Jimmy Carter’s Legacy is Hardly Positive

Jimmy Carter was the 39^th President of the United States who held office from 1977 to 1981.  His four years were a tumultuous failure.  High prices, Iran’s holding of American hostages, a devastated economy, and a bungling foreign policy characterized the President’s term.

The President may be best known for his 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty.  The peace treaty was a one-sided arm twisting of Israel.  Egypt had attempted to destroy Israel from 1948 onward.  When the Peace Treaty was signed which President Carter brokered, Israel had to give up its safety barrier which was the Sanai Peninsula.

Israel had used the Sinai wisely.  Fish farming was developed there by Yonathan Zohar, Ph.D., known as the OB of fish, which has provided millions of people around the world with healthy protein.  Fish farming also reduced the devastation of natural stock throughout the oceans and seas.

After the Peace Treaty, the Sanai became a conduit for terrorists and an infrastructure for terrorists to smuggle weapons from Egypt to Gaza.  Egypt permitted the spigot to remain open until this past year.

The “peace” between Egypt and Israel was cold at best.  Egypt got everything it wanted in the 1979 deal, and Israel got a promise of peace, which Egypt undermined through its tacit support of terrorist organizations.  The Egyptian government was interested in saving its own skin and redirecting terrorists elsewhere.   Egypt also controlled Gaza, to the complaint of no one.

Jimmy Carter’s reign as President was blemished by his brother Billy who was an outspoken antisemite.  If that is not bad enough, and it is plenty bad, Jimmy Carter was very reluctant to call out his brother even after Billy Carter declared that American Jews, “can kiss my ass as far as I am concerned now.”  The President’s response was that he could not control his brother, that he loved his brother, and that his brother was entitled to his opinion.  The bottom line was that the President would not condemn his brother’s remarks about Jews.  Rather, the President merely denied that his brother was antisemitic and claimed that he never made a “serious” critical remark against Jews or any other people.

The President who stood tall for minority groups could not bring himself to condemn his brother’s bad behavior.  It was a stain on the Democratic Party and the President.

President Carter’s brother supported Libya, a sworn enemy of the United States, and may have violated United States law in his relationship with the Libyans.  The White House did issue a statement that the President did not share any of his brother’s views that could be “interpreted” as antisemitic.  However, as noted, neither the President nor the White House specifically repudiated the remarks.

When confronted, the President said that he was afraid to criticize his brother because he thought Billy would “react very strongly” and “exert his independence.”

The scandal became so notorious that the Department of Justice sent a letter to Billy Carter pointing out that any American who worked for the foreign government must register as a foreign agent.   Billy Carter denied that he was a foreign agent for the Libyans.

The Justice Department indicated that it might have to determine whether the President’s brother should register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.  Not surprisingly, there was no follow-up.

One of the more interesting reflections on the Carter Presidency was from Dr. Kenneth Stein, former Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center from 1982 until 2006.   He was Carter’s primary Middle East Advisor until 1994.

Most of the adulation concerning President Carter was his work when he was no longer president.  He founded the Atlanta-based Carter Center which became his podium for speaking out on issues.  He wrote 30 books and hundreds of newspaper pieces.  In 2002, he received the Nobel Prize for his humanitarian work in eradicating disease, monitoring elections, and promoting democracies.  Much of his post-presidential work is laudatory and should be complimented.  A major stain on the Carter’s presidency was his association with Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Columbia University Professor who became Carter’s National Security Advisor.  Brzezinski and Carter believed that sucking up to the Arabs, buying their oil, and enriching the Arab world at the expense of the Jewish and Christian communities in the Middle East would somehow bring the Arabs into the 20^th Century.  Their approach backfired.

The Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was followed by turmoil.  The Iranian Islamic Republic demonstrated its hatred for the United States, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and as the 1980 election approached, Americans were hopeless hostages in Tehran.  Even Carter’s military effort to rescue the hostages was badly bungled and was an embarrassment to the United States military.

Those who know Carter well indicated that Carter believed that his incompetence was not the reason he lost the 1980 election but rather that American Jews had abandoned him!  In fact, according to Stein, Carter blamed his loss on the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin!

Carter developed a deep and abiding distain for Israel even after he was president, not surprising given his earlier failure to condemn his brother’s antisemitic behavior.  In October of 2006 Carter published a book entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The book was clearly flawed and was not history, but rather polemic.  Some of the former President’s closest advisors noted that many of the claims in the book were simply false.  Some were “invented” Stein wrote.  What was written in the book, compared with notes taken during meetings with Palestinians, was “fully incompatible,” according to Stein and other Carter advisors who were present at the meetings.

After reading the book, I wrote to Carter myself.  He responded in a most peculiar fashion.  He took my letter, and he wrote notes with pencil in the margin.  They were angry and unstatesmanlike.  I pointed out the President’s unfair characterization of the Jewish community in Israel, and he handwrote in the margin, “most Jews agree with me.”  Carter continued to delude himself into thinking that he could bully the tiny Jewish population in the United States and Israel. He believed that the worst people in the world would become our friends if we were willing to sellout out allies and brothers in arms.

Other presidents had an appropriate demeanor, in contrast to former President Carter.  When I confronted Gerald Ford about Richard Nixon’s choice of William Renquist over Arlan Adams as a Supreme Court Justice, Ford did not defend the president he served. Rather asked if my critical article could be placed in Ford’s Presidential Library in Dearborn, Michigan.  When I looked Bill Clinton in the eye and told him, in a one-on-one meeting, that he should not complain about the press favoring Barrack Obama over Hiliary Clinton, during the primary season, because that was the job of the free press, Clinton said to me: “Now, Cleef, I think you’re right about that.”  When a delegation from the Federal Bar Association, in no uncertain terms, told President Obama that he was not doing his job in appointing federal judges because there were so many judicial emergencies around the country (including in the Middle District of Pennsylvania), he responded in a gentlemanly fashion, asking whether the Federal Bar Association could provide him names of prospective nominees.  We obliged.  At first, the President’s spokesperson tried to deflect criticism from President Obama, blaming the crisis on the Republicans and his preoccupation with Iraq.  However, President Obama then acknowledged that presidential nominations of federal judges was something that would follow him for “the next 40 years” and that he would improve his performance.  Jimmy Carter had a settled hostility for those who disagreed with him and he reacted defensively without justification.

Like many people with inherent bigotries based upon their upbringing, their geographic history, and religious confusion, Jimmy Carter achieved some worthy and noble accomplishments.  However, they were badly marred by a defective and crudely distorted way that he thought about the world and those at fault for his own ineptness.