Jimmy Carter

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      ‘Market rules should benefit the majority of the citizenry’: historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway

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      For the last decade, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway have been digging into the history of the idea that freedom only thrives if businesses are left unbothered by governments. It’s a philosophy that has touched every corner of American life, they argue, even though it has long been proven deeply flawed.In their new book – The Big Myth – How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market – Oreskes and Conway document the rise of what’s more politely called “market fundamentalism” over the last century, from corporate propaganda and fringe academic theory to mainstream ideology.The book is both a sequel and a prequel to their groundbreaking book Merchants of Doubt, which is about a handful of prominent scientists who obfuscated clear scientific findings to oppose climate regulation. At the heart of their beliefs, Oreskes and Conway argue, was the big myth.The Guardian spoke to Oreskes and Conway about The Big Myth and how it came to dominate how Americans think about government regulation. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.The Guardian: How do you define “the big myth”?Oreskes: In a way, the myth isn’t just one thing; it’s a set of interconnected concepts that together support this larger ideology of market fundamentalism.The first part of the myth is the notion of the free market, the idea that you could even meaningfully talk about “the free market” as a thing that exists. In reality, people make markets. Markets are human institutions.So that leads to the second part of the myth, which is the idea that markets have wisdom, that the invisible hand guides us and that if we all do our own thing, our own self-interest will somehow lead to this productive, efficient and happy outcome. And therefore, we should just trust markets, that the government distorts markets and interferes with the wisdom of the marketplace.Then the third part of the myth is, in a way, the most damaging – it’s the piece that really informed Merchants of Doubt. It’s this idea of the inextricable link between capitalism and economic freedom as a bulwark against totalitarianism.What are the origins of the big myth?Conway: We pick up the story with business leaders fighting against the regulation of child labor and workplace safety. We’ve all forgotten that there was a crisis of workplace accidents in the United States in the late-19th and early-20th century that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of peopleBusiness leaders in the United States were absolutely dead-set against doing anything about these twin crises.Oreskes: It’s pretty hard to come up with a good argument to defend the employment of children as young as two in textile mills, which we know happened. How do you defend something that’s clearly, on the surface, really quite appalling? Come up with some kind of argument that appeals to something that we do care about, that we value: freedom.We saw this in Merchants of Doubt, when we talked about the tobacco industry and how it mobilized this whole argument about the freedom to smoke, that you don’t want the government telling you what to do. We actually thought the tobacco industry invented that strategy. But they didn’t. What we show in this new book is that it goes back much further.In the 20th century, one of the things the market fundamentalists did was rewrite US history to invent a story about how free enterprise was embedded into the very foundations of American society, economy and culture.They do this in the 1930s through a metaphor they came up with called the “Tripod of Freedom.” This was pushed by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which at the time was the largest trade organization in the United States. They claimed that the United States was founded on three essential principles that were like a tripod – if any were to be compromised, the whole structure would fall. The three pillars were representative democracy, the Bill of Rights and free enterprise. The third part was a complete invention because, actually, free enterprise appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence.The book covers the extensive propaganda campaign from NAM and companies like General Electric to sway the American public against government regulation of businesses. Why were these campaigns so effective?Conway: They disguised propaganda as entertainment, it was not obviously partisan or political. That was the whole idea. Propagandists need a kernel of truth in order to be successful. The best lies are ones that are built on something people already believe.They basically doubled down after the second world war when corporations could control their own advertising again. They keep doing it for decades. If you’re hammered through every outlet with the same message over and over again, eventually you start to believe it. Even if, once upon a time, you realized it was garbage.You have a whole chapter on Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s best-selling books that became a hit TV show. I imagine many people didn’t know it was largely written with the help of her daughter, Rose Lane Wilder, a staunch libertarian. Though the books are supposed to be about Ingalls Wilder’s true childhood, Lane Wilder fictionalized much of it to expound on the ideals of individualism.Oreskes: There are people out there who are mad at us for bursting that bubble. My defense? Actually, we didn’t burst the bubble. Other historians, Caroline Fraser and Christine Woodside burst that bubble, and we’re drawing from their work.In the first chunk of the book, market fundamentalism is fighting an uphill battle. At what point did market fundamentalism start taking hold and becoming mainstream?Oreskes: A key figure in this story, obviously, is Ronald Reagan. Most Americans know that Reagan was an actor before he became a politician, but what they don’t know is how he affected that transition.Reagan’s career was not doing all that well, but he was still a Democrat. He was the president of the Screen Actor’s Guild. But then he gets this job with GE, and the job has two parts: hosting General Electric Theater and promoting General Electric ideology through speeches. It’s pretty clear that during this period, his political outlook shifts to be very, very aligned with GE. So he comes out of GE with this new political ideology, quite different than