Transcripts For CSPAN2 Lectures 20240704

The opinion that metals matters most is your own here this is what democracy looks like pure cspan, powered by cable. Welcome to poly side 4299 and also some graduate student sitting in back to i got enough handouts for you all and, of course, readings to our friends watching this on the cspan lectures in history series pure so just a quick reminder on thursday w and go to circulate e writing assignment i get back the tests i know were getting close to spring break so if youre not able to make it you will have opportunities to get the assignment and ask plenty of questions and, of course, i will hand exams after the break as well here are right, any logistical questions about that . Venable and get started with our Schedule Program here. Today were talking aboutut the president ial legacy of jimmy carter who was president from 1977 e 1981 pure our lecture is titled why not the best . Which was also the title of carters campaign biography and i think gives us some insight so keep that title in mind as we think about carters political project and legacy. Here with win the news. So couple of weeks ago, it was announced that that former president carter, who is 98 years old, was going to live out the rest of his days in home hospice. And this kind of kicked off a lot of really testimony and a lot of conversation about carters president ial legacy and legacy in the world, some of which you read today. But up until this point, carter had a pretty kind of negative legacy and is often at the bottom of lists of great president s. So you kind of see this here. Here are couple of these are both conservative news sites comping. Democratic president s to jimmy carter. And these are kind of intended to be unflattering sorts of comparisons anescially with inflation, which well talk about youve gotten a lot of comparisons between between carter and vitamin you see it didnt start. Theres also some comparisons with with barack obama. But lately as you saw in the piece that you read, theres this kind of reassessment and resurgence, thinking about the significance of jimmy carter as an individual and as a president and really kind of rethink what happened not just in this postpresidency, which has been very famous for all of the Public Service that done, but also really, really rethinking rethinking carters time in office and its and its significance. Does anyone have any preliminary questions or thoughts on this before and launch into the rest of of this bit. Okay we talked a couple of weeks we kind of brainstormed about what do we what do we know about carter and i kept that in mind as i put this all together. So i want actually start with a little personal. 26 story. So in 2006, i was doing some dissertation or some research for my doctoral dissertation and i was doing archival work at the carter president ial library, mostly reading files exchanged by carters speechwriters and Communications Team and the carter president ial library is located in atlanta. Its its on the same grounds as the Carter Center is the area where the carters have its sort of their launching point for all of their humanitarian work. The carter has done election monitoring and other kind of global democracy promotion and activities so its a really big center is august new class of interns folks ourselves were probably arriving at the center and as i was leaving the archives one day, i really thought id spent too much time in the archives and that i was hallucinating because im like, im pret sure i just saw president carter and his wife and i saw one of the the archal sff out. She was like, did you see the president . Did you go say hi . Did you shake hand . And then i saw like security detail, know, a couple of feet away, i was like, oh, that actually was president carter. Well i guess i should go say hi. So i kind of chased him down, which i dont recommend with former World Leaders and, went up and introduced myself to it was him and his wife rosalyn introduced myself and immediately started babbling, which will probably not be that surprising to any of you and and said, you know ive been reading a bunch of your speeches for my dissertation. Im in grad school, whatever i said and i said, ive been reading a lot of your speeches and youre sort of said, im sorry to hear that. Oh, which was very funny and kind of unexpected, but also it kind of actually rang a bell in my so this is 2006, right . Lets think about context at that moment in time, you have going to building cynicism in in the country specifically. This is the administration of George W Bush well cover later in the semester about the way that that administration what they did, but also how they talked about what they did. There was a kind of growing sense that the public been lied to a growing sense that we werent really getting the full story about the kinds of trade offs involved in governance. And it wasnt a lot of humility and in that rhetoric. And that was really appealed to me as a grad student reading carters speeches are really struck me so i dont have living of this administration. But i was reading all of these speeches and thinking, well, carter speaks, he talks about tradeoffs. He says, look, you know, here is here are sacrifices were going to have to make heres what were heres what will work here. Heres may not work. Speaking about own election to office, he talked a lot about keeping campaign promises, but he also kind of had this this comment once in back and forth of the media where he says, you know, i didnt win by that much. It was very close election and just kind of had approached that with a sense of humility and so at the time, i remember thinking, this is really different than any kind president ial speech or rhetoric that i have encountered before and that really stayed with me. Is not only as i wrote my dissertation and book about about president ial mandate, claiming which i dont get to talk about the kind of significance of carter there at the end, but also in putting this and putting together, i want us to kind of think about this framework. So heres where were at. Heres where were going to go. Here are somemes. The first one i want us to kind of think about carters pathway to the presidency, not just to in the nomination contest, although you all know i love those, but also about what he was responding to. So this is really what weve been talking about the last couple of weeks in this class about what was going on leading up to the sixties in the seventies. So we know quite a bit about that. And to talk about that i want to talk about his policy priorities and general approach to, the presidency, what was accomplished, what wasnt accomplished, but also kind of the politics of that. And then finally, the big the legacy. What does this all mean for american politics . And then finally, i want to end by talking about carter as a transition point. Again, im kind of using my own work as a as a jumping off point. But why carter is in the class the of transition point also between our or two units as well as a transition point in in the presidency and its role in american politics. All right. Any preliminary questions, comments concerns . Okay. So were just start with our political backdrop here. Again, this is really familiar territory to. You all so here weve got president richard nixon, the last president , elected before before carter. Theres this brief gerald ford interlude