this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Carter was a pretty good person, at least post-Presidency, can't really speak on how he was in the White House though.
Reagan, otoh, was irredeemable all the way through, given while he was in the White House, that guy effectively destroyed the middle class, created the current disaster that is unaffordable post-secondary education, and created the current credit score system among other atrocities, not to mention that whole Contra business.
Yes, really, if it weren't for Reagan, there wouldn't be a massive and progressively-widening gap between the bottom and top of society, it would still be possible to get affordably educated, and people wouldn't be getting completely screwed by bad credit.
For a perfect foil of everything the US has stood for for at least the last four decades, look at most of the EU having universal healthcare, having an actually regulated education sector where for-profit grift schools like University of Phoenix or even the late ITT Tech or EDMC and its subsidiaries, wouldn't have ever been allowed to take root to begin with.
For Carter the worst thing I know is that a lot of the free iran Iranian people really hate Carter for his actions in the Whitehouse and blame him for the current oppressive Iranian regime. I don't really think that was something malicious on his part, just a policy mistake.
They aren't wrong! Carter may have been the best president post office, but he is also the American most responsible for the religious dictatorship that took over Iran and much of the middile east.
I'm a leftist, but after finishing "Reading Lolita In Tehran" and watching the PBS documentary "Taken Hostage" I understood completely how Reagan defeated him in a crushing landslide. The outpouring of grief after Carters death was difficult to stomach understanding the damage he had done. Yes the man built houses and gave generously late in life, but that's because he knew he had a lot to make up for it. The man destabilized several nations, including his own, with entirely foreseeable negligence.
Everything you mention for Reagan was passed by a democrat controlled Congress. Both parties killed the middle class