what he had before he went in. Also critically, he comes out with a set of wealthy corporate backers who then finance his run for governor of California.But you make the point that it wasn’t just Reagan.Conway: When Jimmy Carter becomes president, he brings into office a new generation of economists, many of whom have now been educated with the ideas of free markets that have been pushed into academia by the Chicago School of Economics. They begin shifting the way the government manages the economy. They are the regulators Carter brings into office, the first people we now associate with Reagan and ending with Bill Clinton, who finishes the job of deregulating banks in the late 1990s.Orenskes: We see how this language, rhetoric and ideology gets taken across the board politically so that when Bill Cinton gives his State of the Union address in 1995, he says: “The era of big government is over.” And that’s a Democrat, right?So how does that happen? Milton Friedman said one of the jobs of intellectuals is to be standing ready with ideas. And you just work on your ideas and you get laughed at for a long time. But one day, the world is ready and then you’re there. So when the crisis, the postwar 1970s stagflation develops, nobody really has an explanation for why this has happened. There are probably multiple factors – but the right wing is now standing ready saying: “Oh, the problem is too much government. The problem is big government. The problem is overregulation.” That gains traction, in part because it’s a simpler explanation to a complex problem.Does it seem like market fundamentalism’s grasp is loosening? Are the tides changing?Oreskes: After the Silicon Valley Bank failure, there’s this big conversation taking place right now about how much of that was allowed to happen by weakened regulation, particularly because there were specific regulations that were weakened during the Trump administration.I think most people still see regulation as a necessary evil – even liberals and progressives. So they’re sort of apologetic about it. “Yeah, I know it’s bad. But you know, we have to do it.” I would like to try to change that conversation, to make people think much more in terms of regulations as the rules of how markets operate.At the end of the book, we make a point about biological regulation. Without biological regulation, all life would cease to exist because an organism cannot operate unless it can regulate its internal chemistry. Biological regulation makes life possible. I think that’s true of society as a whole. The right set of rules and regulations supports a vibrant economy where people can “live well and prosper” (you know, Star Trek).Conway: The question is, who are the rules set up to benefit the most? Business leaders want the rules of the road to benefit them, and we’re arguing that no, the rules of the market should benefit the majority of the citizenry, not just the business leaders. More

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      Republicans tried to delay release of US hostages to sabotage Carter, ex-aide claims – report

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      A former Texas governor met Middle Eastern leaders in 1980 to convince Iran to delay releasing American hostages as part of a Republican effort to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign, according to a news report.The New York Times reported on Sunday that John Connally, who served as Texas’s Democratic governor from 1963 to 1969 and ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, traveled to a number of countries in the summer leading up to the 1980 election.By that time Ronald Reagan had secured the Republican nomination, and the re-election campaign of his Democratic rival Carter was struggling in the midst of the crisis that resulted from more than 50 Americans being taken hostage from the US embassy in Tehran.In an interview with the Times, a then protege to Connally named Ben Barnes said he was with Connally as he met leaders in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. Connally was there to deliver a message, the Times reported:“Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr Reagan will win and give you a better deal.”Carter, who had ordered a failed attempt to rescue the hostages in April 1980, lost the election amid criticism of his handling of the Iran crisis and a stagnating economy. The hostages were eventually released on 20 January 1981, the day Reagan took office.“History needs to know that this happened,” Barnes said in one of several interviews with the Times.Barnes said he decided to come forward with his account after news last month that Carter, 98, had entered hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, after a series of hospital visits.“I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more,” Barnes said. “I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”Barnes – a Democrat who served as lieutenant governor of Texas and was vice-chair of John Kerry’s 2004 election campaign – told the Times that on returning from the Middle East, Connally reported to the chairman of Reagan’s campaign, William J Casey.“Carter’s aides have long suspected that his campaign was torpedoed by Reagan affiliates who wanted to delay the release of American hostages until after the election,” Axios wrote on Monday.It added: “Ronald Reagan’s subsequent presidency ushered in a conservative era that remains a model for Republicans. If Carter had secured the release of the hostages, he might have won instead.”Being able to confirm Barnes’s account, the Times said, is difficult “after so much time”.“Barnes has no diaries or memos to corroborate his account. But he has no obvious reason to make up the story and indeed expressed trepidation at going public because of the reaction of fellow Democrats,” the Times wrote.Connally died in 1993. And Casey, who went on to become the director of central intelligence, died in 1987.John Connally III, Connally’s eldest son, told the Times that he remembered his father taking the Middle East trip but had never heard about a message being sent to Iran.Barnes told the Times he had shared the information with four people over the years: Tom Johnson, a former Lyndon B Johnson White House aide who later became president of CNN; Mark K Updegrove, president of the LBJ Foundation; Larry Temple, a former aide to Connally and Lyndon Johnson; and HW Brands, a University of Texas historian.All four, the Times reported, confirmed that Barnes had told them the story. More

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      The Truth About US Democracy

