Former President Carter Disgraced

Few will take note, but this means that the last two Democrat Presidents, Clinton and Carter, have both come to face significant disgrace either while in office, or after having served. One would need to go back to LBJ to find a Presidential D wherein that isn't the case. Yet, LBJ opted to not even run for a second term.

Kennedy served less then three years before his assassination. From there, you have to go back to Truman to find a D in the White House. And the Democrat Party of today can hardly be called the Party of Truman or Kennedy, one man stood up to the communists with power and basically invaded Cuba, the other dropped The Bomb to end a war.

Consequently, a political party which has failed to win and hold the Presidency with distinction, or without suffering a significant disgrace in from 40 - 50 years would today purport to usurp Executive power due to a slim margin in the Congress ... and do it during a time of war. Carter's ultimate and hopefully final legacy here via lgf.

Comments

[jim]

George H.W. Bush - failure to capture Saddam, broke campaign promise not to raise taxes
Reagan - Iran/Contra
Gerald Ford - pardoned Nixon, allowed Indonesia to invade East Timor, vetoed Freedom of Information Act, famously stated that Russia didn't control East European nations.
Nixon - 'nuff said.

Eisenhower, now, did a decent job.

But the party of Eisenhower could hardly be called the Republican Party of today.

[Terry Gain]

Disingenuous Jim,

George H.W. Bush abided by the U.N. mandate under which he operated. If he had done otherwise the MSM, the Democrats, the Euroweenies and people like you Jim would have been all over him.

It's because of people like you Jim that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi died during Saddam's reign of terror because the job wasn't finished in 1991.

And if you think Iran/Contra begins to nullify winning the cold war, you are an idiot.

[Charles]

Reagan was senile and shit himself for the last 25 years of his life, including half of his presidency. If that isnt a disgrace, I dont know what is.

[ApplePie]

I'm sorry you didn't study history, Terry.
"I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties, and while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.
And the question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is, not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the President made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
-1992 Dick Cheney, George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, on why the US didn't take Baghdad and and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

[Skyboxx]

People need to realize, to paraphrase, "This isn't your fathers (or grandfather's ) Democratic party anymore" (Apologies to Oldsmobile)

This party made up of Joe "plagerist" Biden who simply can't win the presidency, Bubba Jefferson Clinton who well, enough said here, Sandy Berger who STOLE national security documents. (One has to wonder what the 9/11 commission didn't see courtesey of this theif) Edward "ted" Kennedy, well, enough said here too, Al "I invented the INTERNET" Gore, and now Jimmy "history revisiionist ala Oliver Stone" Carter.

Policticians on both sides of the aisle have issues, some are thugs, and so on. But it appears that a good deal of the Dems always get a pass. Am I the only one who feels this way?

[Terry Gain]

Sorry you can't read (or think) Apple Pie. Jim implied G.H.W. Bush was a lousy President because he didn't finish the job in Iraq. I pointed out that he didn't finish the job because he followed the mandate of the (lefist) U.N- a course favoured by both the Democrats and the MSM.

All of us abhor the sacrifice which is being made to bring peace to Iraq but if America does not win there it will soon be fighting here.

And if you don't understand that it's you who knows nothing about history, human nature, or what al Qaeda itself has said about the conflict.

You stll don't get the role that Clinton's guilt ridden self-absorbed pacificism played in the rise of al Qaeda.

We can deal with this problem at a cost of 750 troops per year or we can defer the decision until later when the cost will be in the tens of thousands or perhaps in the hundreds of thousands or millions. If you think that the threat of Islamofascicm is going away on its own you are delusional.

[Jon G]

First, it's not a dictatorship, though reading your posts, you'd probably prefer that.

Second, everything George Bush has done in this war has gone wrong. If he were running a company he'd have been fired long ago.

Finally, if you and the Republicans want to rubber stamp Bush's Iraq policies, you're welcome to it. You'll guarantee the election of a Democratic president with even larger congressional majorities. Think the American public was pissed at the Republicans last time? Pile another two years of failure with thousands more deaths and the public will crush the Republican Party into a shell of what it once was.

And where does getting thousands of Americans killed in a trumped-up-war stand on your Disgrace-o-Meter?

[jim]

The post is about how presidents have disgraced themselves either during or after office, right?

So - Reagan disgraced himself with Iran/Contra. I'm sorry you don't see it that way, but that's a fact. Here's why:

Reagan secretly sold weapons systems to a government that had sworn to destroy us.

And violated the Constitution in doing it.

As for G.H.W.Bush, perhaps you're right. Perhaps I'll just stick with how he lied and broke his one and only campaign promise, and raised taxes. That and his domestic policy was enough to make him a one-termer, which didn't even happen to Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, or the current Bush.

[jim]

Oh, yeah - with Reagan there's so many disgraces that get swept under the rug, that I almost forgot. There was also how he stationed troops in Beirut so he could look good, and didn't arm them. And then, when they were attacked by a car bomb.

The results?

"The death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 Army soldiers. Sixty Americans were injured. In the attack on the French barracks, 58 paratroopers were killed and 15 injured. In addition, the elderly Lebanese custodian of the Marines' building was killed in the first blast.[1] The wife and four children of a Lebanese janitor at the French building also were killed.[2]

This was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima (2,500 in one day) of World War II and the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the 243 killed on 31st January 1968 — the first day of the Tet offensive in the Vietnam war. The attack remains the deadliest post-World War II attack on Americans overseas."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

Reagan's response?

He pulled back all of the troops and did nothing.

Let me underscore that for you - NOTHING. No one was caught, no one was investigated.

That is a disgrace.

[old trooper]

OK, Jimmy...what did You Do?

[Purple Avenger]

"Reagan's response? He pulled back all of the troops and did nothing. "

Sounds like today's democrats.

But hey, at least the Ethiopians finally cleaned up Clinton's mess right?

[jim]

Well, if the worse things that are said about Clinton are true, then Bill Clinton was almost as bad disgraceful as Ronald Reagan.

Oh, wait though: Reagan also sold weapons to Iran against the law, behind Clinton's back. So Reagan's still worse.

[jim]

Ahem.

I mean to say "Oh, wait though: Reagan also sold weapons to Iran against the law, behind Congress's back. So Reagan's still worse."

Time to sleep.

[Carl]

Wow, 14 jews don't like Carter's stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If that's a disgrace, what is a 31% approval rating and complete irrelevance even though you are president for 2 more years.

[daveinboca]

Ask Bill Clinton who was more willing to compromise for peace: Ehud Barak or Yasser Arafat?

Carter is becoming a poster boy of how old age can bring on obsessive delusions. His real motivation is his obsession that AIPAC and friends of Israel mousetrapped him in 1980, funding Kennedy and John Anderson campaigns to chip away at his constituency.

If AIPAC did so, congratulations to them, because Carter would never have confronted the USSR as Reagan did. His simpering approach to the Kremlin in 1983 requesting help in opposing Reagan's re-election in '84 recently surfaced in KGB documents.

But the New York Times and other mainstream media protect Carter as a liberal---one of their own.

[D. Carter]

Shouldn't the title of this post read, "Former President Carter Disgraced (Again)"?