Reagan vs. Carter vs. Bush. Fight!

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-16 06:26pm

Pu-239 wrote: Weren't Hoover and Carter engineers?

Hoover and Carter achieved a level of incometance GWB can only dream of.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2004-09-16 06:39pm

GWB can only dream of being as competent as Hoover and Carter.

Talon Karrde · Post by **Talon Karrde** » 2004-09-16 06:50pm

Imperial Overlord wrote:GWB can only dream of being as competent as Hoover and Carter.

Right...

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-16 07:03pm

Imperial Overlord wrote:GWB can only dream of being as competent as Hoover and Carter.

Jimmy Carter came into office in 1977 with very high unemployment rates. He left office in 1981 with even higher unemployment rates and mind boggling inflation rates. His solution to inflation was going on television and asking people nicely not to ask their boss for raises because it causes inflation.

he royally fucked up the Iran hostage situatin.

His one sucess was the Camp David Accords which ended up costing Anwar Sadat his life. And oh yeah, i almost forgot Arabs and Israelis still kill each other.

don't even get me started on Herbert Hoover

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2004-09-16 07:10pm

Egypt and Israel are still at peace. Compare with Bush's Middle East peace disaster.

Unemployment: risen under Bush, while wages for most people fall.

Deficet: Sky rocketed under Bush

Iran hostage: Iranians held onto the hostages until after the election to sink Carter.

Middle East death toll: Carter: one botched operation
Bush: a botched war

And then there is the touchy subject of our allies

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-16 07:21pm

Imperial Overlord wrote:Egypt and Israel are still at peace. Compare with Bush's Middle East peace disaster.

Unemployment: risen under Bush, while wages for most people fall.

Deficet: Sky rocketed under Bush

Iran hostage: Iranians held onto the hostages until after the election to sink Carter.

Middle East death toll: Carter: one botched operation
Bush: a botched war

And then there is the touchy subject of our allies

did you know that the unemplyment rates in the late 1970's rose into the low teens? compared to what? 6 percent now?

Carter's foreign policy and it's soft and friendly approach to the Russians served to enable Soviet ambitions in Asia. Remember Afghanistan?

The Iranians held the hostages until Carter left because they resented the US support of the crooked and brutal Shah.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2004-09-16 07:28pm

Yeah, I'm sure a "hard" Carter would have made the Soviets simply change their mind on invading Afghanistan: please.

Besides, strategically, it was great for us that they invaded Afghanistan.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2004-09-16 07:32pm

Supporting the Shah was American policy long before Carter hit office.

Bush is very friendly with problem places like Saudia Arabia and Pakistan.

Real wages were much higher in the 70s.

The Russians have always had ambitions in Asia. You might want to actually know something about Afghanistan before you say Carter was the deciding factor. Local conditions were more important than American policy. Are you blaiming the Viet Nam War on Russia for being to "soft" to prevent Armerica from engaging in that boondoggle?

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-16 08:27pm

Imperial Overlord wrote:Supporting the Shah was American policy long before Carter hit office.

True, but the shit hit the fan in the late 70's. The writing was on the wall that the Shah was heinously unpopular and quite an asshole. Still Carter did nothing.

Bush is very friendly with problem places like Saudia Arabia and Pakistan.

i don't dispute that

Real wages were much higher in the 70s.

Yes, up until the the giant sucking sound that was inflation took hold at the end of the decade. Not to mention unemployment that climbed into the teens.

The Russians have always had ambitions in Asia. You might want to actually know something about Afghanistan before you say Carter was the deciding factor. Local conditions were more important than American policy. Are you blaiming the Viet Nam War on Russia for being to "soft" to prevent Armerica from engaging in that boondoggle?

i don't dispute that they did, but Carter's soft stance didn't help matters. The Soviets knew full well that there would be little to no reprecussions afterward. Had a more hard line President been in office, say a JFK or a Reagan i would have like to have seen how it played out. As it was when Reagan took over policy changed, but perhaps the soviets would have thought twice with a strong POTUS.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2004-09-16 08:54pm

Even with inflation wages were better in the 70s. America still had something that resembled a social safety net in a bad light under Carter. The job situation is worse under Bush. He is the only president since Hoover to lose jobs. And look what quality jobs that have been created under him. "Welcome to Walmart."