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Biden in crisis mode as specter of one-term Carter haunts White House

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      Biden in crisis mode as specter of one-term Carter haunts White House President urged to act more forcefully to deal with rising inflation, gun violence and dire supreme court rulingsAt an Independence Day barbecue, crises cascading around him, Joe Biden declared that he had “never been more optimistic about America than I am today”.Of course there were challenges, grave ones, the US president told the military families assembled on the south lawn of the White House. And the nation had a troubling history of taking “giant steps forward” and then a “few steps backwards”, he acknowledged.But Biden gave a hopeful speech that reflected his often unshakable faith in the American experiment on the 246th anniversary of its founding.Yet many Americans, even his own supporters, no longer share the president’s confidence. To many observers Biden appears to be at a moment of profound crisis in his presidency: and one he is struggling to address. The specter of Jimmy Carter – a one-term Democrat whose failure to win the 1980 election ushered in the Ronald Reagan era – is starting to haunt the Biden White House.Joe Biden signs executive order protecting access to abortionRead moreWith decades-high inflation, near-weekly mass shootings, a drumbeat of alarming disclosures about Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat, and successive supreme court rulings that shifted the country’s political landscape sharply rightward, Biden’s rosy speech-making struck even his fellow Democrats as ill-suited for what they view as a moment of existential peril for the country.A new Monmouth poll captured the depth of America’s pessimism: at present just 10% of Americans believe the country is on the right track, compared with 88% who say it is on the wrong track. Confidence in the country’s institutions fell to record lows this year, according to the latest Gallup survey. The presidency and the supreme court suffered the most precipitous declines, while Congress drew the lowest levels of confidence of any institution at just 7%.“If that sunny optimism were paired with actual steps to secure the future that the president claims to be excited about, it would ring less hollow,” said Tré Easton, a progressive Democratic strategist. “But right now it seems disconnected from the reality that many people, especially people who worked very hard to get President Biden and Vice-President [Kamala] Harris elected, are experiencing.”Last month, a conservative super-majority on the supreme court ended the constitutional right to abortion, paving the way for new restrictions and bans in Republican-controlled states across the country. Meanwhile, democracy experts are sounding the alarm as Republican candidates who embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election win primary elections for key positions of power.With control of Congress, governorships and statehouses at stake this November, many supporters and allies are pleading with Biden to lead with the urgency and force they believe this moment demands.Under mounting pressure from supporters and allies to deliver a more assertive response, Biden on Friday signed an executive order that the White House said would protect women seeking an abortion. In his most impassioned remarks to date, Biden said the supreme court’s decision was “an exercise in raw political power” and warned that Republicans would seek a national ban on abortion in they win control of Congress in November.Democrats broadly welcomed the order and the passion. Still others hoped it was just a “first step,” noting that the action did not include some of the more novel actions Democrats have called for, such as opening abortion clinics on federal lands in states where the procedure is banned or declaring a national emergency.Before the signing ceremony on Friday, Bloomberg reported that the White House considered declaring a national public health emergency as a number of Democratic lawmakers and activists have urged him to do, but ultimately decided against it.That caution, a hallmark of Biden’s decades-long political career, has frustrated many Democrats who fear democracy itself is under an assault.“Everything’s on the line right now. It’s truly existential,” Easton said. “It just doesn’t seem like he understands that.”New reports of a White House struggling to respond to mounting challenges have even fueled a discussion among Democrats over whether Biden should seek re-election in 2024.In recent weeks, speculation has mounted over potential alternatives. Among them are California governor, Gavin Newsom, has positioned himself as a pugnacious leader in the fight to protect abortion rights and Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, offered a guttural response to the Independence Day shooting in his state that drew contrast with Biden’s more restrained approach.“If you are angry today, I’m here to tell you to be angry,” Pritzker said. In a statement, Biden condemned the attack as yet another “senseless act of violence” and held a moment of silence for the victims at the White House.The White House has rejected that criticism, arguing that Biden has responded – quickly and forcefully – to the mounting crises facing the nation. Asked about Democrats’ criticism of Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president has been quick to tackle the nation’s crises.“The president showed urgency. He showed fury. He showed frustration,” she said of Biden’s response to the recent mass shootings, and that his leadership paved the way for a bipartisan gun safety compromise, breaking decades of gridlock in Washington over how to address gun violence.Democrats fears’ come as the party faces a historically challenging electoral landscape, with prognosticators anticipating a Republican takeover of Congress in November.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the president and executive director of NextGen America, a youth-vote mobilization organization in the country, said the supreme court’s ruling on Roe clarified the stakes for many young people. But she said they’re looking for bold leadership in Washington.Democrats must put “everything on the table” to keep an “ultra-rightwing and extremist minority from overtaking every major institution in our country,” she said. “That’s what’s on the ballot in 2022.”Biden on Friday said his executive powers were limited and Democrats lacked the numbers in Congress to protect abortion rights at the nation level.