Book Review: His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life by Jonathan Alter

Of all the post-war Presidents, Jimmy Carter was the most enigmatic. Typically relegated to "one-term" purgatory, Carter's tumultuous tenure (1977-1981) was overwhelmed by various crises at home and abroad. In 1980 Ronald Reagan defeated Carter's bid for reelection, inaugurating a conservative cycle in American politics. 

Jonathan Alter, author of books on Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama, makes a strong case for a reevaluation of President Carter. Alter provides a panoramic view of Carter's surprising rise to the presidency and the influences on his life. Even handed in tone, Alter is often critical of Carter's stubbornness and aloofness, but also points out the many virtues of his presidency and leadership style.

Carter was elected in 1976 as a welcome outsider in the post-Watergate era. He grew up in rural Georgia in the 1920s and 1930s when Jim Crow Laws and segregation were in full force. Raised in a 19th century style of living in an agrarian setting, values of hard work and honesty were instilled. He attended the Naval Academy and served on one of the first nuclear submarines. After his father passed away, Carter left the Navy to manage his family's farm and entered Georgia politics. 

Considered a liberal on racial issues, Carter rarely spoke out on Civil Rights during the 1960s. He never met Martin Luther King nor marched for Civil Rights, in his campaign for Georgia Governor in 1970, he employed rhetoric to placate segregationists. There are examples of Carter resisting the racism of his environment in daily interactions, he defended a Black naval officer being harassed and stood up to local racists on a few occasions. 

Alter skillfully traces the evolution of Carter's worldview. While silent on Civil Rights during the 1960s, his Presidency broke new ground in advocating for Human Rights at home and abroad. Marking a break from the realism of the Nixon-Kissinger-Ford years, informed by his Christianity, the dignity of the individual shaped his policymaking. The first "born again" President, his religion is one of the keys to understanding Carter. 

Dealing with depression in the late 1960s, Carter found peace in prayer and engaged in missionary work. By all accounts Carter was sincere in his faith and kept himself to a high standard. Although he opposed abortion and the death penalty, he believed it was important not to force his personal views on anyone. He found it especially galling when Jerry Falwell commented that Carter's loss to Reagan meant a "real Christian" was back in the White House. 

Rosalynn Carter, his wife of 77 years, was the most important influence on him. As First Lady, she raised awareness on mental health and disability rights, her campaigns to vaccinate children were also successful. Rosalynn and Jimmy would meet for lunch twice a week and debate policy issues, her tenure as First Lady is now considered modern and innovative.

Alter spends over half the book on the Presidency. The achievements in foreign policy were far reaching. Relations with China were normalized, a move that bolstered China's economic rise in the coming decades. The Panama Canal Treaty prevented a war in Central America, done in the face of fierce opposition from conservatives. The Camp David Accords, the most dramatic chapter in the book, established a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel - the two nations have not gone to war since. Carter's intelligence and tenacity in dealing with Egyptian leader Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin remains a marvel of personal diplomacy.

The year 1979 brought about the undoing of the Carter Presidency. The entire saga of the Iranian Revolution and the ensuing Hostage Crisis caught Carter and his advisors by surprise and the miscalculations were multifold.  Americans were bombarded every evening with disheartening images from Iran intensified by the botched rescue attempt by the military (Carter took full responsibility). Relations with the USSR also went downhill, offended by Carter's Human Rights advocacy and his aggressive diplomacy in the Middle East, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and at the end of 1979 brought détente to a halt and led to a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (a highly unpopular policy).

Despite Carter's defeat in 1980, Alter argues his legislation on energy, the environment, and Civil Rights were all impactful. His famous "crisis of confidence" speech, composed after spending 10 days in isolation speaking to a variety of Americans about the problems of the country, expressed a criticism of consumerism, which many interpreted as a scold. On Democratic party politics he was often oblivious, which opened him to a challenge within from Ted Kennedy. With the ailing economy of the late 1970s, a combination of bad luck and questionable decisions led to his defeat.

When considering those who came before and after, Carter's fall appears to be an anomaly. He was neither corrupt nor incompetent. The most well read, intelligent, and pro-Science - his work ethic would be greeted with relief these days. Carter's greatest flaw was his bluntness and dedication to the job. Considered too liberal by conservatives and not liberal enough by the left, Carter tended to exasperate allies and foes.

Alter's prose is engaging, even handed with a good sense of narrative. The portrait is complex and raises important questions about political leadership in a democracy relating to issues of transparency, faith, and loyalty. Hardly any of the details included feel superfluous, anecdotes about Carter praying for peace with his eyes on a globe every morning, hanging out with the Allman Brothers, and winning over no less a cynic than Hunter Thompson all present an engaging tapestry. 

Alter, Jonathan. His Very Best: Jimmy Carter: A Life. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2020.

