Is Trump the Right's Jimmy Carter?

[Hindsight was 2020]

Granted Carter unlike Trump is a good human being but the fact remains Carter took over in 76 with both the Senate and the House (I even think the senate was over 60 seats) an through his own party infighting an failed leadership didn't get major goals through which lead to him being viewed as a failed leader culminating in Reagan beating him 4 years later with a legacy of being incompetent. Is Trump now running the same risk?

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Yes, but the country is more polarized so fewer voters will abandon him.

[The_Doctor]

Calling him the Right's Jimmy Carter ignores that there was a confluence of an economic and international crisis that doomed Carter in 1979-1980. The New Deal coalition had been slowly crumbling since 1966, and Carter's defeat was the final nail in the New Deal coalition. That said what doomed Carter was the stagflation crisis which really began in 1974 and intensified towards 1980.

Think of it this way. Had the election been held in 1948, Carter would've won and be remembered as a fairly decent President like Harry Truman. Or even 1960. But it's Carter's timing that he came in at the tail end of the New Deal era, at a time where Nixon had weakened the New Deal coalition and Carter saw it split asunder.

All that said, I don't necessarily buy that there will be a crisis by 2020. 2021-2024, yes, but not 2020. Obama left a fairly strong country (although with the bottom half struggling, but better off since 2008). He did a ton of spadework to try to restore the country's fundamentals and that will probably keep us afloat for a while. Crucially, however, Obama never managed to get at the root issues underlying the 2008 crash nor did he solve the bottom half of the country's economic woes. Neither will Trump; Trump's simply not in a position to better the lives of the working class whites that voted for him, in any substantive way given his coalition's ideology and composition.

The crisis that will develop will take a while to form and so I think Trump will be a Harding but not the Hoover in the eye of the storm. Trump seems to me a man at odds with history and an increasing aberration that will be part of our "forgotten" presidencies that the nation brushes off. I don't think he runs for a second term, if he's not impeached.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I might not agree with it entirely, but I'd really like to see TD's thoughts on this.

The administration is defined by chaos thus far, sure. But where as Jimmy Carter micromanaged, I think Trump is pulling back and letting the various factions war around him. It may have worked for him in the business world, but the White House is a totally different animal.

Edit: Knew it.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Calling him the Right's Jimmy Carter ignores that there was a confluence of an economic and international crisis that doomed Carter in 1979-1980. The New Deal coalition had been slowly crumbling since 1966, and Carter's defeat was the final nail in the New Deal coalition. That said what doomed Carter was the stagflation crisis which really began in 1974 and intensified towards 1980.

Think of it this way. Had the election been held in 1948, Carter would've won and be remembered as a fairly decent President like Harry Truman. Or even 1960. But it's Carter's timing that he came in at the tail end of the New Deal era, at a time where Nixon had weakened the New Deal coalition and Carter saw it split asunder.

All that said, I don't necessarily buy that there will be a crisis by 2020. 2021-2024, yes, but not 2020. Obama left a fairly strong country (although with the bottom half struggling, but better off since 2008). He did a ton of spadework to try to restore the country's fundamentals and that will probably keep us afloat for a while. Crucially, however, Obama never managed to get at the root issues underlying the 2008 crash nor did he solve the bottom half of the country's economic woes. Neither will Trump; Trump's simply not in a position to better the lives of the working class whites that voted for him, in any substantive way given his coalition's ideology and composition.

The crisis that will develop will take a while to form and so I think Trump will be a Harding but not the Hoover in the eye of the storm. Trump seems to me a man at odds with history and an increasing aberration that will be part of our "forgotten" presidencies that the nation brushes off. I don't think he runs for a second term, if he's not impeached.

I don't mean literally like Carter we could go through a 90's Bush like Recession under his watch an it will still leave his legacy would be Carter like

[Virginiá]

I always thought this was a good read:

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-politics-trump-makes/

Snip:

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Long article, but very interesting.

[dead0man]

They both were in over their heads as POTUS and probably at least a little racist, but Carter is smart and not a narcissistic c**nt bird.

[Rjjr77]

No carter's rigid Keynesian economic policy plunged the country into economic turmoil that most economists didn't think was even possible, and his refusal to move off it made things so much worse.

