President Jimmy Carter, and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, have both taken issue with my recent article in Foreign Policy about Obama’s Jeffersonian and Wilsonian foreign policy impulses, entitled “The Carter Syndrome.”
As I said in my reply, my “article was not really about Carter or his administration. It was about the current U.S. president and the intellectual, cultural, and political challenges he faces.” Readers may remember, however, that others have disagreed with the comparisons made and historical frameworks employed in my article.
Of this group of dissenters, however, President Carter is the only person I’ve voted for, and I am honored to have his reply, even if we don’t reach the same conclusions.
I just had to stop reading after about half of President Carter’s self-defense. Having him recount with whom he met and how often and how they subsequently passed along his instructions to others, etc., brought back bad memories. He always missed the forest for the trees. While tree-focus can be quite appropriate and laudable in a Navy nuclear engineer, who he was, it doesn’t generally serve President’s very well and certainly didn’t in his case. I’ve never forgotten something I read in (I think) Newsweek at the time. I almost hope it is apocryphal, but he was reported to personally approve the daily White House tennis court schedule. That would help explain his tetchy response 30 years after leaving office.
Did you choose the title of the article “The Carter Syndrome”?
“I’ll make it up to you when I write a book”?!? That’s your answer?