Jimmy Carter Revisited
We've been pretty tough on Jimmy Carter, but with hindsight, probably not tough enough. If you search our site for "Jimmy Carter," you'll find all of his disgraceful acts that we've commented upon. His history is a sorry one: he started out as a Midshipman and served honorably in the Navy. But at some point, his leftist politics took hold and he started aligning himself with America's enemies. The turning point, I think, came here:
Soviet diplomatic accounts and material from the archives show that in January 1984 former President Jimmy Carter dropped by Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's residence for a private meeting.Carter expressed his concern about and opposition to Reagan's defense buildup. He boldly told Dobrynin that Moscow would be better off with someone else in the White House. If Reagan won, he warned, "There would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power."
Using the Russians to influence the presidential election was nothing new for Carter.
Schweizer reveals Russian documents that show that in the waning days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter White House dispatched businessman Armand Hammer to the Soviet Embassy.
Hammer was a longtime Soviet-phile, and he explained to the Soviet ambassador that Carter was "clearly alarmed" at the prospect of losing to Reagan.
Hammer pleaded with the Russians for help. He asked if the Kremlin could expand Jewish emigration to bolster Carter's standing in the polls.
"Carter won't forget that service if he is elected," Hammer told Dobrynin.
Conspiring with our chief enemy to try to influence an American Presidential election: We could have called that treason, but we didn't. You can form your own opinion.
In more recent years, Carter has never met an anti-American dictator he didn't like. Whether it was Castro, Ortega, Arafat...whoever. And he used the occasion of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to attack the current American government...just as those who awarded the prize had expected. No class.
And most recently, of course, he invited the execrable Michael Moore to sit with him in the former President's box at the Democratic National Convention. Moore is best known for calling Iraq's terrorists, who take sadistic delight in capturing innocent people and decapitating them on camera, that country's "Minutemen," and gleefully predicting that they would defeat the armed forces of the United States. Carter's public embrace of Moore can only be seen as an endorsement of his views. That puts Carter squarely "on the other side."
Jimmy Carter is a disgrace. We've said so before, and we'll continue saying so as long as he merits the criticism. If you want to learn more, read Steven Hayward's book The Real Jimmy Carter.
Here is a brief excerpt from an interview with Mr. Hayward about the wretched former President:
Carter panted after the Nobe Peace Prize for years, seeing it as a means of gaining official redemption for his humiliation at the hands of the voters in 1980. He lobbied quietly behind the scenes for years to get the prize, and finally met with success in 2002 when the left-wing Nobel Prize committee saw an opportunity to use Carter as a way of attacking President Bush and embarrassing the United States. The head of the Nobel Prize committee openly admitted that this was their motivation in selecting Carter. Any other ex-president would have refused to be a part of such an obvious anti-American intrigue, but not Jimmy. Here we should observe that Carter conceives himself much more as a citizen of the world than as a citizen of the United States, and I think it is highly revealing that Carter is most popular overseas in those nations that hate America the most, such as Syria, where they lined the streets cheering for Carter when he visited.
Yes, I think we've been much too kind to Mr. Carter.
DEACON adds: Some folks think that Rocket Man owes President Carter an apology for saying that "Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side." In my view, Carter owes the American people an apology for the actions cited above, and others. Carter, it seems to me, subscribes to the view that America is, and generally has been, more a force for evil in the world than a force for good. Accordingly, he believes, I think, that the world would be a better place if the U.S. were weaker militarily and less influential. Carter also holds our enemies in higher regard than he holds our friends, particularly in the Middle East. And, as Rocket Man notes above, he is particularly fond of anti-American dictators and, at times, has actively assisted such dictators to our detriment. I'm not sure whether all of this places Carter "on the other side," but it's difficult to understand in what sense he's on our side.
Those who admire Carter will say that he's really a patriot who is trying to set the country he loves back on its proper course. Perhaps. But to me, this means that Carter may rejoin our side if we reinvent ourselves by becoming as ineffectual as we were during the harrowing years of his administration. It does not mean that he's on our side now.
HINDROCKET adds: Kos and Atrios readers are welcome. However, please spare us your emails unless you actually know how to make an argument. That would exclude all those we've heard from so far.
UPDATE: We got an email from a reader who prefers to remain anonymous, but who is a reputable historian. He says the claim that Carter collaborated with the Soviets is a bum rap:
I don't disagree with you on Carter's less-than-reputable post-Presidency performance.However, I do have to call you on your conclusion that Carter was possibly traitorous because of an alleged attempt to get the Soviets to dump Jewish immigrants into the U.S. in advance of the election. It's not accurate, and it is error based on fourth-hand hack journalism and scholarship.
Hammer was not speaking for Carter when he made the request to the Soviets for increased Jewish emigration in advance of the election, and the idea was never that they were to come in and all vote for Carter.
The second [source] is a footnote to Anatoly Dobrynin's "In Confidence," his 1995 memoir published by Times books and widely read by every Cold War junkie. Schweizer's sole source for this Hammer meeting is Dobrynin. Dobrynin, meanwhile, recounts the story like this: Hammer had met with other prominent Jewish leaders, Robert Strauss, Carter's campaign manager and Carter at an October breakfast. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about getting out the Jewish vote. Carter asked Strauss, the Jewish leaders and thus Hammer to get out the Jewish vote in response to his efforts with the Camp David accords.
Hammer then meets with Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador, whom he knew, and told him this story. Hammer asked Dobrynin whether the Soviet leadership could expand Jewish immigration--and Hammer adds that Carter wouldn't forget such a move (since it would have been in line with
longstanding human rights pressure that the U.S. had put against the Soviets since the early 1970s). The idea went no where. Dobrynin never believed that Hammer was acting in any kind of official capacity for Carter or the country--nor did Hammer attempt to give that impression to Dobrynin. Dobrynin in conclusion on the episode: "But as far as I know he was never used by the American government as its representative, and we acted accordingly.…And we certainly never asked Hammer to carry any messages to the U.S. government on our behalf." [p. 466-67, paperback ed. In Confidence, 1995].Schweizer is not revealing anything new. Newsmax is blowing it out of proportion, and Frontpage Mag is helping by not checking the original work OR the footnotes to see if Schweizer is right. So Carter was not asking Hammer to have Jews immigrate in large numbers to vote for him. Ergo, he was not committing treason.
We're delighted to move this story forward; if anyone else wants to weigh in, we'll print what we get. Our email correspondent doesn't say anything about the 1984 episode referenced above. As to the 1980 election, I'm no expert and haven't even read Dobrynin's memoirs. But it seems to me that there is some ambiguity here. As I understand it, the theory was not that Russia would let a lot of Jews go, who would then vote for Carter. There presumably wouldn't be time for that. The theory was that Carter would collaborate with the Soviet Union in orchestrating a foreign policy "victory" that would make Carter look good. And I don't necessarily accept Dobrynin's casual assurance that Hammer wasn't regarded as an agent of the Carter administration. For many years, Hammer played an important role, which still may not be fully understood, in U.S.-Soviet relations. From what I know, it would have been entirely reasonable for the Russians to think that Hammer was speaking for Carter, whether Dobrynin now wants to paint it that way or not.
But, as I say, this is not an area in which I am an expert. Let's hear from more historians on this point, as well as the 1984 contact.
FURTHER UPDATE: We had Steve Hayward, author of The Real Jimmy Carter, on our radio show Friday night. Steve said that, based on Dobrynin's memoirs and on documents in the Soviet archives, he believes the anecdote recited by Schweizer about Carter's 1980 overture to the Soviet Union to be true.
