Biden faces ‘weird’ Carter comparisons as Democrat leaving with one term amid inflation and Middle East crisis
He is a one-term Democrat who is leaving office amid domestic discontent over inflation, the Middle East hostage crisis and a Republican defector replacing him.
Yes, that’s President Biden, but he also sounds like the late Jimmy Carter. The parallels between the two are “uncanny,” Richard Moe, who was chief of staff to Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, he told The New York Times.
“That Mr. Carter will leave the scene at this particular stage of Mr. Biden’s presidency, however, evokes a certain sense of déjà vu: another one-term Democratic president whose aspirations for another term have been marred by inflation and the struggle to win the freedom of hostages held in the Middle East before he leaves office,” wrote Peter Baker of the New York Times.
Of course, while Carter was ousted from office in a crushing defeat by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980 that he never recovered from, Biden didn’t get a chance to win re-election, watching his running mate Kamala Harris lose to President-elect Donald Trump.
President Biden and the late President Jimmy Carter. (AP)
Biden, who came to office in a similar fashion to Carter taking shape as a figure of moral clarity after Trump’s tumultuous first term, he was dropped from running for a second term after a disastrous debate in June. His gruff, halting demeanor emphasized even to his own supporters that he was unfit to serve another term.
Another Carter aide, Stuart Eizenstat, said the 39th president was doomed by “the three I’s”: intra-party warfare, inflation and the Iran hostage crisis.
Carter was weakened an unsuccessful primary challenge in 1980 by Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, and 44 years later, Biden failed to overcome pressure from his own party to step down.
“They both faced the fact that they were dealing with a divided Democratic Party,” Eizenstat told The New York Times.
Their terms in office were marked by high inflation – it was even worse in the late 1970s than in the 2020s – and Carter was plagued by Iran, while Biden’s term was defined by a progressive internal struggle over Israel’s war against Hamas and constant hostage situation after October 7, 2023.
BIDEN ATTACKS TRUMP AS APPLAUSES JIMMY CARTER’S decency, shares fondest memory of late president
President Jimmy Carter and then-Sen. Joe Biden at a fundraiser during the 1980 campaign. (Getty Images)
Biden paid tribute to Carter on Sunday after his death, calling him an “extraordinary leader” and a man of high character. Biden, then a young US senator from Delaware, endorsed Carter at the start of his long-running bid for the White House in 1976.
Baker also wrote in the Times that “both saw themselves as sharpshooters in a world of spinners, and both made their mark early as more moderate Democrats only to move leftward during their lives.” However, Biden referred to Carter’s “decency” as something Trump could learn from irked conservatives on Sunday.
Carter received media praise since his death for his humanitarian, post-presidential work that has included fighting terrible diseases in Africa and building homes through Habitat for Humanity. Some observers have also suggested that he was judged too harshly for his presidency, which was considered a failure at the time but has been viewed through a different lens in the decades since.
CARTER’S DEATH PROMOTES TRIBUTE FROM STATE LEADERS OF BOTH SIDES: ‘A SERVANT’S HEART’
Biden is grappling with what his legacy will be as he leaves office with Democrats in tatters and Trump on the rise. He hopes his single term will also be viewed more favorably at some point, given that some modern observers think Carter’s widely derided presidency wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
President Joe Biden speaks at the 2024 White House Tribal Nations Summit at the Department of the Interior in Washington, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Carter has been praised in retrospect for deregulating big industries and his conservation efforts, while Biden wants more credit for what he sees as pulling the country out of the throes of the pandemic and signing major progressive legislation. Still, Harris’ loss was a reflection of the country’s economic anxieties, and Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter was a blow to his reputation after his repeated promises not to do so.
National Review’s Philip Klein did not join the chorus of eulogies for Carter after his death, saying he was a terrible president and an even worse ex.
“Carter’s real legacy is economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage,” he wrote. “He left the country at its weakest in the post-World War II era. After he was convincingly removed from office, the self-described ‘citizen of the world’ spent the rest of his life meddling in American foreign policy and working against the United States and its allies in ways that could rightly be described as treacherous.”
CARTER ARGUED WITH SUCCESSIVE PRESIDENTS, ONCE ARGUED WITH BILL CLINTON
That’s what conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings said on Sunday Biden will leave office in “disgrace” and will be remembered only for high inflation, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the pardon of Hunter.
There are also big differences between Carter and Biden, not least of which is their age when they leave office. Carter left at the age of 56 and had decades to continue his post-presidential endeavors, while Biden leaves the White House at the age of 82 as the oldest commander-in-chief ever.
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In fact, he noticed as he praised Carter on Sunday, he knew the late president “for 50 years”.
