with admiration from Liberal Street Fighter
The splash on the homepage for The Carter Center conveys President Carter’s mission since he left the White House with Ted Kennedy’s knives still sticking out his back:
waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope
Yesterday, at the Baptist World Alliance’s centenary conference in Birmingham, central England, President Carter was trying to wage peace, to speak out against injustice, in a voice that echoes the America I love, rather than the belligerent holler that too often echoes around the globe from a pig farm in Texas:
“What has happened at Guantanamo Bay … does not represent the will of the American people,” Carter said. “I’m embarrassed about it, I think it’s wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.”
Carter continued, criticizing the Iraq war, as he’s done in since Bush launched this criminal war:
“I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false,”
What will it take for the DC Dems to speak so clearly about the wrongs committed by this criminal administration?
photo via Spiegel Online
I was just thinking this morning – ‘Who was/is the most honest American President in my life?’
And Carter was my choice.
I probably couldn’t be around him too long if we met, but something about him sums up the America that I respect.
But I’m more entertained by you sinners!
Yeah
It really is a looking-glass world when Ronald Reagan is considered a great president, and George Bush a resolute leader, and Jimmy Carter a failure.
I wrote a diary today about a book by Jeff Golder titled “As If We Were Grownups.” It just struck me in reading this that perhaps Carter’s presidency is a great example of how that doesn’t work. He did speak the difficult truth to the American people and embraced the complexity of the choices. That is what Golden is suggesting politicians need to do. But the public didn’t respond too well to Carter’s presidency did they?
But anyway, I’d love to see Carter and Gore team up a bit. They both really do seem to have found their voice since leaving office.
Carter was the first presidental candidate I ever voted for who actually won. I remember well him sitting there with a Mr. Roger’s sweater on in front a fireplace, asking us all to conserve energy. If only the country had listened to him!
He was done in by Those Who Rule. He was probably the only president we had in the last century who wasn’t owned by corporate intersts.
A couple of weeks ago, Jon Stewart had a guy on the Daily Show who had written a book about the 100 people who have ruined America. John Stewart just sliced the author to bits. When the show went into commercial, Jimmy Carter showed up on the screen, building a house, with the words “Number 6” at the bottom.
This author (sorry, I can’t remember his name) thinks that Jimmy Carter is the 6th most destructive person in American society.
Carter was on the short list of names for my son.
the daily show link is here (bottom of the page).
This author (sorry, I can’t remember his name) thinks that Jimmy Carter is the 6th most destructive person in American society.
You know, there’s something deeply sick about a movement which labels a guy in his 80’s, a man who is respected all over the world, who spends his time working with Habitat for Humanity, a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize the 6th most destructive person in American society. Particularly considering American Society’s wealth of demonstrably destructive forces.
It puts a whole new meaning to: “The Good, they do Die Young”
He was too good for the evil he battled, and the most human instict for the Robber Barons is, if you fear something, destroy it.
He’s not dead yet.
not physically no, but his career was murdered ; )
I know, I was kidding. I’m emoticon challenged.
Man, look at his face. I look at that picture and see the determination of someone who knows that he is fighting for what is right. That is not a man operating on token effort or weightless gesture. That is a man working out of conviction.
Bernard Goldberg be damned; Jimmy Carter is one of the greatest Americans of our lifetimes.
But frankly, Madman, if the you of today were transplanted back to 1980, you would have definitely been on Kennedy’s side, and would have decried Carter as “GOP Lite” or a “Vichy Dem”. Do you know how many bills he vetoed, that were passed by a liberal Democratic Congress? In the ’76 primaries, he was very much a pre-DLC centrist Southern Democrat who beat out a lot of more liberal candidates to get the nomination, and then spent four years locking horns with the liberal wing of the party.
-Alan
I wasn’t the me of today back then, and I would have supported Jerry Brown in the primary, to be honest. President Carter lost me at the time w/ his talk of the draft (I was 17).
I had this argument in the other thread, and don’t feel like it here. This isn’t about his Presidency, this is about the work he’s done since, expecially during the Bush administration.
As for the liberal wing of the time … not a big Teddy Kennedy fan. Wasn’t them, am not now.
Also, I believe you were praising Carter for what he’s doing now, not what he did then. While Slacker may be unable to separate the two, they are quite obviously different.
I ran into the same problem in the crosspost at dKos. With some, everything you write is colored by past disagreements.
Well, first of all Madman, you invited the reaction by the title of the diary (which, by implication, continued to slag other Democrats, something you have become known for). And yeah, that’s why we have consistent screen names, so that every subject isn’t a brand new, anonymous free-for-all. There’s good and bad in that–I certainly have had my own share (especially with Bob Johnson at dKos) of people reacting to my name and turning the topic to Iraq even if it was something completely different.
