Signaling the Right Turn: How to Understand Jimmy Carter
Laura Blessing | January 6, 2025
Many political narratives on the late 1970s are incomplete, simplifying a politically complex legacy of President Carter, who died on December 29. Carter is both more nuanced and more relevant to American politics today than is commonly understood. He presages—and hurries—major shifts that would become cemented with the Reagan Revolution.
In many ways, the public view of Carter was itself a political Rorschach test. Conservatives wishing to paint a contrast with Ronald Reagan’s transformative presidency often characterized Carter as liberal, a high spender, or dovish. While he was none of these things in office, he nonetheless preceded a massive change in our politics. Alternatively, his active post-presidency resonated with liberals, in both his policy work — on foreign affairs from Israel to eradicating the Guinea Worm — and his political positioning in Democratic circles.
To think that the conservative Democrat who won an intra-party fight with liberal lion Ted Kennedy would later vote for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries is a role reversal indeed. His administration was the last of a midcentury political order, not yet definitively formed in ways the Reagan revolution would solidify. In particular, this transformation had not yet resulted in hardened partisan ideological camps, movement politics with religious groups, and modern Republican fiscal policy.
Ideological camps
Political science points to the mid-1970s as the time when our current trends towards greater congressional polarization began. Beyond that, when Carter took office, Republican presidents could advance liberal policies and Democratic presidents could advance conservative ones. Modern politics had not taken its current shape.
Carter represented the more conservative wing of the Democratic party, from economic policy, to hawkish positions in foreign policy, to drug policy, education and more. Yet even here there is nuance—a southern Democrat and Governor of Georgia, he was a strong proponent of civil rights, placing himself at odds with segregationists in his party. He added the Departments of Energy and Education. He gave human rights a platform in international affairs and diplomacy it had not regularly enjoyed prior to his advocacy. His efforts for peacebuilding are lifelong: from the Camp David Accords in office to the creation of the Carter Center and winning a Nobel Prize after his tenure. While conservative for his party, he was not always easily filed on a liberal to conservative spectrum. He was also confounded by challenges outside his control. Addressing either the Iran Hostage Crisis or inflation are beyond the scope of this piece. (Alice Rivlin, the then-Director of the Congressional Budget Office, notes that it was very difficult to know what course to take.)
Carter fought both with the liberal wing of his party and Democrats in Congress generally. This is notable because in an era where Members of Congress enjoyed greater support than the President in their districts (this voting trend has reversed), documents from the Carter Library show both an awareness that 72% of all House Democrats won their districts by a larger percentage than Carter, along with similar trends for important committees such as Ways and Means, where Members had more such support in their districts than the President. Carter was willing to take on issues he considered matters of principle that would not endear him to legislators.
One of his first forays into congressional politics was to take on the Members’ earmarks for water projects, that he viewed as evidence of parochial interests triumphing over sound policy. While Carter’s veto of the bill was sustained by the House, and he succeeded in defunding six of the eighteen projects on his “hit list,” it was widely seen as a pyrrhic victory showing poor negotiating with Congress. Carter’s White House Diary shows that he was happy to ruffle feathers: “[T]he public works bill had been filled by members of Congress with their pet local projects. This particular legislative process was almost sacrosanct, and my veto was a shock and serious aggravation to them.” This political world seems unimaginable today, that a President (other than the generally volatile Mr. Trump) would damage congressional relations in this way.
Movement politics
Partisan coalitions outside Congress also looked very different, especially concerning religious groups. When Carter ran for the presidency, evangelical Christians had largely avoided organizing for national politics, a position held for much of the midcentury period after largely retreating from the political sphere after the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” trial.
Carter’s earnest description of the role of his faith in guiding him was plain. A favorite line that was also the first inscription of his campaign biography Why Not The Best? is a Reinhold Niebuhr quote: “The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.” Carter actively sought evangelical votes for his win in 1976, legitimizing them as a political force and speaking openly about the importance of his faith—a sea change to standard political behavior at the time.
Carter not only ushered evangelicals and Christian movement politics back into public life, but also did so at a time where political coalitions were far more fluid and partisan allegiances not fully set. He sincerely sought both evangelical support and the support of women’s groups–strongly supporting the ERA and appointing more women to his administration—overtures that would soon be incompatible. Yet Carter’s oft-repeated position to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” left the growing evangelical movement and its more conservative positions disappointed.
This is particularly true on abortion. Carter supported the Hyde amendment — banning the use of federal funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and preserving the life of the mother — but did not go further. While Carter gave some mixed political signals, he did not waver from his campaign position: “I think abortion is wrong, and I will do everything I can as president to minimize the need for abortions—within the framework of the Supreme Court, which I can’t change.” This excerpt from the famous 1976 Playboy interview received less attention than other comments, of course. The cumulative effect of this is to have welcomed a politically powerful group of evangelicals back into politics that would play an important role in policy, elections, and as a major supporter for the Republican Party. By the time the Moral Majority was a major force during the Reagan years, their letterhead bore the symbol of the congressional dome on it, clearly signaling their arrival into politics.
Fiscal politics
The Carter Administration’s efforts on fiscal policy also show us a political world not yet shaped in modern ways. In particular, the administration’s efforts on tax policy predate the Republican adoption of an anti-tax ethos.
Most House Republicans voted against his 1977 tax cut (the Senate held a voice vote), after which Carter pushed unsuccessfully for a 1978 cut paired with reform. The differences between Carter and the Republicans are telling. Both wanted tax cuts—Carter desired smaller cuts targeted to poorer Americans, whereas the GOP advocated larger across-the-board cuts. The $25 billion in net reductions Carter proposed was thought to be too much by liberal Democrats in Congress, who by July of 1978 had a counter-offer in the Ways and Means Committee: $15 billion in cuts, without significant reform. Compare that to the estimate at the time of the version of Kemp-Roth being promoted: $80 billion in cuts—the actual enactment of Kemp-Roth years later would cost far more.
My research on Carter’s tax policy shows not just the transformation of the GOP but also yet another episode of Carter’s difficulty in building political coalitions. He attempts to bring in business interests, effecting such an overture that he hurts his standing with unions. Meanwhile he sticks to various positions he considers principled—these include, for the 1978 failed bill, that he wanted to eliminate multinational companies’ ability to defer paying taxes on income earned abroad—highly lucrative, this policy was strongly favored by the business community but little understood by voters or advocated by other political interests. His Commerce Secretary, Juanita Kreps, outlines various ways this was ill-fated—files in his Presidential Library show a handwritten response from him that “We’ll all have to fight together – JC”.
The fiscal trends after Carter are, of course, well known. Reagan inaugurates our modern era of high deficits and with it, bringing the politics of debt to the forefront of politics and as a lens for all policy issues. The world changes here, too, as political camps are sorted, and a new type of fiscal era is inaugurated: Republicans become the party of tax cuts.
Carter was the last of the Democratic line before Reaganism, in many ways assisting that transformation. He relished his outsider status as a politician—his efforts outside office may be his most cherished legacy. The death of a former president is always an occasion to take stock of our politics, the changes, and the passing of time. A time for everything, a season for every activity under the heavens: words which seem particularly appropriate for President Carter.
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