Jimmy Carter in the american political spectrum

[buritobr]

There are conflicting views regarding Jimmy Carter.

There are ones who consider Jimmy Carter the most leftist president of the United States.

There are ones who consider Jimmy Carter the most rightist Democratic president of the period between 1932 and 1980.


Supporting the view that Jimmy Carter was the most leftist president of the United States, one can observe the foreign policy. He did not invade countries. He was the first president in the Cold War to not endorse the far right military dictatorships in South America. Johnson backed the military coup in Brazil in 1964. Nixon backed the military coup in Chile in 1973. Carter criticized these dictatorships. Carter's foreign policy was less anti-communist than Truman, Kennedy and Johnson's ones (although he supported Olympics boycott).

On the other side, there are the ones who argue that Carter was on the right of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson because he is considered the president who started Reaganomics before Reagan. Carter deregulated the Airlines, deregulated the railway system, cut income taxes.


It is hard to sumarize everything in the left-right scale. Through cherry picking, one can say that A was on the left of B, but also that A was on the right of B.

But what do you think? Carter was on the left or on the right of the other New Deal democratic presidents?

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Probably to the right. Not just of all those Presidents but likely Nixon as well - "We're all Keynesians now" would not play well in post-1980 America. (Remember Milton Friedman was misquoted so don't necessarily try to align him with Nixon). You also have pretty serious wage and price controls in the Nixon era.

On the other hand, as you said, Carter was the precursor to Reaganomics.

Eisenhower is a little closer, but I'd probably would him to the right of Carter.

Economics is my primary consideration in political ideology rankings. Foreign policy can be quite dependent on other leaders. Even Nixon had detente with the USSR though that's in part due to Brezhnev. I guess Carter does get a good deal of leftist cred for the Middle East though. Still, it's just difficult to measure.

Ranking on economics (left-to-right):
LBJ
FDR

Nixon
Kennedy
Carter
Eisenhower

Ford

I don't know a ton about Ford or Truman, but I'm pretty certain Ford is the most conservative. Truman may be between LBJ and FDR. I know a lot less about him.
(Let me address Kennedy being to the right of Nixon. I do not believe this is how the 1960 election went down. Nixon was likely to his right at the time, but I don't think the way he governed was even remotely to Kennedy's right considering 8 years and a mostly popular Great Society program plus inflation separated those times of Nixon's life. His morphing should be quite apparent.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Carter is probably the most libertarian president we've had in a long while. His libertarian tendencies caused him to seek to keep government small and he favored that across the board.  However, unlike Libertarians and some Republicans, he didn't think of government as evil and wasn't afraid to embrace "big" government where he thought it could make a difference.

He certainly was to the right of every Democratic president or nominee since Wilson, but yet he can easily be said to be to the left of every Republican president or nominee since Willkie.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Carter is probably the most libertarian president we've had in a long while. His libertarian tendencies caused him to seek to keep government small and he favored that across the board.  However, unlike Libertarians and some Republicans, he didn't think of government as evil and wasn't afraid to embrace "big" government where he thought it could make a difference.

He certainly was to the right of every Democratic president or nominee since Wilson, but yet he can easily be said to be to the left of every Republican president or nominee since Willkie.

Come on, the idea that Carter is more conservative than Davis is absurd.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Carter is probably the most libertarian president we've had in a long while. His libertarian tendencies caused him to seek to keep government small and he favored that across the board.  However, unlike Libertarians and some Republicans, he didn't think of government as evil and wasn't afraid to embrace "big" government where he thought it could make a difference.

He certainly was to the right of every Democratic president or nominee since Wilson, but yet he can easily be said to be to the left of every Republican president or nominee since Willkie.

Come on, the idea that Carter is more conservative than Davis is absurd.

On reflection, you're right.  When I wrote that, all I was remembering about 1924 was that a compromise candidate who didn't support the KKK had won the Klanbake convention.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There are ones who consider Jimmy Carter the most leftist president of the United States.

Really? Wow, some people are really stupid.

[Mr. Smith]

There are ones who consider Jimmy Carter the most leftist president of the United States.

Really? Wow, some people are really stupid.

They aren't wrong where foreign policy is concerned, then again arch-conservative Bob Taft is also a lefty in that field, and Herbert Hoover is the most leftist president on that.

But I'd say he's actually to the left of Kennedy, making him merely the second most conservative of the New Deal Democrats.

