Thomas Donlan of Barron’s makes the comparison between our current president and one of his worst predecessors.
No wonder President Donald Trump finds it frustrating to deal with Congress. He could learn a few things by reviewing Jimmy Carter’s similar problems.
Jimmy who? Jimmy Carter. He was the last president to come to Washington as a total outsider, and the first president to get elected making an asset of his inexperience. A one-term governor of Georgia and a state senator before that, Carter had no executive or legislative experience in the federal government. He had just enough contact with high federal officials to believe that they were pretty stupid and that he could perform at least as well as they did, and probably much better. …
… Those who remember Carter’s presidency probably think first about the American hostages in Iran and the bungled attempt to rescue them. They may also remember high inflation and interest rates, or long lines to buy gasoline. But the really significant thing to recall and understand came years before, in the first year of his term, when the president tried to eliminate wasteful water projects from an appropriations bill.
Carter believed that he had been elected to create a new style of government, “as good as the American people,” as he liked to say.
He wanted efficient government, zero-based budgeting, and sound engineering in the capital city that President John F. Kennedy had well described as a place of “Northern charm and Southern efficiency.”
Carter was trying to eliminate 19 dams and water projects in 17 states, many represented by powerful committee chairmen, up to and including Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. After quick disposal of Carter’s cuts, Capitol Hill treated everything that Carter tried as the desperate acts of a loser. Everything he said was considered sanctimonious and impractical; his aides, advisers, and lobbyists struck the lawmakers as arrogant and ignorant in equal measures.