after resigns and watergate. We talked about a couple of weeks ago. Right. This is a real of a kind of declining trust in in the government decline, in trust specifically in the president. And this idea that whats going on in the presidency, the one person has a lot of power and, a lot of people working kind of directly for them, and theyre really able to use Public Resources for private good or for their own kind of political ends and the country by 1976, remember watergate is nixons resignation 74. So by 1976, when carter running for president , that is still pretty fresh in peoples minds, going further back than that. Weve also talked quite a bit about what was going on in the Democratic Party, and we talked lot about the kind of chaotic ending of the Lyndon Johnson administration in 19 in 1968. Right. That has also got some implications for for carter. We talked about this country kind of sense that johnson had gone back on campaign promises, the war in vietnam, that they been lied to about that war by multiple administrations and we have a Democratic Party, this kind of crumbling around the issue of civil rights. And we talked a bit about kind of impact on the broader political situation. And of course, thats to press at some real pain in the democratic coalition. And so incomes jimmy carter is both a southerner not just from from the border but from the deep south, from georgia, but also has a reputation as a racial as someone whos kind of stood up to some of these segregationists southerners, is someone who has a kind of Forward Vision on race. And so thing that the carter kind of exemplar us in this coalition is somebody who can actually bridge this really painful divide in the coalition. You know, its morally painful. Its also politically painful. And that gives carter thats one of the ways that carter has kind of in in theres a other things. Theres a couple other things going here by. 1976, the country has kind of a new president ial nomination system. And whereas before, if you wanted to get nominated as president weve talked a lot about these conventions. Right. Weve a lot about 19th century president ial nomination conventions. You had to really get in good with delegates to those conventions. Well, now, as of 1976, the system was starting to look like the one that that, you know, we know. And what you need to do is do well in the primary system. You need to in order to win delegates, you got to win state state primaries. And theyre in crazy order. And states are early and some are late. Theyre all over the country and the system, again, this is like relatively new. That point, no one really knows how to game it. No, really knows how it works. No one really knows how to strategize. And carter is able to take advantage of that and think his own strategy. Theres some some strategy, some luck. And he goes to iowa. We now know and ive talked with a couple of you outside class. I dont think weve talked lot about the iowa caucuses, but theyre now they have this kind of common importance. That wasnt so much the case in 1976. But carter took advantage of this hes this very little known one term governor from georgia was in the state legislature that not a big national figure. But hes able to go to iowa and meet people and, really appeal to the voters there on basis of his kind of personal characteristics. And this is where that other piece of the political backdrop is so important. He really kind of presents himself as somebody, going to be honest, someone who is an evangelical and born again and has a sort of deep moral kind of basis, deep kind of faith basis for is worldview and his morality. And this is maybe this all like were used to hearing about religion in politics. Now, at the time, this was a little bit different, a little here, a little bit differently. And whats really appealing. If you think about the Nixon Administration if you think about the johnson administration, the way the public felt so alienated and lied, carter kind of comes in and says, i am different from all that. Im an outsider. Im not part of this washington mess. Im not part of whats gone wrong over the last decade or so. And that really lands with this kind of crucial voters. And after doing well in iowa, carter is able to get a lot of media attention. And that kind of becomes known after that is the way the way that you a president ial nomination is you land in these early contests and then you get a kind of National Media presence. Already were starting to see that even though we might think of carter as the person in those early slides, the person the president who other president s dont to be compared to or anything to see how nevertheless the things that did were actually really consequential and kind of helped create the system that we now understand for how president s to the people, their parties and how sort of position themselves. And this becomes very common as this kind of outsider, the last thing i want point out here is something that is really and yet that you dont a lot about, especially in light of carters very service, heavy postpresidency. And that is that to be in this kind of position to come at this and say, okay, this outsider, im from georgia, im you know, im really just coming at this for Public Service and values. But to really go from being a state level politician in georgia to being im in a run for president , you have to have some serious political ambition to really be ambitious. And thats kind of a piece of the persona, the piece of the person that carter was in the 1970s, that often lost as people talk about him, as this kind of selfless public. And i dont think it takes away from that selfless public. Public servant narrative to also emphasize how ambitious carter and the way that we think about those things together. Thats one of the questions i want to pose to at the end. You know, why do we think of these things as being so deeply incompatible. Questions. Right . So just little bit about the about the general or the general election here. So again, carter kind of runs in this in this weird. He positions himself as not really liberal and not really conservative. He kind of positioned himself as conservative in the in the primary race to, let all the liberal democrats knock each other out. But of course, to win, to really consolidate the coalition, he has to have some liberal ideas. Still a democrat, but hes just kind of like ideologues, ambiguous. He talks about government efficiency, about tax and welfare reform, about things we might think as more conservative, but its also very concerned about the plight of people less fortunate. As well talk about later, he does bring the sort moral vision to a lot of us policy issues. So so its kind of hard to pinpoint ideologically and its hard to pinpoint in terms of where the two parties have been up to that up to that point but he really emphasizes this idea of why not the best of the american government, whereas is other texas a government is good is its people that the American People you kind of like build on this sense. The American People are fundamentally good. The people are good and they deserve a better government. They deserve a Good Government. And so we kind of might have some questions about, okay, is that what is a Good Government . Who gets decide who who are the winners and losers of a good kind of political. Were going to find out. And that is part of a set of of political appeals