If you got the impression from the title that this post is about 2008, you’re only partially correct. The turning point that I discuss in this post is 1980, a year when we replaced one of the best presidents in U.S. history with one of the worst. Tuesday’s election calls this to mind, as we are now hoping that we will witness a mirror image of 1980 – the replacement of the worst president in U.S. history with one of the best.
Needless to say, Barack Obama does not yet deserve that designation – and he would no doubt be one of the first people to acknowledge that. He’ll have to earn it, and it will be a very difficult, uphill climb, with an abundance of intensely nasty opposition. In my opinion, in order to be a great President he will have to take risks, frequently opting for what is right rather than for what is popular or easy.
That will be a lot to ask of him. As the first African-American president of a country that has a long history of racism, he will be under intense pressure to go with the flow, so as to avoid being seen as too far left. He will have a very fine line to walk, between doing what is right and avoiding the animosity of the conservative corporate elites of this country.
Well, he had a mighty fine line to walk to get the Democratic Presidential nomination and then go on to win the Presidency. If anyone would have asked me one or two years ago what I thought the chances were of an African-American being elected President of our country in my lifetime, I would have said they were slim to none. Obama’s election was nothing short of a miracle. What it took was a combination of an exceptionally eloquent, talented and inspiring candidate, in combination with eight years of the worst presidency we’ve ever experienced. Congratulations, President Obama!
:toast:
Yet to a large extent, Barack Obama remains a mystery to me. I am hopeful, but not convinced that he will be an outstanding President.
It will probably seem ludicrous to many people that I use Jimmy Carter as an example that I hope Obama will follow. Jimmy Carter’s presidency is widely regarded among conservatives, moderates and even many liberals as a failure. Of 8 historical presidential rankings
listed by Wikipedia that ranked both Reagan and Carter, only one (thank God for that one!) ranked Carter ahead of Reagan. The latest one, sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, ranked Carter 34th and Reagan 6th. Well, screw that poll, and most of the others as well. Their main criteria for a high ranking seems to be
“winning” a major war, either as president or a general: # 1 Washington (Commander-in Chief for the Revolutionary War); # 2 Lincoln (Civil War); # 3 F. Roosevelt (WW II); # 6 Reagan (Some say he won the Cold War); # 7 Truman (ended WW II in the Pacific); # 8 Eisenhower (Supreme Allied Commander during WW II); # 9 Polk (Mexican War); # 10 Jackson (Won the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812); # 11 Wilson (WW I); # 14 McKinley (Spanish-American War). Not that I don’t agree with the high rankings for Lincoln and FDR. I do. But I find the worshipping of war, manifested both in these Presidential rankings and in so much else of American culture, to be repugnant.
The long imperial history of the United States prior to the Carter PresidencyThe history of the United States is a long story of imperial aggression, beginning with our use of slaves from Africa, the
near extermination of the original inhabitants of our country over the course of more than a century, and a
war of aggression against Mexico (1846-8). I discuss this history in more detail in
this post.
Following World War II, with the onset of the
Cold War, our aggressive tendencies intensified, as we repeatedly helped to replace leftist governments with right wing dictatorships or put down rebellions against repressive governments. Major examples include: the CIA sponsored overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in
Iran (1953); the CIA overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in
Guatemala (1954); our assistance in the massacre of Communists in
Indonesia (1965); the
Vietnam War (1959-75), with its associated bombing of
Laos (1969-74) and
Cambodia (1970-75; the CIA sponsored overthrow of Salvador Allende in
Chile (1973) and our help in putting down the
East Timorese rebellion against Indonesia (1975).
There is not full agreement on the reasons for all these Cold War interventions. Our claim was that we conducted the Cold War to protect the peoples of the world against Communist tyranny. But no doubt there were many other reasons, such as our desire to maintain and expand our international influence, corporate profiteering, and perhaps most important of all, the
fear of many American leaders that successful leftist governments would set an example that Americans might want to emulate.
Our desire for oil became an increasingly important reason for our meddling in other countries during this period of time. In 1970
domestic oil production peaked in our country and then began to decline. From that point forward, we became increasingly dependent upon foreign oil, especially from the Middle East.
The Carter Presidency reaction against U.S. imperialism and warJimmy Carter was perhaps the most peace-focused President our country has ever had. On the campaign trail in 1976, Carter was an
outspoken critic of U.S. imperialism:
We’re ashamed of what our government is as we deal with other nations around the world… What we seek is … a foreign policy that reflects the decency and generosity and common sense of our own people.
Morris Berman, in his book “
Dark Ages America – The Final Phases of Empire”, discusses Carter’s commitment to human rights as President:
Carter never stopped talking about the subject… He cut out aid to Argentina, Ethiopia, Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua, Rhodesia, and Uganda because of human rights abuses.
