal. Perhaps it was how my folks made a meager tech/master sergeant's pay stretch to raise 7 kids. There was no money for the folks to help us in college. Maybe it was their strong Roman Catholicism and hard work ethic. But it explains how I was intrigued by a position paper I picked up on Carter's advocacy of zero-based budgeting that he had pitched as Georgia's governor.
If ZBB sounds familiar, it's because of the Dem attacks on the alleged GOP plot to end senior entitlements in 5 years: Sen. Scott's (R-FL) ZBB bill. The basic concept begins with the understanding almost all government programs are perpetually funded at an ever-increasing cost and manpower, even if they're outlived their utility. So, the idea is to periodically rebuild the public budget from the ground up, requiting legislators to reassess whether program costs are justifiable.to sustain operations. To fiscal conservatives like me, the idea is compelling against the ever-growing government blob.
Scott, however, inexplicably confounded the concept with senior entitlement reform. Senior entitlements, although a significant percentage of the federal budget, are still self-financed through the payroll tax; granted the reserves are withering and not fully funded by up to 11 years from now. There needs to be a fix
Of course, I was politically naive to believe that Carter was going to reform the vast federal bureaucracy and overcome the vested interests behind every federal dollar spent. But I especially remember picking up the position paper on ZBB from some candidate table on the UT campus (where I was earning my first graduate degree (in math). And that eventually led to my joining the Carter campaign as a volunteer.
Just for situational context: Texas was pretty much a solid Democratic state during my high school and college years and had been since the end of Reconstruction. You saw occasional GOP victories, like John Tower was elected Senator after LBJ was elected VP, Bill Clements became governor in the 80's, and GHW Bush had been elected as a 60's Houston area Congressman. My folks never really talked about politics. My Mom was the daughter of a rare Massachusetts Republican, a Mom 'n Pop grocer. My Dad was a career USAF enlisted. I suspect he was probably more of a blue-collar conservative Dem. The folks were military conservative with a strong work ethic. We were conservative Catholics, and the folks were obsessed with the Kennedys (JFK was the first Catholic President). One telling anecdote: on college break, I was obsessed with the Watergate hearings. Not the folks. And when I resisted my dad's call to go to bed, Dad flipped off the circuit breaker leading to the living room TV.
Even though I opposed Nixon during my teens, it was not derangement syndrome. I remember Nixon made a reelection swing though Texas with a brief campaign stop at San Antonio's airport. I went to the rally on my own, and even got caught up in the "Four more years" chants. [Nope. I couldn't vote in the election (too young); I encouraged my folks to vote for a pro-life third-party candidate.] The closest I've ever come to a POTUS; in fact, I even managed to shake FLOTUS' hand as she reached into the crowd around me. I was, of course, shocked by Nixon's abuse of power and never understood why it happened, because McGovern wasn't a serious threat to Nixon's reelection. It was still sad to see the Nixons depart the White House in disgrace.
The reason I went into Nixon is because it helps explain why I volunteered for Carter--and also my disappointment with his Presidency. Gerry Ford, the successor to Nixon's original running mate, Agnew. He and his family came across as the family next door. It was like a breath of fresh air. I was annoyed by his prolific vetoes, especially in my more idealistic salad days, but I remember thinking I could vote for Ford. But then he preemptively pardoned Nixon. I didn't have Nixon derangement syndrome, but I had issues with the concept of a pardon in advance of a charge. He seemed to shortchange the justice system. I didn't necessarily want to see Nixon in prison. I had been open to supporting Ford up to that point in time.
I don't remember a lot of my volunteer work except for a couple of things. One of them was a passing car of black passengers wanting some of the Jimmy Carter/peanut campaign buttons/pins I was holding. I reluctantly parted with some of mine. The reason I was reluctant was because they weren't free--I had to buy them and I was on a budget without work on campus. (I had lost my position as a teaching assistant due to politics in the math department.). I think I still have some in a trunk in storage. The other moment was going door to door, and there was this one young married couple. We pretty much spent one or 2 hours trying to resolve their questions about Carter; at the end the husband let us go, saying something like, "Sorry, dudes. Gerry reminds me of my Uncle Joe, and I'm sticking with him." They laughed at us leaving, knowing we had blown the whole evening with nothing to show for it.