and. The result is very close. So we went with just 50 , just over 50 of the vote. And the other thing about this map is its very weird. It is a weird map. So anyone have any observations about how this is different . Looked at a lot of these maps and weve thought a little bit about geography. Any observations here. So a little but you know we looked at normal we look at these maps one of the things weve observed is a sort of dynamic between the middle and the kind of coasts. Right. And weve seen that not just in contemporary maps, but in some older maps. And the one is the north in the south, carter and hes from the south. He kind of locks up the south. But if you look at this map from 1976, you might away and say, huh, the United States has this deep east, west and really get that from a lot of other a lot of other electoral maps. Again, its sort of like a middle and dynamic that were used to seeing or if its more geographic, its north. South. Why is that . Honestly, that is a really interesting that hasnt gotten a lot of the same attention that some of these other questions some of it might be kind of a party story about the Republican Party under nixon investing not just in the south, in the west. Some of it is a kind of state politics story. You know, theres a couple of different theories, but its actually really, i think, kind of fascinating open, open question. But once carter wins, hes to face this question. Its one thing to appeal to the voters with this kind of broad set of ideas about Good Government, whos going to say they dont like Good Government . This is a trick question because once you start governing. It turns out Good Government is a lot more controversial than you might imagine. So this campaign, the governance transition for carter, its always hard. Its always hard. But it really proves to be kind of tricky for the new Carter Administration here. I want to talk a little t before. G into policy about approach to the presidency. And this was a lot of at was what i was researching, writing about back back in the day. Sohiis carter with his Office Management and budget director bert lance, his friend from georgia, who came with him and carteharun in the nomination, had run in the general as i am going be a leader of Good Government is going to be clean government i mean not corrupt honest. And then burt lance gets implicated in a banking scandal. This is like the highest you know, economic official in the administration. And he gets accused of some financial corruption back georgia. He actually gets cleared of it a couple of years later. In 1980. But carter cant wait around for that. And so eight months in birtley vance resigns because hes his alleged has already undermined promise and turns out promising youre going to be transparent accountable not corrupt at all times. This turns out to be a very kind of tall order and in politics. And so carter is already kind of set himself up for some challenges. Theres also this kind of imagery element to it that is quite an in quite fascinating. Carter really tries to bring down the level of the of the white house so using a lot of kind of public facing symbolism to respond to this this political environment of of watergate and vietnam in this kind sense that the government has gotten out of touch with the people and out of control. So carter, whos inaugurated wearing just like a regular suit and not like a more formal kind of attire, hes actually the first president to get out of the the motorcade and just walk along pennsylvania avenue in the inaugural parade, which now common and carter did it and it was just kind of like a little innovation like im just out here with the people. He sold the president ial yacht, the sequoia, which was not only a nod to being less fancy, but also being a little more frugal, a little more careful with public money to try, give, give that kind of impression. And one of the things that you really literally, if you read theres a new president ial biography of carter that has a lot of of depth about what people were saying and they actually complained about people wearing jeans, the white house. And it was you know, it looked dirty. It looked disorganized. Carter himself would wear jeans sometimes the white house and so its some of his aides and he brought in a bunch of people from georgia that were referred to as the georgia mafia, people who didnt have a lot of national, national, political experience. So weve already got a very different of president ial style. And there is substance. Theres style. Theyve set a high bar for what theyre going to do, and theyve brought it down in a way doesnt necessarily sit well with everyone. One of the things that carter did that was unpopular there was he asked that they stop playing hail to the chief when he came into the room and it turned out people like people like a little circle, a little bit of kind of ceremony around presidency. Anyone have questions or comments on of this . This is something thats been, i think, kind of lurking throughout the semester. We havent we havent dealt with it totally head on, but weve been kind of talking about these themes this kind of balance the president s need to strike between being one of the people, just a regular citizen accountable to the people. Right. Theyre not special. We dont have a monarchy. But at the same time, they have a lot of power. And we in some ways we do want them to be a little special or we want the office to be a little special and. Carter comes in like right at point of tension. The only part of this that that i nt to talk about here is ho how this plays out with carter. Once insist on running against washington and now hes now hes washington and not only is he of the political esblishment, but hes got to deal with the people there all the people hes been you know, kind of running against because not just in 76, hes not ju runninggainst and johnson and ford as his actual opponent, but, you know, running generally against kind of culture and way people do things in washington. But then you get to and you realize, oh, those same people, theyre still in congress. You to deal with them there in your own party if you want to get anything done, youve got to deal with congress. Hopefully this is also a theme weve taken from the class. Weve talked a lot about president s being kind of embedded in the other branches. And so one of the things that carter wants to do is really speak to the people about all these new things. He he wants to do all these changes. He wants to make. And again, now we kind of think about the president speaking directly to the people on tv or through any various forms of media that we might have or a live thats pretty normal and it wasnt a new thing in 1976, but we havent really talked about when weve talked about president s speaking directly to the people is this can create a little bit of a tense dynamic with congress. So when you go to the people and youre like heres what were going to do, heres the kind of legislation i Want Congress to pass. Heres how were going to solve this problem. Like as we talked about during the semester, congress is the first Branch Congress can like. Ill sit well see about that who actually passes the laws here. Members of congress and they may not want the president just them what to do. They dont work for the president. And so we can kind of see how that creates a little bit of a tension there with the president being