Friday, January 09, 2009

Setting the record straight

The Republican propaganda machine is trying to paint Jimmy Carter as a terrible president, worse than GW Bush. I have lived thru both, and I know it's a lie.

Another commenter on
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/01/paul-krugman-th/comments/page/2/#comments
summarized things well:



Stephen Kriz says...

Someone needs to investigate the "deep events" that occur when a Democratic administration is coming into office following a Republican administration and vice versa. There is an ugly pattern here:

* In 1960, Kennedy was handed a failed Bay of Pigs invasion already planned by Ike and a CIA stirring up trouble in Laos. This set the stage for a troubled foreign policy.
* In 1976, Carter was handed an economy that was in the tank with out of control inflation and low growth. George H.W. Bush was CIA chief and put in place Team B, which exaggerated the Soviet threat.
* In 1992, Clinton was handed the largest budget deficit in history to date, and Bush had already started to gin up pointless investigations into Clinton's past, starting with the passport file flap, that would plague Clinton's presidency.

Compare this to incoming Republican administrations:

* In 1968, Nixon had a budget surplus, the Vietnam War was winding down and Henry Kissinger, working for LBJ, gave Nixon inside information about the Paris Peace talks that would give Nixon credit for ending the war.
* In 1980, George H.W. Bush, working behind the scenes in an October Surprise, negotiated with our enemy, Iran, to hold the hostages longer so that Reagan would get credit for their release.
* In 2000, George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus, a booming economy and a world at peace.

You think any of this is coincidence???

Posted by: Stephen Kriz | Link to comment | January 09, 2009 at 02:18 PM

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not a coincidence at all - It is carefully selected data (& some of it false).

You have omitted comparable Democrat errors, and have falsely portrayed some of the events you cite.

What a farce to portray the 1968 handoff of the Vietnam War as though it were nothing troubling. It was a horrendous war that killed more Americans than all of the subsequent wars and conflicts combined. And it was Johnson (a Democrat, FYI) who ramped it up. It was Nixon who wound it down.

Carter took office in 1977 with an economy that was well into the recovery from the recession that ended in 1975. During his administration the inflation rate surged to double digits! And his term ended with a recession. Remember stagflation? That is what he left for Reagan. Of course, you selectively left these facts out.

Clinton left a mess for Bush as well. Budget surplus, yes (because of the stock market bubble). But a world at peace? Bullshit! Terrorist attacks and skirmishes were constant. And remember the stock market bubble of the 1990s, and the crash in 2000? Clinton was President during those years. It was the stock market crash that led to the recession in 2001, a nice start for Bush.

If you give a pass to Democrats for their errors, and misallocate blame for some of their items to Republicans, then of course the Republicans will look worse.

Patricia said...

The quality of your comment might be indicated by the fact that you are Anonymous

Patricia said...

Why in the world would I need to point out problems with Democratic presidents? The Republicans are busy at that, including many lies. And I remember the Vietnam war years. The Republicans were gung ho for it. If a democrat had tried to end it, he would have pilloried by the Republicans.

As shown by chart in http://patriciashannon.blogspot.com/2009/01/jobs-created-per-year-in-office.html
since Truman, the president with the most number of jobs created per year was Clinton. The 2nd highest was Carter.

Reagan created a giant deficit that helped lead to the recession that caused the first Bush to only have one term in office.

I know I was better off during the Carter years than during the Reagan years.

And it is not true that "Terrorist attacks and skirmishes were constant" during the Clinton years. Besides, I never considered Clinton a real Democrat. In action, he was a moderate Republican.

According to you, if a recession happened when a Democrat was president, it was that president's fault. But if a recession happened when a Republican was president, it was all the fault of the preceding Democratic president.

And I'm not anonymous.

Anonymous said...

"The quality of your comment might be indicated by the fact that you are Anonymous"

The facts speak for themselves.

And yes, republicans and democrats both have recessions and other troubles that developed during their terms.

The issue with your post is that you are unfair in your assessment of this.

However, I think people grossly overestimate the president's influence on the economy.

Interesting that you consider Clinton to be like a moderate republican and not a real democrat. That makes sense to me. I also think that Bush spent money like a democrat and was not a real republican.

Anonymous said...

BTW, In the interest of disclosure: Over the years I have contributed thousands of dollars to Democrats running for congress, senate and president. I have also contributed about the same amount to Republicans. I support good people regardless of party, and do not have any delusions that one party is good and the other bad. I leave that kind of small-minded thinking to the blind, dumb partisans.

Patricia said...

Golly, what a high quality comment. You are anonymous, I am not. This is my blog, but I let people who disagree with me post on it. So you call me names. Note that when Bush, whom I think has hurt our country in many ways, did something I approved of, I mentioned it in my blog, because I felt it was only fair, since I posted many articles critical of him.

I never said all Democrats and their ideas are good, all Republicans and their ideas are bad. But I believe the Democratic party of today is much better for our country than the Republicans, so of course my blog will reflect that. The Republican party has acted in a way that I find reprehensible, unpatriotic, damaging to our country and the world. Different political parties stand for different things. That's their reason for being. And I am repulsed by what the Republican party chooses to stand for.

The news media is owned by big business, which favors the Republicans because they favor the plutocrats more than the Democrats do. Talk shows that influence many people are almost entirely right-wing liars. Any good deed by the Republicans will get plenty of publicity.

I have been to meetings and been in situations and seen how they were reported, and I know the MSM (mainstream media) is biased toward the plutocracy. It can't be otherwise, when it is owned by big business and depends for its ad revenues on it.

And I have had personal experience with the nastiness of Republicans.

Why don't you take the time to create your own blog, with comments allowed, and post a link here, and you will be free to put whatever you want on it.

Patricia said...

I'll note here that I didn't post a article on the fact that, during a time of ever worsening economic problems, after Obama met with Republicans to try to work together to help our country, and he made changes to make the stimulus bill more to the liking of the Republicans. The result, less than two days ago, was that a unanimous vote by House Republicans against President Obama's stimulus plan. There was no need for me to post anything because it was well reported elsewhere, and I didn't have anything new to say about it. Anybody who agreed with the Republicans wouldn't be swayed by what I had to say.

Even many of the plutocracy have been hurt, and many must see that the Republican party does not have ideas that work, so there was no problem with the news media ignoring the issue, or hiding it away at the bottom of page 18, or putting a slant on it.

This unanimous vote by House Republicans against President Obama's stimulus plan, with most Democrats voting for it, shows that there is a difference between the parties, in case someone hadn't already noticed that.

Anonymous said...

The mess we are in now was caused by excessive spending and debt. The stimulus package is a dramatic increase in spending and debt.

If it were all good stimulus and infrastructure investment it would be more palatable. Unfortunately, congress is using the stimulus program as an excuse to also fund excessive porkbarrel projects. Remove the junk and more votes will come.

Patricia said...

The mess we are in was caused by declining real wages of workers, along with housing prices being too high, so that people had to borrow to get along. Also, the wealth distribution upward to the top 1/2 of 1% resulted in rampant speculation, as it has in the past.

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