Book Review: Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy

Published posthumously in 1969, Thirteen Days by Robert F. Kennedy remains an essential text of the Cold War. A firsthand account of the Cuban Missile Crisis by one of the key participants, RFK's memoir presents a sober and eloquent account. Even though he keeps a lot close to his vest, there's enough there for an impression of the decision-making process during the crisis. Devoted to the memory of his brother President Kennedy, the portrait presented here is a model of steady, but cautious leadership, at a moment when history stood at a precipice.

From October 16-29, 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union nearly went to war. After a U-2 reconnaissance plane discovered Soviet missiles were being deployed in Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of Florida, the Kennedy administration faced its greatest test. JFK's inner circle, uncertain of Soviet intentions, were determined to find a way of removing the missiles without resorting to war. Political considerations also factored into their response, knowing if they failed to show resolve it would unravel the administration and embolden its adversaries. 

Thirteen Days presents a taut narrative of crisis management. The informal committee known as "Ex-Comm" consisting of cabinet members and advisors who argued and debated the proper courses of action. RFK describes how the initial talks debated whether to take immediate military action through aerial bombing and eventual ground invasion, or whether to order a blockade to buy time for a diplomatic solution. While the "quarantine" approach opened the administration to accusations of looking weak, it was a middle course between belligerence and appeasement. RFK wrote:

That kind of pressure does strange things to a human being, even to brilliant, self-confident, mature, experienced men. For some it brings out characteristics and strengths that perhaps they never knew they had, and for others the pressure is too overwhelming (35).

RFK deftly evokes the moments of intense uncertainty, allowing the reader space to imagine the weight of making historical decisions. As fatigue sets in, one will change their mind quickly, change their tune in front of the president, or even become fatalistic or depressed. President Kennedy followed a strategy of preparing for the worst, while keeping options open for a solution. In this specific crisis - it worked. The eventual diplomatic solution, a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba and eventual removal of missiles in Turkey in return for the Soviets removing the missiles in Cuba, was handled discreetly by both sides. 

When one considers all the variables that could've gone wrong its head spinning. Thirteen Days only suggests all the factors in play. Military personnel could make mistakes in the heat of the moment or misinterpret orders. For example, the case of the Soviet submarine officer who prevented a nuclear launch. Luck certainly played a huge role, but rational thinking also prevailed.

Yet the Cuban Missile Crisis continues to raise tantalizing questions. Should nuclear brinksmanship be considered a crime against humanity? RFK recounts his brother worrying about all the innocents who would die in a war. A war for what - credibility? I get the sense all the actors involved at least subconsciously grasped the absurdity of it all - it comes through in Khrushchev's letters he sent to Kennedy. 

If there was a takeaway, it was empathy:

The final lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country's shoes. During the crisis, President Kennedy spent more time trying to determine the effect of a particular course of action on Khrushchev or the Russians than on any other phase of what he was doing. What guided all his deliberations was an effort not to disgrace Khrushchev, not to humiliate the Soviet Union, not to have them feel they would have to escalate their response because their national security or national interests so committed them (95).

Decades later the archives have been opened and all the minute details of the crisis are available. Thirteen Days is now considered more mythmaking than history. No one's going to argue political memoirs are not self-serving, RFK was more hawkish than he led on, but the memoir clearly values diplomacy above brinksmanship, and suggests things were messier than the streamlined narrative presented. Thirteen Days serves as a starting point for studying the crisis (also a quick read), more books on the crisis will be reviewed in the future.

(The 1999 Norton Paperback includes documents and additional historical commentary.)

Book Review: The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter

As the world stands in the thrall of multiple crises in the first quarter of the 21st Century - "polycrisis" to use a trendy word, it's worthwhile to go back and look at how the governments withstood "the world crisis" of the first half of the 20th Century. Few figures influenced the course of those years more than the British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946). Zachary D. Carter's 2020 book reevaluates Keynes through a 21st century lens and examines how Keynesian economics continues to provide a guidepost for navigating uncertainty.

Keynes first became known outside academic circles with the publication of his polemic on the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Keynes served as an advisor for the British delegation who joined the other victor nations of the First World War to dictate peace terms to determine the future of Europe. 

The conference convened as the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza was spreading like wildfire, Keynes became stricken with the virus and was bedridden for weeks. With the United States, Great Britain, and France all working to serve their own self-interests, Keynes developed an antipathy towards all the Allied powers, especially the push to punish Germany with heavy war reparations that he believed would ill serve the world economy. He predicted that a Germany paralyzed with war debts would lead to anger among the people who would turn to politicians advocating vengeance. 

History proved Keynes correct on the war debts issue and their tragic ramifications for Europe. Economic chaos plagued Europe during the 1920s as governments dealt with the fallout from unemployment and inflation. Meanwhile, Keynes continued to develop his ideas towards more international cooperation in his journalism and economic treatises. Known for his uncanny ability to find solutions to a financial crisis, Keynes helped save the British Treasury in 1914 on the eve of the war and worked out ingenious solutions during the 1920s to manage the war reparations by negotiating loans to Germany. Yet he found his ideas failing to get traction in his native Great Britain.

