Herb I?
very bad, I know, but I couldn’t resist. Fantastic update unworthy of such a dreadful pun.
Jimmy Two: America in Carter's Second Term
- Thread starter Vidal
- Start date
very bad, I know, but I couldn’t resist. Fantastic update unworthy of such a dreadful pun.
I like it.
Alternatively Maybe Gregory XVII, for his first name, or Paul VII, in honor of the Pope who made him a Cardinal.
TBH, I haven’t decided, which is why it’s open ended as of now. I will say these are the three finalists I’ve gone back to: Anselm, Hadrian, and John Paul III.
Anselm feels right as Basil himself was also a Benedictine monk. John Paul III is a close second for the reasons ZeroFrame described but at the same time, I wonder if there'd be a hesitation. Both John Pauls have died in quick succession.
Heck, if you wanted, you could still have John Paul II succeeded by Benedict XVI...
Going to be interesting to see how the fact of an English* pope with substantial personal loyalty to the crown affects Northern Ireland - here's a record of a conversation he had with Thatcher early in her premiership on the subject. As far as I can tell he didn't make many public pronouncements on the matter except on the Church's position on hunger strikes (according to him, just another form of suicide) and on the Guildford Four (which seems to have been more personal than political), so there's a lot of room for Interesting Times here...
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Actually, that might be a reason for him to avoid taking the name Adrian — Adrian IV, our last English pope, is supposed to have authorized England's conquest of Ireland.
You won't find any high ranking Catholic church official in the last century (including the last two OTL incumbents) who isn't exposed to the scandal to some degree if only by association and he's better than many options at that time.
Also Saville was very good at manipulation to get where he wanted to be (the infamous keys for example) and while many knew many more just saw the slightly wierdo guy who got the ratings and the donations and occasionally asked a favour or two.
Regarding the assassination the killers will be traced back and both Bulgaria and the pact just scored the mother of all own goals killing JPII. Certainly Poland's reaction (so soon after solidarity) is going to be rather "interesting."
Fantastic update. The conversation between Jimmy and Ted was so poignant and well-written.
Deleted member 145219
Hi Vidal,
JIMMY TWO!
America in Carter's Second Term
This is not about creating some liberal utopia. If it were, Jimmy Carter would not be my choice. The archetypal “liberal” president deregulated industries at the expense of unions, decided to dramatically increase the Pentagon’s budget while sacrificing an opportunity for national health insurance because of its cost, opposed a minimum wage increase, and formulated an energy policy that relied heavily on the widespread use of coal. None of these would fare well in a Democratic primary today. But, at the same time, Carter seemed far to the left in other ways. He wanted universal same-day voter registration, and he proposed it at the start of his first term. He wanted to tax capital gains at the same rate as wage income. He rejected tax cuts for the rich. That deregulation I mentioned earlier was all part of helping the consumer — at the expense of big business interests (unions were collateral, not the intended object of Carter’s ire). And that energy plan that relied on coal also invested significantly in solar and wind energies. He appointed more women and people of color to the federal bench than all of his predecessors combined.
But beyond this complicated legislative legacy is another stunning fact about our 39th president. He never told a lie. Not once did the press corps catch him in some outright untruth. And they tried. And yes, he was prone to some exaggeration here and there, but he never lied. Whether you read Jonathan Alter’s biography of him, or Rick Perlstein’s account of his presidency, or Kai Bird’s biography of him, that fact isn’t in dispute. He promised the people he wouldn’t lie to them, and he didn’t. He made mistakes — yes. He kept Bert Lance around too long — heck, he appointed him in the first place. He eschewed the norms of Washington, believing he could treat Congress — a legislative body of more than 500 full-time legislators — like the Georgia state legislature that convened for a fraction of the time. He thought he could handle the presidency without a chief of staff. And he worried too little about the political outcomes, rarely considering that particular policies may be popular for a reason.
Jimmy Carter is a lot of things, but he is not the simple caricature I learned about from the history books or from the conventional wisdom when I was growing up. He is not a big government liberal who drove our economy into the ground. He was not a hapless president in over his head watching the world pass him by. He did not spend his presidency prioritizing the White House tennis court schedule over the affairs of state.
