Jimmy Carter

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If a man's life is marked by milestones, and those
milestones tell the story of a life well lived, a
life of accomplishment, well, then Jimmy Carter is an American hero.
Yesterday he turned one hundred long ago, setting the record
for the longest living ex president. He also owns the

(00:20):
record for most years on Earth after he left the
White House. We forget some of those details about our
thirty ninth president. He left office still nine years shy
of Social Security. If sixty is the new forty, then figuratively,
Jimmy Carter was a thirty something when he was retired
by the American people and a landslide lost to Ronald

(00:44):
Reagan on election night nineteen eighty, but he hardly faded away.
This one actually helped out. Took up Habitat for Humanity. Yeah,
that was the President of the United States wearing a
tool belt, safety goggles, work in a nail gun, building
low income houses four years. He taught Sunday school every
Sunday for decades after the presidency. He hosted smart debates

(01:09):
on human rights and how best to assist victims of
natural disasters. He'd speak out a turn once in a while,
criticizing his successor's moves, which reminded us of why it
was he failed so badly at the Big Gig. His
four years on the bridge were some of the worst
in the history of the Republic. His economic, energy and
foreign policies were objective disasters. Inflation zoomed to twelve percent,

(01:33):
which is one thing, but when it marries stagflation, an
economic term defined by high prices and low productivity, which
equals pure misery, interest rates under Carter touched nineteen percent.
His energy policies drove the price of oil so high
the result was short supplies and long lines. Manufacturing slumped,

(01:56):
business investment vaporized. There was a man over the fruited plane.
And then in November of nineteen seventy nine, a band
of militant students broke through the gate of the US
embassy in Tehran, Iran. Ordered not to fire on them
by the White House, our guys just stood there as
the students nabbed fifty two of us and held them

(02:19):
hostage for four hundred and forty four days. Thanks to
Carter and his indecisiveness, even the breathless power and might
of the US military was rendered weak, feckless, and paralyzed.
How did somebody like that get to the White House. Well,
when he was elected, the stink of Watergate wasn't gone,
and we yearned for an outsider. He is one of

(02:41):
the most intelligent people ever to take the oath. A
scientist by education, Carter guided a nuclear powered submarine while
serving in the Navy. But those skills made him a
bad manager. Carter was a five star process guy. He
obsessed over details, every single one. For his instruct was
if the process is perfect, so too will be the policy,

(03:04):
and the outcome doesn't work that way. In presidential politics,
you are first a leader, set general broad priorities, surround
yourself with a combination of policy walks and arm twisters,
and then make the sausage. But if you drown in process,
momentum stalls and your army desserts. Classic example, to break

(03:24):
our addiction on foreign oil, Carter ordered we get big
on coal, but to keep prices down, he froze wages,
which resulted in a massive coal miners strike. Killed the
whole idea. The other thing that makes a great president
is naked optimism. We want straight talk, but paint a
sunny picture. Carter did just the opposite, He implied, our

(03:46):
best days are behind us. Stop expecting things to be
better tomorrow. We Americans need to use less, spend less,
have less. If you get cold, turn down the thermostad
and put on a sweater. And then he did, during
a natur actionally televised address. We were less productive, less happy,
less confident, and worried more when Jimmy Carter was president,

(04:07):
which is why Governor Reagan took forty four states on
election night. It's too bad. We must remember his time
at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. You see, he's lived such
a giving and honorable life since. And something tells me
if President Carter was asked, he'd say, I'm okay with
what I've done for the forty four years on this
earth after I left that famous address, and now the

(04:30):
other fifty six to two