Tag: Carter

Presidents & the Apostles’ Creed

The funeral service for George H. W. Bush was as genuine as the man himself. It was one of those very few times when politics could be set aside to remember the character of an honorable person who embraced the Christian faith and lived a life of service undergirded by that faith. Such times are rare indeed anymore. The Christian faith espoused by Bush is no longer as pervasive in our country as it was earlier in our history. Yet… Read more »

Presidential Greatness: A List to Ponder

Presidents Day apparently was a prime time to release the new rankings of presidential greatness. Who is judging which president is greater than another, you may ask. The answer: 170 members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. You may ask further: what are the political leanings of these 170 members? The answer with respect to political party: 57.2% of respondents were Democrats, while 12.7% were Republicans, 27.1% were Independents, and 3% selected Other… Read more »

Needed: Another Ronald Reagan Moment

The third, and final, presidential debate is tonight, and the topic is foreign policy. Most Americans, apparently, find the topic of lesser interest than domestic policy, yet is has a direct impact not only on pocketbook issues but our very survival as a nation. I guess what I’m saying is that we ought to be intensely interested in what transpires overseas. America has always been affected by the ideologies and actions of foreign nations. In our first decade, with George… Read more »

Shades of the Carter Years

I remember it well. It was during the final years of the Carter administration—the rise of militant Islam. The birthplace was Iran under the severe rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini. He had chased the Shah out of the country and taken over, along with his fanatical followers. Khomeini determined that the United States was the Great Satan. Therefore, it made no difference to him that the U.S. embassy was officially American soil; his hordes stormed the embassy and took more… Read more »

A Hierarchy of Courage vs. a Partisan Political Ploy

President Obama seems to have stepped in it again. He has taken an event that should have been a uniting feature of the War on Terror—the killing of Osama bin Laden one year ago—and turned it into a partisan political ploy. A new ad has Bill Clinton—Bill Clinton, mind you—praising the courage and leadership of Obama as he made the decision to proceed with the raid that led to bin Laden’s death. Now, I’m not going to detract from the… Read more »

Another Carter? Or Worse?

I’m seeing a lot of comments comparing Barack Obama with Jimmy Carter, but you probably have to be over 40 to really remember the Carter years. Consequently, a large part of our population may not realize the aptness of the comparison. What are the similarities? First, Carter was an outsider who promised a new way of doing things in DC. Sound familiar? He said he would get the economy out of the doldrums, yet by the time his reelection effort… Read more »

A Historian’s Perspective on Bad Times in American History

I don’t think there’s really any disagreement about how pessimistic the majority of Americans are about the future. Currently, all the polls reveal that pessimism.  As I survey the scene—the spiritual/moral, political, and cultural aspects [what does that leave?]—I have grave concerns as well. I plan to expound on those concerns in tomorrow’s post. But for now, I’d like to offer a historian’s perspective. Since I teach American history, I have a more in-depth knowledge of what has transpired previously…. Read more »