Always the insider/outsider, Keynes enjoyed the privileges of the British upper class and moved freely between power brokers and artistic circles. One of the few non-artists among the Bloomsbury Group, a group of creatives who despised Victorian morays including writers Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, they brought a spirit of experimentation to art and life. Beneath all of Keynes's dense treatises on modern economics was a humanism to improve the quality of life for everyone.

For most who've taken a college economics class, one learns about Keynes through charts and graphs. Carter argues that compassion, "the good life" in JMK's words, stood at the core of his economic theories. Through the Depression and world wars that Keynes helped the world to navigate, there was a respect for individual freedom and social justice beneath all theory and policies. He became even more Utopian towards the end of his life. Through his theoretical works, impenetrable to anyone outside the field of economics, he developed stratagems to avoid economic catastrophes. Pamphlets explaining his approach to economics were also made available to the public with great success.

A main insight of Keynesian economics is that governments are the true managers of economies. Leaving market forces alone to repair themselves in the classical economics mode was no longer tenable, government intervention was essential to maintaining the health of a modern financial system. Deficit spending to "prime the pump" would kickstart economies and help maintain full employment and keep inflation in check. Keynes argued this was always the case throughout history, governments always set currencies and managed economic activity.  Keynes advocated that economic policies should expand prosperity and be aimed at enhancing the culture, not the 19th century Darwinian economy of winners and losers. His definitive 1936 work, completed with his staff of students at Cambridge, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money proved a magnum opus in shaping modern economic theory and policy.

It was in the United States where his ideas took hold. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies of increased government intervention in banking, monetary policy regulation, and public works were practical Keynesian solutions to the economic crisis. FDR's administration was filled with acolytes of Keynes during the 1940s, guiding the economy through the Second World War. At the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, Keynes helped shape post-war policies. 

Keynes was not a Marxist, although he took much inspiration from their critiques of capitalism. He wanted to synthesize classical economics with Marxism, "how to make the practical, risk-averse, anti-revolutionary conservatism of Burke for the radical democratic ideals advanced by Rousseau." (55). A tall order, perhaps an impossibility, but his iconoclastic approach attracted many disciples and fierce critics.

Keynesians felt vindicated by America's astounding turnaround in the post-war years. But as his ideas gained ascendency in academia, a counter movement began to take shape. The business class in America generally despised FDR and the New Deal and envisioned a return to unregulated/Gilded Age type capitalism. F.A. Hayek's 1944 book The Road to Serfdom was greeted as the conservative response to Keynes, arguing more government intervention in economic policy led to totalitarianism. In the climate of McCarthyism, Carter documents the widespread efforts to ban Keynes's teachings from colleges - as communist propaganda. William F. Bickley's debut book God and Man at Yale railed against Keynes.

Price of Peace is also a unique biography in that it devotes the last section of the book to the legacy of its subject. Keynes died in 1946 and did not live to see these debates play out. His life reminded me of Hari Seldon from the Isaac Asimov Foundation novels. In the books Seldon was a visionary who plotted a long term strategy for the galaxy to recover from a decline into a dark age. In the generations after his death, disciples debated his legacy. Much of the same thing happened with Keynes in the afterlife of his ideas. John Kenneth Galbraith in many ways took up the mantle of Keynes in American politics with mixed results, the book almost serves as a short biography of Galbraith. 

Different variations of Keynesian policies evolved over the decades. Paul Samuelson wrote the standard economics textbook with a Keynesian approach, but it was highly technical and dry. Many consider the textbook Lorie Tarshis far superior and more accessible. In time American policy drifted. Keynes failed to foresee the Military-Industrial Complex that came to dominate American foreign policy. Eventually, classical capitalism revived and culminated with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan who set out to gut social services and government spending (only criticism of the book is that Carter tends to move too fast through these sections). 

Carter's chapter on the Bill Clinton (1993-2001) administration is especially scathing. Clinton's embrace of Neo-Liberal policies of lower taxes, balanced budgets, and deregulation were catastrophic for the American economy - culminating in 2008 crash and near demise of the banking system (saved by government bailout). Keynes believed the primary cause of fascism was unemployment. The damaging trade deals of the 90s did not serve America nor the world, a main cause for democracy's decline in recent decades.

The book concludes with:

Keynesianism [in its) simplest form is not so much a school of economic thought as a spirit of radical optimism, unjustified by most of human history and extremely difficult to conjure up precisely when it is most needed: during the depths of depression or amid the fevers of war. (533)

To bring things full circle, in our current moment of spiraling crises ranging from political, economic, to the ecological Keynes offers a model of recovery through defining the problem and finding creative solutions. Boldness of vision and radical intellectual curiosity are perhaps the best prescription. Price of Peace is engaging and well written, a journey through economic history and roads not taken.