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It's understandable that many of the columns and examinations of President Jimmy Carter's life focus on his accomplishments after he left office and on his character. This is, of course, in part because his tenure as president came with many missteps and shortcomings.
We recognize it may seem untoward or unduly harsh to focus on those mistakes. Furthermore, much of the conventional wisdom about the Carter presidency over the decades since he left office has dwelled on those mistakes.
We believe, in reflecting on his presidency, that a more nuanced appreciation for what President James Earl Carter got right is appropriate -- not only so soon after his death but, really, at all times.
President Carter led a transformative effort to ease the undeserved burden of excessive regulations from our economy. While the benefits of these efforts were not immediate, they would, over the years that followed, prove expansive.
"With President Carter's leadership, bipartisan efforts across all three branches of government eventually led to the removal of unnecessary regulation in several previously regulated industries, paving the way for mobile phones, lower airfares, and reduced racial discrimination in certain labor markets," Susan Dudley of George Washington University's Regulatory Studies Center notes.
Unfortunately few elected officials have followed Carter's lead on restraining regulatory burdens -- and perhaps even fewer have followed his lead in curtailing the excessive spending that has caused the national debt to balloon.
"He repeatedly stood up to free-spending Democratic majorities in Congress to hold the line on the budget," Gene Healy of Reason magazine notes. "His record on nonmilitary spending was better than the five presidents who preceded him -- dramatically so in some cases."
Our praise for Carter's sense of restraint, to be clear, does not absolve his White House of its errors on foreign policy or the pace with which it addressed inflation and the energy crisis -- and as time passes, we are confident his handling of those issues will again be subject to criticism.
But we believe, both today and on those future dates, that it is also important to have a balanced understanding of how Carter's White House functioned and how all White Houses should function -- an understanding grounded in the reality that our federal government should both interfere less and spend less.