Jimmy Carter

[T]he more money the federal government has thrown at the schools, the worse they have gotten. Billions have been spent on public education since Jimmy Carter created the U.S. Department of Education in the late 1970s. From 1970 to 1995, per-pupil expenditures in government schools increased by over 75 percent ... According to the U.S. Department of Education's own statistics and recent NAEP assessments, only 31 percent of 4th graders can read proficiently. Only 32 percent can do simple arithmetic. Only 29 percent have gained any proficiency in science.

In the first year of Jimmy Carter's presidency, Congress passed the International Economic Powers Act [IEPA] ... in November 1979, while Iran and the United States were trading partners, Iranian students and demonstrators took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran, holding embassy personnel as hostages. (The crisis began when the Carter administration permitted the deposed shah to receive medical treatment for cancer in New York City ...) Under the authority granted in the IEPA, Carter declared economic sanctions on Iran (that remain in effect to this day), which ... dried up trade between the two countries ...

The draft ended in 1973, toward the close of the war in Vietnam. But President Jimmy Carter ordered every 18-year-old male to register with Selective Service in 1979 when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. This was his way of showing his disapproval of the invasion. How it was supposed to accomplish that is anybody's guess. Ten years later the Soviets left Afghanistan in embarrassing defeat. That was also when the Soviets' Warsaw bloc started collapsing and the member countries turned away from communism. But did President George H.W. Bush end draft registration? No, he didn't.

In 1976, Democratic presidential nominee Jimmy Carter promised that he would never lie to the American people. By 1980, his promise was a source of mirth. On the campaign trail, Ronald Reagan, after reciting Carter's pledge, would comment, "That reminds me of the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.'" ... Governor Bill Clements of Texas, a Democrat, condemned Carter as a "goddamn liar" for claiming that his oil-profits tax program resulted in an increase in the number of oil wells that had been drilled ...

In 1977, Jimmy Carter attended a state dinner in Tehran for the Shah of Iran, the savage U.S.-supported despot who ruled that country for decades ... It took place shortly after Carter hosted the Shah at the White House. The U.S. president hailed the Iranian tyrant with a long toast ... As Carter spoke, his praise for the homicidal Iranian despot became more flowery and obsequious ... Two years later, those same people whom Carter claimed revered the Shah overthrew him and, to this day, loathe the U.S. because of the decades of support and praise it heaped on their dictator.

The Carter Administration's chief economic affliction was rampant inflation and the decline of the dollar's value in relation to that of other major currencies. No matter what it did to assist the dollar, including "massive intervention" in international currency markets, a quintupling of gold sales, and an increase in the discount rate, inflation rose in each year of the Carter Administration.

Many Americans have no idea [the 1953 Iran regime change] happened ... One such American is Dinesh D'Souza, whose new book argues that radical Muslims like Osama bin Laden and those who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center "hate us for how we use our freedom." D'Souza's historical "knowledge" of U.S.-Iran relations goes all the way back to — 1979. As he wrote in the Washington Post, "President Jimmy Carter's withdrawal of support for the shah of Iran, for example, helped Ayatollah Khomeini's regime come to power in Iran, thus giving radical Islamists control of a major state."

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: ... [Henry Jackson] was a ... strongly anti-Communist democrat, kind of a strong defense democrat. And these guys migrated, particularly after Jimmy Carter, because Jimmy Carter, remember ..., he was trying to make peace. ... [S]omebody got a Peace Prize out of it, I don't know what it was, some kind of approach between Arabs and Israelis, and Carter was part of that ... So many of these conservative, pro-defense democrats, anti-Communist democrats abandoned the democratic party ..., particularly after the time of Jimmy Carter and his summit working on Middle East peace.