In what ways?
Japanese internment, circumventing congress on lend/lease, going to war with the supreme court, trying to load it with justices that would rubber stamp whatever he wanted and quite a few more. He put us at war with Germany without congressional approval, authorization, much less a declaration of war with his order to the Navy and Air Corps to attack any German warship on sight as well.
More trivia:
Notice on the BEA table above that the GDP in 1938 and 1939 are the same.
The depression-era GDP bottomed and began rising while Hoover was still in office. Since two consecutive quarters of economic growth is the most-commonly used definition of the end of an economic downturn, a person could say the depression had ended, and recovery began, before Roosevelt even took office.
History shows it would be idiotic to claim the depression ended under Hoover so that trivia is useful only as a rejoinder against (someone who is) getting hung up on strict definitions.
IOW you can use it to point out “don’t get too hung up on definitions,” but if someone truly needs that lesson, he is usually not worth arguing with.
Most of the New Deal
- a federally mandated minimum wafe,
- a federally mandated retirement plan
- etc.
Had been struck down by the courts every time and on every level where they were challenged. Once those decisions were re-re-affirmed by the Supreme Court, (West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish) Roosevelt wanted to amend the Constitution.
His advisors opined “it will take too long, people are suffering.”
His advisors noted Article 3 of the Constitution reads in part
"The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time . . . "
On February 5, 1937 (the major pillars of
of the New Deal still not enacted) FDR introduced to Congress, a bill that would add SIX new Supreme Court Justices.
(Google Roosevelt’s court packing plan)
With amazing speed, and without a single new Justice, the Court overturned itself.
That old junkyard dog! 
Absolutely!
Dems did not used to hate southerners, rural people, devout Christians etc…
They used to fashion themseleves as the party of the working family.
Today their
- snotty coastal urban elist wing, and their
- whack-job pc multiculturalist wing, and their
- anti-rich anti-corporate wing
- anti-religious wing
have led their reputation pretty far down the rabbit hole.
Jimmy Carter a rich rural southern farmer businessman who owned a plantation. Can you picture him getting the Dems nomination?
I lived through the Carter years and there is no way to gloss over the disaster that he was.
Pretty sure i did not “gloss” over anything.
You wrote
…Not giving him a pass on how he handled it.
Just a explaination of what he had to deal with over such a short time.
Reagan had 4 years to sit on the sidelines and come up with a gameplan while Carter was in office…
Here’s one way to look at it. (two examples, same idea(
Under Jimmy Carter inflation totaled 45% over 4 years. During that time SS, (among other programs) was legally required to increase payouts by 45%.
Wages did not increase by 45% and the system was nearing bankruptcy. Jimmy Carter sat idly by, said nothing and did nothing.
By the summer of 1981, Ronald Reagan was on the job fewer than six months when he proposed increasing the FICA tax rate 25% from 6.13% (times 2) to 7.65% (times 2).
.
.
.
.
LIKEWISE
Throughout the 70’s 89’s era American interests were being assaulted in the Middle East and Central Asia. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, American diplomats were taken hostage in Iran and mundane terrorist bombings and plane hijackings stopped being news. The instability fed high oil prices.
What follows is wiki’s list of Jimmy Carters military responses:
- 1980: Iran: Operation Eagle Claw, on April 26, 1980, President Carter reported the use of six U.S. transport planes and eight helicopters in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran.
-1980: U.S. Army and Air Force units arrive in the Sinai in September as part of “Operation Bright Star”. They are there to train with Egyptian armed forces as part of the Camp David peace accords
Below is wiki’s list of Ronald Reagan’s military responses:
-
1981: Libya: First Gulf of Sidra incident, on August 19, 1981, U.S. planes based on the carrier USS Nimitz shot down two Libyan jets.
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1982: Sinai: On March 19, 1982, President Reagan reported the deployment of military personnel and equipment to participate in the Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai.
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1982: Lebanon: Multinational Force in Lebanon, on August 21, 1982, President Reagan reported the dispatch of 800 Marines to serve in the multinational force to assist in the withdrawal of members of the Palestine Liberation force from Beirut.
