Jimmy Carter was a great ex-president, but was shit at being President.

Carter is happy now. He was knocked down to third on the worst Pres. list by the criminals obama/biden.

He centralized power, mismanaged the economy and energy, birthed surveillance/COG machinery, stumbled abroad (Iran, Afghanistan), and locked in frameworks that hurt Americans for decades.

The Case Against Carter (1977–1981)

Power centralization that never rolled back

Department of Energy (law signed Aug 4, 1977; operational Oct 1, 1977): put energy and much of the nuclear complex under one federal roof; policy whiplash and politicization followed.

Department of Education (Oct 1979): federal leverage over K-12 and higher ed expanded permanently.

FEMA (1979 reorg + E.O. 12148): fused civil defense/disaster roles—cornerstone for modern continuity-of-government (COG) architecture.

FISA (1978): secret intelligence court normalized surveillance in the shadows.

Economic pain—by the numbers and the moves that caused it

Double-digit inflation and record interest rates (prime eventually hit ~21.5% in 1980).

“Credit controls” shock (Mar 1980): a blunt clamp on consumer credit that snapped the economy into a recession that year.

Volcker appointment (Aug 1979): necessary to crush inflation, but the timing signaled years of deep pain to clean up policy drift.

Windfall Profits Tax (1980): disincentivized domestic production while the world was in an oil shock.

DIDMCA (1980): deregulated deposit rates, expanded Fed reach; set preconditions for the S&L mess and later financialization.

Airline Deregulation (1978), Motor Carrier (1980), Staggers Rail (1980): unleashed consolidation waves—long-run efficiency at the cost of massive dislocation and industry power concentration.

Energy chaos on his watch

’79 oil shock & gas lines: combined with policy zig-zags (controls, partial decontrol, new taxes) that spooked markets.

Synthetic Fuels Corporation (1980): costly, politicized boondoggle that was later abandoned.

Foreign policy that detonated years later

Iran Hostage Crisis (Nov 1979–Jan 1981, 444 days): paralysis, humiliation, and a botched rescue (Operation Eagle Claw, Apr 1980) that killed eight U.S. servicemen and left equipment in the desert.

Operation Cyclone (from July 1979): green-lit covert support to Afghan Mujahideen—seeds of long-term blowback via Pakistan’s ISI pipelines.

Panama Canal Treaties (1977/78): surrendered a strategic asset on terms many saw as needless self-weakening.

China normalization (Jan 1979): strategic realignment opening corporate channels while downgrading Taiwan to a legislative workaround.

SALT II (1979): signed, never ratified after Afghanistan—telegraphed drift and inconsistency.

PD-59 (1980): shifted U.S. nuclear doctrine toward “flexible” nuclear options and hardened COG posture.

Education and narrative control

Department of Education gave Washington a durable lever over curricula, testing, and funding conditions—centralization that grew under every successor.

Testing/standards architecture launched here enabled later federal micromanagement and data systems.

Security-state scaffolding

FISA Court normalized warranting in secret.

FEMA/COG build-out integrated domestic crisis powers with national security planning.

These tools expanded under both parties afterward; the scaffolding is Carter-era.

The network behind the curtain

Trilateral Commission pipeline: Carter, Brzezinski, Volcker and others were Commission/CFR men.

The program looked like a managerial blueprint: integrate the U.S. deeper into supranational governance, expand executive-branch instruments (DOE, DoEd, FEMA, FISA), re-architect finance and industry, and execute covert realignments abroad.

Results you can’t hand-wave

Misery Index surpassed 20 in 1980.

Recessions: a 1980 downturn on his watch, followed by deeper pain as inflation was wrung out.

Geopolitical standing: Tehran collapse, Soviet move into Afghanistan, and a reputation for impotence.

Permanent bureaucracy: DOE, DoEd, FEMA, FISA Court—none were rolled back.

Anticipating the counterpoints

Camp David Accords (1978–79): yes, a diplomatic achievement; it also locked the U.S. deeper into Middle-East security machinery and aid commitments.

Volcker: the right fix, but forced by a crisis largely allowed to build; the cure was harsh because the disease was neglected.

Airline/Trucking/Rail deregulation: long-run efficiency gains came with brutal short-run shocks and market concentration that still shapes prices and labor conditions.

Bottom line

Carter didn’t just “have a tough era.” He hard-wired centralization (DOE, DoEd, FEMA, FISA), misplayed energy and credit policy into recession, stumbled into catastrophic foreign-policy outcomes (Iran, Afghanistan), and laid structural rails for the surveillance/COG state and financialization that followed. That’s why he was a bad president—and why the damage outlived him.

Wasn’t there a song about Carter? Something like, “if anyone can, the peanut man can” —. Something like that. Kek

He was also a negative thinker (the "malaise" was palpable) and he was a micro-manager - down to taking the reservations for the White House tennis court.

Still he was only half the shit show as those democrat fuckwads Wilson, Bush, Bush, and Osama...

I'm preeeety sure the CIA pushed bush on Reagan .. or else...

What was in the envelopes?