Berman discusses the hopes engendered by Carter’s 1976 election to the Presidency and how the American people turned out not to be ready for that kind of change:
For a brief moment in American postwar history, the position of sanity found an echo… We would work for a more humane world order in our international relations, not seek merely to defeat an adversary; military solution would not come first; efforts would be made to reduce the sale of arms to developing countries…
But… the Carter morality was, within two years, heavily out of step with the return to the usual public demand for a more muscular and military foreign policy… Out-of-office cold warriors closed ranks, forming organizations such as the
Committee on the Present Danger… Their goal – to revive the Cold War – was ultimately successful; Ronald Reagan and
CIA-assisted torture in Central America were the inevitable results. And in the course of all this, a picture was formed of Jimmy Carter as weak, bungling, inept… That Carter would be perceived as weak, and presidents such as Reagan and Bush Jr. as strong, says a lot about who we are as a people…
Carter’s
malaise speech of July 15, 1979, was one of the most unpopular acts of his unpopular presidency. It was unpopular largely because Carter suggested that Americans needed to learn to be satisfied with less material goods. Americans as a people (and perhaps most or all other peoples as well) don’t like to be told that they need to look within themselves to discover the source of their problems. They would much rather blame all their problems on external enemies. Jimmy Carter felt deeply that that attitude was dangerous and needed to be changed:
I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy… (Our nation is experiencing) a crisis of confidence… It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation…
Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning…
We are at a turning point in our history… There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility.
The relations between Carter’s malaise speech and our quest for Middle Eastern oilI believe that Carter’s malaise speech is in need of some interpretation. There are certain things that U.S. politicians simply cannot say if they truly value their political future. So Jimmy Carter was trying to walk a fine line – trying to make a point that he considered to be of great importance, while at the same time trying
not to commit political suicide.
As it turned out, though he tried to exercise some political caution, Jimmy Carter nevertheless crossed the line into political suicide. Andrew Bacevich, in his book “The Limits of Power – The End of American Exceptionalism” says of Carter’s malaise speech:
Carter then proceeded to kill any chance he had of securing reelection. In American political discourse, fundamental threats are by definition external. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or international communism could threaten the United States… That the actions of everyday Americans might pose a comparable threat amounted to rank heresy. Yet Carter now dared to suggest that the real danger to American democracy lay within.
To better understand the background for Carter’s speech, I believe that one needs to go back at least to 1953, the year that our CIA overthrew the popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Stephen Kinzer, in his book, “
All the Shah’s Men – An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror”, describes the lasting effects of that tragedy:
In Iran, almost everyone has for decades known that the United States was responsible for putting an end to democratic rule in 1953 and installing what became the long dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah. His dictatorship produced the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which brought to power a passionately anti-American theocracy that embraced terrorism as a tool of statecraft. Its radicalism inspired anti-Western fanatics in many countries…
The violent anti-Americanism that emerged from Iran after 1979 shocked most people in the United States. Americans had no idea of what might have set off such bitter hatred in a country where they had always imagined themselves more or less well liked. That was because almost no one in the United States knew what the CIA did there in 1953.
In January 1979, just six months before Carter’s speech, anti-American revolutionaries had overthrown the Shah of Iran. Carter must have recognized his own role in the anti-American attitude of the Iranian revolutionaries, as he had been a firm supporter of the Shah. Perhaps he felt guilty about his support for the Shah, recognizing that that support was not fully consistent with his sincere passion for human rights.
My interpretation of Carter’s malaise speechIn any event, it was rapidly becoming obvious by 1979 that the Middle East posed a potential source of long term conflict for our country, so long as we felt the need and the moral right to intervene in Middle Eastern affairs as a consequence of our dependency on foreign oil. It seems to me that that was what Carter was trying to warn us against. I believe that that was what he meant when he spoke of “… a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility.”
And what about when Carter spoke of “a turning point in our history” and the “two paths” we had to choose from? I believe that those points can be looked at specifically in terms of our growing dependence on foreign oil. When it comes to that issue, there are basically three alternatives:
1) Use much less oil – which would mean any or all of the following:
Make do with less
Develop alternative, renewable (and cleaner) sources of energy
Develop policies that are much more energy efficient
2) Develop more domestic sources of oil
3) Use our military to control the oil of other countries
Carter fully recognized the limitations of the 2nd and 3rd options. The second option was not realistic because we had already reached peak oil production in our country, and efforts to develop more would only lead to ever dwindling oil production at greater expense. And the third option was a formula for ever increasing military conflict, national debt, and a reputation as the world’s bully. It is quite clear that Carter greatly preferred option number 1 – and many actions of his presidency were directed in that direction.
