Communism is a specific stage of socioeconomic development
predicated upon a superabundance of material wealth, which is
postulated to arise from advances in production technology and
corresponding changes in the social relations of production. This would allow for distribution based on needs and social relations based on freely-associated individuals. The term communist society should be distinguished from the Western concept of the communist state, the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.
Xue Muqiao wrote that within the socialist mode of production there were several phases.
Su Shaozhi and Feng Langrui article created two subdivisions within the
socialist mode of production; the first phase was the transition from
the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of
production—the phase in which the proletariat seized power and set-up
the dictatorship of the proletariat and in which undeveloped socialism
was created. The second phase was advanced socialism; the socialism that
Marx wrote about.
The notion that socialism and Communism are distinct historical stages is alien to Karl Marx's work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death.
It is said that Karl Marx distinguishes between two phases of marketless
communism: an initial phase, with labor vouchers, and a higher phase,
with free access.
Economic aspects
A communist economic system would be characterized by advanced
productive technology that enables material abundance, which in turn
would enable the free distribution of most or all economic output and
the holding of the means of producing this output in common. In this
respect communism is differentiated from socialism, which, out of economic necessity, restricts access to articles of consumption and services based on one's contribution.
In further contrast to previous economic systems, communism would
be characterized by the holding of natural resources and the means of
production in common as opposed to them being privately owned (as in the
case of capitalism)
or owned by public or cooperative organizations that similarly restrict
their access (as in the case of socialism). In this sense, communism
involves the "negation of property" insofar as there would be little
economic rationale for exclusive control over production assets in an
environment of material abundance.
The fully developed communist economic system is postulated to
develop from a preceding socialist system. Marx held the view that
socialism—a system based on social ownership
of the means of production—would enable progress toward the development
of fully developed communism by further advancing productive
technology. Under socialism, with its increasing levels of automation,
an increasing proportion of goods would be distributed freely.
Social aspects
Individuality, freedom and creativity
A communist society would free individuals from long working hours by
first automating production to an extent that the average length of the
working day is reduced
and second by eliminating the exploitation inherent in the division
between workers and owners. A communist system would thus free
individuals from alienation in the sense of having one's life structured
around survival (making a wage or salary in a capitalist system), which
Karl Marx
referred to as a transition from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm
of freedom". As a result, a communist society is envisioned as being
composed of an intellectually-inclined population with both the time and
resources to pursue its creative
hobbies and genuine interests, and to contribute to creative social
wealth in this manner. Marx considered "true richness" to be the amount
of time one has at his disposal to pursue one's creative passions.Marx's notion of communism is in this way radically individualistic.
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which
is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in
the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material
production.
Marx's concept of the "realm of freedom" goes hand-in-hand with his idea of the ending of the division of labor,
which would not be required in a society with highly automated
production and limited work roles. In a communist society, economic
necessity and relations would cease to determine cultural and social
relations. As scarcity is eliminated, alienated labor would cease and people would be free to pursue their individual goals.
Additionally, it is believed that the principle of "from each according
to his ability, to each according to his needs" could be fulfilled due
to scarcity being non-existent.
Politics, law and governance
Marx
and Engels maintained that a communist society would have no need for
the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society. The
capitalist state mainly exists to enforce hierarchical economic
relations, to enforce the exclusive control of property, and to regulate
capitalistic economic activities—all of which would be non-applicable
to a communist system.
Engels noted that in a socialist system the primary function of
public institutions will shift from being about the creation of laws and
the control of people into a technical role as an administrator of
technical production processes, with a decrease in the scope of
traditional politics as scientific administration overtakes the role of
political decision-making.
Communist society is characterized by democratic processes, not merely
in the sense of electoral democracy, but in the broader sense of open
and collaborative social and workplace environments.
Marx never clearly specified whether or not he thought a communist society would be just;
other thinkers have speculated that he thought communism would
transcend justice and create society without conflicts, thus, without
the needs for rules of justice.
Transitional stages
Marx also wrote that between capitalist and communist society, there would be a transitory period known as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
During this preceding phase of societal development, capitalist
economic relationships would gradually be abolished and replaced with
socialism. Natural resources would become public property, while all manufacturing centers and workplaces would become socially owned and democraticallymanaged. Production would be organized by scientific assessment and planning,
thus eliminating what Marx called the "anarchy in production". The
development of the productive forces would lead to the marginalization
of human labor to the highest possible extent, to be gradually replaced
by automated labor.
Open-source and peer production
Many aspects of a communist economy have emerged in recent decades in the form of open-source software and hardware,
where source code and thus the means of producing software is held in
common and freely accessible to everyone; and to the processes of peer production where collaborative work processes produce freely available software that does not rely on monetary valuation.
Ray Kurzweil
posits that the goals of communism will be realized by advanced
technological developments in the 21st century, where the intersection
of low manufacturing costs, material abundance and open-source design
philosophies will enable the realization of the maxim "from each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
In Soviet ideology
The communist economic system was officially enumerated as the ultimate goal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its party platform. According to the 1986 Programme of the CPSU:
Communism is a classless social
system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and
with full social equality of all members of society. Under communism,
the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of
the productive forces on the basis of continuous progress in science
and technology, all the springs of social wealth will flow abundantly,
and the great principle "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs" will be implemented. Communism is a highly
organised society of free, socially conscious working people a society
in which public self-government will be established, a society in which
labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement
of everyone, a clearly recognised necessity, and the ability of each
person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people.
The material and technical foundation of communism presupposes
the creation of those productive forces that open up opportunities for
the full satisfaction of the reasonable requirements of society and the
individual. All productive activities under communism will be based on
the use of highly efficient technical facilities and technologies, and
the harmonious interaction of man and nature will be ensured.
In the highest phase of communism the directly social character
of labor and production will become firmly established. Through the
complete elimination of the remnants of the old division of labor and
the essential social differences associated with it, the process of
forming a socially homogeneous society will be completed.
Communism signifies the transformation of the system of socialist
self-government by the people, of socialist democracy into the highest
form of organization of society: communist public self-government. With
the maturation of the necessary socioeconomic and ideological
preconditions and the involvement of all citizens in administration, the
socialist state—given appropriate international conditions—will, as
Lenin noted, increasingly become a transitional form "from a state to a
non-state". The activities of state bodies will become non-political in
nature, and the need for the state as a special political institution
will gradually disappear.
The inalienable feature of the communist mode of life is a high
level of consciousness, social activity, discipline, and self-discipline
of members of society, in which observance of the uniform, generally
accepted rules of communist conduct will become an inner need and habit
of every person.
Communism is a social system under which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all.
In Vladimir Lenin's
political theory, a classless society would be a society controlled by
the direct producers, organized to produce according to socially managed
goals. Such a society, Lenin suggested, would develop habits that would
gradually make political representation unnecessary, as the radically
democratic nature of the Soviets would lead citizens to come to agree
with the representatives' style of management. Only in this environment,
Lenin suggested, could the state wither away, ushering in a period of stateless communism.
In Soviet ideology, Marx's concepts of the "lower and higher phases of communism" articulated in the Critique of the Gotha Program were reformulated as the stages of "socialism" and "communism". The Soviet state claimed to have begun the phase of "socialist construction" during the implementation of the first Five-Year Plans
during the 1930s, which introduced a centrally planned,
nationalized/collectivized economy. The 1962 Program of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, published under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, claimed that socialism had been firmly established in the USSR, and that the state would now progress to the "full-scale construction of communism",though this may be understood to refer to the "technical foundations"
of communism more so than the withering away of the state and the
division of labor per se. However, even in the final edition of its
program before the party's dissolution, the CPSU did not claim to have
fully established communism, instead claiming that the society was undergoing a very slow and gradual process of transition.
Several works of utopian fiction have portrayed versions of a communist society. Some examples include: Assemblywomen (391 BC) by Aristophanes,
an early piece of utopian satire which mocks Athenian democracy's
excesses through the story of the Athenian women taking control of the
government and instituting a proto-communistutopia;
The economy and society of the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek
franchise has been described as a communist society where material
scarcity has been eliminated due to the wide availability of replicator
technology that enables free distribution of output, where there is no
need for money.
The Culture novels by Iain M Banks are centered on a communist post-scarcity economywhere technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is automated, and there is no use for money or property (aside from personal possessions with sentimental value).
Humans in the Culture are free to pursue their own interests in an open
and socially-permissive society. The society has been described by some
commentators as "communist-bloc" or "anarcho-communist". Banks' close friend and fellow science fiction writer Ken MacLeod
has said that The Culture can be seen as a realization of Marx's
communism, but adds that "however friendly he was to the radical left,
Iain had little interest in relating the long-range possibility of
utopia to radical politics in the here and now. As he saw it, what
mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing
technological progress, especially space development, and in the
meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world
were rational and humane."
