WTH: Jimmy Carter Was Our Worst Modern Ex-President. Steven Hayward Explains

What the Hell Is Going On

AEI Podcasts

News, History, Government, Politics

4.4 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

While many understand the failures of the late Jimmy Carter’s presidency, he is often referred to as our “best ex-president” because of his humanitarian and diplomatic efforts following his loss to President Reagan. However, the rose-colored glasses through which many Americans view his post-presidency ignore his disastrous meddling in foreign affairs and blatant antisemitism since leaving office. Despite his humanitarian efforts, Jimmy Carter was not the elder statesman his allies alleged him to be. Rather, Carter’s true legacy is that of someone who wished to remain president without the constitutional fetters of the office, undermining his successors of both parties.

Steven Hayward is the Edward L. Gaylord Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. He was previously a resident scholar at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow in Law and Economics at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Hayward is the author of The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry (Regnery 2004).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute.
0:03.0	If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on?
0:01.1	Who in God's name knows what it's all about.
0:29.2	Hi, I'm Daniel Pletka.
0:31.2	And I'm Martisan.
0:32.5	Welcome to our podcast.
0:34.4	What the hell is going on 2025?
0:40.2	What the hell is going on is Jimmy Carter is dead.
0:48.7	1980. Exactly. So this will be coming out the day of the Carter funeral in the National Cathedral.
0:56.3	And so we're here to talk about the Carter legacy in the tradition of this podcast. I know when there's a funeral and we're laying people to rest for their final lap through Washington, we're supposed to
1:00.4	just say nice things about them and remember the good things and not the bad. But we think that
1:04.6	you deserve a fulsome understanding of what a disaster the Carter presidency was. And what we particularly wanted to do with this
1:12.5	podcast is, so 20 years ago, People Magazine wrote, I'm going to read the quote, almost everyone
1:18.7	agrees Jimmy Carter was not our best president, but as a former president's go, he's tops.
1:25.2	He was the consensus that he was our best ex-president. And we are here to tell you
1:30.4	that Jimmy Carter was, until the last four years, the worst president in American history, and we can go
1:36.7	into the comparisons of that. But he was also the worst ex-president ever to serve in this country's history. He was an absolute disaster, a meddler.
1:48.2	He undermined his successors of both parties. The story of his post-presidency is almost as
1:55.5	catastrophic as the story of his presidency. Yeah, it's really true. And it is a testament to not just the dishonesty of the legacy
2:05.1	media on this question, but also, frankly, of our short memory, right? We tend to just look back.
2:13.4	The right word here is look back and lie about how it was. And I fully admit that that applies
2:20.5	in a bipartisan way. But we should look back and understand two, I think, critically important
	...

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