A Jimmy Carter Future By Michael Boyajian
Former President Jimmy Carter has a new book out consisting of excerpts of his recorded diary entries made while he was in the White House. He is one of the most prolific presidents when it comes to writing rivaling only Theodore Roosevelt.
But these diary entries lead to speculation as to what if the late Senator Edward Kennedy had not challenged Carter in the Democratic primary that weakened the incumbent president in the general election against Ronald Reagan.
Jimmy Carter was a very intelligent, well liked man and although worn by some problems would have had the full power of the incumbency and his personal charm to overcome the witty one liners of Reagan. Reagan was after all behind Carter in the polling until late in the race.
So what if Jimmy Carter had won the second term? What would our world be like today? Well, there most likely would not be a conservative movement at the height of power. Conservatives would still be relegated to the sidelines, the fringes if you will.
Reagan would have been too old to run after Carter’s second term so that the next most popular Republican would have taken up the GOP cause and that would have been George Bush Sr. Bush would have run as the moderate that he in reality was. He may well have won two terms as a moderate in the fashion of Dwight Eisenhower.
His conservative son, George Bush Jr. would have been too far to the right for America and would never have even run for the presidency. But by then Bill Clinton would have emerged on the scene and most likely would have won two terms without being saddled by a pit ball conservative Republican Congress. Therefore universal healthcare would have been implemented at that point in time. At this time I will leave it to your imagination about who would or would not be present on the national stage.
But the fact is there would be no strong conservative movement or its angry offspring the tea baggers. America would be a tempered nation with liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans. We would live in a world where Republicans and Democrats did not engage in acrimonious and bitter battles just a healthy competition would exist between the two parties. There would be peace and prosperity. There would still be real life problems but we would have the national will to work together as one to overcome them.
And yes, in the end the Soviet Union would still have collapsed under its own weight thanks to the united foreign policy of all our presidents since Truman and the economy would be humming without deficits as it had from the end of World War II to before the 1970s thanks to the conventional economics of our presidential history. Q.E.D.