I have mixed feelings about Jimmy Carter and his Presidency. over the past year when we knew in hospice care, it was just a matter of time before he passed. In fact, he became the first POTUS to hit the century mark
My personal experience with the Carter campaign occurred while I was earning my first Master's (in math) at the University of Texas at Austin. I had initially joined the graduate program with the idea of earning a PhD in math. I had a teaching assistant stipend for leading twice-weekly calculus problem sessions. I had the misfortune of assisting an idiosyncratic East European professor (G. Freud) visiting from Ohio State. The dean made a big mistake in having him teach freshman calculus. He had a thick European accent (like nature-ul numbers, or recipe-proculs) and he had an unconventional teaching style (including exams--not to mention to get an A, you had to pass an individual oral exam. And I know a student or 2 thought they passed it but he argued he had to give them too much help). One telling example; We were in a large classroom one day with like 4 chalkboards in front and like 3 or 4 more on the right. Without any comment he proceeded to cover like 6.5 chalkboards with equations and then seemed to have a brain fart, completely forgetting where he was going with all this. He sheepishly turned to me to ask if I knew where he was going with all this. I shook my head at his thick glasses with eyes bulging out at me. The students just mechanically wrote down anything he put on the board. Don't get me started on his exams. I think Jeff and I were the targets of student discontent, like we should coach them for exams, but he wrote those on his own. His exams were like 4 questions: 1 right a C, 2 right a B, 3 right an A . I remember one coed was my best session student, and on her second or third exam, she was so pissed she literally threw her exam in my face leaving the classroom. [I later heard next semester she was scoring straight 100's in the second semester course under a different professor.]
So then comes one of the nastiest Machiavellian tactics ever targeted at clueless me. My colleague Jeff [surname I don't recall right now] came to me and convinced a reluctant me that the students were agitated about their class experience and we have to have a come-to-Jesus moment with Dr. Freud. So, we meet with Freud and Jeff told me to start the painful discussion; everything I said was from dealing with my students. So Freud was literally in a state of shock. Shaken, he turned to Jeff and and asked, "Is that true, Jeff?" And I'll never forget the betrayal I never saw coming. "Well, there are a couple of bad apples, but you have a couple of bad apples in any class. I don't know what he's talking about.". My whole world changed in an instant. Freud basically thought I was sabotaging him. I got called into the dean's office--never a good thing--where I got yelled at for not knowing my low status in the scheme of things and basically got put on probation. Freud literally started stalking me into my classes and started bitching about me to my professors; I remember my graduate real analysis professor in particular There are other parts to the story, but flash forward to the spring semester and renewals. I didn't get one. but you know who did? Jeff..
This changed things because I couldn't pursue the doctorate without a stipend or financial assistance. I could get my Master's by writing my thesis the second year, which I wrote on a topic in abstract algebra. I eventually got some minor paid work as a grader for a number theory professor. I still needed to borrow $500 from my maternal grandfather to have my thesis typed to meet university standards.[There is some family drama behind that. I basically paid for all my college bills; I'm the oldest of 7.and my folks were struggling to make ends meet on my dad's modest USAF NCO's salary. .My godfather, retired former grocery owner, could have helped out but held a long-held personal grudge. Ironically a copy of my thesis was in the mail to him when he passed.] At that time you needed like an IBM Selectric with mathematical symbols.
Long story to explain how, working primarily on my thesis, I spent some time on the Carter campaign as a volunteer. I was not that political; I had grown up in a conservative Catholic military family. I don't mean politically as much as socially and religiously. My maternal grandfather was a rare Massachusetts Republican and was proud of getting a social security check. I was visiting him on my 18th birthday, and I thought he was a bit too eager to see his first grandchild register. (I was not in danger of being drafted then.) He was a news junkie watching 2 or 3 nightly news shows (One of the major networks played locally on the hour.) I remember him lecturing passionately against abortion; I was already pro-life and trying to tell him I didn't have a girlfriend yet. My Mom was more of a social conservative, interested in things like displays of the Ten Commandments or crosses on public lands. My Dad never really talked politics but was probably more of a blue-collar Reagan Democrat. The folks never discussed Presidential candidates, at least while I was there but probably supported more conservative Presidential candidates. i recall they had zero interest in the Nixon impeachment hearings. In fact, when I proceeded to watch hearings into the night, he cut the circuit breakers on me.