I did have more success with my relatives back in Massachusetts, apparently convincing my paternal grandmother to vote for the first time in years. It's difficult to pinpoint when we knew Carter had momentum going into the election, but my middle brother, a chemical engineering major, was in my dorm room, ane we were listening to a Presidential debate, when Gerry Ford made a blundering gaffe, suggesting Poland was free of the Soviet Union. We looked at each other laughing in disbelief.
Carter won Texas by about 3 points, a little wider than nationwide (technically Carter could have won without Texas).
I'm not going into an exhaustive review here of the Carter Presidency. A lot of my discontent with Carter's Presidency had to do with a bad economy. I was unemployed for several months after earning my M.A. (I was being recruited as a possible USAF meteorologist, but I didn't get selected in the first 2 officer pools. I moved into a coop off campus; I had no driver's license or car. You're ineligible over the next 6 months (USAF pool), and I didn't have a backup opportunity; the local junior college wasn't hiring. I tried to go back to UT and earn high school math teacher credentials, but I needed financial aid that was blocked for reasons beyond this post.) Perhaps it's unfair to hold Carter responsible for stagflation, energy crises, etc., some of which had precedents in the Nixon and Ford Administrations. [I will give Carter credit for appointing Volcker who broke the back of inflation with high interest rates. something Carter had to know risked a recession for his reelection.]
In terms of the fiscal conservatism underlying my original interest in his candidacy, Carter was a disappointment. He added about 43% to the national debt, about $300B, roughly comparable to Gerald Ford's record. (For a more granular view, see here.) Still, the Dems controlled the power of the purse under both Presidents. More to the point, Carter exercised the veto less than half as often as Ford in his abbreviated term. I did not like seeing Carter expanding the cabinet with the Departments of Energy and Education.
One annoying story that caught my attention hinted at Carter being a micromanager. I don't recall the specific context--the White House swimming pool, tennis courts or bowling alleys--but the basic idea was that Carter himself was signing off on access/other paperwork. The basic point was knowing when and where to delegate authority.
There are some things about Jimmy Carter I respect even more as a libertarian: his amnesty to draft dodgers (we think conscription is a State violation of liberty), he deregulated a number of things--airlines and trucking in particular. Some of his things in foreign policy, like ceding control of the Panama Canal and the Camp David accords; he normalized relations with China.
Why did his reelection bid result in the worst landslide loss since Hoover? There are lots of opinions (cf this Quora discussion), but let me point out some issues from my perspective:
- Carter had communication issues. Some Senate Dems resented this demanding "outsider" Then he also had problems in talking to or inspiring Americans, e.g., the infamous malaise speech. He could come across as morally self-superior and condescending.
- He didn't project strong leadership during crises, like Three Mile Island and the Iran hostage crisis. You would think if there was any issue tailor made for Carter, it was Three Mile Island. Carter had served as a nuclear engineer in our nuclear submarine fleet. I think the disaster (not Carter's fault) seriously impacted the growth of nuclear power plants in the US. Then there was his response to the Soviet/Afghanistan War, including responses like a grain embargo and a boycott of the 1980 Olympics. The whole saga in Iran from the exiled Shah of Iran to an anti-Western theocracy seemed to spiral out of control on Carter's watch.
- Carter had more of an "I can't see the forest because of the trees" problem, the "big picture", or GHW Bush's infamous "vision thing". Carter was more of an engineer focused on well-defined problems with specific technical solutions than dealing with open-ended fuzzily-defined political problems. Carter also was not philosophically consistent. While he did see issues with overregulation, he also grew the federal bureaucracy in education, energy, etc.
