Misha says:
Hey, Kim... I don't want to rain on your little chest-thumping Republican parade, but I think you omitted a few chapters from your reminiscences about recent American political history. In the first case James Earl ("Jimmy") Carter was no wishy-washy liberal, but he was a strong Southern-Baptist Sunday School teacher (in addition to being a successful "peanut farmer"). Carter was a military man, having served with honor in the US Navy. Jimmy Carter was personally selected by Admiral Rickover to be one of the chief nuclear officers on board one of America's then-new fleet of nuclear powered ships.
Carter came to office in January, 1977, in the wake of the whole Nixon-Ford Watergate era, and he inherited a terribly bad economy from his predecessors. Nixon first partially abandoned the US dollar's tie to gold and then completely abandoned it.
Prior to Nixon the US dollar was a certificate of deposit, issued on the "full faith and credit of the United States government" that the US government "promised to pay" the bearer (of a dollar) a given quantity of gold. But the reckless and inflationary "guns and butter" policy of the Nixon Administration forced the US into default on this solemn obligation. The disastrous spending on the Vietnam War meant that the US was pumping dollars into the global economy at a rate that it simply could not sustain, forcing the American government into default. When foreign governments (who until then had believed US promises) protested at the de-linking of the dollar to Gold, Nixon's Treasury Secretary famously stated, "The dollar may be our currency, but it's your problem."
Do you see any parallels to more recent history, with another failed war, or multiple wars in this case, and a dollar (now long de-linked from gold or any other hard commodity) losing some 50% of it's value recently in international currency markets, in the eight years since "wrong-way Dubya" took office?
So Carter was elected in the wake of Vietnam and the Republican Watergate scandal, but he had to endure (and take the blame for) the economic disaster that was the fault of the Nixon administration.
By the way, your guy John McCain is not the first president who declared a self-professed "ignorance of economics" and a "disdain for domestic policy." Nixon actually did it first. Nixon too, and Kissinger, were obsessed with foreign policy and military adventures, to the exclusion of economics and domestic policy; and the United States paid the consequences for Nixon's negligence. The last major rise in energy prices (and inflation generally) occurred under the watch of Richard Nixon and his self-chosen predecessor, Gerald Ford. (Americans--and even Ford himself--were seen wearing little "WIN" ("Whip Inflation Now") buttons, AS IF that was the "cure" for the disease of an empire that had simply overreached itself!
Carter was far from "soft" on the Soviets, his trusted national security adviser being one Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Pole who was obsessed with Russia (if not for the sake of American interests then for those of 'imprisoned Mother Poland').
Later, after Jimmy Carter was elected, Henry Kissinger and other high officials who had served the Nixon-Ford administrations, publicly complained that Carter was trying to "re-negotiate" long-standing agreements and détente that the US had long-ago negotiated with the USSR. (Kissinger still complains about it to this very day.) Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev complained that the USSR could not be expected to re-negotiate all its relations with the US each time the US changed administrations, but "a deal should be a deal" and their should be some continuity in these things.
For one example, Carter, bowing to the Jewish lobby, insisted on linking Russian policy on Jewish emigration from the USSR to arms control treaties with the USA (such as SALT II, then under negotiation). Brezhnev retorted that "this wasn't part of the deal we did with the US". Brezhnev thought the US should not be concerned about Soviet domestic policy in issues that were in the strategic interests of both sides (such as arms control). This information comes to us from recently de-classified Russian documents taken from Politburo meetings.
It was Zbigniew Brzezinski who was the author and architect of the American strategy in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan (which policy was then only continued, if somewhat more openly and publicly, by the subsequent Reagan Administration). Brzezinski was the author of US-Soviet policy, both during Carter and Reagan. That same policy was only continued, and adapted, by the incoming nincompoop Reagan Administration.
