Jimmy Carter in the american political spectrum

[buritobr]

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

And Bill Clinton?

[Antonio the Sixth]

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.

Modern American conservatism didn't even exist before the Civil Rights issue burst into the public debate. Goldwater's stance against the CRA was one of its key (if not the single most important) defining moments.

[Mr. Smith]

@Wolverine: Kennedy and Clinton both have Carter beat on that.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Modern American conservatism didn't even exist before the Civil Rights issue burst into the public debate. Goldwater's stance against the CRA was one of its key (if not the single most important) defining moments.

No.  Modern American conservatism, with its emphasis upon religion and a distrust of government evolved organically from the anti-communism of the immediate postwar era.  Goldwaterism was a side branch of that, but was ultimately not the true ancestor of modern conservatism.

[Antonio the Sixth]

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.

Modern American conservatism didn't even exist before the Civil Rights issue burst into the public debate. Goldwater's stance against the CRA was one of its key (if not the single most important) defining moments.

Let's forget that Goldwater supported every single Civil Rights Act before that one to paint him as evil.

Change your avatar already.

Modern American conservatism didn't even exist before the Civil Rights issue burst into the public debate. Goldwater's stance against the CRA was one of its key (if not the single most important) defining moments.

No.  Modern American conservatism, with its emphasis upon religion and a distrust of government evolved organically from the anti-communism of the immediate postwar era.  Goldwaterism was a side branch of that, but was ultimately not the true ancestor of modern conservatism.

That form of conservatism remained a fringe movement until it merged with the anti-Civil Rights crowd.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Modern American conservatism didn't even exist before the Civil Rights issue burst into the public debate. Goldwater's stance against the CRA was one of its key (if not the single most important) defining moments.

No.  Modern American conservatism, with its emphasis upon religion and a distrust of government evolved organically from the anti-communism of the immediate postwar era.  Goldwaterism was a side branch of that, but was ultimately not the true ancestor of modern conservatism.

That form of conservatism remained a fringe movement until it merged with the anti-Civil Rights crowd.
[/quote]

While it did not dominate the Republican party to the extent that modern conservatism does today, that form of conservatism was hardly a fringe movement.  Rather, it was a bipartisan movement back when American political parties were less ideological than they are today.  Being concentrated in a single party has given it more political strength, but not particularly more adherents.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

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.

Modern American conservatism didn't even exist before the Civil Rights issue burst into the public debate. Goldwater's stance against the CRA was one of its key (if not the single most important) defining moments.

Let's forget that Goldwater supported every single Civil Rights Act before that one to paint him as evil.

Yes, Goldwater voted for every Civil Rights Act except the one that actually achieved something. The CRAs of 1957 and 1960 were essentially all bark and no bite. Sure, it was nice and all for Congress to pass them, but without proper enforcement powers, they were pretty much useless. The fact that Goldwater balked the minute a law was passed that actually enforced the 14th Amendment does not speak too highly of him. 

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

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

And Bill Clinton?

There's no question that Carter was the most liberal President of the last 30 years of the 20th century.

[Mr. Smith]

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

And Bill Clinton?

There's no question that Carter was the most liberal President of the last 30 years of the 20th century.

And the most liberal President this side of 1968 still.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Bill Maher had Cornel West (who is a socialist) on his show and he tried to make a point that Carter was the last president who was truly a pacifist and West disagreed.  He said that the last president whose foreign policy he approved of was Coolidge!  I thought that was quite interesting because if you add it to the fact that Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat) had put Eugene Debs in jail while the Republicans invited him to the White House describing him as an American hero, you have to winder how different the parties are nowadays.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I suppose it would depend on your "ideal" of what liberalism and conservatism should be. If liberalism is to be an emphasis on equality, environmental protection, and a less abrasive American foreign policy, Carter would be a liberal. If conservatism is seeking a smaller and more efficient government, then Carter definitely had a conservative side to him. A fiscal conservative might be able to look back in retrospect at Carter with praise for his efforts to create a more sustainable American government. And even though Carter did display some less public anti-communism (he started policies that would later be co-opted into the "Reagan Doctrine"), a paleo-conservative might prefer him to Reagan, especially with the growth of consumerism in the 1980's. An "Old School New Deal Democrat" might have incredibly antipathy towards him for not being in the model of Roosevelt, Johnson, Humphrey, Mondale, etc. in terms of economic issues. A socialist could praise his perceived pacifism or revile him as the first step of the Democrats' march to the right.

Nixon as well is a leader that is ideologically hard to place, and could be either loved and reviled by very similar and very different groups of people in historical retrospect.

[Mr. Smith]

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-cost-of-disowning-jimmy-carter-20150130

The article is relevant, and from the National Journal, surprisingly insightful. Makes for a great point about the idiocies of neoconservatism and the hysteria the policies have caused.

@Puff: There was heckuva lot wrong with Goldwater without that coming into question.

@locke: That guy isn't being fair, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover had a lot more freedom to enact a sane foreign policy because there was backlash against WWI and Wilson.

Carter was working against 30+ years of hysteria and fear-based interventionism, with those notions as the establishment and then Iran and USSR going as they did, his eventual cave-in to hawkishness was inevitable.

But at least he tried for something different, at least he U.S. wasn't invading anything.

Everyone else from Truman to present has been quite trigger-happy.

[ScottieF]

For the sake of the issue at hand, I'll frame the left/right debate on Carter solely based on economics, in which case he is probably the most rightist president since Hoover. Maybe Ford, but I don't know much about him. Truman never claimed himself as a Keynesian; the quote goes something like "you'll never convince me that the government should spend money it doesn't have."

But as for the rest, in terms of economic policy it seems quite clear that FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ and Nixon are all to the left of any president 1980-present.

[RINO Tom]

I don't subscribe to the belief that Carter's religion, accent or campaign talk can make you insufficiently liberal, LOL.  Jimmy Carter legitimately believed in the age-old liberal belief that government - in one form or another - could and should create an environment to help the financially unfortunate achieve a better life.  He was not a conservative, period.

[Phony Moderate]

Jimmy Carter legitimately believed in the age-old liberal belief that government - in one form or another - could and should create an environment to help the financially unfortunate achieve a better life.

Yes, he was a liberal of the classical variety rather than of the LBJ variety.