A Good Man, A Good President

If only we had listened to Jimmy Carter

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Jimmy Carter, who died today, was a good man and a good president by any reasonable measure. The contrast between him and the man who is about to again dishonor the office of president of the United States could not be starker.

You might be too young to remember Carter’s administration

I was too young to vote when Carter ran for president, but I remember attending a sleepover with two other girls in which one of us favored Ford, one of us Carter, and one of us Ronald Reagan.

I considered myself a Republican back then because my brain hadn’t yet fully developed. So I didn’t “vote” for Carter during the sleepover.

Our country could have been better

Carter wanted us to invest in more solar energy. He had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. (Reagan promptly took them down after his election.)

Carter explained that we needed more energy independence and that we would all need to make some sacrifices.

Excuse me, did you say sacrifices? What?

He lost most Americans right then and there

I personally remember the long lines at gas stations during the 1973 energy crisis, even though I was about a decade away from being able to drive. The adults were outraged.

Endless amounts of cheap gas, as you know, is one of Americans’ God-given rights.

Carter didn’t understand that, and offered some real downer advice. You can watch his 1979 Energy and the National Goals — A Crisis of Confidence speech here.

Americans do not like to deny themselves anything

We are people who will take out payday loans at ruinous interest rates to buy a pair of special tennis shoes.

We will buy enormous four-bedroom houses we can’t afford when we aren’t even planning to have kids.

We will use our credit cards to finance a trip to Europe.

And we prefer pleasant falsehoods over hard truths.

Reagan understood this

He talked about Morning in America — no more of that downer talk of Carter’s! We could and would be strong and rich and always be on top of the world, thanks to American Exceptionalism.

Go on, buy that gas-guzzler muscle car if you want it, and crank the heat on your furnace if the outdoor temperature drops below a comfy 70 degrees.

Don’t worry, be happy.

Americans need not suffer or sacrifice

Well, unless they happen to be poor. In that case, screw them. They aren’t the people we’re talking about.

We are talking about the real Americans — the wealthy ones.

The others can be ignored until we need them to send their kids to war.

In that case, we’ll flatter and celebrate them. We’ll wave a flag, hand them a rifle and put them on a ship. They will not understand they are being used.

Nope. They’ll take great pride in fighting for the interests of the rich oil companies — I mean for America’s freedom.

Oops! I said the wrong thing out loud.

Our best days are behind us

We elected a madman who has not even started his second term, but is already spreading chaos.

I see a country in which half of us are either destitute or just above it. The middle class is tiny and the rich are oblivious to everyone else. They no longer are expected to pay their fair share of taxes.

The rich successfully convinced the poor that making the rich pay their fair share of taxes will actually hurt the poor. Isn’t it remarkable how easy it is to bamboozle most people?

Half of the U.S. hates the other half

Partly, this is because people have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they are angry at anybody who tries to tell them the truth. They seek out “news” sources that are just propaganda mills, and they love them.

How deep does this hatred go? Some people chose to needlessly die in a pandemic rather than accept an immunization because the morons they listened to turned it into a political matter. They are also the people who chose an incompetent old man-child instead of a highly competent younger woman of color.

We are doomed.

We’ve degraded the environment in a thousand ways

We’ve been merrily burning oil, gas and coal all these decades.

We’ve meddled in other countries in devastating ways, and then when the people from those damaged countries try to come here for a better life, we feel no sense of responsibility.

Only someone steeped in American Exceptionalism could not fear this situation. Your average rando will insist ain’t nothing can bring down the US of A.

But your average rando is an idiot.

Here’s a visit from the Ghost of Elections Past

This ethereal visitor shows us what could have been if Americans had listened to Carter’s sober assessments and had decided we needed to quickly wean ourselves off foreign oil.

• What if we had put much more money into researching green energy in the 1970s?

• What if we had stopped meddling with (and enriching) the Middle East?

• What if the Gulf War and 9-11 had never happened?

• What if our air was cleaner and our lives were more stable?

What if, what if, what if

Most people say Carter was a poor president but an exemplary former president.

I disagree. Carter was ahead of his time in many ways, but he made one big mistake: He thought you could treat Americans like intelligent people capable of looking at the facts and making good decisions.

He was wrong.

Reagan didn’t try to appeal to people’s intelligence. He just told them what they wanted to hear, and they ate it up.

That has cost us in so many ways.

I hope if we get another Carter-esque president in the future, we are smart enough to listen to him or her.

But our most recent election proves we are even less able to make good decisions for ourselves now.

Rest in peace, President Carter. We’ll never have another president like you.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. My new book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules.

A version of this piece ran on Feb 20, 2023 on Medium. com.