The Shah had been pissing on his people since we put him in power, but at least he was loyal to us. Pakistan and Saudia Arabia piss on their people and are helpful to our enemies.

Hawkish, confrontational POTUS haven't stopped the Russians from starting shit. They amp up the tension and cause tit-for-tat situations. Reagan helped cause our problems by shipping arms to Iran and giving Pakistan a blank cheque to do what ever it wanted as long as they supplied the Mujahadeen. Thanks Ronny. Way to look out for our long term interests.

The beloved leader of the free world has managed to turn a situation where virtually every nation in the free world was America's ally to one where most of them hate its government. That's a decisive change, but not a good one.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2004-09-16 08:57pm

Pu-239 wrote:
Thinkmarble wrote:
Darth Wong wrote: No nuclear physicists either. Popularity with the voters is not very well correlated with intelligence. Naked ambition and the ability to bullshit people, on the other hand ...
Not exactly a nuclear physicist, but it is well possible that the next head of government in germany has a PhD in physics.
Angela Merkel, the most likely candidate of the conservatives for chancellor, has made her PhD in the field of chemical physics/quantum chemnistry.
Weren't Hoover and Carter engineers?

I don't know about Hoover, but I know Carter was a peanut farmer... A reason he was elected was because he really appealed to the average American after the Watergate scandal, where the public got tired of politicians.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2004-09-16 09:00pm

Exonerate wrote:
Weren't Hoover and Carter engineers?
I don't know about Hoover, but I know Carter was a peanut farmer... A reason he was elected was because he really appealed to the average American after the Watergate scandal, where the public got tired of politicians.

Carter also studied engineering at Georgia Tech for one year and transferred to the Naval Academy where IIRC he studied nuclear engineering.

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2004-09-16 09:03pm

Glocksman wrote:Between this and Kerry's outright lie over the AWB banning machine guns*, I'm almost ready to hold my nose and vote for GWB.

But I won't.
Instead I'll write in Dean.

*Kerry MG quote:
“Police officers -- police officers -- begging the president all across our country: Keep this ban in place so we don't have to walk into a drug bust staring the down the barrel of a military machine gun, of an Uzi or an AK-47.”

Technically, Kerry's right since the barrels are the same.

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2004-09-16 09:14pm

Col. Crackpot wrote:
Imperial Overlord wrote:GWB can only dream of being as competent as Hoover and Carter.
Jimmy Carter came into office in 1977 with very high unemployment rates. He left office in 1981 with even higher unemployment rates and mind boggling inflation rates. His solution to inflation was going on television and asking people nicely not to ask their boss for raises because it causes inflation.

he royally fucked up the Iran hostage situatin.

His one sucess was the Camp David Accords which ended up costing Anwar Sadat his life. And oh yeah, i almost forgot Arabs and Israelis still kill each other.

don't even get me started on Herbert Hoover

Actually, Carter's solution to inflation was ordering Paul Volcker to strangle it out of the system late in 1979. This move, along with Carter's refusal to trade weapons for hostages, cost him the election in 1980. As it turns out, Carter was right: Volcker eventually did knock down inflation and interest rates and Reagan claimed credit for the result. Carter started the military buildup in 1979, another policy Reagan claimed credit for.

Reagan's fiscal policy was that of a teenager who gets his first credit card, maxes it out and leaves it for someone else to pay the bill. Reagan traded weapons to the mullahs and spent both terms as Teheran's bitch. I haven't seen a statesman and man of character like Carter in the White House in my lifetime.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-09-16 09:27pm

Even with inflation wages were better in the 70s. America still had something that resembled a social safety net in a bad light under Carter. The job situation is worse under Bush. He is the only president since Hoover to lose jobs. And look what quality jobs that have been created under him. "Welcome to Walmart."

Really are you taking into account that the value of benifits (and the average worker has benifits) have literally skyrocketed over the ensueing decades? Or that tax rates, particulary for the low end of wage earners, has fallen dramatically?