I was initially a fiscally conservative pro-life Democrat. I was somewhat a social liberal on domestic issues, not a policy wonk in those days but supportive of gimmicky titles/goals: who could oppose fair employment, feeding hungry schoolkids or protecting the environment? After the Nixon scandal, Gerald Ford and his wholesome family were a breath of fresh air. I was planning to support him in my first ever Presidential election when Ford did the one thing I could not support; pardon Nixon. It wasn't I wanted Nixon to die an old man in prison but I wanted him to be held responsible for his crimes.
So, i was already pretty much a Southern Democrat although it wouldn't be until I started my UH MBA studies in the early 80's I became a fully consistent conservative, with a growing skepticism of social liberalism. Now just an aside into Texas politics at the time: John Tower was one of the few Republicans to win statewide office since Reconstruction over the prior century. You did have some Republicans in office, e.g., George HW Bush was a Houston Congressman. But as a young voter, I had really 1 party option to have an impact. So, on the UT campus, the Austin area was/is like a socially liberal oasis of sorts in Texas; at the time the city, beyond being the state capital, was largely centered around the campus. I haven't been there in years, but it's become an expanding high tech metropolis. Don't quote me but I think it's now nearly quadrupled the population since I lived there) The various primary candidate campaigns had tables with various position papers, etc. One in particular that attracted my interest was one on zero-based budget, which intrigued my fiscal conservatism.
At the risk of oversimplification, conventional budgeting starts with adjusted funding of ongoing operations. Zero-based budgeting forces one to cost-justify ongoing operations. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity process A generates report B. is used by decisionmaker C. Maybe B has been generated routinely for years but the report is no longer useful; maybe the data aren't current enough, reliable or usable, maybe the decisionmaker has better alternative resources. So, the first question is does the benefit of the report justify the cost of producing the report (the manpower, data compilation, input/processing, etc.) If not, end the report and the funding of resources. Second, assuming the data are useful, is there way to provide the information cheaper, faster, more reliably, usably?
I'm not suggesting the thought experiment is what happens in government. but too long programs, laws, regulations, taxes persist beyond their relevant timespan. Take the excise tax on long distance calls
Last week [re: 2006] the Treasury Department announced it would stop collecting the 3 percent federal excise tax on long-distance telephone service that Americans have been paying since 1898, when the tax was first levied to help finance the Spanish-American War.
So, the ZBB perspective is more of a systematic budget review of funded operations with an eye out for detecting and eliminating wasted or duplicated costs. it appealed to my fiscal conservativism.
i soon signed up to volunteer. i remember buying Carter campaign buttons out of my shrinking college savings; they weren't free for volunteers. I recall a car of blacks pulling up beside the group I was in asking for campaign items, and I reluctantly gave some of mine. I think the remainder is in a footlocker in storage.
I particularly recall canvassing a neighborhood one night. A partner and I spent a good couple of hours talking to a young couple patiently and thoroughly answering all their questions on why they should voter for Carter vs. Ford. At the end, the husband escorted us out and said something like, "Thank you for taking your time to talk, but we're going to vote for Ford. He reminds me of my good old Uncle Joe." We heard laughing as we left the house, apparently getting a kick of our wasting a couple of hours with nothing to show for it.
Still, Texas narrowly went for Carter, and I wanted to believe at the time I had done my part in his victory. I remember subscribing to the Houston Chronicle, which offered a deeply discounted subscription (really it was more of an honor system because the vending machine was open). The Chronicle decided to endorse Ford, which pissed me off so much I canceled my subscription. I doubt anyone worried about my protest and my cheap subscription revenue. Oh, we had a free student newspaper, the Daily Texan. The ads easily paid for costs. I remember they wanted us to pay for it through student fees, feeling we wouldn't appreciate it if we got it by free. Sure, we paid for it by shopping at the stores advertising in the newspaper.
I quickly soured on Carter, for reasons probably not shared by most people. I was passionately pro-life (9he oldest of 7), and Carter, a religious Southern Democrat was the first post-Roe Dem nominee at a time where hundreds of thousands of preborn children were being subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Carter tried to triangulate the issue by supporting the Hyde Amendment, restricting tax dollars on abortions, but opposing a constitutional amendment overturning Roe. But he did something else at the convention which pissed us pro-lifers: he refused to let pro-life candidate McCormack on the stage. I almost quit as a volunteer over that. i knew the pro-aborts were in charge, but I had hoped for a McCormack appearance as a reconciliatory step.
A second issue I had with him was discovering he seemed to be a micro-manager, which is not a good thing when you're running the biggest government in the world. It was a random news item of the sort he was personally approving guest lists for some White House recreational facility (I don't recall if it was a swimming pool, tennis court or bowling alley. I'm just amazed he was dealing with these duties which were beneath his level.
