In This Dimension

I am sure we’ve had worse presidents than Jimmy Carter. in the 20th Century Hoover comes to mind, as does Wilson.

If you look at the modern era, however, post-WWII, Carter is below the bottom of the list. I’d probably rank the post-WWII presidents (through Clinton - can’t rank W until he’s done) as follows:

1. Truman (ended WW2, established Containment, built NATO, established the Marshall Plan, met the communists in Korea, stared down the Steel and Railroad workers’ unions)
2. Reagan (reinvigorated the nation and economy after Carter’s “malaise,” won the Cold War)
3. Nixon (got us out of Viet Nam, understood the Realpolitik required to confront the USSR, opened China)
4. Eisenhower (got us out of Korea, retained Containment, advised against involvement in Vietnam)
5. JFK (large tax cut stimulating the economic boom of the 1960s, but got us into Vietnam - though at first we were allowed to fight to win - unknown if he would have gone to a strategy of incrementalism or not, stared down the USSR in the Missile Crisis, but invaded - or not - the Bay of Pigs)
6. Ford (pardoned Nixon, keeping America out of years of more internal hatred and strife by putting Watergate on a back shelf)
7. Bush 41 (Whacked Iraq)
8. Clinton (signed Welfare Reform and NAFTA, tried to bring the Democrats to Center-Left)
9. LBJ (stuck us with VietNam and the boondoggle of the Great Society programs - trillions of dollars wasted, inflation up, moms having to go to work, the split of Vietnam still with us today)
10. Carter (Turned loose Islamist terror, of which no one had heard prior to his administration’s enabling the overthrow of the Shah and the return of Khomeini; no clue on domestic or foreign policy issues, no programs other than put-on-a-sweater and live with the ennui of a national malaise, let our men and women rot 12,00 mi away in Tehran for 444 days - truly a national embarrassment.)

Anyway, that’s how I’d rank them. Yeah, Reagan was great, but we wouldn’t have gotten to him without Truman. Absent the MSM bias, no one would even know what Carter was doing today - the great American Electorate really has no use for him. He’s is a stupid, vain, un-intellecutal (i.e. no intellectual curiosity) man arrogant without the intelligence to justify being so. He also is the reason DPRK is a threat today, and any use by DPRK of their nukes will be placed by historians at his doorstep.