But if one adds post-Reagan, he ends being looking more to the left just because of how rabidly right the GOP are, and how forced over Clinton and Obama had to be.

And if one goes to 1912, the same thing happens thanks to the 1920's Presidents and Wilson's civil-liberties record.

[Rockefeller GOP]

I find it incredibly irresponsible to assign left-right positions to ideologically neutral issues like civil rights (a ton of fiscal liberals and a ton of fiscal conservatives supported it ... It's completely revisionist to decide the "best" position is liberal) and foreign policy (fiscally liberal Presidents like Wilson, FDR, Truman and LBJ were all hawkish, as were fiscal conservatives like Reagan and Bush ... Not sure what makes one position "conservative" or "liberal"), so I'll agree that economics is the best way, putting Carter is a centrist President.

[Bojack Horseman]

Jimmy Carter is probably the most conservative Democrat to hold the Presidency in the 20th century. Hands down.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

It also should be noted that he was pro-life. Many Republicans in the era can't say that though obviously that wasn't as left/right either.

Also, Reagan hardly a "fiscal" conservative though to be fair nor many in thus time period are. I know you mean economic, but I get picky on that, haha.

[Rockefeller GOP]

It also should be noted that he was pro-life. Many Republicans in the era can't say that though obviously that wasn't as left/right either.

Also, Reagan hardly a "fiscal" conservative though to be fair nor many in thus time period are. I know you mean economic, but I get picky on that, haha.

I mostly use that term on how they campaigned/what their motives were as opposed to how they (we're often forded to) govern.

[Antonio the Sixth]

ideologically neutral issues like civil rights

lol

[Mr. Smith]

@Wolverine: Nope, Carter is definitively left of Clinton on most issues, and left of Obama economically...and NO ONE except Hoover is further to the left of him where foreign policy is concerned.

Also Carter supported Nixon's price controls, and introduced two government branches of consequence and on issues definitely not conservative. And finally, he attempted universal healthcare.

Now that I have my lunchbreak...in context of New Deal, Hoover, and Reagan.

Fiscal (left-right): LBJ, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Hoover, Nixon/Carter, Reagan, Ford

Social (left-right): LBJ, Truman, Kennedy/Carter , FDR, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Hoover, Reagan 

Foreign (left-right): Carter, Hoover, Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, Ford, Kennedy/Nixon, Reagan, LBJ

Average: Truman,  LBJ / FDR, Carter, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Hoover, Nixon, Ford, Reagan

So yeah,  Carter is easily to the left Kennedy overall, but this simply makes Kennedy the furthest right Democratic President between Grover Cleveland and Bill Clinton.

Fiscally Carter is definitely the furthest right, but socially he ties with Kennedy for 2nd right (the prize of most so-con is FDR for the lousy civil rights record),...and he is the undisputed liberal where hawk/dove is concerned.


I may do one ranging from 1896-Present since that's the beginnings of America the Superpower, the beginnings of economic liberalism (ala William Jennings Bryan) as we know it,...and the NAACP formed just a little after that.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Jimmy Carter is probably the most conservative Democrat to hold the Presidency in the 20th century. Hands down.

]

Woodrow Wilson?

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Jimmy Carter is probably the most conservative Democrat to hold the Presidency in the 20th century. Hands down.

Woodrow Wilson?

No way. He was one of the most left wing despite his party being mostly quite conservative at the time. Jimmy Carter is just the opposite.

I hate quoting Wikipedia, but I think it lists all the progressive causes in bulk better than anywhere else.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Cherry pick as you like because I dislike him a great deal too, but it's hard to deny he's well to the left of most Democrats. I know there's a lot of bad things not on that list, but there's some on it too in my right wing opinion. We can't just view good/bad as left/right. I doubt you'd do that, but there are Progressives who (oddly only on here) deny Wilson as one of their own because of those. Purity is a high standard, and Wilson was far from it despite many things that should be viewed as successes to the left.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Jimmy Carter is probably the most conservative Democrat to hold the Presidency in the 20th century. Hands down.

]

Woodrow Wilson?

What on Earth was conservative about him?  Spare me that he was racist, that's a pathetic tactic to label that the "conservative" stance.  Because he was for an active foreign policy?  So were liberals until one Bush 43 came along.  Foreign policy and civil rights are only put on the political spectrum by revisionists who want to claim one stance as their ideology's own.