-
1982–1983: Lebanon: On September 29, 1982, President Reagan reported the deployment of 1200 marines to serve in a temporary multinational force to facilitate the restoration of Lebanese government sovereignty.
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1983: Egypt: After a Libyan plane bombed a city in Sudan on March 18, 1983, and Sudan and Egypt appealed for assistance, the United States dispatched an AWACS electronic surveillance plane to Egypt.
-
1983: Chad: On August 8, 1983, President Reagan reported the deployment of two AWACS electronic surveillance planes and eight F-15 fighter planes and ground logistical support forces to assist Chad against Libyan and rebel forces.
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1984: Persian Gulf: On June 5, 1984, Saudi Arabian jet fighter planes, aided by intelligence from a U.S. AWACS electronic surveillance aircraft and fueled by a U.S. KC-10 tanker, shot down two Iranian fighter planes over an area of the Persian Gulf proclaimed as a protected zone for shipping.
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1985: Italy: On October 10, 1985, U.S. Navy pilots intercepted an Egyptian airliner and forced it to land in Sicily. The airliner was carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro who had killed an American citizen during the hijacking.
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1986: Libya: Action in the Gulf of Sidra (1986), on March 26, 1986, President Reagan reported on March 24 and 25, U.S. forces, while engaged in freedom of navigation exercises around the Gulf of Sidra, had been attacked by Libyan missiles and the United States had responded with missiles.
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1986: Libya: Operation El Dorado Canyon, on April 16, 1986, President Reagan reported that U.S. air and naval forces had conducted bombing strikes on terrorist facilities and military installations in the Libyan capitol of Tripoli, claiming that Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi was responsible for a bomb attack at a German disco that killed two U.S. soldiers.
-
1987: Persian Gulf: Operation Nimble Archer. Attacks on two Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf by United States Navy forces on October 19. The attack was a response to Iran’s October 16, 1987 attack on the MV Sea Isle City, a reflagged Kuwaiti oil tanker at anchor off Kuwait, with a Silkworm missile.
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1987–1988: Persian Gulf: Operation Earnest Will. … the United States increased U.S. joint military forces operations in the Persian Gulf and adopted a policy of reflagging and escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers … It was the largest naval convoy operation since World War II
-
1987–1988: Persian Gulf: Operation Prime Chance was a United States Special Operations Command operation intended to protect U.S.-flagged oil tankers from Iranian attack during the Iran–Iraq War.
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1988: Persian Gulf: Operation Praying Mantis was the April 18, 1988 action waged by U.S. naval forces in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf .
By no coincidence, the regions became relatively stabile, people stopped dying, and oil prices returned to their pre-chaos level.
Pretty sure you did. Carter was a terrible President. A decent expresident.
Great post!
1 Like
As a nation we “got” to say “we put up with it long enough. Now we’re mad as hell and we’re fighting back.”
(“It” being hijackings, hostage takings, oil prices, inflation devouring the SS trust fund the general loss of American power and prestige.)
But as this is a political website, it escapes no one’s notice that the “put up with it years” were the Carter years, the “time to fight back” was the Reagan years.
I still think James Earl Carter is an excellent man and a better role model than most, but he was an AWFUL president.
West Coast Hotel v. Parrish was about a state law.
I think a federal minimum wage is constitutional.
I don’t know what “mandated retirement plan” you are referring to. Social Security?
Min wage. SS, federal unempl ins.were each ruled unconst. appealed and lost, appealed and losf.
Roosevelt threatened to stack the court. and the decisions were immediately reversed, by the same Justices who had recently ruled against them.
By 1936, before the courts allowed those programs, the depression was over, the adj. gdp was higher than the height-o d-the-boom GDP. (but unempl remained near 20%.)
That’s fine. I am saying that I think the first ruling was wrong.
You have not commented on the rest of my post yet.
They allowed the government program of laissez-faire to persist for a while.
Lol.
That’s because sometimes when I get writing I think in nook-length responses. My bad.