directly to the people. This was a big theme in in carter, speechwriter files as i was as i was kind of going through them so that they to make sure they set a tone they wanted to communicate with the people in an effective way and talked about their values and talked about what the policy agenda be. And obviously Public Opinion really important to them. But there was also a lot of debate about well, okay, theyre looking at this big energy bill, which well about in a moment. And theres this big back and forth between carter about what were going to give to speeches like that. Could be one way if you have to address multiple audiences. Right. But theyre like, okay, if we speak to Congress First and then to the people and the people are going to feel like were not being honest with them theyre going to feel like there was one speech for the governing elites, one speech for the general public. And thats exactly what we said we werent going to do. But if we speak to the people first and then congress, then congress, well, the words they use in the memo are congress will be. Congress will feel like they, you know, being that going over their heads, literally something that also comes up in these memos. We dont want to go over the heads of congress. Do you want to show respect to congress . You also want to show respect to the American People. And those may be in the mind of the administration somewhat different kinds of messages. So weve already got all these kind of approach and style mystic tensions when we havent really even gotten to the policy agenda. Weve been in question so far. What questions do we have . Were good. Okay. All right. So this is a list of some of carters policy prioritie it reads like a chart at the eye doctor. It starts big. It small. So many, so many policy. And if we think about these a little bit of detail, we can also see how they might relate or not relate to the main prrities of the Democratic Party that the was now leader of weve gotney thats something we often associated with carter now this sort of an environmental orientation weve got Foreign Policy weve got all this other stuff right . Health care, the economy, whic is almost always forefront in peoples minds and especially in the seventies, is forefront peopls minds. Carter is a b advocate of consumer protection, deregulation of industries which he thought would be better for for consumers. Weve got urban politics. We have all of these things that carter to be and wants to whos whos in the photo recognize the person with carter and the photo you got across that is joe biden a new new senator joe biden. Yes so they were in a sort of close relationship early on. Biden was an early endorser. So, yeah. So one of the things that we take from is that on the one hand, carter had a lot of ideas, a lot of vision, a lot of things. He wants to get done and spoiler alert, actually, a lot of things do get when you look at this administration and you look at what actually got done, theres actually quite a lot of legislation passed there. Some there are some real Foreign Policy low points, but theres also some achievements its not a do nothing in ministry. So one of the kind of puzzles of of studying carter but it is also the case that when everything is a priority nothing is a priority. And the final part of this is carter himself was coming to this not only his georgia political background, but also his background as an engineer in navy, somebody was really details quite a people who were around him at the time described him as as an intellectual, as somebody really did his homework, but also as someone who really had a tendency to really want to be involved. All of the details. And when youre the president and this is your agenda, you can be involved in all of the details. So some of this is some of this has to do with the coalition, some this has to do with the nature of prioritization and some of it has to do with carters kind of political and individual style. So talk through a couple of these policy areas, and this is really going to be not very deep dive in each of these areas. One of them was energy. So energy had been an issue throughout the seventies with gas lines and shortages of fuel. And carter had a couple of priorities going forward. One was energy so that the us wouldnt be so vulnerable to whatever was going on in the middle east or other Oil Producing countries. And that kind of fed into the idea to some of the more environmentally ideas about developing alternative fuels and stuff like that. Also carter had this kind of consumer orientation and so he wanted costs to be lower for the consumer. These two things already dont always and you add in politics. So we have this very ambitious about what to do, deregulate natural and change the regulations system around that to develop tax to decrease consumption. You this very ambitious kind of plan going to going to congress trying to get Public Investment in alternative fuels so theres like 100 items in the first legislative request that carter sends to congress. There are a couple of issues. One is that weve still got a Democratic Party that has strength in the south and in places like louisiana, where oil is a big part of the economy. And so to the extent that carter was asking for things that would benefit at the expense of industry, and that was very carters orientation, theyre not all going to go for it because thats thats their voters. Thats base those industries are important. So youve got a little bit of kind of push and pull in the democratic in the seventies. Its a little bit than how we might expect it to be constituted today, although some of these issues are still a problem. You still run into the problem where theres like a big picture environmental idea that might benefit everybody, but its not good for certain industries. And those industries are very important to members of congress. That dynamic persisted. They look a little bit different in the seventies. So carter got this really complex congressional situation in the house and the Senate Passed different versions of the bill. They dont agree on the details natural gas regulation. I can send you all some. From the seventies if you want to read those. But you know, so part of it for carter is it looks like he doesnt know how to negotiate with congress it looks like he doesnt have good legislative and ultimately what passes is its a pretty big bill. It makes changes it does deregulate the natural gas industry, it creates the department of energy, i think by 21st century standards. We would consider this a fairly piece of legislation, but its only watered down compared to what the administration had wanted. And so it people on the left mad it makes environmentalists mad, people who oppose it, the industry, people who are not interested in these changes are also and carter comes sort of looking weak and being depicted in the media as being a bad, bad legislative leader. So we have a pretty solid policy success, but the politics of it are just keep sort of getting away. If that wasnt complicated enough for you, now weve got policy. This is actually a very active Foreign Policy and. Theres theres a couple of ways we can kind of break this down analytically youre reading actually a pretty good job as a short reading, but had i think a pretty good overview of some of this key stuff. Some of this comes were going to start again with carter as a person carters kind of values as a person human rights were really important to him. He wanted to have his Foreign Policy be guided by a sense of kind of good of people in the world. That sounds great again, whos going to be against rights. You ask that in a campaign. Very few people. You ask that question in a governing context and things change is very guided by by the politics of human rights. Also, he has this kind of approach of approach, things like an engineer. Were to break down the problem. Were going to analyze it. Were gong to look at its different parts. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesnt. Sometimes thats valuable and other times thats kind of set goes a field of the politics of the situation and the human orientation. Carter kind of quickly learns that thats its one thing to do that with countries that arent powerful. Its another thing to do with countries where the United States has either an alliance or is involved in sort of complex set of of rivalries like the soviet union. So im st going to sort go through the list here. A of a couple of the things carter out with negotiating panama canal treaty to give to give the canal back to to the people of panama. This was not carters this had been in the works for about decade but carter was the one who really pushed it in congress. And it became really contentious, really contentious. So around will this put u. S. Interests at risk in the region . Why are we giving this back . And so even though it happens again the politics of it kind of get away and it fits into this larger narrative of carter making the country seem weak on the national stage. The other piece of this is, is the relationship with the soviet and this is complex and evolves over over time. So carter enters into into talks trying to reduce Nuclear Weapons wants to actually approach that relationship with more of a human rights framework and less of a power politics framework now works sometimes and sometimes it doesnt. And also makes a kind of Pressure Point with this human thing because on the one hand, carter really wants to push that. And there are a lot of human rights abuses in in the former soviet union. But on the other hand, you know, that makes that makes for a kind of negative set of negotiation that youre really trying to have a relationship with a country they can they can refuse to meet or talk to you or do what you want or negotiate with you if you call out their human rights abuses. So that creates this kind of political incentive for carter to downplay that even. Its a very significant moral issue. Later, carters presidency, the soviet union invades afghanistan, and that becomes thing that carter has to has to react, reacts by by pulling out of the olympics, ending some some trade deals over things like wheat, but also not getting involved on the ground. And so its thats another piece of kind of reassessing carters legacy is what how do we how do . We assess what didnt happen. How do we assess the stuff that he didnt do. Next up, weve got from carters first year the camp david accords. This is sitting down with the leaders of israel and egypt and putting together a peace agreement, negotiating a peace agreement, something that was a really high priority for carter and won a nobel peace prize, not for carter, but for the other leaders involved. Do you read about this a little bit, suzanne . That becomes another piece of this really its a really big Foreign Policy accomplishment. But how high is this on the priority of of the American People . What constituency in the Democratic Party does this speaks to and even think about . You know, there are people who care about it, of course, but its not going to be a top line issue the way Something Like the economy and inflation are. So really is like very Foreign Policy forward. In his first year. He wants to get a lot done and some of his advisors are, you know, we need to do stuff that that our voters are going to care more about. We need to attend not just to the policy side of this, but also to the politics side of that and this discrepancy between politics and policy is just going to come up again and again as we as we talk about carter. And then got ah, well, were still not done with Foreign Policy. This is like the most weve talked about Foreign Policy all semester is weve got the iranian revolution and hostage crisis. Yet another thing that carter really has to react to an already very very tense situation and his his botched attempt to rescue american in iran who were there a year becomes just a really bad piece of kind of bad Campaign Imagery bad imagery of the success of the administration they try they send helicopters to try and rescue the hostages. They fail the helicopters crash. Eight soldiers die. And that just looks bad for the administration. So theyre not able to those events. Theyre not able to control what happens and the internal domestic politics of another country and that becomes another kind of challenge. But then on the other side of the ledger, we normalizing relationships with china, creating a diplomatic relationship with china, a very big accomplishment. So its re so its really complicated to put carters Foreign Policy into a box and it also speaks to the sort of difficult of controlling a main political narrative here if youpi make Foreign Policy the centerpiece of your administration thats great but first of all people to pay a lot of attention and second of all you are really vulnerable to external events that youve got no control over whatsoever. Wewe have a couple more policy priorities and then well get intoit legacy. You read a bit about this for today, Good Government i asked earlieris what is good governmet mean . Does anyone have any suggestions, what is good . What is Good Government . In this context. One of the things carter emphasizes his waist, making government more efficient, being a more careful steward of public funds. And so he goes after these little local projects that congress is passing district based Water Projects. It was in your reading. Articles after those. Does this remind youou of any anything . You got a present business and the National Leader and im going to push back on this local stuff. Spirit Andrew Jackson. Yeah, its a little bit of Andrew Jackson and what . The vetoing spirit and sort of the echoes of we see this come up again and again in president ial history, this idea the president re is like i get te big picture idea, members of congress are just being a little bit parochial and mineral in their vision. But it also, they have a tendency to come back and think maybe so but this isnt what my constituents want and in order to get of our past you need congress to vote on the president cant pass laws. Thats pretty much what happens with this Water Project or carted are carded after hit because the democrats are bad and indicating out about half the projects but it mostly again comes back on the administration. Hes going after these things that are important to members of his own party and so hes legislating badly even as hes trying to do Good Government. Talking about inflation briefly produce a cover of time, harder versus inflation, kind of taken on new relevance as we didith inflation again. Ination then was about twice what it is now at the end of carters presidency, and ive just g here a little bit of a text from a speech he gave in the fall of 1978 about inflation, whatbo is going to do about it. Hold downg to