[Rockefeller GOP]

ideologically neutral issues like civil rights

lol

Hey man, great response!!  If a bunch of conservatives and liberals support something, and a bunch of conservatives and liberals oppose that same thing over time, where the hell do you get off calling the stance that happens to be more favored by historians a "liberal" point of view?  Awfully convenient.

[King]

Racism is definitely a conservative ideology. It's not hackery or a demeaning way to call all conservatives racist. It's a semantic truth.

Conservatism is about upholding cultural tradition and being cautious about change. Civil rights is the opposite of this idea.

You can be a conservative who is liberal on the issue of race (or "preservation of race" as it's commonly referred by racist groups) but you are, in fact, liberal on that issue and not a conservative. Sometimes you are liberal or conservative on an issue and you'll just have to swallow your pride and admit it rather than try to explain away that the issue is somehow ideologically neutral.

[Mr. Smith]

Jimmy Carter is probably the most conservative Democrat to hold the Presidency in the 20th century. Hands down.

]

Woodrow Wilson?

What on Earth was conservative about him?  Spare me that he was racist, that's a pathetic tactic to label that the "conservative" stance.  Because he was for an active foreign policy?  So were liberals until one Bush 43 came along.  Foreign policy and civil rights are only put on the political spectrum by revisionists who want to claim one stance as their ideology's own.

Yeah no, if that were the case Truman and LBJ wouldn't have been in hot water with the left-wings of their parties. Eisenhower and Nixon won their elections on cross-party vows to end wars.

Humphrey would've won 1968 if Johnson had a liberal foreign policy that didn't back dictator after dicator and just stayed the hell out of Vietnam....Nixon would've had no footing at all!

Or are you suggesting George "Mr. Liberal" McGovern was a conservative?

And the left praised Carter for Camp David and Panama...all policies no hawk would dare touch.

Even going back to Wilson, he was scoured by the left and lost his blatantly leftist SoS over WWI (William Jennings Bryan) when it was during peace-time.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Racism is definitely a conservative ideology. It's not hackery or a demeaning way to call all conservatives racist. It's a semantic truth.

Conservatism is about upholding cultural tradition and being cautious about change. Civil rights is the opposite of this idea.

You can be a conservative who is liberal on the issue of race (or "preservation of race" as it's commonly referred by racist groups) but you are, in fact, liberal on that issue and not a conservative. Sometimes you are liberal or conservative on an issue and you'll just have to swallow your pride and admit it rather than try to explain away that the issue is somehow ideologically neutral.

I would accept that opposing civil rights is a CULTURALLY conservative position, but to just call it conservative is disingenuous, IMO.  It seems socially conservative has just come to mean supporting the social policies of the GOP (I mean what is the logical, ideological connection between being pro-life and against gun control?), and it's certainly unfair to make the assumption that social conservatives in non-Southern states today would have opposed civil rights legislation, especially when several very conservative Republicans supported it.

[All Along The Watchtower]

^Modern connotations of ideological terms really don't apply to the Progressive Era. There were plenty of Progressives who could be called "conservative" in the sense that they wanted to preserve and strengthen the American social, economic, and political systems for the long term. That goes for Progressive members of both parties during that era, actually.

Remember, this was a time with a growing Socialist Party and other radical movements challenging the dominance of America's ruling institutions. Meanwhile, you had people in that era like William Jennings Bryan, who was both an agrarian economic populist (to the extent that a Democrat was, of course) and a Protestant fundamentalist. Hard to imagine someone like that in America today, in today's political world.

Woodrow Wilson, for what it's worth, was heavily influenced by both Edmund Burke and William Gladstone.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Conservatism is about upholding cultural tradition and being cautious about change. Civil rights is the opposite of this idea.

I addressed these semantics recently, but I'll do it again. Don't just use conservative and right wing synonymously. Just because we are in the US with a mostly capitalist tradition, the words get intertwined. There are radical right wingers even in right-wing countries. The situation only gets worse (more confusing) due to the 2-party system and current coalition consisting of free marketers (or sometimes more appropriately corporatists - take your pick) and white Southerners (some Christians, some not) who couldn't care less about economic policy so they vote by Party. They only care about upholding traditional values as they always have. Despite having nothing in common, these two groups are called right wing because they vote for the more capitalistic economic policy no matter what their real views are.

If the case had been a traditionally left-wing nation that otherwise contained some sort of a racial hierarchy for most of its history, would conservative refer to both of these things? Yes because it would be upholding the socialist tradition and the racial hierarchy. There could be radicals on both the left and right but conservatives likely only on the left. Radicals on the right who opposed civil rights would be the example of someone who is conservative on just an issue. Conservatives on the left who want civil rights would be liberal on a single issue.

