From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Carter, Biden and American Malaise   
   By Kimberley A. Strassel, July 14, 2023, WSJ   
      
   Despite the promises of healing and moderation, Carter and Biden both governed   
   in a far more liberal fashion than they had campaigned. They both had an   
   unfortunate knack for creating or exacerbating the types of messes that   
   infuriate Americans.   
      
   Carter made reducing unemployment his first priority. His disastrous solution   
   was an ambitious spending program, accompanied by pressure on the Federal   
   Reserve to expand the money supply. Fed Chairman G. William Miller, whom   
   Carter appointed in 1978,    
   didn’t move aggressively enough to raise rates, and inflation soared from   
   5.8% when Mr. Carter took office to 13.5% when he left.   
      
   Biden similarly chose a spending blowout as his first initiative—the $1.9   
   trillion American Rescue Plan. The bill larded out $1,400 checks to   
   individuals, air-dropped $350 billion on state and local governments, and   
   dumped money on education. It came    
   after earlier Covid relief bills in 2020 and was followed by further spending   
   on infrastructure and green initiatives. Inflation soared from 1.4% when Biden   
   took office to 9.1% by June 2022, although it has since eased.   
      
   Both men damaged America’s energy security. Carter inherited a nation trying   
   to recover from a global oil shock. He made it worse with a windfall profits   
   tax and a crazy environmental agenda on top of another oil crisis. Gas prices   
   in 1976 averaged 61    
   cents a gallon. By 1980 they were $1.25 a gallon.   
      
   Biden was hit by energy problems stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of   
   Ukraine. But on his first day in office, the president declared war on fossil   
   fuels, and prices were climbing well before Putin launched his attack. Biden   
   inherited average    
   gasoline prices in 2020 of $2.39 a gallon. In June 2022, they peaked above $5.   
      
   Both men reflexively turned to government as the answer to every problem,   
   demagoguing the private sector and weighing it down with new regulations that   
   stifled economic growth. Carter saddled the country with two entirely new   
   cabinet departments, 15    
   major environmental bills and price controls. Biden moved quickly to reimpose   
   nearly every regulation the Trump administration had dismantled, and added   
   plenty more. He appointed the most antibusiness cabinet in history.   
      
   Soaring inflation, rising interest rates, regulatory assault and worrying   
   economic indicators spooked markets in both eras, wiping out vast amounts of   
   wealth. Two years into the Carter administration, the Dow Jones Industrial   
   Average had lost 23% of its    
   value. A Bank of America analysis for clients in Oct 2022 found that the first   
   half of Biden’s second year had been the worst for the S&P 500 since 1872.   
      
   The Carter and Biden years were similarly shaped by foreign-policy fiascoes,   
   the consequence of naive notions about sanctions, multilateralism and   
   appeasement. Both men weakened America on the world stage and invited   
   aggression—and often from the same    
   bad actors. Carter appeased a belligerent Soviet Union, which invaded   
   Afghanistan; Biden appeased a belligerent Russia, which invaded Ukraine.   
   Carter contended with an Iranian revolution, Biden with the threat of a   
   nuclear Iran. Carter in 1979 granted    
   formal diplomatic recognition to communist China; Biden continues to coddle   
   the regime, despite its hostility to human rights and Western interests. The   
   Iranian hostage crisis effectively ended Carter’s ambitions for re-election.   
   Biden opened his    
   presidency with a chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal—during which 13 U.S. troops   
   died at the hands of a suicide bomber.   
      
   The late 70s and the Biden years even share oddly similar social upheaval,   
   with public angst over race-conscious governance, gay rights, education, court   
   decisions and rising crime. Americans by the Carter years were growing angry   
   over the rampant use of    
   quotas and affirmative action. Carter chose activist judges who doubled down   
   on the recently decided Roe v. Wade, setting off cries of judicial   
   politicization. The 39th president was accused of rolling over to teachers   
   unions to aid his re-election bid.    
   Despite Carter’s campaign promise to reduce crime, America’s cities grew   
   more dangerous.   
      
   The combination of domestic morass and bumbling leadership saddled both men   
   with short honeymoons, toxic disapproval ratings, and midterm difficulties. A   
   Jan 1978 CBS News/New York Times poll found Carter with an economic net   
   approval rating of minus 8    
   points. That was the lowest of any president approximately a year into his   
   term—until Dec 2021, when polling averages found Biden at minus 13.   
      
   For all that, the comparison isn’t fair to Carter. In 1977 he took the reins   
   of a nation already beset by the Great Inflation, sky-high crime and declining   
   U.S. oil production. With the help of a Democratic Party that was far saner   
   than today’s    
   version, he pushed some good policies, such as deregulation of airlines,   
   trucking and railroads. Historians often describe the Carter administration as   
   “engulfed” by domestic and foreign crises that overwhelmed the   
   inexperienced president.   
      
   Biden has no such excuses. He inherited an economy that was rounding the Covid   
   corner, poised to roar back as vaccines rolled out and lockdowns lifted. A   
   year before Biden was elected president, the U.S. became a net energy exporter   
   for the first time    
   since 1952. And he certainly can’t blame inexperience. Except for his 4   
   years after leaving the vice presidency, he has held office continuously since   
   Jan 1971. He was elected to the Senate in 1972 at 29 and remained there until   
   2009.   
      
   He took office with another big advantage: He had Carter’s experience as a   
   cautionary tale. The late 1970s are a textbook example of the perils of easy   
   money, government micromanagement and weak foreign policy. Biden lived—and   
   served in the Senate—   
   through them. He had to work hard to make things go so wrong. As Sen. Tom   
   Cotton quipped last year: “Jimmy Carter has a defamation case against anyone   
   comparing him to Joe Biden.”   
      
      
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