Making Jimmy Carter Look More Competent (Just a Little)

Things aren’t looking good for Joe Biden. Comparisons to the malaise-stricken presidency of Jimmy Carter came early for the Biden Administration, and it’s only gotten worse.

“Not too long ago, we had worried that the ‘Biden’ Administration would be a Carter reprise,” wrote Scott Shepard, director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project. “Now we can only hope.”

In a Townhall commentary, Scott noted the similarities between Joe and Jimmy, but also how the Biden strategy looks to have made things worse at a quicker pace and with the hindsight of what happened during Carter’s tenure.  After all, that occurred within Biden’s legislative lifetime.

Among the problems that Scott cited:

  • Both presidencies have been plagued by high inflation, but current Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is playing along with the White House as the Biden agenda calls for more spending and taxes.
  • Even though the terms of Carter and Biden have both been challenged by energy crises, Carter’s was a product of international tensions while Biden destroyed America’s existing energy independence in short order through executive orders. “It created the new American energy crisis, all by itself.”

Biden’s reaction to America trying to accommodate his energy crisis earned Scott’s descriptions of being both nonsensical and “venal” at the same time. In particular, with the price of almost everything going up, the Biden White House is demanding that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) begin going after businesses for alleged price gouging and market manipulation. Scott remarked:

Good heavens. This is right out of the ‘70s playbook, too, when the Carter Administration and states went after “price gouging” and “windfall profits” because they had no interest in admitting that the causes of inflation were government policy. As they are today, but in spades.

If the FTC were honest, it would mount a pre-dawn raid on the White House and a lunchtime encirclement of the Old Executive Office Building and arrest everyone inside as the market manipulators who are 100% responsible for this crisis. But it would probably need the help of the FBI to do that, and there’s no question at all anymore but that the FBI is corrupt all through.

“Economies are not booming – are very much ailing – when the way to make money is to assume that policy makers are going to screw up hard well into the foreseeable future,” Scott concluded. “But that’s very much where we are.”

Click here to read all of Scott’s commentary – “Perhaps a ‘70s Redux is Our Best Hope” – at Townhall.



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.