Subscribe Feed (RSS)What is a strong and convincing argument as to why Jimmy Carter was an ethical president?
December 27th, 2008 by Admin | Filed under History.
Natalie asked:
I always hear that Jimmy Carter is so horrible. True, the Iran Hostage crisis might have perverted his presidential career a little bit… but what about his humanitarian attitude? Why isn’t that enough to classify him as a good president? Everyone I talk to dislikes him.
Therefore, how could I convince someone that he wasn’t such a horrible president? My history teacher assigned me this position, and I have no idea what to talk about. I want to be convincing.
Tags: Dislikes, History Teacher, Iran Hostage Crisis, Little Bit, Presidential Career
I always liked Carter and feel that he was criticized too harshly.
Look into the Panama Canal. Jimmy made things right. We “stole” the Panama Canal land from Colombia. We didn’t share well with the Panamanians either.
He brokered a peace between two sworn ermines (Egypt and Israel) that has lasted to this day. It is not easy to convince people that wish to destroy Israel to lay down their weapons and recognize it’s existence.
EDIT: Egypt was the main nation that called for war in all of the Arab-Israeli Wars and was the strongest of the Arab nations. Israel does not have to worry about an organized army attacking them now and can focus on counter-terrorism.
Separate from whether or not he was an effective President, here is why he was an “ethical President” (which is what you asked.
1. He did a number of things that cost him publicly but because he thought it was the “right thing” to do. The Panama canal treaty was a good example of this.
2. He pushed for Human Rights as a major factor in our international affairs and foreign aid.
3. It was under Carter that we made the Foreign Corrupt Practices act (not okay for our people to bribe foreign officials, not okay for our people to accept bribes as a way of doing business) a policy of US government.
4. Faced with the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, he decided that even though it was wildly unpopular we would boycott the Moscow Olympics. It’s much like the idea of demonstrating when the Olympic Torch goes down your street–it accomplishes nothing but you do take a stand on principle.
5. Last of all, it’s very difficult to find any major policy that Carter supported that you would argue was counter to his stated beliefs. And he also supported a wide number of actions that we might say were politically stupid (ie: it was on his watch that Joe Califano at HEW and then HHS led the fight against cigarettes in the US–what seemed like tilting at windmills at the time given Big Tobacco’s power) yet were done for good reasons.