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Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Senior Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. He is the author of the new book 21 The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry. FP: Why, after all this time, should we be taking another look at Jimmy Carter? Second, what might be called "Carterism"a sentimental, neopacifist view of the worldhas come to define the core ideology of Democratic party liberalism today. FP: Are we witnessing the decline of the Democratic Party? The Democratic Party has been in long-term decline since it lost its nerve in the mid-1960s and began caving in by degrees to its far left wing. People today forget, for example, that its most prominent liberals in the early 1970s like Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, and even Tip O'Neill, all expressed strong opposition to abortion on demand, yet today no Democrat dares voice any deviation from the radical feminist line. Carter was initially thought in 1976 to be a bulwark against this leftist slide--he had, after all, opposed McGovern in 1972--but he proved to be a vessel that ratified rather than resisted the Democrats' slide further to the left. If he had just stuck with building homes with Habitat for Humanity, he might deserve the accolade as our best ex-president. Hayward: He was a disaster on the economy, blaming high inflation, for example, on the character of the American people. His human rights policy led to human rights disasters in Iran and Nicaragua, and emboldened the Soviet Union to extend its reach further into the third world. The fruits of the Iran disaster are still very much with us today. The fall of Iran set in motion the advance of radical Islam and the rise of terrorism that culminated in September 11. If we had stuck by the Shah or his successors, the history of the last 25 years in the Middle East would have been very different (and the Iranian people would have been better off, too). For starters, the Soviet Union would have hesitated greatly over invading Afghanistan in 1979. FP: Yes, Carter facilitated the coming to power of Marxists in Nicaragua and Islamist despots in Iran, Both of the new tyrannies by far surpassed the brutality of their predecessors. Meanwhile, by letting the Soviets know he wouldnt lift a finger if they invaded Afghanistan, Carter spawned a war that ultimately saw one million dead Afghans, five million displaced, and a situation of evil that nurtured the Islamic hatred and militancy that ultimately turned on the West and gave us 9/11. How is it that a man who fertilized the soil in which so much evil grew remains completely unchastened? Hayward: Carter is clearly intelligent in the SAT-score sense of the word, but he seems utterly incapable of learning anything from experience. Even Neville Chamberlain, the arch-appeaser of England in the 1930s, eventually came around about the Nazis, but Carter and liberals like him can't be shaken from their sentimental view of the world, even by something as stark as 9/11. FP: So what do you think it is in Carters personality and ideology that engendered his disastrous record? Hayward: Carter is a mixture of neo-Kantianismthat is, the philosophical view that your good intentions outweigh the practical consequences of your actions and wordsand left-wing Christian pacifism that believes the use of force is always wrong. FP: When you point out that Carter and other liberals like Kerry should have learned from history by now, a serious question comes to mind. Do you think these disastrous Democratic Party leaders such as Carter and Clinton are just plain stupid and nave? Or is there actually an inner desire to harm and hurt their own country and society? Surely it cant be a complete coincidence in terms of how much damage they actually do. Is there a malicious agenda in the heart of these individuals toward America? Hayward: I'd like to think that is it mere stupidity and naivet. Burnham wrote the following: If he the liberal thinks that his countrys weapons or strategy menace peace, then Peace, he feels, not his countrys military plans, should take precedence. This certainly explains Kerry's voting record on defense and intelligence, and Carter's own policy about arms during his presidency. FP: Tell us what you think of Carter winning the Nobel Prize. Hayward: Carter panted after the Nobe Peace Prize for years, seeing it as a means of gaining official redemption for his humiliation at the hands of the voters in 1980. He lobbied quietly behind the scenes for years to get the prize, and finally met with success in 2002 when the left-wing Nobel Prize committee saw an opportunity to use Carter as a way of attacking President Bush and embarrassing the United States. The head of the Nobel Prize committee openly admitted that this was their motivation in selecting Carter. Any other ex-president would have refused to be a part of such an obvious anti-American intrigue, but not Jimmy. Here we should observe that Carter conceives himself much more as a citizen of the world than as a citizen of the United States, and I think it is highly revealing that Carter is most popular overseas in those nations that hate America the most, such as Syria, where they lined the streets cheering for Carter when he visited. FP: Yes, we had Syrians cheering for Carter and now our Islamist enemies are rooting for Kerry. Ill be honest, I am horrified at the idea of Kerry winning the election and overseeing the War on Terror. This is a guy that appears to believe that people like Osama just need understanding and that those who hate us only do so because of what we do, and not because of who and what we actually are: free people. Hayward: It is hard to predict this far ahead of the election, with the Iraq situation portrayed as volatile by our perverse news media. What this election will tell is whether the electorate remains as serious-minded about foreign affairs as it was during the Cold War, when a Democrat could not win the White House unless he seemed sufficiently robust on foreign policy. People forget today that Carter ran to the right of Gerald Ford on foreign policy in 1976, attacking Kissinger and detente and even quoting approvingly Ronald Reagan in one TV spot he ran in the South. But then of course Carter lurched in the opposite direction once in office. I think a majority of voters today will see that Kerry is essentially frivolous or worse on foreign policy. If I am wrong about the soundness of a majority of voters, then Kerry will have a chance of winning. FP: Let us suppose that you were invited to a political history conference in which the top scholars were asked to rate Carter as a President from a scale of 1-10 (10 being a superb president, 0 being an absolute disaster) and then to give a short verdict on his presidency and legacy, what would you say? Nathan Miller, author of The Star-Spangled Men: America's Ten Worst Presidents, ranks Carter number one among the worst. Miller wrote that Electing Jimmy Carter president was as close as the American people have ever come to picking a name out of the phone book and giving him the job. Everyone old enough recalls the high inflation under Carter, and his foreign record was just as bad. Previous Interviews: 23 Kenneth Timmerman 24 Victor Davis Hanson 25 Ion Mihai Pacepa 26 Phyllis Chesler 27 Debra Dickerson 28 Richard Perle and David Frum 29 John Kekes 30 Robert Baer 31 Robert Dornan 32 Paul Driessen 33 Stephen F. Hayes 34 Andrew Sullivan 35 Richard Pipes 36 Rachel Ehrenfeld 37 Ann Coulter 38 Laurie Mylroie 39 Michael Ledeen 40 Daniel Pipes 41 Christopher Hitchens 42 John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr 43 Kenneth Timmerman Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitzs new book 44 Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of the new book 45 The Hate America Left and the author of 46 Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchevs Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 47 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews ...
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