Carter was intensely criticized for his malaise speech. Conservatives criticized it because it asked the American people to limit their consumption and their military prowess, and even many liberals criticized it because it was so politically ruinous.
I view it much differently. I believe that it was one of the most courageous speeches ever given by an American President. As Bacevich said, it helped to end Carter’s political career and earned him the ever-lasting hatred of many of the conservative leaders and war-mongers of our country. So perhaps it could be said that the speech was not politically astute. Perhaps it could be said that Carter overestimated the character of the American people. And certainly it could be said that the speech was a political disaster for Jimmy Carter.
But what Carter attempted to do was to lead the American people to a greater sense of purpose and a better future – for themselves, for all of humankind, and for future generations. He failed in that regard. But it was a heroic effort. He gave it his best shot, and he paid the ultimate political price.
The Reagan Presidency as the path that Carter warned us againstOne major effect of the Reagan Presidency was to lead our domestic policies in a much more conservative direction – more specifically, to start us on a course of systematically dismantling FDR’s New Deal. He accomplished that under false pretenses. He led Americans to believe that it was to their benefit, when in reality it benefited only a small minority of Americans, led to
skyrocketing national debt, a rapidly
widening wealth gap, and a continuing reduction in standard of living for most Americans.
Bacevich describes Reagan’s basic foreign policy philosophy, especially with regard to Middle Eastern oil:
If developments in the Persian Gulf could adversely affect the American standard of living, then control of that region by anyone other than the United States had become intolerable.
Though Reagan, like Carter, bemoaned our escalating dependency on foreign oil, his approach to the problem was radically different. Bacevich explains:
In practice, however, they did next to nothing to curtail that dependence. Instead, they wielded U.S. military power to ensure access to oil, hoping thereby to prolong the empire of consumption’s lease on life.
In defense of his immense military spending, Reagan
reassured Americans and the world:
The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise. The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor. We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression – to preserve freedom and peace.
Bacevich explains the long-standing consequences of ingraining this myth in the psyche of the American people:
A new national security consensus emerged based on the conviction that the United States military could dominate the planet as Reagan had proposed to dominate outer space. In Washington, confidence that a high-quality military establishment, dexterously employed, could enable the United States, always with high-minded intentions, to organize the world to its liking had essentially become a self-evident truth. In this malignant expectation… lies the essence of the Reagan legacy.
And just as Reagan effected a change in the American psyche, that change affected the long term foreign policy of the United States:
Simply put, the United States would rely on military might to keep order in the Gulf and maintain the flow of oil, thereby mitigating the implications of American energy dependence. By the time that Reagan retired from office, this had become the basis for national security strategy in the region.
Obama’s great challengeThe American people in general, and Barack Obama as our new president, are now greatly burdened by this legacy. Bacevich places the dilemma in terms of the current day:
That Americans might shake the habit by choosing a different course remains even today a possibility that few are willing to contemplate seriously. After all, as George H. W. Bush declared in 1992, “The American way of life is not negotiable.” With nothing negotiable, dependency bred further dependency that took new and virulent forms. Each of Reagan’s successors relied increasingly on military power to sustain that way of life. The unspoken assumption has been that profligate spending on what politicians euphemistically refer to as “defense” can sustain profligate domestic consumption of energy… Unprecedented military might could defer the day of reckoning indefinitely – so at least the hope went.
How will Obama handle the current military expectations of our nation’s people? On the positive side of the ledger, Obama has proposed
a comprehensive policy for developing alternative energy sources and improving energy efficiency. That is very encouraging indeed. I also see as very encouraging his early opposition to the Iraq War, and his stated intentions of withdrawing most of our military from Iraq as quickly as possible. Most encouraging of all, I firmly believe that, like Jimmy Carter, his heart is in the right place.
But notwithstanding all of this, Obama has shown very little tendency to question the predominant American dogma on the use of our military – that we have the right to intervene any time anywhere in the world if our “interests” are at stake.
It’s hard to fault him for that. It is quite possible that had he seriously questioned the prevailing American military paradigm during his presidential campaign, we would now be looking at 4-8 years of a McCain-Palin presidency. And undoubtedly, Obama will be under tremendous pressure not to change the prevailing paradigm. Yet, how good can an Obama presidency be if he fails to change current American attitudes towards the use of our military for imperial purposes?
I think that if Barack Obama is to make a significant contribution in this area he will need to combine the morality and courage of a Jimmy Carter with superior political skills. The pressure that he would face in trying to do this would no doubt be extremely intense and ugly, and he would be taking a huge political risk. I have to admit that I have no idea how this is going to play out. I am hopeful, yet in view of the unimaginable obstacles, not at all convinced. Good luck to you, President Obama!
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