Reagan appointed William Casey to head the CIA, on the strength of Casey's credentials. You see Casey had managed to get a copy of the Democrats' strategy booklet for 1980 elections. For Reagan that meant that Casey must be a "espionage mastermind" and thus he deserved to head the US CIA.
Remember Reagan was the guy who didn't know what was going on in his own White House basement, with Ollie North, and the whole arms-for-hostages agreements with Iran (or this was what Reagan claimed at any rate, and I tend to believe him, because years later, when asked why he didn't simply pardon Lt. Col. North, Reagan only said, "Well.. He broke the law.")
Now, coming back to economics, Ronald Reagan inherited an essentially balanced budget from Jimmy Carter. (Okay, it so was about $45 billion in the red, but given the size of the US economy at the time, that amount was a minuscule fraction of the US GDP, something like 0.2%). But when Reagan left office the US fiscal deficit was raging at some 6.2% of US GDP, which is more typical of a 3rd world banana republic than it is of a "great superpower." Indeed Reagan's chosen Director of OMB, David Stockman, resigned in protest stating that it was "simply fiscally irresponsible and reckless" to cut taxes so deeply without corresponding cuts in budget outlays.
Upon taking office Reagan (and Fed Chairman Paul Volkner) presided over "the deepest recession in US history since the Great Depression," in 1981 and 1982. One US newspaper at the time had a feature article about 100 men standing in line outside a restaurant, for a dishwasher's job.
Reagan's response to the economic malaise was first to break the backs of the 'PATCO' air traffic controllers union and then to break the backs of the entire working class in the US generally. The US working class hasn't recovered since. (Fact: The "real"--inflation adjusted--takehome pay of the American worker has not increased since 1981, for almost 30 years now, coincidentally since when Reagan took office... It increased slightly in the late 1990's, under the 2nd Clinton term, and the whole "tech bubble," but those gains were quickly reversed after Dubya took office.)
But coming back to the Soviets, Reagan was thoroughly convinced that the "godless communists" were evil to the core. But this belief was quickly dissipated when Reagan had his first actual face-to-face contact with the Soviet General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev. (Gorbachev reportedly said something like "God willing" or "oh my God" during their first meeting, and this caused Reagan to declare to his aides that "I think the General Secretary is secretly really a closet believer.") The two men got on well, and certainly by Reagan's 2nd term the animosity between the US and USSR was all but gone from US-Soviet relations.
Regan stood at the Berlin Wall and defiantly challenged the Soviet General Secretary, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" And when Gorbachev actually went and did it, it just about threw the whole Reagan Administration into full crises mode: "Oh what to do now.... what to do!"
Now the two gentlemen may have gotten on swimmingly, but their wives are a whole different story. Nancy Reagan never could stand Rasia Gorbachev. Nancy was brought up in the austere protestant tradition, where having money meant above all else that "you just didn't have to show off that way." But Rasia gloried in her full length mink coats, her jewelry and her gold-plated cigarette holders.
Nancy persuaded the Gipper that it was still to early to trust those damn Ruskies! While the two men lit cigars, talked about world politics and the future fate of the globe, their wives were engaged in a little-known behind-the-scenes cat fight to the very death!
Yes, the USSR did implode, but it is puerile to think that Reagan 'single-handedly' did away with the "Evil Empire." In fact the demise of the USSR came from within the Soviet Leadership elite itself; they were simply tired of paying lip service to "the people," after so many years, and they wanted to convert themselves into open (read 'gangster') capitalists, you see.
The Russian leaders were not stupid, and they understood and absorbed everything. If capitalism was to be the better system then they were determined to make damn sure that they would be one of the SUV-driving, cell-phone talking elite, and not one of those "will work for food" losers.
And such was the case in Russia, until one Vladimir Putin, former KGB man and dedicated public servant extraordinaire, rose to the fore and re-hijacked the Russian state back to the genuine service of the Russian people and nation. This explains both why V. Putin is so genuinely and universally loved and admired inside Russia itself and also why he is so despised by the West and especially by the US ruling elite.
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