Leonid Brezhnev, Viktor Sukhodrev, and Richard Nixon during Brezhnev's 1973 visit to Washington, D.C., a high-water mark in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union
Détente (/deɪˈtɑːnt/day-TAHNT, also UK: /ˈdeɪtɒnt/DAY-tont; French for 'relaxation', French pronunciation:[detɑ̃t])
is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones,
through verbal communication. The diplomacy term originates from around
1912, when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduce tensions.
The term is often used to refer to a period of general easing of geopolitical tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. Détente began in 1969 as a core element of the foreign policy of U.S. president Richard Nixon. In an effort to avoid an escalation of conflict with the Eastern Bloc, the Nixon administration
promoted greater dialogue with the Soviet government in order to
facilitate negotiations over arms control and other bilateral
agreements. Détente was known in Russian as разрядка (razryadka), loosely meaning "relaxation of tension".
While the recognized era of détente formally began under the Richard Nixon presidency,
there were prior instances of relationship relaxation between the
United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis
in 1962, both the United States and Soviet Union agreed to install a
direct hotline between Washington and Moscow, colloquially known as the red telephone.
The hotline enabled leaders of both countries to communicate rapidly in
the event of another potentially catastrophic confrontation.
The period of détente in the Cold War saw the ratification of major disarmament treaties such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the creation of more symbolic pacts such as the Helsinki Accords. An ongoing debate among historians exists as to how successful the détente period was in achieving peace.
In response to the heightening tensions, U.S. secretary of state George P. Shultz shifted the Ronald Reagan administration's foreign policy towards another period of de-escalation with the Soviet Union especially following Mikhail Gorbachev coming to power. During Gorbachev's leadership, dialogue over the START arms reduction treaty meaningfully progressed. Diplomatic overtures were continued by the succeeding Bush administration,
including the ratification of the START treaty, up until the collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1991. This period of a renewed de-escalation from
1983 to 1991 is sometimes referred to as the second period of détente.
According to Eric Grynaviski, "Soviet and U.S. decision-makers had two very different understandings about what détente
meant" while simultaneously holding "an inaccurate belief that both
sides shared principles and expectations for future behaviour."
When Nixon came into office in 1969, several important détente treaties were developed. The Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact sent an offer to the U.S. and the rest of the West that urged a summit on "security and cooperation in Europe" to be held. The West agreed, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks began towards actual limits on the nuclear capabilities of both superpowers, which ultimately led to the signing of the SALT I treaty in 1972. It limited each power's nuclear arsenals but was quickly rendered outdated as a result of the development of MIRVs. Also in 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty were concluded, and talks on SALT II began the same year. The Washington Summit of 1973
further advanced mutual and international relations through discussion
of diplomatic cooperation and continued discussion regarding limitations
on nuclear weaponry.
In 1975, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) met and produced the Helsinki Accords, a wide-ranging series of agreements on economic, political, and human rights issues. The CSCE was initiated by the Soviet Union and involved 35 states throughout Europe. One of the most prevalent issues after the conference was the question of human rights violations in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Constitution directly violated the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, and that issue became a prominent point of separation between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The Jimmy Carter administration had been supporting human rights groups inside the Soviet Union, and Leonid Brezhnev accused the US of interference in other countries' internal affairs.
That prompted intense discussion of whether or not other nations may
interfere if basic human rights, such as freedom of speech and religion,
are violated. This basic disagreement between the superpowers, a
democracy, and a one-party state,
did not allow that issue to be reconciled. Furthermore, the Soviets
proceeded to defend their internal policies on human rights by attacking
American support of South Africa, Chile, and other countries that were
known to violate many of the same human rights.
In July 1975, the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project
(ASTP) became the first international space mission; three American
astronauts and two Soviet cosmonauts docked their spacecraft and
conducted joint experiments. The mission had been preceded by five years
of political negotiation and technical co-operation, including
exchanges of American and Soviet engineers between both countries' space
centres.
Trade relations between both blocs increased substantially during the era of détente.
Most significant were the vast shipments of grain that were sent from
the West to the Soviet Union each year and helped to make up for the
failure of the kolkhoz, the Soviet collective farms.
At the same time, the Jackson–Vanik amendment, signed into law by U.S. president Gerald Ford on 3 January 1975 after a unanimous vote by both houses of the U.S. Congress,
was designed to leverage trade relations between the Americans and the
Soviets. It linked U.S. trade to improvements in human rights in the
Soviet Union, particularly by allowing refuseniks to emigrate. It also added to the most favoured nation status a clause that no country that resisted emigration could be awarded that status, which provided a method to link geopolitics to human rights.
End of Vietnam War
Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, moved toward détente with the Soviet Union
in the early 1970s. They hoped, in return, for Soviets to help the U.S.
extricate or remove itself from Vietnam. People then started to notice
the consciousness with which US politicians started to act.
Nixon and Brezhnev signed an ABM treaty in Moscow on 26 May 1972 as well as SALT I, the Interim Agreement, which temporarily capped the number of strategic arms (MIRVs, SLBMs, and ICBMs). That was a show of détente militarily since an expansion of nuclear ballistic arms had started to occur.
The goal of Nixon and Kissinger was to use arms control to promote a much broader policy of détente, which could then allow the resolution of other urgent problems through what Nixon called "linkage." David Tal argued:
The linkage between strategic arms
limitations and outstanding issues such as the Middle East, Berlin and,
foremost, Vietnam thus became central to Nixon's and Kissinger's policy
of détente. Through employment of linkage, they hoped to change
the nature and course of U.S. foreign policy, including U.S. nuclear
disarmament and arms control policy, and to separate them from those
practiced by Nixon's predecessors. They also intended, through linkage,
to make U.S. arms control policy part of détente. ... His policy
of linkage had in fact failed. It failed mainly because it was based on
flawed assumptions and false premises, the foremost of which was that
the Soviet Union wanted strategic arms limitation agreement much more
than the United States did.
A significant example of an event contributing to détente was the handshake that took place in space. In July 1975, the first Soviet-American joint space flight was conducted, the ASTP.
Its primary goal was the creation of an international docking system,
which would allow two different spacecraft to join in orbit. That would
allow both crews on board to collaborate on space exploration. The project marked the end of the Space Race, which had started in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1, and allowed tensions between the Americans and the Soviets to decrease significantly.
Concurrent conflicts
As direct relations thawed, increased tensions continued between both superpowers through their proxies, especially in the Third World. Conflicts in South Asia and the Middle East
in 1973 saw the Soviet Union and the U.S. backing their respective
surrogates, such as in Afghanistan, with war material and diplomatic
posturing. In Latin America, the U.S. continued to block any left-wing electoral shifts in the region by supporting unpopular right-wingmilitary coups and military dictatorships. Meanwhile, there were also many communist or left-wing guerrillas around the region, which were militarily and economically backed by the Soviet Union, China and Cuba.
During much of the early détente period, the Vietnam War continued to rage. Both sides still mistrusted each other, and the potential for nuclear war remained constant, notably during the 1973 Yom Kippur War when the U.S. raised its alert level to DEFCON 3, the highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Both sides continued aiming thousands of nuclear warheads atop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at each other's cities, maintaining submarines with long-range nuclear weapon capability (submarine-launched ballistic missiles,
or SLBMs) in the world's oceans, keeping hundreds of nuclear-armed
aircraft on constant alert, and guarding contentious borders in Korea and Europe with large ground forces. Espionage efforts remained a high priority, and defectors, reconnaissance satellites, and signal intercepts measured each other's intentions to try to gain a strategic advantage.
Reignited tensions and the end of the first détente
The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
carried out in an attempt to shore up a struggling pro-Soviet regime,
led to harsh international criticisms, and a boycott of the 1980 Summer
Olympics, held in Moscow. U.S. president Jimmy Carter boosted the budget of the U.S. Department of Defense and began financial aid to the office of Pakistan president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who, in turn, subsidized the anti-Soviet radical Islamist group of Afghan mujahideen fighters.
Another contributing factor in the decline in the popularity of détente as a desirable U.S. policy was the inter-service rivalry between the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense. From 1973 to 1977, there were three secretaries worth mentioning: Elliot Richardson, James Schlesinger, and Donald Rumsfeld.
Schlesinger's tenure as secretary of defense was plagued by notably
poor relations with Kissinger, one of the most prominent advocates of détente in the U.S.
Their poor working relationship bled into their professional
relationship, and policy clashes would increasingly occur. They
ultimately resulted in Schlesinger's dismissal in 1975. However, his
replacement, Rumsfeld, had similar issues with Kissinger although their
disagreements stemmed more from domestic resistance to détente.