“Vote, vote, vote vote,” he implored Americans angry over the ruling. “We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe. Your vote can make that a reality.”For months, the White House has careened from crisis to crisis. Inflation, war in Europe, record gas prices, an irrepressible pandemic and a baby formula shortage have all contributed to the national malaise and Biden’s low approval rating.Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who holds focus groups with suburban women, said voters constantly tell her that they wish they heard from Biden more.Facing a difficult political landscape, she said voters want to see that Biden is willing to take on the “most extreme elements of the Republican party”.“Even if he can’t do anything about it, the bully pulpit is a powerful thing,” she said adding: “People think this is madness. They want to be able to take their kids to a July Fourth parade and not worry about somebody getting shot. And they want their leader to reflect that back to them.”On Friday, Biden sought to do just that. He hammered Republicans for pursuing bans on abortion without exceptions for rape or incest and highlighted the case of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to travel out of state for an abortion.He previously endorsed an exception to the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass abortion protections, but he’s so far declined to embrace calls for court reform like term limits or court expansion. And in response to the extraordinary revelations about the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Biden has mostly declined to comment, deferring to the congressional committee investigating the attack and the justice department, which is weighing whether to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the violent assault on American democracy.“In this hour, if you want to commit to democracy, the thing to do is to not laud the institutions that we have as they’re currently constituted, but to set to work on amending these institutions to meet present exigencies,” said William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the author of Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy.He said Biden’s commitments to democratic norms and traditions are critical, particularly after the Trump years, but that should not impede him from addressing the “acute need for us to revisit our institutions”.‘The ante-status quo was dysfunctional – it was unacceptable in the face of the pressing challenges that our country faces,” he said. “While there’s a need for a reset, there is a greater need for leadership in terms of institutional reform.”TopicsJoe BidenJimmy CarterDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world

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      The 1977 White House climate memo that should have changed the world Years before climate change was part of national discourse, this memo to the president predicted catastropheIn 1977 Star Wars hit movie theaters, New York City had a blackout that lasted 25 hours, and the Apple II personal computer went up for sale. It was also the year that a remarkable one-page memo was circulated at the very highest levels of US government.Years before climate change was part of national discourse, this memo outlined what was known – and feared – about climate change at the time. It was prescient in many ways. Did anyone listen?By July 1977, President Jimmy Carter had only been in office for seven months, but he had already built a reputation for being focused on environmental issues. For one, by installing solar panels on the White House. He had also announced a national renewable energy plan .“We must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century,” he said in an address to the nation outlining its main goals.The climate memo arrived on his desk a few days after the Independence Day celebrations on July 4. It has the ominous title “Release of Fossil CO2 and the Possibility of a Catastrophic Climate Change.”One of the first thing that stands out is the stamp at the top, partially elided, saying THE PRESIDENT HAS SEEN.The memo’s author was Frank Press, Carter’s chief science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Press was a tall, serious, geophysicist who had grown up poor in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, and was described as “brilliant” by his colleagues. Before working with the Carter administration, he had been director of the Seismological Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, and had consulted for federal agencies including the Navy and NASA.“Carter had a great respect for Frank [Press] and for science,” said Stu Eizenstat, who served as Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser from 1977 to 1981.Press starts the memo by laying out the science of climate change as it was understood at the time.
      Fossil fuel combustion has increased at an exponential rate over the last 100 years. As a result, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now 12 percent above the pre-industrial revolution level and may grow to 1.5 to 2.0 times that level within 60 years. Because of the “greenhouse effect” of atmospheric CO2 the increased concentration will induce a global climatic warming of anywhere from 0.5 to 5°C.
      These far-sighted assertions were in line with the climate science that originated the previous decade, when the US government funded major science agencies focused on space, atmospheric and ocean science. Research produced for President Lyndon B Johnson in 1965 found that billions of tons of “carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas”.Press’s memo was on the mark. In 2021, for the first time ever, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 reached 420PPM, the halfway point to the doubling of pre-industrial CO2 levels that Press posited.
      The potential effect on the environment of a climatic fluctuation of such rapidity could be catastrophic and calls for an impact assessment of unprecedented importance and difficulty. A rapid climatic change may result in large scale crop failures at a time when an increased world population taxes agriculture to the limits of productivity.
      Press was right. We have indeed seen the catastrophic effects of a climatic fluctuation, in the form of increasingly severe weather events including droughts, heatwaves, and hurricanes of greater intensity. Meanwhile, in many parts of the world heating has already stemmed increases in agricultural productivity, and large-scale food production crises are thought to be possible.
