I don't want to be "that" guy nor do I want to sound pedantic, but the points scoring as the necessary byproduct of political discussions is just where so many of us throw our hands up. I don't pretend - for even one second - to be an economist, but I read a lot about the Presidents and the policies
and usually figure out what the "after the fact" realities are.
Now just to be 100% clear - I am in no way accusing YOU of doing this, I don't agree with that.
It's just where most of these conversations wind up going despite the fact I think (and I'm sure you do as well) these things are a lot more difficult than "this guy did this", at least in most cases.
Thing is, only Carter was honest and stupid enough (politically) to "take one for the team" and hire Paul Volker to kill the inflation madness. It cost him re-election.
Now here's where I get confused in all of the discussions. For years, folks tried to insist that there was no Reagan recovery, that the 1980s were horrendous, and Reagan almost single-handedly destroyed the whole country.
Then they turn right around - as if I wouldn't be smart enough to notice this - and give Carter CREDIT for the very same prosperity they insist never happened by giving Carter credit for "well he appointed the Democrat Volcker who REALLY saved us from inflation." I mean, anyone who can't see the agenda behind that kind of an argument is an online Stevie Wonder.
From the enormous number of books I've read covering the subject and spanning four Presidencies, the general consensus is that in the 1970s is that LBJ couldn't get the Democratic controlled Congress to "give him back" the 1962 JFK tax cut and was basically trying to "hide" the massive cost of his Great Society program AND Vietnam War by printing extra money. This got even worse when a run on gold exchange in 1971 led Nixon to abandon the gold standard as (IIRC) Britain and France were making a run on the Fort Knox gold, so Nixon abandoned the Bretton Woods system. It's always funny when I listen to same bozo tell me that Volcker deserves credit for the 80s boom that never happened and Nixon the blame for "taking us off the gold standard." Because guess who told Nixon to do that? Well, the loudest voice was Paul Volcker.
The 1970s stagflation swallowed the Presidencies of Nixon, Ford, and Carter, and undid Reagan in his first two years. I know the old Keynesian theory was to lower inflation by increasing unemployment (and vice versa) but that has largely been abandoned as well. Volcker's decisions did push the US into a brief recession approaching Carter's last year, but what hurt him worse was the point was to use the recession to stem inflation. I guess I can go along with Carter being the sacrificial lamb, but so too was Ford and to a point Nixon; if he'd been polling a 70% approval rating rather than in a economic crisis in 1973-4, there's no chance he leaves office even with Watergate.
I think we ought to view Presidents through the choices they sometimes make they didn't REALLY want to make. Obama, the liberal Democrat, wasn't the kind of politician to be a fan of bailing out the banks - but he also had no choice if he wanted to get us past the subprime crisis, too.
Supposedly anti-Communist Nixon was implementing Central Planning with Wage and Price controls. Ford thought we were such fools that he asked us to wear W.I.N. buttons (Whip Inflation Now). I'd rarely seen my dad so angry.
Nixon, the conservative, adopted the liberal solution to a problem and
his reward was a bunch of liberal Democratic votes in the 1974 midterms, right?
Of course, I'm simplistic calling Nixon a conservative, too. We've gotten too much into labeling and not enough into considering why a President might have to break a cherished promise or his own worldview.
It's like Reagan's budget deficits. Is that a legitimate issue to criticize him? Yes. On the other hand, he was also assuming unemployment wouldn't go to its post-WW2 record high in 1982, didn't realize he was going to spend a billion bucks a month for years to beat down the air traffic controller's strike, never met a missile program he didn't like (except the MX because that was Carter's), and tax cuts galore. The deficit was predictable, the scope was not. And as I've said elsewhere, view it as a WARTIME deficit in a Cold War his country couldn't afford to lose, and it's not quite as bad.
"Reagan was enthusiastic about financing defense spending and foreign aid, and Congress was enthusiastic about financing domestic spending. They reached compromises only a politician could love."
- Willis Gradison, assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Eisenhower Administration