As a result, clashes on policy continued between the State and the
Defense Departments. Rumsfeld thought that Kissinger was too complacent
about the growing Soviet strength. Although Rumsfeld largely agreed with
Kissinger's stance that the U.S. held military superiority over the
Soviet Union, he argued that Kissinger's public optimism would prevent
Congress from allowing the Defense Department the funds that Rumsfeld
believed were required to maintain the favorable gap between the US and
the Soviets. Rumsfeld responded by regularly presenting a more alarmist view of the superior strength of the Soviets.
In response to the stranglehold of influence by Kissinger in the
Nixon and Ford administrations and the later decline in influence over
foreign policy by the Department of Defense, Richardson, Schlesinger,
and Rumsfeld all used the growing antipathy in the U.S. for the Soviet
Union to undermine Kissinger's attempts to achieve a comprehensive arms
reduction treaty. That helped to portray the entire notion of détente as an untenable policy.
The 1980 U.S. presidential election saw Reagan elected on a platform opposed to the concessions of détente.
Negotiations on SALT II were abandoned as a result. However, during the
later years of his presidency, Reagan and Soviet General Secretary
Gorbachev pursued a policy that was considered to be détente. However, the Reagan administration talked about a "winnable" nuclear war and led to the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative and the Third World policy of funding irregular and paramilitary death squads in Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, Cambodia, and Afghanistan.
On 17 December 2014, U.S. president Barack Obama and Cuba president Raúl Castro
resolved to restore diplomatic relations between Cuba and the U.S. The
restoration agreement had been negotiated in secret in the preceding
months. The negotiations were facilitated by Pope Francis
and hosted mostly by the Canadian government, which had warmer
relations with Cuba at that time. Meetings were held in both Canada and
the Vatican City.
The agreement would see some U.S. travel restrictions lifted, fewer
restrictions on remittances, greater access to the Cuban financial
system for U.S. banks, and the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Havana
and the Cuban embassy in Washington, which both closed in 1961 after
the breakup of diplomatic relations as a result of Cuba's alliance with
the Soviet Union.
On 14 April 2015, the Obama administration announced the removal of Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
Cuba was officially removed from the list on 29 May 2015. On 20 July
2015, the Cuban and U.S. interest sections in Washington and Havana were
upgraded to embassies. On 20 March 2016, Obama became the first U.S.
president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge visited in 1928. In 2017, Donald Trump,
Obama's successor, stated that he was "canceling" the Obama
administration's deals with Cuba, while also expressing that a new deal
could be negotiated between the Cuban and U.S. governments.
Carter took office during a period of "stagflation", as the economy experienced a combination of high inflation
and slow economic growth. His budgetary policies centered on taming
inflation by reducing deficits and government spending. Responding to
energy concerns that had persisted through much of the 1970s, his
administration enacted a national energy policy designed for long-term
energy conservation and the development of alternative resources. In the
short term the country was beset by an energy crisis in 1979 which was overlapped by a recession
in 1980. Carter sought reforms to the country's welfare, health care,
and tax systems, but was largely unsuccessful, partly due to poor
relations with Democrats in Congress.
The final fifteen months of Carter's presidential tenure were marked by several additional major crises, including the Iran hostage crisis and economic malaise. Ted Kennedy, a prominent liberal Democrat who protested Carter's opposition to a national health insurance system, challenged Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries.
Boosted by public support for his policies in late 1979 and early 1980,
Carter rallied to defeat Kennedy and win re-nomination. He lost the
1980 presidential election in a landslide to Republican nominee Ronald
Reagan. Polls of historians and political scientists generally rank Carter as a below-average president, although his post-presidential activities are viewed more favorably.
Carter sought to appeal to various groups in the party; his advocacy for cutting defense spending and reining in the CIA appealed to liberals, while his emphasis on eliminating government waste appealed to conservatives.[4] Carter won the most votes of any candidate in the Iowa caucus, and he dominated media coverage in advance of the New Hampshire primary, which he also won.[5]
Carter's subsequent victory over Wallace in the Florida and North
Carolina primaries eliminated Carter's main rival in the South.[6] With a victory over Jackson in the Pennsylvania primary, Carter established himself as the clear front-runner.[7] Despite the late entrance of Senator Frank Church and Governor Jerry Brown into the race, Carter clinched the nomination on the final day of the primaries.[8] The 1976 Democratic National Convention proceeded harmoniously and, after interviewing several candidates, Carter chose
Mondale as his running mate. The selection of Mondale was well received
by many liberal Democrats, many of whom had been skeptical of Carter.[9]
The Republicans experienced a contested convention that ultimately nominated incumbent President Gerald Ford, who had succeeded to the presidency in 1974 after the resignation of Richard Nixon due to the latter's involvement in the Watergate scandal.[9]
With the Republicans badly divided, and with Ford facing questions over
his competence as president, polls taken in August 1976 showed Carter
with a 15-point lead.[10]
In the general election campaign, Carter continued to promote a
centrist agenda, seeking to define new Democratic positions in the
aftermath of the tumultuous 1960s. Above all, Carter attacked the
political system, defining himself as an "outsider" who would reform
Washington in the post-Watergate era.[11] In response, Ford attacked Carter's supposed "fuzziness", arguing that Carter had taken vague stances on major issues.[10] Carter and President Ford faced off in three televised debates during the 1976 election,[12] the first such debates since 1960.[12]
Ford was generally viewed as the winner of the first debate, but he
made a major gaffe in the second debate when he stated there was "no
Soviet domination of Eastern Europe."[a]
The gaffe put an end to Ford's late momentum, and Carter helped his own
campaign with a strong performance in the third debate. Polls taken
just before election day showed a very close race.[13]
Carter won the election with 50.1% of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes,
while Ford won 48% of the popular vote and 240 electoral votes. The
1976 presidential election represents the lone Democratic presidential
election victory between the elections of 1964 and 1992.
Carter fared particularly well in the Northeast and the South, while
Ford swept the West and won much of the Midwest. In the concurrent congressional elections, Democrats increased their majorities in both the House and Senate.[14]
Outgoing President Gerald Ford and President-elect Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office on November 22, 1976
Preliminary planning for Carter's presidential transition had already been underway for months before his election.
Carter was the first presidential candidate to allot significant funds
and a significant number of personnel to a pre-election transition
planning effort, which subsequently would become standard practice.
Carter made an innovation with his presidential transition that would
influence all subsequent presidential transitions, taking a methodical
approach to his transition, and having a larger and more formal
operation than past presidential transitions had.
In his inaugural address, Carter said, "We have learned that more is
not necessarily better, that even our great nation has its recognized
limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all
problems." Carter had campaigned on a promise to eliminate the trappings of the "Imperial Presidency,"
and began taking action according to that promise on Inauguration Day,
breaking with recent history and security protocols by walking from the
Capitol to the White House in his inaugural parade. His first steps in
the White House went further in this direction: Carter cut the size of
the 500-member White House staff by one-third and reduced the perks for
the president and cabinet members. He also fulfilled a campaign promise by issuing a "full complete and unconditional pardon" (amnesty) for Vietnam War-era draft evaders.
Administration
Though Carter had campaigned against Washington insiders, many of his
top appointees had served in previous presidential administrations. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, and Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal had been high-ranking officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Other notable appointments included Charles Schultze as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger as a presidential assistant on energy issues, federal judge Griffin Bell as Attorney General, and Patricia Roberts Harris, the first African-American woman to serve in the cabinet, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Carter appointed several close associates from Georgia to staff the Executive Office of the President. He initially offered the position of White House Chief of Staff to two of his advisers, Hamilton Jordan and Charles Kirbo,
but both declined. Carter decided not to have a chief of staff, instead
implementing a system in which cabinet members would have more direct
access to the president. Bert Lance was selected to lead the Office of Management and Budget, while Jordan became a key aide and adviser. Other appointees from Georgia included Jody Powell as White House Press Secretary, Jack Watson as cabinet secretary, and Stuart E. Eizenstat as head of the Domestic Policy Staff. To oversee the administration's foreign policy, Carter relied on several members of the Trilateral Commission, including Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski emerged as one of Carter's closest advisers, and Carter made use of both the National Security Council and Vance's State Department in developing and implementing foreign policy. The hawkish Brzezinski clashed frequently with Vance, who pushed for detente with the Soviet Union.
Vice President Mondale served as a key adviser on both foreign and domestic issues. First Lady Rosalynn Carter
emerged as an important part of the administration, sitting in on
several Cabinet meetings and serving as a sounding board, advisor, and
surrogate for the president. She traveled abroad to negotiate foreign
policy, and some polling found that she was tied with Mother Teresa as the most admired woman in the world.
Carter shook up the White House staff in mid-1978, bringing in advertising executive Gerald Rafshoon to serve as the White House Communications Director and Anne Wexler to lead the Office of Public Liaison.