Trumps a jerk, Carter was inept

[Hindsight was 2020]

No carter's rigid Keynesian economic policy plunged the country into economic turmoil that most economists didn't think was even possible, and his refusal to move off it made things so much worse.

Trumps a jerk, Carter was inept

You seriously don't look at Trump anti-green jobs/bring back coal jobs/sabotage healthcare to get dems to negotiate health care economic plans an don't see economic turmoil?   

[Mr. Smith]

Almost precisely the case.

But this was likely to be the case anyway, unless Hillary won, in which case she would've likely fallen out the same way Bush Sr did [which itself is ironic considering '92].

There were some Reagan-y and Nixony aspects to Obama from the start, I'd argue more Nixony since they both overstayed unpopular wars they promised to end, tried playing nice to the opposition on healthcare when they had little reason too, and generally had pragmatic foreign policy rather than anything moralist.

This pretty much set Hillary up to go the way of Gerald Ford or Bush Sr, both of whom, like her, were long-runners in Washington. Like the latter, she did lots of office hopping. Like the former, she was directly in Washington for 25+ years.

Turns out she ended up more like Ford.

Then there was the primary, which really should have been an obvious foreshadowing, since as it turns out, fending off lots of conflict early can make one strong if they come out on top. There were 15 people all trying to hit the same, really tired ideas...oh and one foreign policy oddball.  In '76, there were 14...and one foreign policy oddball. This is perfect room for a complete outsider to build cred the others can't.

And build this cred did, quite nicely too. Well, everywhere except in The West.

Then comes the GE stuff, everyone's complaining about how negative the whole thing is, both candidates appear to be too moderate to the cultural base, even if a chord got struck, so they pick a milequetoast-but-ideologically-pure Midwesterner to hold things down.

This manages to wrest over Ohio and Wisconsin, the former is critical and the latter had a 30+ record on the other side. This manages to nab The South...except for Virginia...specifically because of NoVA.

But most critical in this equation, the same West that didn't want 'em in the Primaries...didn't want 'em much again.

And now as President, the Trump-Ryan relations share a very eerie resemblance to Carter's with Tip O'Neill. AHCA might very well be what The Water Wars were for Carter.

2020 is likely going to be in The West exactly what it was for Carter in 1980 if things keep going as they are.

[The Dowager Mod]

No, Jimmy has a soul and is honest.

[ProgressiveCanadian]

No, Jimmy has a soul and is honest.

[Rjjr77]

No carter's rigid Keynesian economic policy plunged the country into economic turmoil that most economists didn't think was even possible, and his refusal to move off it made things so much worse.

Trumps a jerk, Carter was inept

You seriously don't look at Trump anti-green jobs/bring back coal jobs/sabotage healthcare to get dems to negotiate health care economic plans an don't see economic turmoil?   

Not at all. The government should not be pimping jobs (when green is profitable it will be in its own)
ACA is going to collapse on its own, and needs to be fixed. Parts from it can be successful, but the whole system is a nightmare.

And comparing any of that to stagflation is borderline criminal. Stagflation was so bad, most economists didn't think it was even POSSIBLE. It's probably the worst thing to ever happen in this country's economic history.

[Mr. Smith]

No, Jimmy has a soul and is honest.

Two words: Shadow Archetype.

[Hindsight was 2020]

No, Jimmy has a soul and is honest.

That was the first thing I said though

[Rjjr77]

No carter's rigid Keynesian economic policy plunged the country into economic turmoil that most economists didn't think was even possible, and his refusal to move off it made things so much worse.

Trumps a jerk, Carter was inept

You seriously don't look at Trump anti-green jobs/bring back coal jobs/sabotage healthcare to get dems to negotiate health care economic plans an don't see economic turmoil?  

Not at all. The government should not be pimping jobs (when green is profitable it will be in its own)
ACA is going to collapse on its own, and needs to be fixed. Parts from it can be successful, but the whole system is a nightmare.

And comparing any of that to stagflation is borderline criminal. Stagflation was so bad, most economists didn't think it was even POSSIBLE. It's probably the worst thing to ever happen in this country's economic history.

Stagflation wasn't worse than the Great Depression. I suppose you could argue that Carter's response to stagflation was worse than Hoover's response to the Great Depression; but by every economic metric the Great Depression was worse. It's like baby boomers trying to equate their experiences in Vietnam to the GI Generation's experiences in WWII.

