I think Carter is a decent human being, served his country, a devout Christian, and has done a lot of good in his post-presidency. But he was a terrible president. My father, a lifetime straight-ticket D voter, could not bring himself to vote for him a second time. The economy of the late 70s was a nightmare. High inflation, double-digit interest rates, low growth. Energy crisis (I remember sitting in school with most of the lights off and wearing winter coats because the heat was set so low). Iranian hostage crisis, and rescue debacle. It was not a good time.
Absolutely. We often judge Presidents as though the state of the country today was defined by their decisions yesterday. Or even by their predecessors a few months or years ago.
And they shouldn't avoid blame! They are in the most powerful seat in the US government.
But at the same time, economic timescales are lengthy, and often more than 4 or 8 years.
I get why: because the people pushing that framing are doing so as political PR (positive or negative). But we shouldn't confuse the inaccurate framing with the underlying truth.
I think it’s reasonable to judge presidents for ~4-6 months after they take office to six months after the next guy takes office. Plenty of presidents left just before or after things when to shit, but you only get 4 years, including a lame duck period, which means moving quickly.
Sure they don’t control the legislature but they do have quite a bit of leverage to make real compromises.
Why is the president responsible for how the economy goes? To me it seems like one of those things that's easy to mess up but hard to improve. It's also the result of a lot of interactions, so blaming or crediting the president seems unfounded.
The president heads the executive and at the and of the day is responsible for setting industrial policy, economic policy and foreign relations. Of course he is responsible (but we all know that in truth the country is run by appointed civil servants, all of who are under 40 years old).