Carter implemented broad personnel changes in the White House and
cabinet in mid-1979. Five cabinet secretaries left office, including
Blumenthal, Bell, and Joseph Califano, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. Jordan was selected as the president's first chief of staff, while Alonzo L. McDonald, formerly of McKinsey & Company, became the White House staff director. Federal Reserve Chairman G. William Miller replaced Blumenthal as Secretary of the Treasury, Benjamin Civiletti took office as Attorney General, and Charles Duncan Jr. became Secretary of Energy. After Vance resigned in 1980, Carter appointed Edmund Muskie, a well-respected Senator with whom Carter had developed friendly relations, to serve as Secretary of State.
Among presidents who served at least one full term, Carter is the only one who never made an appointment to the Supreme Court. Carter appointed 56 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 203 judges to the United States district courts. Two of his circuit court appointees – Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – were later promoted to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton. Carter was the first president to make demographic diversity a key priority in the selection of judicial nominees.
During Carter's presidency, the number of female circuit court judges
increased from one to twelve, the number of non-white male circuit
judges increased from six to thirteen, the number of female district
court judges increased from four to 32, and the number of non-white male
district court judges increased from 23 to 55. Carter appointed the
first female African-American circuit court judge, Amalya Lyle Kearse, the first Hispanic circuit court judge, Reynaldo Guerra Garza, and the first female Hispanic district court judge, Carmen Consuelo Cerezo. Federal Judicial Center data shows that Carter appointed more women (41) and people of color (57) than had been appointed by all past presidents combined (10 women and 35 people of color).
Domestic affairs
Robert Templeton's portrait of President Carter, displayed in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
President Carter was not a product of the New Deal traditions of liberal Northern Democrats. Instead he traced his ideological background to the Progressive Era. He was thus much more conservative than the dominant liberal wing of the party could accept. British historian Iwan Morgan argues:
Carter traced his political values to early twentieth-century
southern progressivism with its concern for economy and efficiency in
government and compassion for the poor. He described himself as a fiscal
conservative, but liberal on matters like civil rights, the
environment, and "helping people to overcome handicaps to lead fruitful
lives," an ideological construct that appeared to make him the legatee
of Dwight D. Eisenhower rather than Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Relations with Congress
Carter
successfully campaigned as a Washington "outsider" critical of both
President Gerald Ford and the Democratic Congress; as president, he
continued this theme. This refusal to play by the rules of Washington
contributed to the Carter administration's difficult relationship with
Congress. After the election, the President demanded the power to
reorganize the executive branch, alienating powerful Democrats like
Speaker Tip O'Neill and Jack Brooks. During the Nixon administration,
Congress had passed a series of reforms that removed power from the
president, and most members of Congress were unwilling to restore that
power even with a Democrat now in office. Unreturned phone calls, verbal insults, and an unwillingness to trade
political favors soured many on Capitol Hill and affected the
president's ability to enact his agenda.
In many cases, these failures of communication stemmed not from
intentional neglect, but rather from poor organization of the
administration's congressional liaison functions. President Carter attempted to woo O'Neill, Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd,
and other members of Congress through personal engagement, but he was
generally unable to rally support for his programs through these
meetings. Carter also erred in focusing on too many priorities at once, especially in the first months of his presidency.
Democrats in Congress were displeased with his moralistic,
executive-oriented, rational approach to decision-making and his
reluctance to accept standard congressional methods of compromise,
patronage, and log-rolling.
A few months after his term started, Carter issued a "hit list" of 19 projects that he claimed were "pork barrel" spending. He said that he would veto any legislation that contained projects on this list.
Congress responded by passing a bill that combined several of the
projects that Carter objected to with economic stimulus measures that
Carter favored. Carter chose to sign the bill, but his criticism of the
alleged "pork barrel" projects cost him support in Congress.
These struggles set a pattern for Carter's presidency, and he would
frequently clash with Congress for the remainder of his tenure.
Budget policies
Jimmy Carter and his cabinet in 1978
On taking office, Carter proposed an economic stimulus package that
would give each citizen a $50 tax rebate, cut corporate taxes by $900
million, and increase spending on public works. The limited spending
involved in the package reflected Carter's fiscal conservatism, as he
was more concerned with avoiding inflation and balancing the budget than
addressing unemployment. Carter's resistance to higher federal spending
drew attacks from many members of his own party, who wanted to lower
the unemployment rate through federal public works projects. Carter
signed several measures designed to address unemployment in 1977,
including an extension of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, but he continued to focus primarily on reducing deficits and inflation. In November 1978, Carter signed the Revenue Act of 1978, a $19 billion tax cut.
Federal budget deficits
throughout Carter's term remained at around the $70 billion level
reached in 1976, but as a percentage of GDP the deficits fell from 4%
when he took office to 2.5% in the 1980–81 fiscal year. The national debt of the United States increased by about $280 billion, from $620 billion in early 1977 to $900 billion in late 1980. However, because economic growth outpaced the growth in nominal debt, the federal government's debt as a percentage of gross domestic product decreased slightly, from 33.6% in early 1977 to 31.8% in late 1980.
Energy
National Energy Act
Carter at Three Mile Island nuclear accident April 1, 1979
In 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), based in the Middle East, had reduced output to raise world prices and to hurt Israel and its allies, including the United States. This sparked the 1973 Oil Crisis, a period of high oil prices, which in turn forced higher prices throughout the American economy and slowed economic growth. The United States continued to face energy issues in the following years, and during the winter of 1976–1977 natural gas
shortages forced the closure of many schools and factories, leading to
the temporary layoffs of hundreds of thousands of workers. By 1977, energy policy was one of the greatest challenges facing the United States. Oil imports had increased 65% annually since 1973, and the U.S. consumed over twice as much energy, per capita, as other developed countries.
Upon taking office, Carter asked James Schlesinger to develop a plan to address the energy crisis.
In an address to the nation of April 18, 1977, Carter called the energy
crisis as, apart from preventing war, "the greatest challenge that our
country will face during our lifetime." He called for energy
conservation, increased use of U.S. coal reserves, and carefully
controlled expansion of nuclear power. His chief goals were to limit the
growth of energy demand to an increase of two percent a year, cut oil
imports in half, and establish a new strategic petroleum reserve containing a six-month supply. Carter won congressional approval for the creation of the Department of Energy,
and he named Schlesinger as the first head of that department.
Schlesinger presented an energy plan that contained 113 provisions, the
most important of which were taxes on domestic oil production and
gasoline consumption. The plan also provided for tax credits for energy
conservation, taxes on automobiles with low fuel efficiency, and mandates to convert from oil or natural gas to coal power.
The House approved much of Carter's plan in August 1977, but the
Senate passed a series of watered-down energy bills that included few of
Carter's proposals. Negotiations with Congress dragged on into 1978,
but Carter signed the National Energy Act
in November 1978. Many of Carter's original proposals were not included
in the legislation, but the act deregulated natural gas and encouraged
energy conservation and the development of renewable energy through tax credits.
Another energy shortage hit the United States in 1979, forcing
millions of frustrated motorists into long waits at gasoline stations.
In response, Carter asked Congress to deregulate the price of domestic
oil. At the time, domestic oil prices were not set by the world market,
but rather by the complex price controls of the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act
(EPCA). Oil companies strongly favored the deregulation of prices,
since it would increase their profits, but some members of Congress
worried that deregulation would contribute to inflation. In late April
and early May the Gallup poll
found only 14 percent of the public believed that America was in an
actual energy shortage. The other 77 percent believed that this was
brought on by oil companies just to make a profit. Carter paired the deregulation proposal with a windfall profits tax,
which would return about half of the new profits of the oil companies
to the federal government. Carter used a provision of EPCA to phase in
oil controls, but Congress balked at implementing the proposed tax.
I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy...
I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at
peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and
military might. The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a
crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and
soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the
growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a
unity of purpose for our nation...
Jimmy Carter
In July 1979, as the energy crisis continued, Carter met with a
series of business, government, labor, academic, and religious leaders
in an effort to overhaul his administration's policies. His pollster, Pat Caddell,
told him that the American people faced a crisis of confidence stemming
from the assassinations of major leaders in the 1960s, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal.
Though most of his other top advisers urged him to continue to focus on
inflation and the energy crisis, Carter seized on Caddell's notion that
the major crisis facing the country was a crisis of confidence. On July
15, Carter delivered a nationally televised speech in which he called
for long-term limits on oil imports and the development of synthetic fuels.
But he also stated, "all the legislation in the world can't fix what's
wrong with America. What is lacking is confidence and a sense of
community." The speech, named A Crisis of Confidence, came to be known as his "malaise" speech, although Carter never used the word in the speech.