But the point here is that Carter no longer stands for election. When he did, and had to deal with electoral realities as he campaigned for swing votes, he practised the kind of centrist “pragmatism” that you roundly denounce in the Democratic politicians of today who do still have to face the voters. So maybe you should cut them some slack–they could turn out to be the kind of statesmen (and women) Carter is, once they are out of office (or even in their last term and have decided not to seek reelection).
-Alan
I can’t cut slack for people who sign onto CAFTA, or the Bankruptcy Bill or meaningless calls for bullshit labeling. I certainly can’t cut slack for the likes of Bill Clinton, who runs around now giving Bush bi-partisan cover for his crimes.
I cut slack when it is consistent with an office holder’s clearly stated principles, and when those principle represent me. As an example, I respect Feingold’s insistence that he tends to defer to a President’s right to pick his people. I hate some of the people Feingold has voted to confirm, but I understand and respect WHY he confirmed.
I object to leaders who come knocking for contributions and boots-on-the-ground as they undermine our base. I feel there is a consistency in what I support now, and what I decry. Elder Statemen/Women are a big part of how a party defines itself, and how that party is defined. Why are Carter & Gore such lonely voices regarding the Iraq Crime and other Bush misdeeds? Daschle, Gephardt … where are they? Oh yeah, Daschle is a lobbyist w/ the same company that employs Dole. Gephardt, according to the most recent thing I could find quickly googling, was joining Goldman Sachs. Many others are consultants and lobbyists. In otherwords, the party speaks for big money and big influence.
No wonder voters think the party doesn’t stand for anything.
(which, by implication, continued to slag other Democrats, something you have become known for)
Some ‘other Democrats’ richly deserve ‘slagging’. You yourself have become known for ‘slagging’ other Democrats, just different ones.
I’ve come to distrust those who present themselves as ‘pragmatists’ in opposition to ‘ideologues’. In part because they are inevitably unable to respond effectively respond to objections when flaws in their strategy are pointed out or admit error when, having shoved said strategy down our collective throats, admit their error when said objections are proved true and another election is lost.
It’s my personal belief (from several years of trying to talk with them) that self described centrist pragmatists are deeply ideological and regard political dialogue as an opportunity for manipulation and spin rather than honest discussion. Likewise I believe they’re just as deeply ideological as those on the left they so obviously despise, it’s just that the values they hope to express politically are very different from those they hope to influence and lead.
Sure, I agree–but Madman has cultivated a rep for dissing almost all elected Democrats.
Or even many of the same Democrats, I’d wager–but still, a minority, that I specifically named (that is, I didn’t paint “DC Dems” with an overbroad brush).
Likewise, I’m sure! 😉
Hmmm…well, that’s your opinion/observation, I guess. Do you feel that your camp responds effectively to objections when flaws in their strategy are pointed out? I feel that the reaction is often hostility or in fact a rejection of the very idea that strategy should come into play. And if your side is too pure to even use strategy, how can you judge ours?
I certainly haven’t done that. I’ve been mostly unable to “shove” or more gently persuade those in the blogs I post at toward the kind of strategic thinking I favour, sadly. And your camp got their man in the DNC chairmanship, so do you really have grounds for this complaint at this point?
What’s an error is to assume that if strategy A didn’t work (as well as we’d like), that strategy B definitely would have. We can’t rerun elections, so how do you know B wouldn’t have resulted in landslide defeat? Is it not possible that strategy C (or D…etc.) would have been better? Or even that some elections might not be winnable regardless of our strategy, if the other side is on their game? We are working with a certain electorate, after all.
I can only speak for myself, and for a few close friends whose “true motivation” I feel confident I have a handle on, but we don’t favour a more cautious, centrist strategy because we don’t want progressive government–only because we believe said strategy will get us as much as realistically possible: the “half a loaf instead of none” idea. So now you know, we’re not all actually conservative Dems (though I think it makes sense to ally ourselves with that camp to the degree it is necessary to win elections–as long as certain “Vichy” lines are not crossed–and get control of Congressional leadership positions).
Or do you think I’m lying to hide a more sinister agenda?
-Alan
I had this argument in the other thread, and don’t feel like it here. This isn’t about his Presidency, this is about the work he’s done since, expecially during the Bush administration.
Isn’t it curious how many ‘progressives’ are willing to savage the reputation of a Nobel Peace Laureate and one of the few advocates for the poor remaining in the castrated Democratic party and point out how bad things were back in the late 70’s?
Ironically, though the popular imagination has it that Carter was a “wimp” as a leader and that Reagan came in and “won the Cold War” (god, I’m tired of hearing that–aren’t we all?), it was actually Carter who had the Warsaw Pact shaking in their boots.
-Alan