Like a lot of us, I hate being lied to. And I grew up learning a certain historical canon — that Jimmy Carter was a failure. But when a car accident happens and a seatbelt saves the driver’s life, there’s a pretty good argument to be made that Jimmy Carter wasn’t a total failure. When I sip a drink at a craft brewery, there’s pretty good reason to believe Jimmy Carter didn’t totally screw up on the job. When a family can afford to fly on a plane for their vacation, when impoverished Americans are able to access food stamps without first purchasing a physical stamp, when Americans watched the Soviet Union fall apart — all of these are instances when someone should have said, “Hey. Jimmy Carter wasn’t a failure.” But no one did. And few do today.
We are in the midst of a national reexamination of Jimmy Carter The President. We’ve always appreciated Jimmy Carter The Man. Jimmy Carter The Ex-President. Jimmy Carter The Humanitarian. But now we are reconsidering Jimmy Carter The President, and I think that’s important. Not because he was the best or most successful president. Not because he was a perfect president, or even a nearly-perfect one, but because we’ve been lied to for so long. We’ve been told that Jimmy Carter is synonymous with failure, with disaster. That he is proof positive that liberal ideas don’t work, when, in fact, Carter was one of the last presidents to face a major primary challenge because he wasn’t liberal enough for the Democrats of the day.
No, Jimmy Carter cannot be fit into a box, and that’s precisely why I felt compelled to consider what his second term may have looked like. I’ve read a lot of timelines on this board, but I believe the best ones are when the author makes a controversial decision — one that goes against the standard groupthink — and then is able to convince you to see their premise in a new light. I enjoy the timelines when ‘plausibility’ does not mean a simple straight line. For a man as paradoxical as Jimmy Carter, there is a lot to work with and a lot of decisions to consider. As I’ve written the timeline, I’ve been nervous, wondering to myself, Would Jimmy Carter really do that? But the reason Carter is such a fascinating subject for alternate history is because there are so many ways you could answer. My ultimate hope is that this alternate history shows you something about him that his biographers couldn’t.
Of course, he had some ingrained traits. He was self-assured. He often thought he was the smartest person in the room. But even some of his most characteristically Carter beliefs — his love of peace, for example — were not absolute. He was no pacifist. He considered military intervention throughout his presidency before deciding against it. He wanted to take on big business and expand the social safety net without ballooning government spending. Which side won out with him? Hard to say. Conservatives will tell you the former. Liberals will argue the latter. And this is why his second term deserves a thorough examination. In fact, it deserves multiple thorough examinations.
If there was one North Star I kept while researching this timeline, it would be a quote from @Yes in his introduction of McGoverning: “The best fantasists, on the other hand, weave altered worlds then drop real souls in them, where they behave in the fresh landscape as real souls would. That’s the goal here. Things change, but Things change. People don’t stop being themselves (at least the ones already born when we start.)” There is no better advice for the alternate historian, but it is especially important to keep in mind when dealing with Jimmy Carter. As I tinkered with points of divergence and the 1979-1980 portion of this timeline, I kept going back to this quotation. In some ways, Carter is the best subject for this, and in some ways the worst. He is a man of contradictions, and in showing you other decisions he may have made, I have sought only to illustrate his complexity — not to change his character.
I thought about an early point of divergence — getting rid of Bert Lance. But there’s no way Jimmy Carter goes to Washington without one of his closest personal advisers, especially while Charlie Kirbo stayed home. I considered having Carter embrace Kennedy’s plan for national health insurance, but there is simply no way to persuade Jimmy Carter, in the environment of the 1970s economy, to buy-in to a plan the spent that much money, even though his heart wanted to give healthcare to all Americans. I have enjoyed reading and listening to Walter Mondale recount his time as vice president. He is almost aghast — still — that you were never able to persuade Carter based on political reasoning. It’s not hard to find ways to make George Bush or Gerald Ford two-term presidents. You go back in time, tinker with the advisers, have them include a question in a poll they might have missed and you manipulate it so the president sees the path to the second term. But you can’t do that with Carter, because Carter wasn’t driven by finding a path to a second term — only I was.