I know that still makes conservative the term for racist, but I'd rather not even ponder a revolutionary who destroys a society with a great tradition of equality. I suppose that's possible as well.

The meanings of these terms are not consistent across cultures and hardly even across time periods within a country which is why I find right-wing and left-wing so important. Can you argue for the inclusion of race on the spectrum within those constraints? Possibly, but I still think Rockefeller has the strongest argument thus far. It's a conservative tradition that we are debating in a right-wing nation, but there were activist advocates against it from both parties. Does being radical on one issue in a RW country make you LW on that particular issue if you are agreeing with the LW radicals as King wants to portray (with terminology being my own)? Frankly, I'm not 100% sure - I tend to say no but its possible. Not every issue can really line up neatly into RW/LW lines.  This is especially true when there is an underlying economic argument from your particular wing's ideology that explains why this cultural change would be best. That's not to say "Because it is would help the economy under our wing's conditions" but to say "Because the economically fair thing would be for the government to provide for this race as well" or "Because the economically fair thing would be to afford this race the same opportunity to produce and sell goods" or something more or less extreme from each side.

I know there's no definitive answer in there so this is a lot of rambling about word definitions, but I think Rock's more accurate than he has been given credit for.

And don't think I am just using conservative/radical to refer to cultural issues because there could easily be a right wing radical on an economic issue in a RW country.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Jimmy Carter is probably the most conservative Democrat to hold the Presidency in the 20th century. Hands down.

]

Woodrow Wilson?

What on Earth was conservative about him?  Spare me that he was racist, that's a pathetic tactic to label that the "conservative" stance.  Because he was for an active foreign policy?  So were liberals until one Bush 43 came along.  Foreign policy and civil rights are only put on the political spectrum by revisionists who want to claim one stance as their ideology's own.

Yeah no, if that were the case Truman and LBJ wouldn't have been in hot water with the left-wings of their parties. Eisenhower and Nixon won their elections on cross-party vows to end wars.

Humphrey would've won 1968 if Johnson had a liberal foreign policy that didn't back dictator after dicator and just stayed the hell out of Vietnam....Nixon would've had no footing at all!

Or are you suggesting George "Mr. Liberal" McGovern was a conservative?

And the left praised Carter for Camp David and Panama...all policies no hawk would dare touch.

Even going back to Wilson, he was scoured by the left and lost his blatantly leftist SoS over WWI (William Jennings Bryan) when it was during peace-time.

The hippie movement plus anti-war students certainly provided an anti-war backbone for the Democratic Party in the 60s through the Reagan years, but war has evolved so much that it's hard to transcend eras. Just a decade and a half prior to this, Robert Taft - one of the biggest conservatives in America - was also one of the biggest non-interventionists in American history - a tradition that seems to have been revived by both the always dovish Republicans and the simpletons who oppose everything Obama does so they jump on the anti-drone bandwagon (though that appears to have changed with threats from Russia and ISIS). The left and right both have plenty of doves. There is usually a general consensus between parties which is preferred at the moment. More doves in the mid 20th century. Hawks in the late part and post-9/11 and now there are lots of doves from Iraq-weariness.

Another historical example of a conservative dove that I dislike just to prove I am not buttering up my own side: Herbert Hoover - a man who I dislike intensely - quite the statist, but inarguably RW conservative on most issues did not even believe in helping the UK out on the verge of collapse during WWII.

There's no shortage of hawkish Democrats if you want to hear about them.

Ironically, many white neoconservatives were among the most ardent supporters of the civil rights movement so something is not adding up. The reason they left the Democratic Party was due to the rise of the anti-authority crowd and a desire for traditionalism. I think neither issue can really be used to determine left/right standing. I mentioned foreign policy in my first post and the semantics of race down the page. You decide.

It seems liberals get the credit as doves because when the activist crowd loves to voice their opinion loudly.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

conservatism is a meaningless term, especially the bizarre American version of the word.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

conservatism is a meaningless term, especially the bizarre American version of the word.

My brother's roommate is from Newcastle, and he can't even comprehend how the Republican Party social issue-only voters are a thing. Don't worry, I had a London resident confirm that, since there's a lot of things they can't comprehend up there. (No offense intended anyone - I say the same thing about regions dear to me and it's not politically charged.)