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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2011
By most assessments, Jimmy Carter's presidency was a failure. The popular image of Carter is that of a president who was politically naive, an inept manager, a well-meaning but nettlesome scold, and an unsuccessful leader. According to two recent scholarly evaluations, Carter was an ineffective leader who ranks in the bottom quintile of the thirty-nine presidents who have preceded George Bush.
1. Simonton, Dean Keith, Why Presidents Succeed (New Haven, 1987), 132–33 and 206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whicker, Marcia Lynn and Moore, Raymond A., When Presidents Are Great (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1988), chap. 7.Google Scholar
2. The literature on popular support for presidents is vast. Among the better-known works are: Edwards, George C. III, The Public Presidency (New York, 1983), chap. 6Google Scholar; Kernell, Samuel, “Explaining Presidential Popularity,” American Political Science Review 72 (June 1978): 506–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mueller, John E., War, Presidents and Public Opinion (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; and Stimson, James, “Public Support for American Presidents,” Public Opinion Quarterly 40 (Spring 1976): 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. Simonton, Why Presidents Succeed, 260.
4. On 3 November 1774, Edmund Burke told his electors in Bristol that “your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” , Burke, Works, vol. 2 (Boston, 1869), 12.Google Scholar Although Americans have long admired the ideal of the public-regarding and independent representative, trusteeship politics is more compatible with parliamentary government. In the United States, trusteeship “must account for a separation of elections (the president and Congress), the plurality and strength of interest groups, and political parties’ weak integrative capacity” (Jones, 3). While the president may claim to be trustee for the public interest, he faces a Congress of delegates (the antithesis of the trustee role) who, collectively, can advance a similar claim.
5. Ronald Reagan, operating with a quite different constituency and “inspired by a higher dogma that permitted] him to disregard conventional economic analysis” (108), confronted and whipped inflation by inducing a severe recession. As a Democrat, albeit a centrist one, Carter did not have that option.
6. Hargrove notes that Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal attempted to provide direction while serving as chair, and CEA chair Charles Schultze tried to serve as a bridge between the various departmental and agency interests. But each acted without explicit presidential authority and thus had limited success.
7. Vance and the State Department pushed for a democratic centrist government in Iran and advocated negotiations with the Ayatollah Khomeni. Brzezinski argued that the shah could be saved, and political disaster for Carter avoided, only by seeking a military solution. To this end, he established a back channel to communicate with the shah that bypassed the State Department and denied information to Vance (140). It turned out that Brzezinski was right, but his actions in support of his position created the impression of a president who could not control his subordinates.
The Afghanistan invasion brought to a climax a long dispute within the administration over how to handle relations with the Soviet Union. Vance and State advocated an approach balanced between cooperation and competition, while Brzezinski maintained that the Soviets had to be challenged wherever they sought to assert themselves (146–56). Carter sided with Vance initially and long enough so that he appeared “soft” in his approach to the Soviets. When he responded forcefully to Afghanistan, at Brzezinski's urging, he received criticism for having been naive. Hargrove attributes Carter's embarrassment over the breakdown of detente to lack of foreign policy experience and inadequate historical knowledge and understanding (158).
8. Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York, 1990).Google Scholar
9. Hargrove, Erwin C. and Nelson, Michael, Presidents, Politics, and Policy (New York, 1984), 263–64.Google Scholar
10. Burns, James MacGregor, Leadership (New York, 1978), chaps. 6–14.Google Scholar