Depressions and recessions  happen, we understand the, we see how they work, we know what they are, we always have. They may be more detrimental to the public as a whole. Stagflation was worse from the standpoint it shouldn't have existed, there was no way to explain it, people were baffled by it. Some people still don't understand it.

Now what Hoover and FDR did was not the best way to solve a depression and may have hampered the speediness of the recovery.

An easier analogy would be like AIDS is worse than Cancer. Cancer kills more people but we understood cancers existence AIDS was an epidemic in part because it came out of nowhere and baffled professionals and layman alike.

[pbrower2a]

Calling him the Right's Jimmy Carter ignores that there was a confluence of an economic and international crisis that doomed Carter in 1979-1980. The New Deal coalition had been slowly crumbling since 1966, and Carter's defeat was the final nail in the New Deal coalition. That said what doomed Carter was the stagflation crisis which really began in 1974 and intensified towards 1980.

Carter came to office with inflation at the worst non-wartime levels and had no way of dealing with inflation that his Party would accept.  Republicans were for big reductions in government spending, especially of the safety net, and to weaken labor unions. What Jimmy Carter lacked the guts to do, Ronald Reagan was willing to do. Of course, nobody could have foreseen the consequences of the hidden rot within the Iranian royal government...

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Much so. But you must remember that Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to need the South were he to have a chance of winning the Presidency, at least in the 1970s. He won every former Confederate State except Virginia. In 1980 the only former-Confederate state that he won was Georgia. Carter also lost a raft of states (among them California, Washington, New Mexico, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine) that no Democrat would lose except when losing the election.

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So far I see rifts within the Republican Party between the more libertarian wing that wants to shrink government spending, the Protestant fundamentalist wing that cares only about turning America to Jesus to make it righteous whatever the cost, and the Corporate wing that wants an absolute plutocracy  enforced with chicanery and brutality. Democrats can do nothing now except to play one Republican faction against another.

Barack Obama saved the banks, ensuring that people would keep getting their paychecks and no9t lose their life savings. Businesses would not fold just because their cash reserves vanished in a bank run. But he did not, and really could not, stop the intensification of economic inequality that the Republican Party stands for. Third-World living conditions with which the economic elites would be content so long as those elites get maximal profits are not compatible with First World efficiency and motivation.

Donald Trump has shown himself as a pure crony capitalist before becoming president, and he remains one as President. He believes fully in the idea that profit is the highest of human virtues,  and that any compromise with humanitarian decency or human dignity is evil. If America has someone with much the same set of beliefs when the economy is in a tailspin, then expect people to go hungry and cold and get angry.

This comes to an end with the defeat of this agenda or with a revolution. As in the Philippines in 1986 or Romania in 1989, the political leadership will call upon the police and the military to mow down protesters, and the military will turn against those who give criminal orders.    

Consider infrastructure. Democrats will obviously oppose any infrastructure spending that requires sweetheart privatization. If the price of having a six-lane alternative to grossly-obsolete Interstate 94 between the  Indiana state line and Ann Arbor is the building of and unregulated (toll) relief road as a private-public partnership, then they might accede so long as the existing Interstate 94 remains a non-tolled highway. The construction jobs will be worth the concession. On the other side, transforming the existing highway into an unregulated toll road, then they might align with Republican deficit hawks. Anyone who has no stake in a corrupt deal can become a deficit hawk.

It's a risky game, and it creates more gridlock while the political debate becomes shriller. Government that achieves nothing while the economy implodes (and President Trump wishes to recover the corrupt boom of the George W. Bush era, a bubble that made the Panic of 2008 inevitable) and offends too many sensibilities is one way to get a crisis.    

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I see no obvious analogue for Donald Trump in American history. I see a demagogue who made appeals to people experiencing genuine hardships who has since sold out his voters. With polls stabilizing around 40% approval, I can;t see him winning re-election. The only people seeming to go toward President Trump are the sorts who have class privilege that he has made clear that he will not challenge. His ideology is clear -- All for the Few, people whose indulgence is the alleged magic that drives capitalism. Most people an IQ over 120 -- and that's where the people who can make the clever phrases are -- reject him.

