Should our presidents be nice?

 

Jimmy Carter was apparently a genuinely nice fellow.

Donald Trump isn’t famous for that. Neither was FDR.

In our media-mediated age, we’re taught to think that our leaders should be guys we’d fancy having a beer with. Or ladies. Hillary was dinged as unable to project empathy even though she liked to swill whiskey with army generals.

John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was said to do well because he wore workingman’s clothes and made voters feel they could “relate.”

For my part, I don’t relate to any of these guys and don't want to. In my old-fashioned way, I want them to do good things even if they’re raging assholes.

But let’s have a look at what nice President Carter did for us.

It’s easy to forget what a disaster Jimmy Carter’s presidency was and not for the reason given at the time--that he was too idealistic and therefore weak and let the Soviets and the Iranians take advantage.

Carter wasn’t weak at all when it came to his policy goals, led (by the nose perhaps) by his eminence gris, the Russia-hating Polish immigrant Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski saw no evolutionary nuances in the Soviet system like the proponents of the Nixon-Kissinger détente did, and he set about dismantling it.

Carter did his bidding by signing off on support for Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan well before the Soviet invasion (with some unfortunate boomerang results).

He also dug in with the Shah of Iran while ignoring reports that the shah’s rule was shaky. He ignored further advice not to admit the shah into the U.S. after his overthrow, leading directly to the hostage crisis that collapsed his presidency.

Carter had a star turn as a peacemaker between Israel and Egypt culminating in the Camp David Accords. That set the stage for further Israeli intransigence and gleeful destruction of the Palestinians.

Carter had nothing to say about the relentless Israeli settler project, which led to the hardening of  Israel's colonizing ambitions since it no longer had to worry about 100 million Egyptians on its borders. In addition, as Michael K. Smith wrote in Counterpunch,

His much-praised Camp David accords were the death warrant for Lebanon as Israel was freed to concentrate undivided attention on a long-planned invasion across its northern border. It was this invasion (June 1982) that convinced Osama bin Laden that only mass murder of Americans could ever change U.S. foreign policy.

Fifty years later, we can see the outcome: Carter got the Nobel while undermining chances of a long-term peace. 

Of course, as an ex-president he did courageously denounce the Israeli state for practicing apartheid. Too bad he hadn't noticed when he could have done something about it. 

Like his “peacemaker” reputation, Carter also is remembered for highlighting “human rights” as a cornerstone of U.S. relations with the world. It’s easy to forget—or not know given our PR approach to history—that the U.S. had sunk into acute disrepute over its decade of atrocities in Vietnam and its shameless promotion of vicious military dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere. 

Carter, a nice fellow with a humanitarian impulse, was a convenient antidote for regaining the lost moral high ground.

As we have since seen, “human rights” was quickly turned into an excuse to continue America’s expeditionary imperialism. Convenient accusations of “human rights” abuse popped up anywhere the U.S. wanted to stage its next invasion.

We heard about Saddam Hussein’s crimes, Khaddafy’s brutality, and al-Assad’s nastiness just as the U.S. needed them demonized. If a foreign enemy had to be undermined or unseated, moralizing over “human rights” was ever-ready as a spearpoint.

Conversely, problems with “human rights” among our allies never quite made it to the front pages or the TV news segments. Even Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas against his Kurdish population was excused while he fought a war against Iran, only to be resuscitated later when it was time to invade Iraq and restore “human rights.”

Carter chided Duvalier for his dictatorial rule in Haiti while deporting Haitian refugees back there. He winked at the South Korean military dictatorship and defended the CIA’s role in installing Chile’s Pinochet.

Nice Jimmy Carter could also launch the rollback of the New Deal that might have been resisted had some post-Nixon conservative attempted it too early. Under Carter, we had mass deregulation of a slew of industries including airlines, trucking, telecommunications, and railroads, ushering in the neoliberal era.

Carter delivered the goods for Wall Street though not quickly nor thoroughly enough and was shoved aside by the Reagan Revolution, which he arguably initiated.

It's true that Jimmy Carter did great things for world health, like eliminating guinea worm disease. He acted to protect the ozone layer by banning CFCs. Good! No doubt he thought the planet worth saving, and maybe you have to be kinda nice to feel that.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, isn’t likely to go down in history as nice, compassionate, humanitarian, or a fun guy on the next barstool. He’s an arrogant prick, a narcissistic scammer, and as empathetic as a scorpion in your shoe.

Maybe that’s why he could send his real estate buddy Steve Witkoff to Israel and tell Netanyahu that he didn’t give a rat’s ass whether it was the holy Shabat or Hallowe’en. I’m coming for your signature on this deal, said Witkoff, so get your inkstand out.

Would Kamala Harris have done anything like that? No. Is she nicer? Probably.

Who knows if this means the slaughter of Gazans will end or what new horror Trump’s Zionist billionaires has planned for them. For now, however, Trump turns out to be the lesser of two evils on genocide, and that’s true whether he or anyone around him is nice.

It’s time to put “niceness” to sleep as a political category, alongside “sincerity.” As my late friend Gabrielle always used to say, referring to her escape from the Nazis at age 14, “Hitler was sincere. So what?”