The initial reaction to Carter's speech was generally positive,
but Carter erred by forcing out several cabinet members, including
Secretary of Energy Schlesinger, later in July. Nonetheless, Congress approved a $227 billion windfall profits tax and passed the Energy Security Act. The Energy Security Act established the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, which was charged with developing alternative energy sources. Despite those legislative victories, in 1980 Congress rescinded Carter's imposition of a surcharge on imported oil,
and rejected his proposed Energy Mobilization Board, a government body
that was designed to facilitate the construction of power plants.
Nonetheless, Kaufman and Kaufman write that policies enacted under
Carter represented the "most sweeping energy legislation in the nation's
history." Carter's policies contributed to a decrease in per capita energy consumption, which dropped by 10 percent from 1979 to 1983. Oil imports, which had reached a record 2.4 billion barrels in 1977 (50% of supply), declined by half from 1979 to 1983.
Economy
Federal finances and GDP during Carter's presidency
Carter took office during a period of "stagflation", as the economy experienced both high inflation and low economic growth. The U.S. had recovered from the 1973–75 recession, but the economy, and especially inflation, continued to be a top concern for many Americans in 1977 and 1978. The economy had grown by 5% in 1976, and it continued to grow at a similar pace during 1977 and 1978.
Unemployment declined from 7.5% in January 1977 to 5.6% by May 1979,
with over 9 million net new jobs created during that interim, and real median household income grew by 5% from 1976 to 1978.
In October 1978, responding to worsening inflation, Carter announced
the beginning of "phase two" of his anti-inflation campaign on national
television. He appointed Alfred E. Kahn as the Chairman of the Council on Wage and Price Stability (COWPS), and COWPS announced price targets for industries and implemented other policies designed to lower inflation.
The 1979 energy crisis ended a period of growth; both inflation
and interest rates rose, while economic growth, job creation, and consumer confidence declined sharply. The relatively loose monetary policy adopted by Federal Reserve Board Chairman G. William Miller, had already contributed to somewhat higher inflation, rising from 5.8% in 1976 to 7.7% in 1978. The sudden doubling of crude oil prices by OPEC forced inflation to double-digit levels, averaging 11.3% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980.
Following a mid-1979 cabinet shake-up, Carter named Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Volcker pursued a tight monetary policy to bring down inflation, but
this policy also had the effect of slowing economic growth even further. Author Ivan Eland
points out that this came during a long trend of inflation, saying,
"Easy money and cheap credit during the 1970s, had caused rampant
inflation, which topped out at 13 percent in 1979." Carter enacted an austerity program by executive order,
justifying these measures by observing that inflation had reached a
"crisis stage"; both inflation and short-term interest rates reached 18
percent in February and March 1980. In March, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to its lowest level since mid-1976, and the following month unemployment rose to seven percent. The economy entered into another recession, its fourth in little more than a decade, and unemployment quickly rose to 7.8 percent. This "V-shaped recession"
and the malaise accompanying it coincided with Carter's 1980
re-election campaign, and contributed to his unexpectedly severe loss to
Ronald Reagan. Not until March 1981 did GDP and employment totals regain pre-recession levels.
During the 1976 presidential campaign, Carter proposed a health care
reform plan that included key features of a bipartisan bill, sponsored
by Senator Ted Kennedy, that provided for the establishment of a universalnational health insurance (NHI) system. Though most Americans had health insurance through Medicare, Medicaid,
or private plans, approximately ten percent of the population did not
have coverage in 1977. The establishment of an NHI plan was the top
priority of organized labor and many liberal Democrats, but Carter had
concerns about cost, as well as the inflationary impact, of such a
system. He delayed consideration of health care through 1977, and
ultimately decided that he would not support Kennedy's proposal to
establish an NHI system that covered all Americans. Kennedy met
repeatedly with Carter and White House staffers in an attempt to forge a
compromise health care plan, but negotiations broke down in July 1978.
Though Kennedy and Carter had previously been on good terms, differences
over health insurance led to an open break between the two Democratic
leaders.
In June 1979, Carter proposed more limited health insurance
reform—an employer mandate to provide private catastrophic health
insurance. The plan would also extend Medicaid to the very poor without dependent minor children, and would add catastrophic coverage to Medicare. Kennedy rejected the plan as insufficient. In November 1979, Senator Russell B. Long led a bipartisan conservative majority of the Senate Finance Committee to support an employer mandate to provide catastrophic coverage and the addition of catastrophic coverage to Medicare. These efforts were abandoned in 1980 due to budget constraints.
Welfare and tax reform proposals
Carter
sought a comprehensive overhaul of welfare programs in order to provide
more cost-effective aid; Congress rejected almost all of his proposals. Proposals contemplated by the Carter administration include a guaranteed minimum income, a federal job guarantee for the unemployed, a negative income tax,
and direct cash payments to aid recipients. In early 1977, Secretary
Califano presented Carter with several options for welfare reform, all
of which Carter rejected because they increased government spending. In
August 1977, Carter proposed a major jobs program for welfare recipients
capable of working and a "decent income" to those who were incapable of
working. Carter was unable to win support for his welfare reform proposals, and they never received a vote in Congress. In October 1978, Carter helped convince the Senate to pass the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Act, which committed the federal government to the goals of low inflation and low unemployment. To the disappointment of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and organized labor, the final act did not include a provision authorizing the federal government to act as an employer of last resort in order to provide for full employment.
Carter also sought tax reform in order to create a simpler, more progressive taxation system. He proposed taxing capital gains as ordinary income, eliminating tax shelters, limiting itemized tax deductions, and increasing the standard deduction. Carter's taxation proposals were rejected by Congress, and no major tax reform bill was passed during Carter's presidency. Amid growing public fear that the social security system was in danger of bankruptcy within a few years, Carter signed the Social Security Financing Amendments
Act in December 1977, which corrected a flaw that had been introduced
into the benefit formula by earlier legislation in 1972, raised Social
Security taxes and reduced Social Security benefits. "Now this
legislation", the president remarked, "will guarantee that from 1980 to
the year 2030, the social security funds will be sound".
Environment
Carter
supported many of the goals of the environmentalist movement, and
appointed prominent environmentalists to high positions. As president
his rhetoric strongly supported environmentalism, with a certain
softness regarding his acceptance of nuclear energy – he had been
trained in nuclear energy with atomic submarines in the Navy. He signed several significant bills to protect the environment, such as the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, which regulates strip mining. In 1980 Carter signed into law a bill that established Superfund, a federal program designed to clean up mining or factory sites contaminated with hazardous substances.
Other environmental laws signed by Carter addressed energy
conservation, federal mine safety standards, and control of pesticides. Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus
convinced Carter to withdraw over 100 million acres of public domain
land in Alaska from commercial use by designating the land as
conservation areas. The 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act doubled the amount of public land set aside for national parks and wildlife refuges. Business and conservative interests complained that economic growth would be hurt by these conservation efforts.
Education
Early
in his term, Carter worked to fulfill a campaign promise to teachers'
unions to create a cabinet-level Department of Education. Carter argued
that the establishment of the department would increase efficiency and
equal opportunity, but opponents in both parties criticized it as an
additional layer of bureaucracy that would reduce local control and
local support of education. In October 1979, Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act, establishing the United States Department of Education. Carter appointed Shirley Mount Hufstedler, a liberal judge from California, as the first Secretary of Education. Carter also expanded the Head Start program with the addition of 43,000 children and families. During his tenure, education spending as a share of federal, non-defense spending was doubled. Carter opposed tax breaks for Protestant schools in the South, a position that alienated some on the Religious Right.
He also helped defeat the Moynihan-Packwood Bill, which called for
tuition tax credits for parents to use for nonpublic school education.
Carter took a stance in support of decriminalization of cannabis, citing the legislation passed in Oregon in 1973.
In a 1977 address to Congress, Carter submitted that penalties for
cannabis use should not outweigh the actual harms of cannabis
consumption. Carter retained pro-decriminalization advisor Robert DuPont, and appointed pro-decriminalization British physician Peter Bourne as his drug advisor (or "drug czar") to head up his newly formed Office of Drug Abuse Policy. However, law enforcement, conservative politicians, and grassroots parents' groups opposed this measure, and the War on Drugs continued. At the same time, cannabis consumption in the United States reached historically high levels.
Carter was the first president to address the topic of gay rights, and his administration was the first to meet with a group of gay rights activists. Carter opposed the Briggs Initiative, a California ballot measure that would have banned gays and supporters of gay rights from being public school teachers. Carter supported the policy of affirmative action, and his administration submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court while it heard the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. The Supreme Court's holding, delivered in 1978, upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action but vetoed the use of racial quotas in college admissions. First Lady Rosalynn Carter publicly campaigned for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, and the president supported the extension of the ratification period for that amendment.