But just look at his faults that have nothing to do with his ideology: he is reckless, inattentive, dishonest, materialistic, and selfish; he has no tolerance for any personal affront. (I am satisfied that if he could make me disappear -- he would). Such is all horrible whatever the ideology, and none of it is compatible with good leadership.   

[Antonio the Sixth]

I recommend we reserve judgment until the next election.

[Hindsight was 2020]

I recommend we reserve judgment until the next election.

I'm speaking more in governing sense then his 2020 chances

[The_Doctor]

I might not agree with it entirely, but I'd really like to see TD's thoughts on this.

The administration is defined by chaos thus far, sure. But where as Jimmy Carter micromanaged, I think Trump is pulling back and letting the various factions war around him. It may have worked for him in the business world, but the White House is a totally different animal.

Edit: Knew it.

I'd like to hear your thoughts as a Trumpian because you seem one of the most smart and realistic ones here. Hopefully you see this. I have a profoundly biased view of Trump so I was curious.

[The_Doctor]

No carter's rigid Keynesian economic policy plunged the country into economic turmoil that most economists didn't think was even possible, and his refusal to move off it made things so much worse.

Trumps a jerk, Carter was inept

You seriously don't look at Trump anti-green jobs/bring back coal jobs/sabotage healthcare to get dems to negotiate health care economic plans an don't see economic turmoil?   

Not at all. The government should not be pimping jobs (when green is profitable it will be in its own)
ACA is going to collapse on its own, and needs to be fixed. Parts from it can be successful, but the whole system is a nightmare.

And comparing any of that to stagflation is borderline criminal. Stagflation was so bad, most economists didn't think it was even POSSIBLE. It's probably the worst thing to ever happen in this country's economic history.

For the record, stagflation, in strict economic terms, were second to the Great Depression in terms of economic pain and damage. Nothing we've had, except maybe the 2008 crash, compares. Stagflation was bad, but the Great Depression easily beats stagflation in terms of unemployment and GDP (I think GDP, unemployment for sure). You can tell it was less bad than the Great Depression in that it started around 1974 and was ended by Paul Volcker's Federal Reserve, coupled with Ronald Reagan's support for the Fed, and tax cuts, which provided a jolt of necessary funds in 1983. The Great Depression began in 1929 and didn't end until 1945, the end of World War. Arguably, thanks to the war's effects, the economic good times didn't actually even return until maybe 1947.

Second, the ACA is not going to collapse on its own. It needs shoring up in the risk corridors and the insurance co-payments but in the long run, it'll be fine for a decade. You are seriously not reading healthcare news if you're just skimming headlines from November about the ACA.

Third, Trump is not going to cause this crisis on his own. The crisis has been developing for decades, much as the run up to the Great Depression did (the 1908 stock market crash, the 1920 economic freak collapse, and the European economic situation leading to Black Tuesday of 1929).

[The_Doctor]

I always thought this was a good read:

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-politics-trump-makes/

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I need to read the entire article but I dissent in calling Franklin Pierce the disjunctive President. I think it rightfully belongs to James Buchanan. Buchanan tried to prop up the Union and failed in the final months in striking a compromise that would keep the North and South together. Arguably, maybe both Pierce and Buchanan were disjunctive Presidents.

[The_Doctor]

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Sure. Carter's Democratic coalition wasn't able to accept the tough cuts that the Reagan Republican coalition were able to plus the harsh anti-inflationary measures of the Voclker Fed.

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This is accurate, to a degree. Obama was constrained because he's a minority coalition President who doesn't have the political capital or political coalition to ram through the reforms to deal with economic inequality. He began talking about it in the run up to his re-election campaign but he had no congressional coalition or real political coalition behind him to enact the radical measures that would take on income inequality. That requires, as I have said many times, a realignment and a much more stronger and united Democratic Party.

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On the contrary there are Presidents who have acted like Donald Trump, in specific areas, at different times in this nation's history. Andrew Jackson behaved like Donald Trump; he was just luckier to be in the right time to hold much of Trump's proclivities and sensibilities and be revered enough to land on our $20 dollar bill (ignoring the objective good and bad of the Jacksonian era). Roosevelt and Reagan certainly had cults following him and Roosevelt's 1936 refrain against the "royalists" is deeply demagogic and populist. Reagan exhibited the same tone of populist warcry in his Presidency and campaigns to bring together blue collar voters to back his neoliberal conservative agenda.

