Carter’s Accomplishments: The 39th President

Historians are often tempted to devote little time or energy to studying the presidency of Jimmy Carter. If they do pay attention to his one four-year term in office, they routinely dismiss his administration as a failure. But he might merit a second look.

Carter continued at least two agenda items from his predecessor, President Gerald R. Ford, whom Carter defeated in the November 1976 election. Upon taking office in January 1977, Carter embraced both Ford’s affection for deregulation and Ford’s commitment to take an unwavering stance in support of human rights.

In the transportation sector, Carter achieved some milestones of deregulation, as historian Kai Bird writes:

Despite his aversion to political machinations — such as cutting deals with smarmy congressmen — Carter was an effective and extraordinarily productive president. He deregulated the airline industry, making it possible for middle-class Americans to fly.

He was willing to contradict one of his party's major allies: organized labor. The Democratic Party had significant support from labor unions at the time. Carter risked their dissent:

Trade unions opposed his deregulation of airlines, trucking and railroads.

Although deregulation ultimately proved to energize the economy and help working-class families, the move was one factor in Carter’s loss in the November 1980 election. Many union members voted for Carter’s opponent, President Ronald Reagan.

Carter maintained President Ford’s focus on human rights. During the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, this focus must be understood in the context of the Cold War. More and more evidence was coming to light, revealing the ongoing violation of human rights by the Soviet Socialists, spanning decades from the 1930s to the 1980s.

President Ford drew international attention to the question with a document known as the Helsinki Accords. Carter continued Ford’s pattern. A global consensus among many nations emerged, and international sentiment was against the USSR. During Carter’s administration, Kai Bird notes,

The principle of human rights became a cornerstone of America’s foreign policy.

Jimmy Carter was the first president to use his nickname in an official capacity. Rarely, if ever, was he referred to as “James,” but routinely as “Jimmy.” This was a departure from two centuries of precedent.

Gerald Ford was never officially listed as “Jerry,” and John Kennedy was never officially cited as “Jack.” The nicknames were only for the closest friends and family. But Jimmy Carter was known universally by that name.

Some later presidents would follow Carter’s pattern: Bill Clinton was never cited as “William,” and Joe Biden was never listed as “Joseph.”

Although Carter failed to get reelected, and was thereby limited to four years in office, his presidency nonetheless merits attention.

Urban Planning: The Third Way

City planners in the United States and elsewhere have long been subject to the dogma that there are two options for cities. The first option is the automotive city, with rings and spokes of multi-lane limited-access freeways and highways, large multi-lane surface streets as the main arteries, smaller surface streets branching off the larger ones, and many parking spaces. The second option is the walkable city, with generous sidewalks, bike paths, and public transportation like streetcars and subways.

The dichotomy between these two has sometimes become so extreme that when one option is chosen, the other option is not only ignored, but actively discouraged. Planners who choose the automotive option will deliberately omit sidewalks; planners who choose the walkable option will deliberately work to reduce the number of parking spaces and make the driving experience frustrating in other ways.

This binary framework reduces urban planning to “either/or” decisions, simplistic thinking, and in some cases political conflicts.

There is a third way. Most cities in the United States — small, medium, or large — can embrace both of these options simultaneously. A city can be walkable and automotive at the same time. It can have a robust public transportation system and lots of parking at the same time.

There are exceptions: cities whose geographical peculiarities make them less flexible, like San Francisco and parts of New York.

But other cities can take advantage of America’s resources: lots of open land and the ability to generate concrete, steel, and asphalt in large amounts.

An office worker in a city might choose to be the only passenger in her or his SUV driving to work two days a week, bicycle to work another two days per week, and take the streetcar to work on the final day of the work week. City planners can make all of these convenient and equally convenient.

The economics of this arrangement can become self-sustaining: more people will be lured into the city from the suburbs, either for an afternoon shopping trip, or to live in the city permanently. Increased revenue will pay for the infrastructure.

Nixon’s Visit to China: Playing Cold War Communist Powers Against Each Other

The presidency of Richard Nixon, from January 1969 to August 1974, is known for many things. One of them is Nixon’s engagement with China. His visit to China in February 1972 was the first time a U.S. president had set foot in the country. China and the U.S. had no diplomatic communication with each other for over twenty years.

On a surface level, Nixon’s rapprochement with China could be seen as a softening of America's resistance to communism during the Cold War. He was granting diplomatic recognition to a communist regime which was responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese, and was responsible for the egregious violations of human rights and civil rights.

On a deeper level, however, Nixon’s China policy was a clever way to play two communist nations against each other. From 1949, when the communists took over China, the Soviet Socialists had an alliance with China. Mao had a comfortable working relationship with Stalin.

But after Stalin died in 1953, China’s alliance with the Soviet Socialists began to deteriorate. Nixon saw this as an opportunity. When Nixon was in China, the Soviets worried that a close relationship between America and China would leave the USSR out. So Nixon visited Moscow in May 1972. At that point, the Chinese worried that America would develop a good connection to the Soviets.

Nixon was able to play the two communist nations against each other. Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford, recalls:

Our new ties with the Soviets were possible, I believed, only because the Soviet leaders were becoming concerned about developments within the People’s Republic of China. Both Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai were making increasingly antagonistic speeches toward the Kremlin. Nixon sensed that the Chinese leaders feared and distrusted the Soviets. Their long-standing border dispute was a festering sore. Mao had never forgiven the Soviets for mistreating him in the 1950s, and he was concerned about Soviet intentions in the Pacific. Skillfully, Nixon moved to take advantage of the split.

U.S. diplomat Richard Haass sees Nixon’s policy as a kind of balance. Nixon’s goal, according to Haass, was to make China and the USSR feel equally jealous of each other’s relationship with America:

The purpose of the policy developed by Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger was to use China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and shape China’s foreign policy, not its internal nature.

The timing of Nixon’s visits to China and to the USSR must be understood in the context of the Vietnam War. It was not until 1973 that the final peace documents were signed, and that the U.S. began withdrawing its troops from Vietnam.

Both China and the USSR supported North Vietnam to varying degrees during the war. China’s support for North Vietnam was continued but reduced after 1968, when China began to reserve more soldiers and equipment for anticipated direct combat between the USSR and China.

In cementing China’s split from the Soviet Union, the United States gained leverage that contributed to the Cold War ending when and how it did.

Although China was interested in empire-building in southeast Asia, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, China was not as aggressive in the South China Sea region as it became after 1990 and especially after 2000.

China’s ability to pose a military and economic threat to the nations of the South China Sea regions was limited in the 1960s and 1970s. Nixon’s rapprochement with China cannot be seen as opening the door to the Chinese expansionism that the following decades would see. At the time of Nixon’s visit, lacked the military power and economic power needed to take control of the South China Sea.