      The urgency of the problem derives from our inability to shift rapidly to non-fossil fuel sources once the climatic effects become evident not long after the year 2000; the situation could grow out of control before alternate energy sources and other remedial actions become effective.
      This is correct. By the 2000s, the effects of climate change had become apparent in some regions in the form of more deadly heat waves and stronger floods and droughts.
      Natural dissipation of C02 would not occur for a millennium after fossil fuel combustion was markedly reduced.
      This prediction by Press was actually debunked at least a decade ago. Scientists used to believe that some warming was “baked in”, but scientists have since found that as soon as CO2 emissions stop rising, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 levels off and slowly falls.
      As you know this is not a new issue. What is new is the growing weight of scientific support which raises the CO2-climate impact from speculation to a serious hypothesis worthy of a response that is neither complacent nor panicky.
      But there were other currents mitigating against the sort of response Press calls for. “​​The story of climate policy in the US, generally, is one missed opportunities and unjustifiable delay,” said Jack Lienke, author of the book Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the “War on Coal.”Many other issues may have seemed more pressing, or simply better understood. As he writes in Struggling for Air, “At a time when Americans were still dying somewhat regularly in acute, inversion-related pollution episodes, it is unsurprising that legislators were more concerned with the known harms of sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide than the uncertain, seemingly distant threat of climate change.”
      The authoritative National Academy of Sciences has just alerted us that it will issue a public statement along these lines in a few weeks.
      That public statement, released later that month, emphasized the importance of shifting away from fossil fuel energy and highlighted the urgency of starting to transition to new energy sources as soon as possible: “With the end of the oil age in sight, we must make long-term decisions as to future energy policies. One lesson we have been learning is that the time required for transition from one major source to another is several decades.”So what happened? When Press’s memo made it to the president’s desk, Jim Schlesinger, America’s first secretary of energy, also attached his own note in response:
      ​​My view is that the policy implications of this issue are still too uncertain to warrant Presidential involvement and policy initiatives.
      Carter seems to have heeded this warning, and did not make much progress on climate change mitigation during his presidency. Yet he did sign some significant pieces of environmental legislation, including initiating the first federal toxic waste cleanups and creating the first fuel economy standards.A significant challenge facing Carter was his own contradictory energy aims. Despite his goal of encouraging alternative energy, he also felt there was a national security interest in boosting US oil production in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.“We realized our dependence on foreign oil was dangerous and, very importantly, alternative energy was in its infancy,” Eizenstat said. “So Carter was both doing conservation and still encouraging more domestic oil and gas as a way of reducing dependence on foreign oil,” said Eizenstat. “As with all policy, you have conflicting goals.”Still, it seems possible that if Carter had been re-elected, the world might have been in a better position regarding climate impacts today. One of the first things Reagan did after winning the election in 1981 was take down the White House solar panels. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry – whose scientists were already studying the ways that fossil fuels were changing the climate – started spending tens of millions of dollars sowing doubt about climate science.Did the Press memo accomplish anything at all? For one person it was in fact a “transformational moment” – this was Eizenstat himself. He says it was instrumental in his own future work on climate change, including his decision in 1997 to serve as the United States’s principal negotiator for the Kyoto global warming protocols.Those protocols set the stage for the first international effort to tackle climate policy on a global level. So even if Press’s memo had a muted impact at the time, his warning wasn’t entirely ignored.TopicsClimate crisisClimate crimesJimmy CarterUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘Decades ahead of his time’: history catches up with visionary Jimmy Carter

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      When I reach Jimmy Carter’s grandson by Zoom, he answers wearing a Raphael Warnock campaign T-shirt. Jason Carter is a lawyer and politician himself, mid-40s, animated and well-read, with blue eyes reminiscent of his grandfather’s. He’s just got off the phone with his 93-year-old grandmother, Rosalynn. It’s a special day; Joe Biden is on his way to the Carter house in Plains, Georgia.“My grandfather has met nearly everyone in the world he might want to,” Jason Carter says. “Right now, he’s meeting with the president of the United States. But the person he’d say he learned the most from was Rachel Clark, an illiterate sharecropper who lived on his family’s farm.