Frankly though when you have double digit unemployment you have a crapload of people who make nothing and if even 5% of the US economy works for Walmart (and bring some proof if you want to talk about the number of invididuals in McJobs) - then they are all better off than not having any job at all. On top of the problem of inflation is not with wages, but with economic instability (leading to fewer jobs and less growth) and liquid wealth devaluation. If you want to discourage investment lending, rampant inflation is a great way to do it. If you want to decimate the savings of indiviudals, inflation is another good way of doing it.

Losing jobs on his watch? I'm sorry but the refrain about jobs is BS. Companies don't outsource job because Washington wants them to, they do it because the wages, which you apparantly want to be higher, in other countries are so much lower that they can cut costs dramatically. The only way to preserve outsourced jobs is to tariff, subsidize, or nationalize; Labour provided a textbook example of how those basic policies sucked. Add to this the effects of automation and the collapse of the internet bubble and frankly I don't see what exactly people expected Bush to do, spend the whole budget subsidizing failing corporations?

Carter's problem with the Shah is that he was too moralistic to actually back the Shah with force sufficient to sustain the Shah and not bold enough to demand the Shah reform. Essentially it was a worst of both world's choice made by sticking one's head in the sand.

Ronny did manage to loosen Soviet control over eastern Europe and could you remind me what "tit-for-tat" occured following Grenada? Or how exactly did Libya go tit-for-tat with after the bombing run? At the end of the day the Soviet Union was peacably dying, Eastern Europe was liberated, and Gorbachov was begging for whatever level of force reduction he could get Reagan to sign.

Carter inherited a mess, it got worse because of measures beyond his control in addition to anything he may have directly done to make things worse, and the 1970's make today's economic climate downright sunny. Frankly even the POTUS has finite ability to impact the economy, holding presidents responsible for the economy (unless they directly dick with it) has always struck me as laughably moronic.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-16 09:34pm

let me just add that i have nothing against President Carter personally. He is a kind hearted person that has devoted himself to charity work in his later years. His problem was that he was too much of a nice guy.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2004-09-16 09:45pm

Yes, I am including benefits and inflation. Temporary unemployment is better than long term economic disenfranchisement.

I never said Bush wanted the US to lose jobs. Don't fucking straw man me. I said he lost them. The argument is about incompetence, not evil.

Progress with the USSR was for two reasons

1) There own internal problems

2) Reagan stopped talking about the evil empire and started talking near the end of his first term. It isn't surprising that he got results AFTER he started negotiating instead of saber rattling.

Reagan doesn't get credit because after rotting for decades they collapsed on his watch.

The 50s and 60s were the height of Cold War machismo. Interventions encouraged interventions.

I agree the President has limited ability to influence the economy. But Bush's party has both Houses of Congress and chosen one of his spear carriers as their leader. He carries a lot more weight for the countries problems because of it.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-09-16 10:04pm

I never said Bush wanted the US to lose jobs. Don't fucking straw man me. I said he lost them. The argument is about incompetence, not evil.

So what could he have done to stop the flow out? You a position in the US that costs 40,000 per annum plus benifits against less than half that without benefits ... how do you keep the jobs? Subsidize, tariff or nationalize?

1) There own internal problems

You mean like maintaining technological parity with the US? You mean like Gorbachav's inability to afford both a Reagesque military and his economic reforms?

2) Reagan stopped talking about the evil empire and started talking near the end of his first term. It isn't surprising that he got results AFTER he started negotiating instead of saber rattling.

Reagan point blank walked out of Reykjavik, he straight up called for Gorbachov to "tear down this wall" ... all of which was saber rattling. He got Gorbachov because the Russians first tried Andropov to counter him and that got nowhere.

Reagan doesn't get credit because after rotting for decades they collapsed on his watch.

I see so why did everything come tumbling down in the late 1980's rather than in the 1970's or in the 1990's. The revolution was over 70 years old, exactly why did the rot reach critical mass to ever so coincidentally follow Reagan.

The 50s and 60s were the height of Cold War machismo. Interventions encouraged interventions.