government spending, slash federal hiring, bring back competition. What ideology does it sound like whats what party does this sound like what this is a liberal or conservative . What do you think . Were conservative. Yeah. Th is kind of not typically what you expect to hear out of a democratic president. It sounds a lot like what youre going to hear when we get to carters success, Ronald Reagan we are seeingg very different kind ofat democrat and very different kind of Democratic Administration really moving away from some of the main points of the Democratic Party going up to that point. At that again just makes him even more on the outs with other democrats is specific with o the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and kind of traditional new deal way. So im having to get to the point where were kind of winding down all the smallest detail. You probably s a feel like ivet you with a firehose of policy detail, right . This is intentional because i want to give the effects of what this administration kind of felt like. With his agenda kind of felt like we just have all of these Different Things, all of these different details there is little criticism carter was being unfocused. I dont want us to kind of think about why would people receive it that way . Is that ais fair criticism . Is a a criticism that really links to this particular kind of context . Is this something you would say today . Now people complain the government doesnt get anything done, government is gridlocked, the twowo parties cant get alog here andti here youve got an administration that is focusing on a lot of things, fighting a lot with its own party, fighting a lot with congress but also things are getting done and that everything is great, that everything is perfect but they are accomplishing some some things they saidan they would d. I do want to move briefly though to whats not there. I think this is really notable given the scope of the carter agenda. Whats not there is a kind of front and center set of civil rights proposals. At this point wve been talking a lotil about president a grace and civil rights and kind of constitutional struggles around that its remarkable for a democraticresident, first democratic president since Lyndon Johnsonoust reallyes not be addressing this in a party where this is been such a main point. Its been such a political struggle and where africanamericans are still such an incredibly important constituency, civil rights activists are still part of the broader party coalition, and theres things there. Carters ideas on race are about business opportunities. They are about support for historically black colleges and universities that thats exactly the kind of thing like nixon. They are very surveys of economic opportunity. Thats not nothing. Thats not to say those things are badad unnecessarily good but its different than having a comprehensiveou plan about fedel involvement and equal opportunity, about bolsteg rights. These things were important to the administration and theres plenty off evidence carter was invested in these ideas. Hed agreed with these ideas but even as a person in the south, he had actually borne personal cost as a business person not joining these kind of reactive southern White Citizen Councils and thanks for when it came to being president this wasnt at the top of his agenda and yet sort have sort of a mixed legacy for that reason. In the early part of the administration the Supreme Court heard the case on affirmative action and the administration was really torn internally about exactly where to go without but the ended up coming out in general support of the concept of affirmative action. But again itsre kind of reacti. Yeah. Did his campaign focus on civil rights . Window broken promises or empty promises without . Thats a goodd question. It wasnt really a campaign focused. Either. For campaign was a lot more gentle about this kindde of Good Government kind of idea. Yeah, itt wasnt really front ad center campaign. You sort of see that also in the way the electorate shakes out, carter was quite popular in the south. It was really like the safe bet carter was a safe bet in the general election in that sense. Not pushing at that. Great question. Anyone else . So i want to spend the rest of our time really bringing down the legacy here,an everyone see that . I have a different motive for legacy. The first thing is that we think about president ial strength and weakness. And ihink we see this both in the really kind of symbolic and surficial stuff like carter wearing jeans inus the white hoe or appearing on tv, hes o tv in this cardigan telling everyone to tur the thermostat down. And also in these kind of major Foreign Policy moments, the country maybe not always be able to assert dominance in every Foreign Policy interaction, ethics like them panama canal treaty or approaching things from a human rights framework rather than more like a dominance power politics framework. How does this shape how we think about president ial strength . It really shapes the kind of symbolism and the kinds of words and language that the president s use. I think that it made president s really hesitant to use this kind of tradeoff language or to talk about things not going so great. One of the most famous moments with carter, and this kind of topic happens in 1979 when he gives whats commonly known as the malaise speech. We have heard of the malaise speech. Also is kind of note in the administration as the crisis of confidence in speech, and talked about how the country is kind of experiencing this kind of low point in this crisis of confidence in that we need to come together and can figure out where we are going. There is a fairly recent book about this that since says we totally misunderstood the speech and says in fact, after the speech that people were responsive to carter talking about the need for national sacrifice or people talking about the need for kind of the National Mood to shift and for the people of the country to do something, to make things better instead of promising the government would deliver better. This book says actually after that, people wrote it and they said we will make sacrifices to conserve and we will do this, and the people were quite responsive to the speech and it wasth just everything that happened after that, things kind of fell apart carters cabinet resigned and the administration then goes into some trouble in over that period the economy continues to be bad. You start to have the hostage situation and think falling apart in iran and those other the things that really brought down the administration, not a misspeaking about this malaise speech. Is a debate about that legacy but it was still received at the time its like the american president cant go on tv and just say things are bad. The american president cant go on tv until the American People what theyre doing wrong or whats wrong with them. And that i think hasnt really took hold, really took hold through the following decades. Really, what we think about this . Is as good or bad for a president not to be able to address the American People that way . Its kind of like theres kind of the sense of well, carter issues being a downer and want to the president whos going to tell us that we are great, the country is great, that we are all doing fine and we are not going to acknowledge tradeoff spirit is one of the ways i read this legacy, carters