The American Firstism of the Trump era was last seen in the 1920s, when we refused to negotiate favorable loan terms to the Europeans because we 'lent them the money and it was their problem' (I'm paraphrasing Calvin Coolidge).

Sure, there hasn't been a President who brought all that together in a grand package but individually, Trump's White House is not unprecedented. Except, perhaps, the level and nature of Russian aid in interfering in the Presidential election. But beyond that, no.

[Rjjr77]

Depressions and recessions  happen, we understand the, we see how they work, we know what they are, we always have. They may be more detrimental to the public as a whole. Stagflation was worse from the standpoint it shouldn't have existed, there was no way to explain it, people were baffled by it. Some people still don't understand it.

Now what Hoover and FDR did was not the best way to solve a depression and may have hampered the speediness of the recovery.

An easier analogy would be like AIDS is worse than Cancer. Cancer kills more people but we understood cancers existence AIDS was an epidemic in part because it came out of nowhere and baffled professionals and layman alike.

Ok I see what you're saying.

But I'd argue that what made the Depression last longer than expected even with all of the New Deal programs in place wasn't the fault of the New Deal itself (I'd contend that these programs were just and necessary); but was the fault of the federal reserve for tightening their monetary policy in the midst of an economic downturn.

Milton Friedman explains it better than I can:

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Of course who knows exactly. Economists since the Great Depression have been studying this event for decades now. Some would even go as far as to say that we study it too much and that it was simply a statistical outlier and that we shouldn't put such enormous focus on it.

I tend to agree that the Depression has been overstudied. I absolutely believe the tightening of our monetary policy factored into it (no doubt) I also believe new deal programs (many which started under hoover) continued to contribute to the prolonging of the depression.

[Rjjr77]

No carter's rigid Keynesian economic policy plunged the country into economic turmoil that most economists didn't think was even possible, and his refusal to move off it made things so much worse.

Trumps a jerk, Carter was inept

You seriously don't look at Trump anti-green jobs/bring back coal jobs/sabotage healthcare to get dems to negotiate health care economic plans an don't see economic turmoil?   

Not at all. The government should not be pimping jobs (when green is profitable it will be in its own)
ACA is going to collapse on its own, and needs to be fixed. Parts from it can be successful, but the whole system is a nightmare.

And comparing any of that to stagflation is borderline criminal. Stagflation was so bad, most economists didn't think it was even POSSIBLE. It's probably the worst thing to ever happen in this country's economic history.

For the record, stagflation, in strict economic terms, were second to the Great Depression in terms of economic pain and damage. Nothing we've had, except maybe the 2008 crash, compares. Stagflation was bad, but the Great Depression easily beats stagflation in terms of unemployment and GDP (I think GDP, unemployment for sure). You can tell it was less bad than the Great Depression in that it started around 1974 and was ended by Paul Volcker's Federal Reserve, coupled with Ronald Reagan's support for the Fed, and tax cuts, which provided a jolt of necessary funds in 1983. The Great Depression began in 1929 and didn't end until 1945, the end of World War. Arguably, thanks to the war's effects, the economic good times didn't actually even return until maybe 1947.

Second, the ACA is not going to collapse on its own. It needs shoring up in the risk corridors and the insurance co-payments but in the long run, it'll be fine for a decade. You are seriously not reading healthcare news if you're just skimming headlines from November about the ACA.

Third, Trump is not going to cause this crisis on his own. The crisis has been developing for decades, much as the run up to the Great Depression did (the 1908 stock market crash, the 1920 economic freak collapse, and the European economic situation leading to Black Tuesday of 1929).

I think I clarified why stagflation is worse, because we didn't understand how it existed, not necessarily the impact on the public (because recessions occur and we understand them).

No ACA cannot stand on its own, not without bailouts or some FDIC style government insuring of the policies as a whole. The risk is too great to the insurance companies for many to stay in the marketplaces under the current structure. Ten years of it operating? sure, thats not long term by any economic measure. There are too many issues, medicaid increase are not affordable from a long term view, neither is the fact that as costs go up due to inflation and exits from the marketplace will the penalty outweigh the cost of a policy for many young healthy individuals. It is just a unsustainable business model.

There are lots of parts of it that are beneficial that can be sustained, but without an overhaul ACA will not and cannot last in its current structure