Carter presided over the deregulation of several industries, which proponents hoped would help revive the sluggish economy. The Airline Deregulation Act (1978) abolished the Civil Aeronautics Board over six years, provided for the free entry of airlines into new routes, and opened air fares up to competition. Carter also signed the Motor Carrier Act (1980), which gradually withdrew the government from controlling access, rates, and routes in the trucking industry; the Staggers Rail Act (1980), which loosened railroad regulations by allowing railroad executives to negotiate mergers with barge and truck lines; and the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (1980), which removed ceilings on interest rates and permitted savings and commercial banks to write home mortgages, extend business loans, and underwrite securities issues.
The Housing and Community Development Act of 1977 set up Urban
Development Action Grants, extended handicapped and elderly provisions,
and established the Community Reinvestment Act, which sought to prevent banks from denying credit and loans to poor communities.
The Child Nutrition Amendments of 1978 introduced a national income
standard for program eligibility based on income standards prescribed
for reduced-price school lunches. The Act also strengthened the
nutrition education component of the WIC program by requiring the
provision of nutritional education to all program participants. Urban development Action grants supplied nearly $5 million for some 3,300 projects in declining cities,
and a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was passed with the aim of
prohibiting "abusive and unfair techniques of debt collection."
The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 was passed with
the intention of enabling the coal industry to develop coal resources
without damaging other natural resources in the process, while the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 was aimed at safeguarding mineworkers from harm in the workplace.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) programs and
women's programs were also strengthened, and "common sense priorities"
led to focus on major health problems.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, passed in 1978, prohibited companies
or organizations from discriminating against pregnant employees while
providing protection in the areas of childbirth and medical conditions
related to pregnancy or childbirth. The National Consumer Cooperative Bank Act of 1978 sought to put funds aside for low-interest loans to start cooperatives.
Minimum wage coverage was extended to farmworkers, and the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act Amendments of 1978 increased the upper
age limit on coverage against age discrimination in non-federal
employment and in the private sector from 65 to 70 as a means of
extending safeguards against age discrimination. In addition, the purchase requirement for food stamps was abolished and the first-ever national youth employment law was enacted.
In 1979 Carter opened the first White House Conference on Library
and Information Services stating that "libraries must be strengthened
and the public made more aware of their potential: Libraries can be
community resources for the consumer and small business on matters such
as energy and marketing and technological innovation." The White House Conference on Library and Information Services was a project of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.
Although foreign policy was not his highest priority at first, a
series of worsening crises made it increasingly the focus of attention
regarding the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Iran, and the global energy
crisis.
His handling of the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis made him
very unpopular at home and lowered his historical stature as measured by
historians.
Cold War
Carter took office during the Cold War, a sustained period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, relations between the two superpowers had improved through a policy known as detente.
In a reflection of the waning importance of the Cold War, some of
Carter's contemporaries labeled him as the first post-Cold War
president, but relations with the Soviet Union would continue to be an
important factor in American foreign policy in the late 1970s and the
1980s. Many of the leading officials in the Carter administration,
including Carter himself, were members of the Trilateral Commission,
which de-emphasized the Cold War. The Trilateral Commission instead
advocated a foreign policy focused on aid to Third World
countries and improved relations with Western Europe and Japan. The
central tension of the Carter administration's foreign policy was
reflected in the division between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who
sought improved relations with the Soviet Union and the Third World, and
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who favored
confrontation with the Soviet Union on a range of issues. After the disappointment of the Vietnam War a re-focus of the US Army on the Warsaw Pact problem found that technology and teamwork both were in dire need to be upgraded. Guided by General Donn A. Starry and the concept that was to become AirLand Battle, Carter and his administration approved the initial outlays for the A-10, AH-64, HIMARS, Bradley IFV, M109 Paladin, Patriot missile, M1 Abrams, and the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk.
Human rights
Carter meeting with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, in Washington, September 6, 1977
Latin America was central to Carter's new focus on human rights. The Carter administration ended support to the historically U.S.-backed Somoza regime in Nicaragua and directed aid to the new Sandinista National Liberation Front government that assumed power after Somoza's overthrow. Carter also cut back or terminated military aid to Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Ernesto Geisel of Brazil, and Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, all of whom he criticized for human rights violations.
Carter's ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young,
was the first African American to hold a high-level diplomatic post.
Along with Carter, he sought to change U.S. policy towards Africa,
emphasizing human rights concerns over Cold War issues. In 1978, Carter became the first sitting president to make an official state visit to sub-Saharan Africa, a reflection of the region's new importance under the Carter administration's foreign policy. Unlike his predecessors, Carter took a strong stance against white minority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. With Carter's support, the United Nations passed Resolution 418, which placed an arms embargo on South Africa. Carter won the repeal of the Byrd Amendment, which had undercut international sanctions on the Rhodesian government of Ian Smith. He also pressured Smith to hold elections, leading to the 1979 Rhodesia elections and the eventual creation of Zimbabwe.
The more assertive human rights policy championed by Derian and State Department Policy Planning Director Anthony Lake
was somewhat blunted by the opposition of Brzezinski. Policy disputes
reached their most contentious point during the 1979 fall of Pol Pot's genocidal regime of Democratic Kampuchea following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia,
when Brzezinski prevailed in having the administration refuse to
recognize the new Cambodian government due to its support by the Soviet
Union. Despite human rights concerns, Carter continued U.S. support for Joseph Mobutu of Zaire, who defeated Angolan-backed insurgents in conflicts known as Shaba I and Shaba II.
His administration also generally refrained from criticizing human
rights abuses in the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, Iran, Israel,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and North Yemen.
SALT II
President Jimmy Carter and Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna
Ford and Nixon had sought to reach agreement on a second round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which had set upper limits on the number of nuclear weapons possessed by both the United States and the Soviet Union.
Carter hoped to extend these talks by reaching an agreement to reduce,
rather than merely set upper limits on, the nuclear arsenals of both
countries.
At the same time, he criticized the Soviet Union's record with regard
to human rights, partly because he believed the public would not support
negotiations with the Soviets if the president seemed too willing to
accommodate the Soviets. Carter and Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev
reached an agreement in June 1979 in the form of SALT II, but Carter's
waning popularity and the opposition of Republicans and neoconservative Democrats made ratification difficult. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan severely damaged U.S.-Soviet relations and ended any hope of ratifying SALT II.
Yemen
In 1979, the Soviets intervened in the Second Yemenite War. The Soviet backing of South Yemen
constituted a "smaller shock", in tandem with the Iranian Revolution.
This played a role in shifting Carter's viewpoint on the Soviet Union to
a more assertive one, a shift that finalized with the Soviet-Afghan
War.
Afghanistan had been non-aligned during the early stages of the Cold War. In 1978, Communists under the leadership of Nur Muhammad Tarakiseized power. The new regime—which was divided between Taraki's extremist Khalq faction and the more moderate Parcham—signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in December 1978.
Taraki's efforts to improve secular education and redistribute land
were accompanied by mass executions and political oppression
unprecedented in Afghan history, igniting a revolt by Afghan mujahideen rebels. Following a general uprising in April 1979, Taraki was deposed by Khalq rival Hafizullah Amin in September. Soviet leaders feared that an Islamist government in Afghanistan would threaten the control of Soviet Central Asia, and, as the unrest continued, they deployed 30,000 soldiers to the Soviet–Afghan border.
Historian George C. Herring states Carter and Brzezinski both saw
Afghanistan as a potential "trap" that could expend Soviet resources in a
fruitless war, and the U.S. began sending aid to the mujahideen rebels
in mid-1979. However, a 2020 review of declassified U.S. documents by Conor Tobin in the journal Diplomatic History
found that "a Soviet military intervention was neither sought nor
desired by the Carter administration ... The small-scale covert program
that developed in response to the increasing Soviet influence was part of a contingency plan if
the Soviets did intervene militarily, as Washington would be in a
better position to make it difficult for them to consolidate their
position, but not designed to induce an intervention." By December, Amin's government had lost control of much of the country, prompting the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan, execute Amin, and install Parcham leader Babrak Karmal as president.
Carter was surprised by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as
the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community during 1978 and 1979
was that Moscow would not forcefully intervene.
CIA officials had tracked the deployment of Soviet soldiers to the
Afghan border, but they had not expected the Soviets to launch a
full-fledged invasion. Carter believed that the Soviet conquest of Afghanistan would present a grave threat to the Persian Gulf region, and he vigorously responded to what he considered a dangerous provocation. In a televised speech, Carter announced sanctions on the Soviet Union, promised renewed aid to Pakistan, and articulated the Carter doctrine, which stated that the U.S. would repel any attempt to gain control of the Persian Gulf. Pakistani leader Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq had previously had poor relations with Carter due to Pakistan's nuclear program and the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and instability in Iran reinvigorated the traditional Pakistan–United States alliance. In cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Carter increased aid to the mujahideen through the CIA's Operation Cyclone. Carter also later announced a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which was joined by 65 other nations,
and imposed an embargo on shipping American wheat to the Soviet Union.