legacy is in light of strength and weakness and it becomes the legacy of a roadmap for what president s shouldnt do. Thebi last piece of that is a st of emphasis on big picture versuse details, that is kind of weak to be overly invested in the details. This is different, this place differently depending on who is president , and we kinda shift back and forth between these different kinds of president ial images of is the president to nerdy, to investigate details, and relatable . When obama was running people used to thinknk it was professorial, like that was a bad thing. Verses,in you do, not interested enough in thewa details, not invested enough in reading and so thisit was a common critiquef trump it was a common critique of george w. Bush, anything kind of a framework from that era as well of is it bad to to havee president whos over invested in the details of a situation versus may be under invested . And so it leaves us with this kind of open question about how president s might navigate the tradeoff. Questions about this . Comment . Throwing a bunch of questions at you ponder. You will t have time to ponder,e will come back to these questions over the course of the semester. Carter leaves this kind of, again i think what i want you to take away from this is that carter does leave the sort of roadmap like an antiroadmap for what president s should avoid, should avoid looking over invested in details but they should avoid being negative. They should avoid asking people to make so many sacrifices. I think a lot of president s since then have kind of acted accordingly. For kind of coated to i wanted to add into this is a little bit of a last entity, the rabbit incident from 1979. Does anyone know about this . Tori, your smile and way too much vector do you want to weigh in on this . He was canoeing and r he was attacked by a rabbit, and the president believed him so we brought a photo showing him in the canoe hit a big rabbit to prove he had, in fact, been attacked by a rabbit. This is the only photo that im aware of. There are very different era it is not about the footage of this. Yeah, canoeing and apparently the description of this on like it wase a smart rabbit that it wasnt like a cute little bunny rabbit. It was a wild animal and jumped into the canoe and he had to hit with a paddle picked no one really knows. Heres the picture, at this also becomes how light develops its own floor and theres all these rumors about what members of the meeting said in private to carters press secretary about what had happened but also like how they were a thinking about t and none of this if confirmed particularly well, but its this idea that press is like this becomes a symbol of carters failure in the iran hostage crisis and its failure with the soviet union the idea is the president cant getke attacked y a rabbitt and his like making himself weak by having to beat down thein sad little creature this becomes again like a second level sort of rumors that no one is sure if he is by the conversation, the sabbath or te press secretary writes a book in the 80s kind of trying to tell people what really happened. The president confessed having limited experience with raised rabbits and it was told aboua but it exemplifies this relationship with carter in the media. No, takes us back to watergate remember we talked last week about how important the press them like the press being a little bit aggressive with administrations, how important it was in the watergate story. We see carter is a different person circumstances have changed the elements of the environment are still there and carter is still contending with the sort of idea of a news media that really wants to expose the weaknesses and foibles of an administration. And so with carter its many Different Things that are quite newsworthy but also intoro this sort of war around this rabbit incident. That can illustrate this weakness if Everything Else i said was born and going to whenu forget you remember this rabbit. The second point of like a semi to address is carters legacy in the Democratic Party. This is kind of weird because expresident s whether they lose, win, whatever leads to d always have kind of an odd relationship with their Party Sometimes theyre kind r states person of the parties but also their time is done it sometimes its time to let other people lead. But carter influenced the trajectory of the Democratic Party, inom addition to still being somewhat of a figure within the party here one of the things i would want to draw your attention to is that the thing that was probably presented the most challenges for carter,es te most responsible for the problems he had as of the legacy that really stuck, the legacy that did become a kind of positive roadmap for later president ial candidates, and that this outsider idea here that is the idea that parties should nominate people who are of little bit fresh from the mess in washington this as we start to see a lot of governors being nominated and elected to president that change kind of happens with carter and so this idea of outsider politics, this nomination system, the primaries, the iowa caucus we could drive back and forth to the state and beat everybody, New Hampshire andu other early primary, i think you literally have to meet everything a person in the state if you want to win the primary. That is a Real Advantage to an outsider candidate. You dont have a lot of name recognition. Im going to go to the diner and get name recognition. That sticks that becomes a thing. Answer carter has of h this Lasting Imprint really on both parties but particularly on his own. For second we do see the Democratic Party moving to the center under carter, this becomes anything through certainly through the 80s and 90s and early to thousands. 2000s. The Democratic Party starts to move away from its new deal roots, starts to think about adopting some of his more republican frameworks about the size of the government, thinking back to that slide with inflation speech regulation speech. The idea that government is going tola play this big role in peoples lives, that its okay to talk about building out government, building up a new cabinet departments come new regulations. That becomes a lot less popular and we associate all that with Ronald Reagan who will talk about after spring break, but carter is really one of the early people to articulate these ideas and very early on the democratic side to the articulating form as a sitting president. Democrat cuts and then this kind of new strain of thought within the party and. Finally, we have a new role. The south, the south been lurking all throughout our semester. Weve had a lot of experience with the south kind of being the kind of veto point being the constituency in congress that president s are in congress that president s are worried about, playing a role in nominations, but now weve had someone from the deep south as the president , fairly unusual thing in the 20th and even 19th centuries, since the civil war. But its a new south. Carters part of this kind of cohort of new moderate to liberal southern governors so were seeing real changes in at that region as well. And you do see through the 1980s this sort of idea in the Democratic Party similar to the move to the center, trying to pivot toward the south and trying to win back the south and to make the appeals that are kind of in a moderate, modern democratic mode as opposed