Oh please. What interventions encouraged the Soviets in Poland, Yugoslavia, or anywhere else east of the iron curtain? Who intervened to spark communist intervention in the Greek civil war? Hell who intervened to bring the Soviets into china back in 1927? Exaclty when did the Soviets react to first world intervention? I'm searching my memory but it always seems to be the communists who first intervened and they did so in innumerable cases without prior first world intervention.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-16 10:10pm

can a mod split our little Jimmy Carter/Ronald Reagan tangent?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2004-09-16 10:47pm

Col. Crackpot wrote:can a mod split our little Jimmy Carter/Ronald Reagan tangent?

I just split that whole tangent with them and Bush, since you couldn't really separate just those two from the whole thing.

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2004-09-16 11:34pm

The problem with comparing unemployment stats from the 70s to those of the 1980s-present is the way they are figured.

People who have been on unemployment long enough to exhaust their benefits aren't counted -apparently they believe these people magically find jobs.

Someone who was working 40 hours-plus but is now working part time is considered employed. Real wages have been going down for more than 30 years, except for a few years in the late 1990s.

It reminds me of knuckleheads who say our unemployment rate is only half of Germany's or France's, without figuring (A) that other countries don't use our bullshit system of counting and (B) unemployed people in parts of Europe have it better that many of the "employed" (Welcome to Wal-Mart!) over here.

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2004-09-16 11:34pm

So what could he have done to stop the flow out? You a position in the US that costs 40,000 per annum plus benifits against less than half that without benefits ... how do you keep the jobs? Subsidize, tariff or nationalize?

I would start by not letting them write that off against their taxes.

PostPosted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 10:04 pm Post subject:
Quote:
I never said Bush wanted the US to lose jobs. Don't fucking straw man me. I said he lost them. The argument is about incompetence, not evil.

So what could he have done to stop the flow out? You a position in the US that costs 40,000 per annum plus benifits against less than half that without benefits ... how do you keep the jobs? Subsidize, tariff or nationalize?

Quote:
1) There own internal problems

You mean like maintaining technological parity with the US? You mean like Gorbachav's inability to afford both a Reagesque military and his economic reforms?

Quote:
Reagan point blank walked out of Reykjavik, he straight up called for Gorbachov to "tear down this wall" ... all of which was saber rattling. He got Gorbachov because the Russians first tried Andropov to counter him and that got nowhere.

Nice order. But those were negotiating tactics after they had gotten to the table. After Reagen stopped calling the Russians "the evil empire" and joking about "beginning bombing in 5 minutes." We can be grateful that the Russians economy was collapsing in the 70s, limped around for about a decade, and a reformer was finally able to get power around the same time Reagan needed to show the US electorate he wasn't a complete loon.

The allies sold Eastern Europe after WW2 to Stalin who wanted a buffer. The Cuban missle crisis (solved by compromise), the Bay of Pigs, and Viet Nam (sliced up because Ho Chi Minh would win an election and dictator of the moment installed in the South). The School of Americas (South American dictator school). Is that a big of a list of US interventions?

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-09-17 08:54am

he royally fucked up the Iran hostage situatin

Yeah, by trading weapons to the Iranians and showing that America can be forced to negotiate with terrorists. Oh, wait, that wasn't him, that was Reagan I.

And please, none of this "Reagan won the Cold War" BS that always comes up. The end result of the Cold War was due to the foresighted containment strategies developed at the end of WW2 (the lesson of which appears to have completely eluded our present leadership) and the shaky foundations of the Soviet state.

Predator · Post by **Predator** » 2004-09-17 08:56am

Carter was almost as bad as the other two. Can you say "Operation Cyclone"? Carter and Brzezinski assisted in setting the conditions for the Soviet invasion and for the establishment of the Taleban and Al Qaeda. Deciding to "stir up a few muslims" was a pretty big fuckup.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2004-09-17 09:13am

Wasn't Reagan the prez in 1982? And didn't the reform party fail because of the massive soviet invasion that overran all the major population centers? And didn't many of the mujahadeen form the core of the Northern Alliance?