The embargo ultimately hurt American farmers more than it did the Soviet
economy, and the United States lifted the embargo after Carter left
office.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought a significant change
in Carter's foreign policy and ended the period of detente that had
begun in the mid-1960s.
Returning to a policy of containment,
the United States reconciled with Cold War allies and increased the
defense budget, leading to a new arms race with the Soviet Union. U.S. support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan would continue until the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. The USSR collapsed two years later.
Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin meet at Camp David on September 6, 1978.Sadat, Carter and Begin shaking hands after signing Peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in the White House, March 27, 1979
On taking office, Carter decided to attempt to mediate the long-running Arab–Israeli conflict. He sought a comprehensive settlement between Israel and its neighbors through a reconvening of the 1973 Geneva Conference, but these efforts had collapsed by the end of 1977. Carter did convince Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat to visit Israel in 1978. Sadat's visit drew the condemnation of other Arab League countries, but Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
each expressed an openness to bilateral talks. Begin sought security
guarantees; Sadat sought the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula and home rule for the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli-occupied territories that were largely populated by Palestinian Arabs. Israel had taken control of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War, while the Sinai had been occupied by Israel since the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Seeking to further negotiations, Carter invited Begin and Sadat to the presidential retreat of Camp David
in September 1978. Because direct negotiations between Sadat and Begin
proved unproductive, Carter began meeting with the two leaders
individually.
While Begin was willing to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, he
refused to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel had
begun constructing settlements
in the West Bank, which emerged as an important barrier to a peace
agreement. Unable to come to definitive settlement over an Israeli
withdrawal, the two sides reached an agreement in which Israel promised
to allow the creation of an elected government in the West Bank and
Gaza. In return, Egypt became the first Arab state to recognize Israel's
right to exist. The Camp David Accords were the subject of intense domestic opposition in both Egypt and Israel, as well as the wider Arab World, but each side agreed to negotiate a peace treaty on the basis of the accords.
On March 26, 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in Washington, Carter's role in getting the treaty was essential. Author Aaron David Miller
concluded the following: "No matter whom I spoke to — Americans,
Egyptians, or Israelis — most everyone said the same thing: no Carter,
no peace treaty." Carter himself viewed the agreement as his most important accomplishment in office.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, had been a reliable U.S. ally since the 1953 Iranian coup d'état. During the years after the coup, the U.S. lavished aid on Iran, while Iran served as a dependable source of oil exports.
Carter, Vance, and Brzezinski all viewed Iran as a key Cold War ally,
not only for the oil it produced but also because of its influence in
OPEC and its strategic position between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf.
Despite human rights violations, Carter visited Iran in late 1977 and
authorized the sale of U.S. fighter aircraft. That same year, rioting
broke out in several cities, and it soon spread across the country. Poor
economic conditions, the unpopularity of Pahlavi's "White Revolution", and an Islamic revival
all led to increasing anger among Iranians, many of whom also despised
the United States for its support of Pahlavi and its role in the 1953
coup.
By 1978, the Iranian Revolution had broken out against the Shah's rule.
Secretary of State Vance argued that the Shah should institute a series
of reforms to appease the voices of discontent, while Brzezinski argued
in favor of a crackdown on dissent. The mixed messages that the Shah
received from Vance and Brzezinski contributed to his confusion and
indecision. The Shah went into exile, leaving a caretaker government in
control. A popular religious figure, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, returned from exile
in February 1979 to popular acclaim. As the unrest continued, Carter
allowed Pahlavi into the United States for medical treatment.
Carter and Vance were both initially reluctant to admit Pahlavi due to
concerns about the reaction in Iran, but Iranian leaders assured them
that it would not cause an issue. In November 1979, shortly after Pahlavi was allowed to enter the U.S., a group of Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 66 American captives, beginning the Iran hostage crisis. Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan ordered the militants to release the hostages, but he resigned from office after Khomeini backed the militants.
The crisis quickly became the subject of international and
domestic attention, and Carter vowed to secure the release of the
hostages. He refused the Iranian demand of the return of Pahlavi in
exchange for the release of the hostages. His approval ratings rose as
Americans rallied around his response, but the crisis became
increasingly problematic for his administration as it continued. In an attempt to rescue the hostages, Carter launched Operation Eagle Claw
in April 1980. The operation was a total disaster, and it ended in the
death of eight American soldiers. The failure of the operation
strengthened Ayatollah Khomeini's position in Iran and badly damaged
Carter's domestic standing. Carter was dealt another blow when Vance, who had consistently opposed the operation, resigned. Iran refused to negotiate the return of the hostages until Iraq launched an invasion
in September 1980. With Algeria serving as an intermediary,
negotiations continued until an agreement was reached in January 1981.
In return for releasing the 52 captives, Iran was allowed access to over
$7 billion of its money that had been frozen in the United States. Iran
waited to release the captives until 30 minutes after Carter left
office on January 20, 1981.
Released in 2017, a declassified memo produced by the CIA in 1980 concluded "Iranian hardliners – especially Ayatollah Khomeini"
were "determined to exploit the hostage issue to bring about President
Carter's defeat in the November elections." Additionally, Tehran in 1980
wanted "the world to believe that Imam Khomeini caused President
Carter's downfall and disgrace"
Carter and Omar Torrijos shake hands moments after the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties.
Since the 1960s, Panama had called for the United States to cede control of the Panama Canal.
The bipartisan national policy of turning over the Canal to Panama had
been established by presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, but
negotiations had dragged on for a dozen years. Carter made the cession
of the Panama Canal a priority, believing it would implement Carter's
call for a moral cleaning of American foreign policy and win approval
across Latin America as a gracious apology for American wrongdoing. He
also feared that another postponement of negotiations might precipitate
violent upheaval in Panama, which could damage or block the canal.
The Carter administration negotiated the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, two treaties which provided that Panama would gain control of the canal in 1999.
Carter's initiative faced wide resistance in the United States, and
many in the public, particularly conservatives, thought that Carter was
"giving away" a crucial U.S. asset.
Conservatives formed groups such as the Committee to Save the Panama
Canal in an attempt to defeat the treaties in the Senate, but Carter
made ratification of the treaties his top priority. During the
ratification debate, the Senate crafted amendments that granted the U.S.
the right to intervene militarily to keep the canal open, which the
Panamanians assented to after further negotiations.
In March 1978, the Senate ratified both treaties by a margin of
68-to-32, narrowly passing the two-thirds margin necessary for
ratification. The Canal Zone and all its facilities were ultimately
turned over to Panama on December 31, 1999.
Carter hoped to improve relations with Cuba
upon taking office, but any thaw in relations was prevented by ongoing
Cold War disputes in Central America and Africa. In early 1980, Cuban
leader Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wished to leave Cuba would be allowed to do so through the port of Mariel.
After Carter announced that the United States would provide "open arms
for the tens of thousands of refugees seeking freedom from Communist
domination", Cuban Americans arranged the Mariel boatlift. The Refugee Act,
signed earlier in the year, had provided for annual cap of 19,500 Cuban
immigrants to the United States per year, and required that those
refugees go through a review process. By September, 125,000 Cubans had
arrived in the United States, and many faced a lack of adequate food and
housing. Carter was widely criticized for his handling of the boatlift,
especially in the electorally important state of Florida.
Continuing a rapprochement begun during the Nixon administration,
Carter successfully achieved closer relations with the People's Republic
of China (PRC). The two countries increasingly collaborated against the Soviet Union, and the Carter administration tacitly consented to the Chinese invasion
of Vietnam. In 1979, Carter extended formal diplomatic recognition to
the PRC for the first time. This decision led to a boom in trade between
the United States and the PRC, which was pursuing economic reforms
under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping.
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter allowed the sale of
military supplies to China and began negotiations to share military
intelligence.In January 1980, Carter unilaterally revoked the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China (ROC), which had lost control of mainland China to the PRC in the Chinese Civil War, but was now based offshore on the island of Taiwan.
Carter's abrogation of the treaty was challenged in court by
conservative Republicans, but the Supreme Court ruled that the issue was
a non-justiciable political question in Goldwater v. Carter. The U.S. continued to maintain diplomatic contacts with the ROC through the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
South Korea
One
of Carter's first acts was to order the withdrawal of troops from South
Korea, which had hosted a large number of U.S. military personnel since
the end of the Korean War.
Carter believed that the soldiers could be put to better use in Western
Europe, but opponents of the withdrawal feared that North Korea would
invade South Korea in the aftermath of the withdrawal. South Korea and
Japan both protested the move, as did many members of Congress, the
military, and the State Department. After a strong backlash, Carter
delayed the withdrawal, and ultimately only a fraction of the U.S.
forces left South Korea. Carter's attempt to remove U.S. forces from
South Korea weakened the government of South Korean President Park Chung-hee, who was assassinated in 1979.
