The collective memory of Americans seems to be getting shorter all the time. I say that based upon two news-worthy events this week.
One of those was former President Jimmy Carter turning 100-years old. Carter is the first former President to become a centenarian. And to read the articles or to recap the video stories about his time in office, you would have thought that his four years in the Oval Office were the height of American Exceptionalism.
To be fair, Carter has been an exemplary American after leaving office. He was a major support of Habitat for Humanity, actually swinging a hammer and doing the work in neighborhoods rather than just appearing in public service announcements or hosting big-money fundraisers. His Carter Foundation has led international efforts to fight disease and promote peace around the world. And he continues to lend his voice to anti-Trump efforts, sounding the alarm of the former President’s threat to democracy and American standing around the world.
But that does not change the disaster that was his four years in office. Unemployment was in the eight percent range that entire time. Interest rates went from the eight percent range to more than 16% in a couple of year–with mortgage rates hitting an unbelievable 20+% by the end of 1980. All of that was aggravated by continued inflation that averaged 10% over the entire four years. Things were so bleak during Carter’s administration that economists coined a new phrase to measure the despair: the “Misery Index”–the unemployment rate plus the rate of inflation–which hit a high of 22% in the late 1970’s.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, we were hit by another energy crisis, as OPEC cut back oil production substantially. It wasn’t quite as bad as the gas lines and higher prices of the early 1970’s when the Arabs started flexing their muscles, but it definitely added to the general American unhappiness. There were bumper stickers made that said “Carter can kiss my gas”.
Where Carter was the weakest is he could provide no inspiration to his constituents. His televised speeches blamed Americans themselves for the energy crunch because they wanted big cars with low mileage per gallon, and they wanted their houses toasty warm in the winter. While he never actually told the country to “put on another sweater” that was the message sent in a speech where Carter sat in a heavy sweater and told people to turn down the thermostat.
The death knell for Carter’s presidency was the Iran Hostage Crisis. You can debate whether Carter was directly responsible for the situation–where more than 50 Americans working at the US Embassy in Tehran were taken hostage immediately following the Islamic Revolution that put religious zealots in power. One of the demands the hostage-takers made was the return of the Shah–who was an American puppet leader–who was deposed and fled to the US for treatment of cancer. Carter refused, and the hostage crisis began.
It would last for 444-days, and not end until after Carter lost the 1980 election and Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. During that time, the US looked incompetent in not being able to negotiate the hostages’ release. There was a failed rescue mission that saw the military helicopters snuck into Iran crashing into each other in the desert and others break down during a night-time operation that had to be abandoned. The US looked like a faded power bumbling around in the dark.
That aspect was further aggravated by Soviet aggression around the world, including the invasion of Afghanistan and increased nuclear missile production. Carter’s response was the boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow–which had mixed response from Americans, who didn’t see how punishing athletes sent an effective message to the Soviets.
I could also mention the brutal winters we experienced in 1978 and 1979 that plunged much of the country into bitter cold and record amounts of snowfall, and the rise of disco music as further adding to the overall misery of the times–but we really can’t blame Carter entirely for those. I can only assume that those writing all of the flowery prose about the former president today didn’t live through any of those things–or have chosen to pretend they never happened.
The other image rehabilitation champion honored this week was Pete Rose. Rose died at the age of 83. In the hours that followed, social media was filled with posts about what an “outrage” it was that Major League Baseball kept Rose out of the Hall of Fame. Again, I’m going to assume that everyone posting such thoughts is too young to remember that historic press conference in August of 1989 when Commissioner Bart Giamatti announced that Rose had voluntarily accepted a lifetime ban from the sport for betting on baseball.
I use the term “voluntarily” intentionally, because Giamatti initially offered Rose a much shorter suspension if he would publicly admit that he had bet on baseball while serving as manager of the Cincinnati Reds. But Rose, despite the documented evidence against him refused to do so–and took the lifetime ban, which had been established as the standard punishment for gambling, set by those involved in the Black Sox Scandal of 1919.
It’s important to keep in mind the timeline of the Pete Rose saga. He was initially accused of gambling on baseball. He denied that, saying he only bet on football, basketball, and horse racing. That went on for the better part of a decade, when suddenly, Rose admitted to betting on baseball–but not Reds games. I would point out the admission came in a book that Rose was selling. When MLB reminded everyone that it had evidence that Rose bet on the Reds he continued his denials for the better part of a decade before admitting he did, in fact, bet on the Reds. And he did not bet on them every game. Those that try to defend Pete claim that somehow improved his argument for reinstatement, but all it does is prove that he was in fact setting up strategy to win more often in games that would make him money.
Add to that Rose going to prison for tax evasion–not reporting the income he derived from betting on sports–and as now-Commissioner Rob Manfred stated after Rose’s final appeal for re-instatement a “lack of mature understanding of his wrongful conduct”, you can understand why he went to his grave divorced from the sport he loved. But that is not calming down the Pete Rose apologists. They point out that Major League Baseball now partners with casinos and on-line gambling operations to allow fans to legally bet on the sport. There are ads for casinos and betting apps in the stadiums and on the TV broadcasts. ESPN provides live betting odds every at-bat. And today’s fan thinks “what’s so bad about someone betting on the game?”–failing to truly consider the impact a player or a manager having a direct financial benefit from each individual play could have for them.
The reason I’m concerned about the image rehabilitation efforts that have people thinking of Jimmy Carter as a great politician, and Pete Rose as a “victim” of an unfair system, is that the same thing can happen to the even worse people of this generation. Just like it would have been impossible to consider in the late 1970’s that Jimmy Carter would be anywhere but near the bottom of a list of Best Presidents, it’s equally impossible to think that Donald Trump would ever get out of the absolute last place in that same list. But 50-years from now, there’s a good chance that those not around now are going to think “You know what, maybe he wasn’t that bad!”
Unfortunately, I’ll have to live to be 100-years old to be the voice of reason then too.