Another thing that disturbed me was a particular public appearance where Admiral Rickover, father oh the nuclear Navy, told the President where to stand and Carter meekly complied. (Note, some 20-iodd years earlier, he had served in the nuclear Navy.) I'm thinking: dude: you should be the one telling him where to stand
I may have posted my own Rickover story. I was a newly minted MA in math, was up for a math instructor role for enlisted NCO training for the nuclear Navy. Technically I could have taught as a contractor in theory, but Rickover liked having direct control over any officer in the program. I was worried about what the admiral would ask me: some twisted calculus problem? So, long story short, I go into his office, and he didn't like my personal appearance and started sharply criticizing the clothes I was wearing. I did know appearance is important (my earliest memories included my mom ironing my dad's work clothes), but I didn't own a decent business suit and had not been briefed in advance about dress code. I thought I was well-dressed from a business casual standpoint; i didn't think the others were wearing 3-piece suits in our waiting room. He didn't like anything I said, and continued to fire off one contemptuous question after another. I had been totally swerved. I had come to the interview unemployed for 5 months since graduation. no other leads and running out of money. And when he finally dismissed me--it was probably was less than 5 minutes but felt like hours, I felt like I blew it from the get-go and what the hell I would do now?. I would learn I got the job/commission after I returned to Austin. Maybe the whole point was he's wanting to see how I handled myself under pressure.
One final note here is there are legendary Rickover interview stories. the one I remember most was he once challenged the candidate to do something which would piss him off. The guy saw a framed picture of Rickover's beloved wife on his desk, grabbed it and stomped through it. The story goes that the admiral had to be physically restrained from going after the candidate. No word of what happened, but mission accomplished
I'm not going to go into a long review of Jimmy Carter's Presidency. Historian Brion McClanahan, a frequent source of my daily posts, has called him the likely last of the agrarian Presidents. Others call him as the last of o more Progressive era Democrat vs a New Deal era, with a dash of populism: a fiscally conservative, scientific management/modernist approach to improving government with a particular emphasis on conservation and the environment and civil liberties (versus Wilson's racism). He ran as an outsider which contrasted from the dominant Big Government social liberalism stemming from the activist New Deal era . Carter had inherited an inflation-bound economy exacerbated by government deficits and accommodative monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. This often led him to clash with his own party leadership in the House which held power for 4 decades from mid-fifties.
There are a lot of things I could identify with as an emerging conservative Southern Democrat: his wariness with Big Government spending initiatives. I do give him credit for staving off a government takeover of healthcare, although that led to Kennedy's unsuccessful primary challenge to Carter in 1980. In particular, he did much to liberate the economy from overregulation and bureaucratic governance with, e.g., deregulation in airlines and trucking.
On the other hand, Carter paradoxically expanded the government by adding 2 new cabinet departments, energy and education, and he opposed alternatives to public education.
I also give him a lot of credit for appointing Volcker to the Fed while the economy was under stagflation, which Reagan would later infamously tie with his misery index The inflation cycle really was kicked off when Nixon ended backing the dollar with gold combined with deficit spending and interruptions in oil imports exacerbating inflationary pressures. I'm convinced Carter knew Volcker's tough medicine risked a recession and his own reelection.
Carter's foreign policy was a mixed bag. It was on his watch that Iran flipped control to an adversarial theocratic regime, the hostage crisis, and failed rescue attempt. I thought his peace talks leading to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt , which seemed unthinkable after the 1967 and 1973 wars, was monumental. I also hail the treaty with Panama over the canal. I thought his human rights foreign policy was attractive as a goal but troublesome in practice; I want a foreign policy which is not interventionist and focuses more on America's specific defense. I thought his approach with the USSR was dubious beyond détente. for example, I did not support the American boycott of the 1980 Olympics; I don't like politicizing sports events, unfair to athletes. i disagreed with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan but saw it as their version of Vietnam.
I didn't really leave the Democratic Party until the Bork confirmation hearings, but I was not really surprised by Reagan's landslide victory. I had lost my interest in volunteering for political campaigns. Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations of what he could do with Congress as President.
I rate him higher than more recent Presidents, but he was still more interventionist than I like; he held a tough hand politically. Ironically he had perhaps a more consequential post-Presidency with his more recent Nobel Peace prize and his charity work (Habitat for Humanity). However, his politics took an unfortunate left turn later in life . A good man with failed political leadership.