Africa
In sharp contrast to Nixon and Ford, Carter gave priority to sub-Sahara Africa. Southern Africa especially emerged as a Cold War battleground after Cuba sent a large military force that took control of Angola in 1976.
The chief policy person for Africa in the Carter administration was
Andrew Young, a leader in the black Atlanta community who became
Ambassador to the United Nations. Young opened up friendly relationships
with key leaders, especially in Nigeria. A highly controversial issue
was independence of Namibia from Union of South Africa.
Young began United Nations discussions which went nowhere, and Namibia
would not gain independence until long after Carter left office. Young advocated strong sanctions after the murder by South African police of Steve Biko in 1977, but Carter refused and only imposed a limited arms embargo and South Africa ignored the protests.
The most important success of the Carter administration in Africa was
helping the transition from white-dominated Southern Rhodesia to black
rule in Zimbabwe.
Controversies
OMB
Director Bert Lance resigned his position on September 21, 1977, amid
allegations of improper banking activities prior to his becoming
director.
The controversy over Lance damaged Carter's standing with Congress and
the public, and Lance's resignation removed one of Carter's most
effective advisers from office. In April 1979, Attorney General Bell appointed Paul J. Curran
as a special counsel to investigate loans made to the peanut business
owned by Carter by a bank controlled by Bert Lance. Unlike Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski who were named as special prosecutors to investigate the Watergate scandal,
Curran's position as special counsel meant that he would not be able to
file charges on his own, but would require the approval of Assistant
Attorney General Philip Heymann. Carter became the first sitting president to testify under oath as part of an investigation of that president.
The investigation was concluded in October 1979, with Curran announcing
that no evidence had been found to support allegations that funds
loaned from the National Bank of Georgia had been diverted to Carter's
1976 presidential campaign.
Carter's brother Billy Carter generated a great deal of notoriety during Carter's presidency for his colorful and often outlandish public behavior. The Senate began an investigation into Billy Carter's activities after it was disclosed that Libya had given Billy over $200,000 for unclear reasons.
The controversy over Billy Carter's relation to Libya became known as
"Billygate", and, while the president had no personal involvement in it,
Billygate nonetheless damaged the Carter administration.
Republican Ronald Reagan defeated President Carter in the 1980 presidential electionOutgoing President Jimmy Carter and President-elect Ronald Reagan with his wife Nancy in the Oval Office on November 20, 1980
In April 1978, polling showed that Carter's approval rating had
declined precipitously, and a Gallup survey found Carter trailing Ted
Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic nomination.
By mid-1979, Carter faced an energy crisis, rampant inflation, slow
economic growth, and the widespread perception that his administration
was incompetent. In November 1979, Kennedy announced that he would challenge Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries. Carter's polling numbers shot up following the start of the Iran hostage crisis, and his response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan further boosted his prospects in the Democratic primaries.
Carter dominated the early primaries, allowing him to amass an early
delegate lead. Carter's polling numbers tumbled in March, and Kennedy
won the New York and Connecticut primaries. Though Carter developed a wide delegate lead, Kennedy stayed in the race after triumphing in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
By the day of the final primaries, Carter had registered the lowest
approval ratings in the history of presidential polling, and Kennedy won
just enough delegates to prevent Carter from clinching the nomination.
After the final primaries, Carter met with Kennedy in the White
House. Partly because Carter refused to accept a party platform calling
for the establishment of a national health insurance program, Kennedy
refused to concede. He instead called for an "open convention", in which delegates would be free to vote for the candidate of their choice regardless of the result in the primaries. Carter's allies defeated Kennedy's maneuverings at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, and Carter and Vice President Mondale won re-nomination.
Despite Kennedy's defeat, he had mobilized the liberal wing of the
Democratic Party, which would give Carter only weak support in the
general election.
The 1980 Republican presidential primaries quickly developed into a two-man contest between former Governor Ronald Reagan of California and former Congressman George H. W. Bush
of Texas. Bush, who referred to Reagan's tax cut proposal as "voodoo
economics", won the Iowa Caucus but faded later in the race. Reagan won
the presidential nomination on the first ballot of the 1980 Republican National Convention and named Bush as his running mate. Meanwhile, Republican Congressman John B. Anderson, who had previously sought the Republican presidential nomination, launched an independent campaign for president. Polls taken in September, after the conclusion of the party conventions, showed a tied race between Reagan and Carter.
The Carter campaign felt confident that the country would reject the
conservative viewpoints espoused by Reagan, and there were hopeful signs
with regards to the economy and the Iranian hostage crisis.
Seeking to unite Democrats behind his re-election campaign, Carter
decided to focus on attacking Reagan's supposed ideological extremism
rather than on his own policies.
A key strength for Reagan was his appeal to the rising conservative movement, as epitomized by activists like Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, and Phyllis Schlafly.
Though most conservative leaders espoused cutting taxes and budget
deficits, many conservatives focused more closely on social issues like abortion and homosexuality. Developments of the 1970s, including the Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade and the withdrawal of Bob Jones University's
tax-exempt status, convinced many evangelical Protestants to become
engaged in politics for the first time. Evangelical Protestants became
an increasingly important voting bloc, and they enthusiastically
supported Reagan in the 1980 campaign. Reagan also won the backing of so-called "Reagan Democrats",
who tended to be Northern, white, working-class voters who supported
liberal economic programs but disliked policies such as affirmative
action.
Though he advocated socially conservative view points, Reagan focused
much of his campaign on attacks against Carter's foreign policy,
including the SALT II treaty, the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, and the
revocation of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty.
Reagan called for increased defense spending, tax cuts, domestic
spending cuts, and the dismantling of the Department of Education and
the Department of Energy.
Polling remained close throughout September and October, but
Reagan's performance in the October 28 debate and Carter's failure to
win the release of the Iranian hostages gave Reagan the momentum
entering election day.
Reagan won 50.7 percent of the popular vote and 489 electoral votes,
Carter won 41 percent of the popular vote and 49 electoral votes, and
Anderson won 6.6 percent of the popular vote. Reagan carried all but a handful of states, and performed especially well among Southern whites.
The size of Reagan's victory surprised many observers, who had expected
a close race. Voter turnout reached its lowest point since the 1948 presidential election, a reflection of the negative attitudes many people held towards all three major candidates. In the concurrent congressional elections, the Senate went Republican for the first time since the 1950s. Carter, meanwhile, was the first elected president to lose re-election since Herbert Hoover in 1932.
Evaluation and legacy
Graph of Carter's approval ratings in Gallup polls
Polls of historians and political scientists have generally ranked Carter as a below-average president. A 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Carter as the 26th best president. A 2017 C-SPAN poll of historians also ranked Carter as the 26th best president. Some critics have compared Carter to Herbert Hoover, who was similarly a "hardworking but uninspiring technocrat."
Robert A. Strong writes:
Jimmy Carter is much more highly regarded today than when
he lost his bid for reelection in 1980. He has produced an exemplary
post-presidency, and today there is an increased appreciation for the
enormity of the task he took on in 1977, if not for the measures he took
to deal with the crises that he faced. Carter took office just thirty
months after a President had left the entire federal government in a
shambles. He faced epic challenges—the energy crisis, Soviet aggression,
Iran, and above all, a deep mistrust of leadership by his citizens. He
was hard working and conscientious. But he often seemed like a player
out of position, a man more suited to be secretary of energy than
president. Carter became President by narrowly defeating an uninspiring,
unelected chief executive heir to the worst presidential scandal in
history. The nomination was his largely because in the decade before
1976, Democratic leadership in the nation had been decimated by scandal,
Vietnam, and an assassination.
Historians Burton I. Kaufman and Scott Kaufman conclude:
It was Carter's fate to attempt to navigate the nation
between the rock of traditional Democratic constituencies and the hard
place of an emerging conservative movement whose emphasis was more on
social and cultural values than on the economic concerns of the
Democratic Party. It was also Carter's misfortune that he led the nation
at a time of staggering inflation and growing unemployment, compounded
by an oil shock over which he had little control... At the same time, it
is hard to avoid the conclusion that Carter's was a mediocre presidency
and that this was largely his own doing. He was smart rather than
shrewd. He was not a careful political planner. He suffered from
strategic myopia. He was long on good intentions but short on know-how.
He had lofty ideals, such as in the area of human rights, which had
symbolic and long-lasting importance, but they often blinded him to
political realities. He was self-righteous. He was an administrator who
micro-managed, but not well. Most important, he was a president who
never adequately defined a mission for his government, a purpose for the
country, and a way to get there.
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