to the old southern democrats or on the other hand the old school, new deal northern liberalism. So carter actually has a profound effect on the shifts within his own party and within the ideas that are floating around in the country. So this is the last one. The last piece of legacy i want to talk about and in a lot of ways sort of the deepest one. This is probably the image youre most familiar with, with carter. Anyone know what hes doing there . This is a couple of years old. Hes building a house. Hes building a house with what organization, anyone know . Habitat for humanity. Yeah, habitat for humanity he didnt start, but he and his wife built it up. Its a couple of years old and read the caption at the bottom, carter returns from surgery to build homes for habitat for humanity and again, this is not that old, this is only a few years old, hes in his 90s. This is one of the postpresidency legacy of jimmy carter. They have the Carter Center he and his wife found and devoted to election, democracy and Disease Eradication and hes active in eradicating diseases in the developing world and then on the other hand, building homes with habitat for humanity which carter is out there physically building these houses. And thats really the postpresident ial legacy of carter and often pointed at as a point of contrast, he wasnt as good as president and on the other hand, a wonderful, humanitarian human being and one of the ideas that i think got deeply absorbed into the political culture, those two things are just at odds with each other, that you cant be kind of a sunday School Teacher kind of person and also be a successful president. And thats one of those the legacy ideas that i think might need to be revisited and probably will be revisited as people rethink carters legacy and rethink what happened while he was president. What do we think about this . Why do you think we might treat those things as being so, so different, this idea if you are this kind of really Service Oriented person, you cant be an effective president . Do you think this is true . What do we think . Who thinks this is true . Do you want to say why . Go for it. Maybe this is like a generalization of politics, perceived as and thats not really what life of a sunday School Teacher. Seems like got swallowed up by politics so the nature of okay, yeah, if you all had taken International Relations class you probably played like a game or done some games during this idea and politics and youve got to be thinking how youre going to play a power game of politics, right . Youre not thinking about how could i help this other person, youre thinking about how can i win, you have to think strategically. This drives how we think of politics. A paradigm with International Relations and also in other areas. Being ruthless doesnt mesh with being a good person. Anyone else have thoughts on this question . I dont really have an answer about whether these things are fundamentally different, whether this is just someone who is very effective in one context and ineffective in another. I think it deserves revisiting that one of the things that really got absorbed into the culture is the idea that these things are totally incompatible and with a case of one, and with people kind of coming off the end of the carters presidency, quite raw about the whole thing, theres a sort of international humiliation, that theres this terrible inflation, and all of these things are sort of bad, that that might lead people to make a very general conclusion and might not actually be always true. Might not be the case that its not ever possible to bring these two things together and it seems a little bit, to me, a little bit quick to give up the game, quick to give up the idea that the presidency can be kind of compatible with service or democracy or a lot of the constitutional themes that we have been talking about, that the presidency just cant be reconciled with those. And so, i think that we will see, if youll revisit carters legacy, kind of revisittation of whether this presidency was more effective than people think. Whether the things about carter that kind of foreshadow his post presidency, kind of emphasis on human rights, his emphasis on vision, his emphasis on the environment, that these things actually, were parts of the presidency that had some success or that brought something good to the table and maybe that thats it depends on where you look to assess the carter presidency. Are there thoughts about this . Okay. So im going to kind of close this up, carter is a transitial president , both for the country and for the class. So kind of identified carter here as a transitional president around this idea of the old party going into decline. We see that with the change in nominations. We see that with t kind of decline of this new deal Democratic Party and carter comes in asresident and again, who really makes this outsider vision very popular way t run for president , a very successful way to run for president. We have, moving awa from kind of ide of bigger government toward an idea that government shou be efficient and this really complicated inherance for how strong the presidency should be. So on the one hand the sort of craving for stronger symbols, for president s to avoid a rabbit moment at all costs, to be attentive to how theyre negotiating with congress to be attentive to how it looks like theyre negotiating with international actors, but at the same time the watergate baggage hasnt gone away and also contending with suspicion for the government being corrupt and all of that kind of stuff. So as in this sort of goldilocks and the 3 bears for president , if nixon and the presidency up to that point was too strong and carter overcorrecting was too weak in those symbols, president s now have to think how to present themselves as just right and teas thats really constraining and carter is a turning point, but we think about the presidency and how we think about the post watergate presidency. For us in this class, carter represents our transition between our constitutional unit, where its been building up, talking through these themes about how president s have enacted their constitutional obligations, now theyve navigated the demands of civil rights and federalism and now were moving into a period where were going to focus on the public presidency and again were back in the president and how they relate to the people, how they relate to their parties and how those things pull them in different directions, how they relate to social movements. Thats how were going to pick up next time is really delving into that, delving into that unit. Anyone have any final thoughts or questions before we wrap things up here . Okay. So, for next time, thursday, we are really peeling back. Weve kind of talked here about how carter related to the new Deal Coalition and the Democratic Party. Weve gone over that, but well really be back in that and immerse ourselves in that on thursday and kind of move backward in time and ask how do we get here. So, that will be a lecture on fdr and the Democratic Party on thursday, get excited. But thus far, hopefully this posts questions about the Carter Legacy that we can chew on over the semester. If youre enjoying American History tv, then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming problem like lectures in history, the presidency and more. 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