It is now a half century since Governor Jimmy Carter took the Democratic primaries by storm in the spring of 1976, winning the Democratic presidential nomination away from much smarter, much more talented candidates – back in the days when the Democratic Party actually did still count a lot of decent politicians among its numbers.
It may be worthwhile – especially for those who comment on the Trump presidency 24/7 – to contemplate the Carter years for a moment, half a century on.
Carter’s public service before the presidency was relatively short, compared to the typical lifelong pols and bureaucrats who populate the Democratic field nowadays. He spent some years in the Navy (his shameful departure from an important posting being an early indicator of his future behavior), then became a farmer, and dabbled in local politics as a local school board member.
He only had eight years of real government experience when he entered the presidency – four years as a part time state legislator and four years as a governor. To say he was woefully ill-prepared for the Oval Office is putting it mildly, as commentators of both sides have always admitted.
I know that there are a lot of people out there who think Jimmy Carter was a wonderful man. They think that – even though his entire four-year presidency was a disastrous dumpster fire – “at least he meant well, and that’s what counts.”
Well, that’s just wrong.
The Carter presidency was a dumpster fire on purpose. Jimmy Carter intentionally dismantled our security, intentionally undermined our allies, intentionally wrecked our economy.
That is to say, he may not have always understood the exact way that his hundreds of rotten decisions would hurt the country and the world, but he had to know they would. He had campaigned as a moderate, as a believer in limited government, then he governed as the exact opposite.
After all, he knew who he was appointing to his cabinet; he knew that he was forcing chaos on our allies. He knew he was expanding crippling regulations on our economy. He knew he was growing an already overgrown government bureaucracy. He didn’t do these things “by mistake.”
Carter didn’t force Israel to give the Sinai peninsula to Egypt for nothing by mistake. He knew what he was doing; he didn’t just forget that a solution to the so-called palestinian refugees should obviously have been a key part of that process. He intentionally robbed Israel of its best possible bargaining chip for nothing in return, saddling Israel with the nightmares of PLO, Hamas and Fatah in Gaza, Judea and Samaria for the past 50 years.
Carter did that. All that.
And Jimmy Carter encouraged France to let the Ayatollah out of jail and supported the jihadist insurgency in Iran to overthrow the Shah, on purpose.
This didn’t just “destabilize” the middle east – that’s a deep state euphemism – Carter set up a powder keg in the middle east, and directly ramped up the security threats of fifty years of disaster that followed, as a result of empowering Shiite jihadists with a massive petroleum-fueled economy to fund their worst inclinations.
We don’t need to go into detail about the economic disasters of the Carter years because that part at least hasn’t been forgotten:
Jimmy Carter pushed the Public works Employment Act of 1977, the costly and destructive new federal Departments of Energy and Education, the Surface Mining and Control Reclamation Act of 1977, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, and so many more programs that sound nice but ended up costing a mint that we couldn’t afford, creating a vast expansion of the federal bureaucracy, and increased the cost of energy by beginning to seriously restrict the opportunities for mining and drilling that an energy-hungry economy needs.
People too often give Carter a break, saying he just didn’t understand how to respond to crises that weren’t of his own making. But in fact, more often than not, the crises WERE of his own making. He’s the one who started them in the first place.
If you’re wondering why I’m mentioning this today, over 45 years after the fool left the White House, it’s because of whining that I see from the left about President Trump.
We have grown used to liberals and leftists complaining about the Republicans for nominating President Trump, a man whose sense of humor is hard to understand at first, a man who seems coarse and even mean until you get to know him, a man who takes decisive action and calls out America’s enemies directly rather than diplomatically.
I certainly agree that President Trump’s demeanor is not the one I would’ve preferred when I was a young voter. So I understand the discomfort of many.
But then I think back on many of our most destructive, vicious, horrible politicians… people like Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden, people who smile sweetly and look nice and proper for the cameras, then appoint judges, and sign legislation and EOs, and populate a bureaucracy, all of which together undermines the business community, destroys our culture and drives millions of jobs permanently overseas.
And darn it, THOSE are the people we should be calling out.
Perhaps most of the issues of the Biden-Harris years are too recent to delve into without partisan rancor.
So I chose to look at Carter today, a period so long ago that most of the voters responsible for his election are either long gone or long since awakened.
That nasty anti-semitic marxist – who pretended to be no more than a neighborly, sweet Sunday school teacher – was elected 50 years ago because he pretended to be a moderate. But he planted time bombs all over the world that we are still having to deal with.
Think about Hamas in Gaza, Fatah in Judea and Samaria.
Think about the tens of thousands mowed down in Iran in just these recent weeks by the mullahs. That wouldn’t have happened if Carter had supported the Shah and forbade the freeing of Khomeini, way back then.
Think about the Suez Canal closure due to the Iran-proxy Houthi rebels in Yemen, which has been costing the world economy over a billion dollars per day for two full years now. This isn’t a cost borne by just a few steamship lines or a few thousands of businesses; it’s a cost borne by the entire world economy. We are ALL poorer because of this incredible economic waste.
And yes, this is all Jimmy Carter’s fault.
The Left tells us that Jimmy Carter’s legacy is a couple hundred crummy houses that he built with Habitat for Humanity in his post-presidency.
It’s not.
Jimmy Carter’s legacy is the thousands of Israelis injured or murdered by Hamas over the years.
His legacy is 47 years of millions of Iranians being tyrannically ruled, imprisoned or killed by the Ayatollahs’ mullahs.
His legacy is the weaker economy that the entire world suffers today because the Suez closure causes thousands and thousands of container ships sailing between Asia and Europe to waste two costly weeks going around the continent of Africa for two solid years.
His legacy is the higher cost of American produce and meat because so many hundreds of thousands of acres of productive land have been removed from planting or grazing to satisfy his silly environmentalist dreams and his then-nascent solar farm goals.
His legacy is the college unaffordability crisis, the millions with unpaid student loans, and the many other challenges caused by the foolish policies of the Education Department.
Want to complain about President Trump’s occasionally obnoxious boastfulness or undiplomatic insults on the public stage?
Go ahead. You have the right.
But to be honorable, and to be fair, while you’re at it, at least be adult enough to admit to the millions of people killed and impoverished, and the hundreds of millions whose lives are poorer, as a result of the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who always smiled sweetly for the cameras, who never insulted anybody publicly, but who did so much damage all around the world, who planted so many time bombs of destructive policy both domestically and internationally, that this planet will never be done suffering from them.
Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance trainer and consultant. President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his first nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” are all available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon. And he’s just begun an eponymous podcast.
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