“He didn’t pity her,” Carter says. “He saw her power. My grandfather believes in the power of a single human and a small community. Protect people’s freedoms, he says, and they can do great things. It all comes back to an enormous respect for human beings.”Carter is openly moved speaking about his grandfather, though it’s also clear he does so often. A spate of recent biographies and documentaries shows not just a renewed interest in the former president, but a willingness to update the public narrative surrounding his time in office. Recent biographer Jonathan Alter calls Carter “perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history”.Carter, who lost his bid for re-election in a so-called landslide to Reagan in 1980, is often painted as a “failed president” – a hapless peanut farmer who did not understand how to get things done in Washington, and whose administration was marked by inflation, an energy crisis and the Iran hostage disaster.Subsequent presidents, especially fellow southern Democrat Bill Clinton, kept a distance – assumably not wanting to be seen as part of a political narrative that emphasized piety over getting things done. Even Obama was apparently wary of being associated with the sort of soft-hearted ineffectuality ascribed to Carter.But was Carter actually so ineffectual?In his 2020 biography of Carter, Alter speaks to a more nuanced interpretation of Carter, calling him “a surprisingly consequential president – a political and stylistic failure, but a substantive and far-sighted success”. It is, perhaps, the far-sighted nature of Carter’s ambitions, particularly around energy, that allows us to appreciate him more four decades after his term concluded.Born in 1924, Carter is now 96. Americans must process his mortality and the onset of climate change, which Carter explicitly warned the nation about 40 years ago.Carterland, a just released documentary, offers a particularly sharp focus on Carter’s extensive work on conservation, climate and justice.[embedded content]“Here’s what people get wrong about Carter,” Will Pattiz, one of the film’s directors tells me. “He was not in over his head or ineffective, weak or indecisive – he was a visionary leader, decades ahead of his time trying to pull the country toward renewable energy, climate solutions, social justice for women and minorities, equitable treatment for all nations of the world. He faced nearly impossible economic problems – and at the end of the day came so very close to changing the trajectory of this nation.”Will’s brother, Jim, agrees. “A question folks should be asking themselves is: what catastrophes would have befallen this country had anyone other than Jimmy Carter been at the helm during that critical time in the late 1970s?”Those late 1970s were defined by inflation, the cold war, long lines at gas pumps, and a shift in cultural mores. Carter himself showed a willingness to grow. Although Carter served in the navy himself, he pardoned Vietnam draft-dodgers. Though from a segregated and racist background in Georgia, Carter pushed for affirmative action and prioritized diversity among judicial nominees, including the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amalya Lyle Kearse. He employed Mary Prince, a Black woman wrongly accused of murder, as his daughter Amy’s nanny, a move criticized by some contemporary thinkers as perpetuating domestic servitude.What was radical in the 1970s can appear backwards decades later; the public narrative works in both directions. Carter is, in some respects, difficult to narrativize because he could be both startlingly conservative – financially, or in his appeal to the deep south’s evangelicals – and progressive, particularly on human rights and climate. He seemed to act from his personal compass, rather than a political one.He startled the globe by personally brokering the critical Middle East peace treaty between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at Camp David. He ceded access to the Panama canal, angering conservatives who thought he was giving away an American asset. Through the Alaska Natural Interests Lands Conservation Act, he doubled the national park system and conserved over 100m acres of land – the most sweeping expansion of conserved land in American history.He was not afraid to make unpopular moves, or ask for personal sacrifice. He was old-fashioned and a futurist, and nowhere did his futurism matter more, or seem more prescient, than on climate and conservation. He risked speaking directly to the American public, and asking them to do a difficult thing – focus on renewable energy and reduce reliance on oil.He paid the price for this frank ask, and so did we.In advance of his trip to Plains, Georgia, Biden participated in a video tribute to Carter, joining an all-star cast of Georgia politicians, the familiar faces of Senator Jon Ossoff, Senator Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams serving as an affirming nod to Georgia’s return to political importance.The messages address the substance of the film, but also serve as a heartfelt thank you to a former president who has only recently begun to look prescient on climate, and singular in his moral bearing.“He has always lived his values,” Abrams says in the video.“Our world cries out for moral and ethical leadership,” Warnock offers. “Few have embodied it as clearly and consistently as Carter.”“He showed us what it means to be a public servant, with an emphasis on servant,” Biden says.[embedded content]Many Americans can’t help but spot a link between Carter and Biden – who became the first elected official outside of Georgia to support Carter’s bid for the presidency in 1976. Biden’s colleagues decried him as an “exuberant” idealist at the time.There’s also an increasingly stark comparison between the Carter and the Trump administration.James Gustave Speth served as the chairman of Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality. As Carter’s chief adviser on environmental matters, Speth helped brief Carter on climate change and direct policy. He finds the contrast between Carter and Trump “striking”.“People see now that Carter was at a pole,” Speth tells me. “Carter was the opposite of Trump – and everything that people despised about him. Carter had integrity, honesty, candor and a commitment to the public good of all else. Carter was a different man, totally.”Carter’s vice-president, Walter Mondale, died a month ago at 93, perhaps putting an exclamation mark on the need to expedite overdue praise and understanding. Speth agrees that it would be best to speed up our recognition of Carter. “So many fine things are said over the bodies of the dead,” Speth said. “I’d love to have the recognition occur now.”Speth is also working on his own book on the Carter administration, that covers the Carter and subsequent administrations on climate and energy and highlights the failure to build on the foundation that Carter laid. His project, soon to be published with MIT, carries a damning title: They Knew.One of the most profound– even painful – parts of watching documentaries like Carterland is bearing witness to the fact that Carter was right on asking us to drive less, to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to focus on conservation and renewable energy. Not only was Carter’s vision a path not taken, it was a path mocked. Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House, politicized the environmental movement and painted it as a fringe endeavor.“Carter was our only president who had a visceral environmental and ecological attachment. That was part of his being,” Speth says. “We had an opportunity in 1980 – but we’ve lost 40 years in the pursuit of a climate-safe path. We can no longer avoid serious and destructive changes, period. That didn’t have to happen.”I ask Speth why getting Carter’s legacy right matters. First, Speth says, it’s important to recognize the example Carter set for looking ahead, in a culture that prizes soundbites and short-term gains. “Carter was a trained engineer who believed in science,” Speth points out. “He understood things on a global scale, and believed in forecasting. Preparing for the long run is rare in politics.”Carter’s biographer Alter agrees. “If there is a gene for duty, responsibility and the will to tackle messy problems with little or no potential for political gain,” he writes, “Jimmy Carter was born with it.”While none of these recent documentaries or biographies seeks to portray Carter as a saint or even politically savvy, they do insist that his presidency was more successful than history has acknowledged, particularly on the energy, conservation and human rights fronts. Still, there are aspects of his single term that will probably remain embedded in his narrative, such as his tenuous relationship with Congress, early catering to segregationists to win votes, and Iran’s hostage crisis.What can we learn from the shifting narrative around Carter’s presidency?“You can talk about how Carter was an underrated president,” film-maker Jim Pattiz says. “But can you ask yourself: what qualities do you actually want in a leader? Do you want someone who will challenge you to be better, or speak in catchphrases and not ask much of you?“This film is a cautionary tale,” Pattiz says. “We can elect another Carter. Let’s reward leaders willing to do the right thing.”Jason Carter has lived with the nuances and inconsistencies in the narrative surrounding his grandfather’s presidency his entire life. “Stories are always summaries,” he says. “They leave out so much so that we can understand them in simple terms. Public narrative, these days, is so often about politics. It should really be about the great, public problems we’re solving. There’s a difference.“I don’t want history to be kind to my grandfather,” Jason Carter tells me. “I just want history to be honest.” More

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      Walter Mondale, former US vice-president and celebrated liberal, dies aged 93

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      Walter F Mondale, the former vice-president and liberal leader who lost to Ronald Reagan in one of the most lopsided presidential elections, has died at the age of 93.A towering figure in the Democratic party who resolutely put humility and honesty before the glitz of mass communication, Mondale’s death marked something of an end of an era in US politics. He was described by a biographer as the last major American politician to resist the allure of television.The death of the former senator, ambassador and Minnesota attorney general was announced in a statement on Monday from his family. No cause was cited.Mondale followed the trail blazed by his political mentor, Hubert H Humphrey, from Minnesota politics to the US Senate and the vice-presidency, serving under Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.His own try for the White House, in 1984, came at the zenith of Ronald Reagan’s popularity. His candidacy made history, hammering a crack into the nation’s glass ceiling as he chose Geraldine Ferraro, then a US representative from New York, as his running mate – making Mondale the first major-party presidential nominee to put a woman on the ticket.But his insistence on telling voters the truth hurt him badly, notably with his frank declaration that he would raise taxes to counter Reagan’s budget deficit. Reagan, by contrast, led his campaign with one of the great political jingles: “It’s morning again in America.” On election day, Mondale carried only his home state and the District of Columbia. The electoral vote was 525-13 for Reagan – the biggest landslide in the electoral College since Franklin Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon in 1936.“One of my opponents called me a media Luddite. I wasn’t good at it,” Mondale recalled in a 2008 interview with the Guardian looking back on his overwhelming defeat. “Reagan, he was a genius at it. He could walk in front of those cameras and it would come out magic. I would walk in and it would be a root canal.”On Saturday afternoon, Walter Mondale sent this note to his former staffers and campaign alumni, saying: “Together we have accomplished so much and I know you will keep up the good fight. Joe in the White House certainly helps.” pic.twitter.com/PdYk42NXtK— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) April 20, 2021
