The Carter Effect

In the wake of the death of Jimmy Carter, I can acknowledge that it was probably Carter that started my political awareness. While running for office in 1976, the same year as the Colorado Centennial, I remember sitting in the barber’s chair having my hair cut while on the television screen in the upper-left corner of the shop was Jimmy Carter. I was 15.

Understanding the moment is important. Carter was running against Gerald Ford, because Ford had been named Vice President by Nixon when VP Spiro Agnew had to resign over an IRS investigation. A year or so later, Nixon resigned after the Watergate hearings that now look exactly like what they were, a witch hunt by Democrats and RINOs. Another coup. When Ford took office, he pardoned Nixon.

Enter Jimmy Carter from the South. He appeared harmless enough, a sort of hick in a suit, a peanut farmer from Georgia. Given all of that, I couldn’t stand him. He didn’t seem to have any weight, any savvy and I could tell from what he was saying that he didn’t really care for the United States of America, the first in a long line of Democrats who would have the same contempt. He was a globalist, though I didn’t understand that at the time. Despite his obligatory flag-waving and Naval-veteran status, there was something weak and pathetic about him that a 15-year-old, baptized into a world of mutual combat, could see.

Two years later, I was working on F-15s and didn’t have the parts we needed. We continually had to cannibalize broken jets for parts. Worse, our squadron was third in priority out of three squadrons for new parts. I’m not saying this happened, but it would not be ridiculous to think that someone, deep in the night, might steal parts from the squadron that was first in line. Of course, writing up the missing part in the other’s aircraft forms and showing its changed status would be imperative to safety, even if the write-up was unsigned.

My first-ever vote was for Reagan, because not only had Carter left American hostages to languor in Iranian captivity (ultimately for 444 days), but also, because when I heard of the rescue attempt, I thought it was ill-planned and relied on expectations of equipment that I knew from personal experience was likely illogical. The number of Fully Mission Capable (FMC) jets we had in our squadron was rarely over 60% and we flew a lot of Partially Mission Capable (PMC) jets to cover for it. The same thing is true today of the F-35, but where that’s a result of badly-matched electronic components, our troubles were caused by Carter’s policies of seeking peace rather than maintaining military readiness. If the mission required six FMC helicopters prior to engaging the enemy, they should have committed at least ten to the effort, instead of seven. That was my take, but I was a nobody, a crew chief who suffered under poor management and lacking supply, but I could see how it would extend to that mission easy enough. Now, whether what I perceived was actually the cause or not could be substantiated by someone much better versed in these things like Bill Buppert, but that’s how I saw it.

Carter symbolized American weakness from his campaign to brutal reality in the desert and where one might defend his position as simply a president, the disdain for the military I felt as a crew chief could be expected to produce that sort of outcome. I don’t know if it was an apologetic, self-flagellation over the ill-prosecuted Vietnam War, not too distant in the rearview mirror, or a deeper embarrassment at simply being American, but Carter symbolized that whole defeatist period in American history, even while it was being written.

Reagan was different. He seemed to be pro-American and when he got elected and inaugurated, it was like night and day. Suddenly, parts were everywhere. Things that had been on-order for months had appeared overnight. Our squadron’s ability to fulfill our mission vaulted from somewhere around 70% to 90%. The number of FMC jets were increased to 80%, then it was more of an issue of manpower rather than parts. And, I don’t say this from an idyllic point of view. I was no political adherent to one party or another. I was a Democrat at the time, as was my family, probably from the Civil War down, but not only did I vote for Reagan, so did my parents and I was not around them to hear their point of view on it and only discovered what it was later.

What we wanted and still do demand from a president is someone who is pro-American. This is all one has to be, America First, and while there is a hubbub right now over a few issues where Trump is on the wrong side, i.e., H-1B visas and Mike Johnson as Speaker, I only expect a few things from a president, one of which is to be pro-American. To that purpose, my only demands of Trump, at this stage, is to shut the border, deport the illegals, prosecute those who violated the law against the American people, including himself, and work as diligently as possible to reduce government spending to a sustainable rate.

I know everyone wants everything from him, an impossible expectation to begin with. I don’t expect much from politicians and for good reason. There are about half of the people in this nation that want him stopped at all costs, who will focus on every crying criminal alien mother and child, every suddenly jobless illegal who displaced a working American, to bring him down. It’s a wrecked political system from which he must operate and if I’m not satisfied with the outcome of this period in history, it will likely be because I didn’t work hard enough on my own account rather than to blame it on someone else, who is a thousand times more hated and blockaded than I’ve ever been.

There is no real accounting of the lives lost under lousy leadership. It often can’t be quantified as such, but I would think there could be something called the Carter Effect that could take a stab at it. They called it the “Misery Index” in the 1980 campaign, but it’s really bigger than that. For instance, a database should be available of how many Americans have been killed by criminal aliens over the past four years. How many people have been killed by the push for green energy? This figure could include how many froze to death due to lack of electricity, or who burned to death in their EV. This could also include loss of profitability due to increase costs of electricity, a sort of lives lost/billions lost index due to poor leadership. Let these politicians run against that, and propose efforts to reduce from the previous administration’s numbers.

As far as the modern military goes, I’m not sure why we’re wedded to the legacy military ideal of fighter jets, aircraft carriers and tanks, when it’s being proven more and more by Yemeni Houthis and the Ukraine War that drones are much more effective per dollar spent than any of the others. For heaven’s sake, a recent assault relied on F-15s, A-10s and B-52s. But where are the new platforms for the 21st Century? We should have stealth drone ships being commissioned every week for the cost of a single non-functioning F-35.

So, in the end, all that Carter’s death means to me is a stirring up of old military sentiment for a man who abandoned the troops in the most expansive way, through every dollar that was not spent and every advancement that was not taken.

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