Oppenheimer has always been one of the mythical, complicated American figures — easily reviled, and harder to understand — as noted in American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.
Now the author Kai Bird is on to make a case for, another misunderstood American, President Jimmy Carter. Carter is often described as a failure of an American president. Even the biggest critics of his presidency, praise Carter as a person. I am inclined to think he was probably one of the most honest presidents after Lincoln. Honesty has become a curious emblem of the past, even within his lifetime.
In his new book “Outlier”, Kai seems to builds a persuasive case for Carter ($) at least according to the review in the New York Times.
In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, Carter tried to lead a transitional and corrective presidency. His business experience gave him an intuitive feel for the importance of the marketplace. It was Carter, and not Ronald Reagan, who began the process of opening up the Great Society economy. Carter oversaw the deregulation of oil and gas prices, the airline industry and the trucking industry. Instead of instituting wage and price controls to dampen inflation, as Richard Nixon had done, Carter brought in Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve, knowing he might push for higher interest rates to drain rising prices out of the system. Carter also went after waste, fraud and abuse in government. Concerned that most federal water projects were not only “pork barrel” but a threat to the environment, Carter zeroed 19 of them out (worth $5 billion) in his first budget. And he made clear to congressional liberals like Ted Kennedy that the country didn’t support and couldn’t afford single-payer health care.
I generally think that one-term Presidents are often undervalued in American history, either because it is presumed if they were that good they would not have lost their re-election, or perhaps there is just not enough time in their presidency to judge them with confidence. I had always felt Carter and senior Bush were better presidents than they are often portrayed to be in the media. I enjoyed the books that Carter has written, and I am looking forward to reading this book on Carter.