jimmy carter was right

After reading Jimmy Carter’s speeches and policies while he was President in the late 70’s, you might think he was some sort of fortune teller with an amazing ability to see into the future. Carter was a man who put solar panels on the White House and created huge tax incentives for solar energy development (both of which were quickly dismantled by the Reagan administration) and was brave enough to suggest that one sure fire way to over come the energy crisis of that time was to simply stop using so much of it. He pushed for less dependency on foreign oil, development of alternative forms of energy, higher fuel efficiency for cars, better public transportation, and for tougher environmental restrictions for emissions. If you read his proposed energy policy that he presented in 1977, it is easy to imagine that had his suggestions been fully implemented, many of the problems of today would have been already solved. “…We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources.”
But it is in his campaign against Ronald Reagan in 1980 that you really see Carter’s ability to predict the future. For instance, check out this excerpt from his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention:
“The year 2000 is just less than 20 years away, just four Presidential elections after this one. Children born this year will come of age in the 21st century. The time to shape the world of the year 2000 is now. The decisions of the next few years will set our course, perhaps an irreversible course, and the most important of all choices will be made by the American people at the polls less than 3 months from tonight.
The choice could not be more clear nor the consequences more crucial. In one of the futures we can choose, the future that you and I have been building together, I see security and justice and peace. I see a future of economic security-security that will come from tapping our own great resources of oil and gas, coal and sunlight… I see a future of justice–the justice of good jobs, decent health care, quality education, a full opportunity for all people regardless of color or language or religion; the simple human justice of equal rights for all men and for all women, guaranteed equal rights at last under the Constitution of the United States of America. And I see a future of peace–a peace born of wisdom and based on a fairness toward all countries of the world, a peace guaranteed both by American military strength and by American moral strength as well.
But there is another possible future. In that other future I see despair–despair of millions who would struggle for equal opportunity and a better life and struggle alone. And I see surrender–the surrender of our energy future to the merchants of oil, the surrender of our economic future to a bizarre program of massive tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor, and massive inflation for everyone.”
Jimmy Carter is a president who deserved to be re-elected. He was a realist who tried to solve problems, not just gloss over them with temporary fixes. Our current President recently suggested that America’s problem with high fuel prices was caused by the lack of a national energy policy, and pointed fingers at the Clinton administration in a recent speech; “This is a problem that’s been a long time in coming. We haven’t had an energy policy in this country. 10 years ago, if we’d had an energy strategy, we would be able to diversify away from foreign dependence, but we haven’t done that. And now we find ourselves in the fix we’re in.”
But clearly Bush had forgotten (or was never aware of in the first place) everything that Carter tried to do back in the 70s. I guess that is just too long ago for a President (or the mainstream media for that matter) to remember.