“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”

So said one-term President Jimmy Carter in July 1979, just 18 months before Ronald Reagan took over the White House. After living for a full century, Carter now lies in dignified repose, awaiting the pomp and pageantry of a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral on Thursday, January 9. Lame-duck President Joe Biden is scheduled to give the eulogy.

It’s a fitting choice. Carter’s presidency bears striking similarities to Biden’s. Both Democrats failed to effectively fight inflation, faced intra-party conflicts, and dealt with hostage crises in the Middle East. Worms will soon devour Carter’s body, but these parallels show how an army of maggots has long been at work on the decaying capitalist system.

The “respectable” ex-president 

In life, the DC establishment regarded Carter as one of the only living presidents we could look back on as “respectable.” Here was a politician with everyman sensibilities who didn’t connive and scheme. The peanut farmer turned president, who in retirement gave generously to charity and pursued peace on Earth.

But Washington’s mythmakers can’t hide the fact that, between 1977 and 1981, Carter was the chief executive of American capitalism, the most powerful and destructive imperialist regime in world history. Even before ascending to the presidency, he had close relationships with the likes of the Rockefellers as a part of the Trilateral Commission. Among other “accomplishments,” he dutifully deregulated major industries, like airlines and trucking, while bailing out Chrysler. He firmly believed in freeing the market from the state—except when the monopolies failed.

Imperialist criminal

This supposed peace-loving Christian slashed social programs while increasing military spending. Carter claimed his foreign policy would be guided by concern for “human rights.” He then toasted the Shah of Iran at a state dinner. The Shah—a merciless dictator who had been installed and maintained by US imperialism to assure the flow of Iranian oil—was overthrown on Carter’s watch by the Iranian Revolution of 1978–9.

His Middle East diplomacy furnished empty accords and agreements that kept Israel secure as the deadly adjudicator of Palestinian lives. In Afghanistan, he armed mujahideen fanatics to fight the Soviet Union. Further east, he supported the blood-soaked Khmer Rouge regime as a counter to the Vietnamese workers’ state, which had recently embarrassed US imperialism.

Some Palestine solidarity activists laud Carter’s belated criticism of Israel’s apartheid policies. But he waited to criticize Israel until well after he left the White House. While in office, he generously financed the Israeli regime and brokered the Camp David accords, securing peace between Egypt and Israel without regard to the brutal occupation and oppression of those in Gaza and the West Bank. He effectively pressured Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to forget the Palestinians in exchange for an avalanche of American foreign aid.

Carter waited to criticize Israel until well after he left the White House. / Image: US NARA, Wikimedia Commons

Malaise forever

Meanwhile, at home, the American working class faced “stagflation”—slow growth and high unemployment combined with runaway inflation, which had reached 14% by 1980. The postwar boom had come to a close, and relatively well-paid industrial jobs were offshored or shifted to the largely nonunion South. Workers were squeezed by an energy crisis, inflation, and high government spending. This caused the malaise that Carter acknowledged in his infamous “Crisis of Confidence” speech. His solution? Save up for the future, lower the thermostat at home, and most importantly—have faith!

Carter’s doomed 1980 reelection campaign centered on branding his opponent, the celebrity actor Ronald Reagan, as a threat to American democracy. Sound familiar? Reagan weaponized the resentment of a section of the working class, asking: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Millions answered in the form of a landslide Reagan victory. But far from creating the promised “shining city upon a hill,” Reagan presided over a further decline in working-class living standards. He reappointed Carter’s pick, Paul Volcker, to lead the Federal Reserve—changing only the intensity of how the working class was being bled out.

Farcical repetition

Now, we find ourselves in a farcical rerun of history. A pathetic, one-term president is being swapped out for a brassy president-elect who promises to make America great again—for real this time! But Trump doesn’t have Reagan’s advantages. The Reagan voter had strong, recent memories of postwar prosperity and was primed to imagine the glory days could be quickly restored. Today, most of the working class only knows of boom times from stories their parents and grandparents tell. Deindustrialization, the rotten fruits of trickle-down economics, multiple recessions, eye-watering inequality, and now, the contraction of globalization have only heightened the malaise Carter spoke of.

Capitalism—a system based on exploiting workers for the enrichment of parasites—cannot be made pretty by any president. Even if the president is a charitable Sunday school teacher who prays for peace, his job is to rule in the common interests of the ruling class. Carter was no different. The solution is not “good” men trying to legislate a kinder, gentler capitalism, but the complete overthrow of imperialism. Not the leadership of a noble everyman, but the collective rule of every man and woman in the working class in the common interests of humanity instead of profit.