All of this is to say, I’ve long believed someone had to do Jimmy Carter justice. And I’m glad that Jonathan Alter and Kai Bird have done their part. Now, it’s time to bring the reexamination of Carter The President to alternatehistory.com. Of course, my version will not be definitive, but I hope it gets us to look at the possibility of a second Carter term in a real way. Again, the goal is not some kind of grand liberal erasure of Reagan. That timeline (which I often dream of) is more about going back to the ’76 election, re-electing Ford or nominating Mo Udall — anything to get a traditional liberal Democrat in office to preside over the prosperity of the 1980s. This isn’t that timeline. Jimmy Carter’s second isn’t going to be fun for Ted Kennedy or most Democrats, and it won’t even be that fun for Jimmy Carter, but I hope it’s fun for all of us as we consider what might have been.
“No one can know what ‘would have been,’ but with a new beginning and the millstone of the captive hostages removed, we would have continued our strong commitment to energy conservation, maintained our nation’s determined effort to bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and kept our national budgets in balance.”
-Jimmy Carter
"We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace."
-Walter Mondale
"But in truth, Carter is sometimes perceived as a failure simply because he refused to make us feel good about the country. He insisted on telling us what was wrong and what it would take to make things better. And for most Americans, it was easier to label the messenger ‘a failure’ than to grapple with the hard problems."
-Kai Bird in The Outlier (2021)
When and why do you think that Carter got his reputation of being the worst President ever? Most would chalk it up to Iran, Inflation, and of course "Malaise." What is your take? Personally I would put Carter in the bottom fifteen Presidents. Hoping ATL President Carter can earn a spot in my top 15.
Oh my gosh, I just found out now. Will pray for him and his family during this rough time.🙏
If these are to be the last days Jimmy’s with us, it’ll be sad, but he lived a long life of admirable public service. All the more reason to reflect on and appreciate his legacy.
Very sad to learn of this. Obviously we knew this day would come, but it is still difficult to contemplate the impending loss of such an important figure. Let us celebrate Jimmy's legacy and learn from him. He has contributed so much, and we should honour him by redoubling our commitments to the causes he cares about.
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While I'm no fan of Carter as a president, I do hope that he survives this. If he doesn't, I hope and pray that his family will be there to comfort him and that he dies peacefully and happily.
No matter my opinions on his presidency, he is a major piece of American history that may soon leave us. He'll be the oldest lived American president and hopefully his passing will unite all Americans, if only for a moment.
No matter my opinions on his presidency, he is a major piece of American history that may soon leave us. He'll be the oldest lived American president and hopefully his passing will unite all Americans, if only for a moment.
I guess I reject the premise of the question. Worst president ever? He may be a favorite punching bag of today's right wing (somewhat ironically), but I don't really know of anyone who puts him dead last... Buchanan? Andrew Johnson? Harding?
C-SPAN's ranking puts him at 26, ranking 18 presidents (including two successors and two contemporaries) below him. The lowest he's ever ranked since C-SPAN started the project in 2000 is 27th.
So, yeah his reputation is subpar, but I think your ranking of him is lower than the academic community's, which is perfectly fine, of course, I don't think the C-SPAN ranking is Gospel by any means.
All of that is to say, though, that I can't really answer your question because I don't agree with it. He was dealt a bad hand by history, and clearly some think he fumbled it. I also think a lot of the things he did well never had the chance to come to fruition (see his work on mental health systems) or at least didn't during his presidency (Volcker, widely credited with finally ending the "malaise," was a Carter appointee after all. Even if not ITTL...)
I don't think I have a better answer than Kai Bird, whom I quote in the first post of this thread:
"But in truth, Carter is sometimes perceived as a failure simply because he refused to make us feel good about the country. He insisted on telling us what was wrong and what it would take to make things better. And for most Americans, it was easier to label the messenger ‘a failure’ than to grapple with the hard problems."
-Kai Bird in The Outlier (2021)
Anyway... I suppose I'll have much to say about this in the days ahead.