Repack, you really missed both the fall of inflation from 13.5% in 1980 to 2% by 1986 and the end of the Soviet Empire and the Cold War?! ‘Tis a pity, they were in all the papers back then. Or maybe you mean that they do not meet your standard to be considered ‘good stuff’. If that is the case, I am impressed. Your standards are certainly higher than mine … or pretty much anyone else’s I have ever met.

Economy better? Let me borrow a few hundred billion of your children’s money, and I can make the place look pretty good, as long as you don’t mind tripling your debt.

International affairs? Iran-contra? Arms for hostages? Bitburg? Grenada? 251 dead Marines in Lebanon?

I must have missed all that good stuff. Why is it that there are people who think borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from China to prop up a sagging economy is sound policy?

Creating new business “opportunities” for his father’s well-connected friends?

In fact, I think if Carter were offered the presidency again (a screaming unlikelihood, I am aware), he would probably turn the job down…much the way Gore, who would be immediately competitive, refuses to run for office in 2008. The office grants one incredible power, yes. I sense that Carter has, over time, realized that first of all, power isn’t always enough to accomplish what you want, and secondly, it comes with costs and shackles (such as making sure every other politician is being kept happy) that limit your abilities to wield it.

This tends to sail over the heads of many pols these days–that simply having the office is not its own reward. The office is a tool, not a goal.

Anybody want to guess what George W. Bush will be doing after he leaves office? I give him three years before the emptiness of his life outside of being “commander guy” sets in and he starts filling it with alcohol again.

Repack, I would say it in a slightly different way. Reality matters, and the reality of history is that the years 1981-1988 were better for the U.S. than 1976-80. This may not be ‘fair’, but politics is not fair. For all of Carter’s good points (which you mention), the economic and international situation grew worse while he was President (inflation, Iranian revolution and hostage crises, Russian invasion of Afganhistan). What do you expect to happen to a President’s popularity when things go bad?

And the reality is that most of these problems were signficantly better when Reagan left office. Again, what do you expect to happen to a President’s popularity when good things happen to the economy and in international affairs? I realize you think this isn’t fair because Carter was the better man so things should have worked better when he was President, but the sad reality is that they did not.

In any case, you wanted an explanation for why Reagan was/is popular and I have given you mine. I can’t help that it may be annoying.

Carter, moral, intelligent, a former nuclear submarine commander, and the factors you cite (inflation, hostages, Afghanistan) were none his fault.

Reagan spoke in bumper stickers (”It’s morning in America!”) and couldn’t follow a complicated policy analysis.

Reagan, amoral, stupid, no leadership capability, and not responsible for the internal factors that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. Presided over a treasonous action known as Iran-Contra, traded arms for hostages with the same Iranis who held hostages during Carter’s administration, and violated multiple provisions of the Constitution by raising a proxy army with private funds. Added more to the national debt than all previous presidents, which put the inflation bills on our children. Still holds the record for most administration officials convicted of federal crimes.

So you are saying perceptions were more important than reality, which pretty much agrees with my point. Why ISN’T reality important?

Carter was and is a real person who made and understood his own decisions and took responsibility for them. Reagan was an actor reading a script, but had nothing to do with writing that script, and when asked about his responsibility, set a record for not remembering unmatched until the arrival of Alberto Gonzales.

Reagan’s primary characteristic was his willingness to act as a tool for the people who put him in office, which was obvious to me at the age of 20, but as you point out, not so obvious to a majority of Americans, and I want to know WHY.

Did I mention the atrocity known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, which drains billions of dollars each year for a useless project? Maybe I should have.

Glad to oblige, Repack. Reagan won in 1980 because people had concluded that Carter was not up to the job. This was primarily because inflation reached 14%! that year, though the Iranian hostage crises and the feeling that ‘the Russians were on the march’ (remember they had invaded Afganistan in 1979) also played significant parts. By 1984, inflation was down to 4%. For 4 straight Presidents (Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter) inflation had been rising till it reached almost crises proportions, and yet by the end of Reagan’s first term, it was clearly on the way out. If you want to say that Reagan shouldn’t get any credit, it should go to the Fed or somewhere else, you can make that argument, but surely you understand that most Americans blame or credit the President for the economy. Also, while Reagan may have talked tough in foreign affairs, he managed to avoid any serious wars. Peace and prosperity tends to make a President popular.

And I don’t really have to mention the end of the Cold War do I? Again, if you don’t want to give Reagan any credit, that is fine, but also again you understand that most voters will. So here we have a guy who comes in when inflation is tearing the economy apart and the Soviet empire seems to be growing and when he leaves office both of these huge problems are solved. Explaining why he might be popular is not all that hard. Napolean once said he would rather have generals who were lucky rather than good. I think the Reagan presidency might show that the same principle applies to Presidents.

Yet actual adults, with far more experience than I had, voted for him. Several times. Someone please explain.