      Affectionately known as Fritz, Mondale was born on 5 January 1928, the son of a Methodist minister and a music teacher. He grew up in several small southern Minnesota towns.Tributes poured in on Monday evening as news of his death emerged. In a statement, Jimmy Carter called him a “dear friend, who I consider the best vice-president on our country’s history”.“Fritz used his political skill and personal integrity to transform the vice presidency into a dynamic, policy-driving force that had never been seen before and still exists today,” the former president said.In a tweet, Barack Obama said Mondale “championed progressive causes and changed the role of VP”.Mondale’s great-grandfather migrated to the US from Norway. The dourness of Norwegian culture stayed with the family – he recalled that in his childhood, kids were spanked for the sin of bragging about themselves.He was only 20 when he served as a congressional district manager for Humphrey’s successful Senate campaign in 1948. Mondale started his career in Washington in 1964, when he was appointed to the Senate to replace Humphrey, who had resigned to become vice-president to Lyndon Johnson. Mondale was elected to a full six-year term with about 54% of the vote in 1966, although Democrats lost the governorship and suffered other election setbacks.In 1972, Mondale won another Senate term with nearly 57% of the vote.His Senate career was marked by advocacy of social issues such as education, housing, migrant workers and child nutrition. Like Humphrey, he was an outspoken supporter of civil rights.Mondale tested the waters for a presidential bid in 1974 but ultimately decided against it. “Basically I found I did not have the overwhelming desire to be president, which is essential for the kind of campaign that is required,” he said in November 1974.In 1976, Carter chose Mondale as No 2 on his ticket and went on to unseat Gerald Ford.As vice-president, Mondale had a close relationship with Carter. He was the first vice-president to occupy an office in the White House, rather than in a building across the street. Mondale traveled extensively on Carter’s behalf and advised him on domestic and foreign affairs.Mondale never backed away from his liberal principles.“I think that the country more than ever needs progressive values,” Mondale said in 1989.After his White House years, Mondale served from 1993-96 as Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Japan, fighting for US access to markets ranging from cars to cellular phones.Despite his long and varied career in politics, it will be his epic defeat to Reagan, and his honorable but ultimately disastrous resistance to the small screen, for which he will be remembered. “I think, you know, I’ve never really warmed up to television,” he once said. “In fairness to television, it never really warmed up to me.”In his Guardian interview, Mondale recalled that his campaign staff in the 1984 race had tried hard to drag him into the TV era. They pleaded with him to change his hairstyle and his smile to charm more on camera.“I didn’t like it, and I told them so,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Look, I’m all I’ve got. I can’t be someone I’m not.’” More

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      'A new day of hope': US politicians and ex-presidents hail Biden-Harris victory

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      Former presidents and politicians from both major parties weighed in to congratulate Joe Biden on his victory over Donald Trump, with Democrats eager to turn the page on four years of tumult and some Republicans offering prayers and best wishes while hinting at the partisan combat to come.Biden was declared the winner of Pennsylvania on Saturday, pushing him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency after days of uncertainty as election officials counted an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots due to coronavirus pandemic. Trump has refused to concede.“In this election, under circumstances never experienced, Americans turned out in numbers never seen,” Barack Obama said in a statement praising his former vice president and Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris. “And once every vote is counted, President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris will have won a historic and decisive victory.”Obama implored Americans to stay active, urging them not to view Biden’s election as the finale after four years of protest and action but rather to see it as a stepping stone in their quest for progress.“Enjoy this moment,” he continued. “Then stay engaged. I know it can be exhausting. But for this democracy to endure, it requires our active citizenship and sustained focus on the issues – not just in an election season, but all the days in between.”Former president Jimmy Carter, who lost his re-election bid in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980, congratulated the Democratic ticket, which may be the first to win his home state of Georgia in more than a quarter-century.“We are proud of their well-run campaign and look forward to seeing the positive change they bring to our nation,” he said in a statement.Shortly after Biden clinched Pennsylvania, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer called Biden to congratulate him. According to an aide, it was a “happy call”. Schumer, who had joined revelers in Brooklyn, held up his phone for Biden to hear their cheers and applause.“Today marks the dawning of a new day of hope for America,” Pelosi said in a statement. “A record-shattering 75 million Americans cast their ballots to elect Joe Biden President of the United States – a historic victory that has handed Democrats a mandate for action.”House Democrats will maintain their majority, but Pelosi is on track to lead the thinnest majority in decades after sustaining unexpected losses. The Senate majority will almost certainly be decided by a pair of runoff elections in Georgia in January.Republicans appeared divided on Saturday between accepting the new president-elect and standing by Trump.Utah Senator Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee who did not vote for Trump, congratulated Biden and Harris, praising them as “people of good will and admirable character.”Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee who is retiring, urged Trump to follow more than two centuries of precedent and accept the outcome of the election.“After counting every valid vote and allowing courts to resolve disputes, it is important to respect and promptly accept the result,” he wrote.Like Trump, many of his closest allies were unwilling to accept the result, at least not yet.“The media do not get to determine who the president is. The people do,” Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a Republican seen as having presidential ambitions, wrote on twitter. “When all lawful votes have been counted, recounts finished, and allegations of fraud addressed, we will know who the winner is.” More