Carter’s Legacy Lives on in Ways People Might Not Expect

Jimmy Carter’s recent departure at age 100 has prompted assessments of the man and his presidency. In the default view, Carter is a decent fellow who made crucial blunders, some more visible than others.

The Constitution assigns no role for the federal government in education but President Carter created the federal Department of Education, a payoff to the teacher unions who supported his 1976 campaign. The department’s effectiveness can be judged by the 1983 “A Nation at Risk,” contending that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” Not exactly a great report card.

As economist Milton Friedman noted, bureaucracies are easy to start but practically impossible to eliminate, whatever their level of failure. President Ronald Reagan failed to eliminate the federal education department, which survived other Republican and Democrat administrations. So does another Carter creation, seldom recognized by the people.

One of President Carter’s top priorities was the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which created the Senior Executive Service (SES) a corps of more than 8,000 government bosses established to “ensure that the executive management of the Government of the United States is responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the Nation and otherwise is of the highest quality.” It didn’t exactly work out that way.

By 1981, few efficiency gains were evident, but SES bosses were dissatisfied with their pay. Between 2008 and 2011, on top of their hefty salaries and benefits, the elitist bureaucrats bagged more than $340 million in bonuses, which were not subject to budget cuts. True to form, the SES insignia is a gold keystone surrounded with stars, also appearing on the SES flag.

In effect, Jimmy Carter aimed to fix government inefficiency by creating a new bureaucracy. This development is not unique to Carter and his political party.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) failed to prevent the massive terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, the worst since Pearl Harbor in 1941, with 3,000 dead and thousands wounded. The response of the Bush administration was to create a new federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

The DHS failed to prevent terrorist attacks at Fort Hood (2009), the Boston Marathon (2013), San Bernardino (2015) and Orlando in 2016. The vaunted FBI played no role in the takedown of the terrorists. Despite massive failure at their appointed tasks, all three federal agencies lived on.

President Carter is also associated with the “misery index,” a combination of unemployment and inflation, but that measure was created by economist Arthur Okun during the administration of Lyndon Johnson during the 1960s. During the 1976 campaign, Carter wielded it against the Republican Gerald Ford, who lost to the Georgia Democrat.

On Carter’s watch, the misery index started at 12.72 percent, peaked at 21.9 percent in June, 1980, and was still higher than 20 percent in November. That played a role in Reagan’s landslide victory, but the people had other factors to consider.

As the late Malcolm Muggeridge noted, the twin pitfalls of religious experience are unctuousness and spiritual exhibitionism. Both are on display with Carter, who was also a scold of sorts. On July 15, 1979, Carter told the nation:

“For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.”

And so on, in what became known as the “malaise speech,” though Carter did not use the word. Judging by their vote in November, 1980, the people held Carter responsible for the surging misery. Jimmy Carter can be remembered as a decent person and the president who launched the Department of Education and Senior Executive Service, still with us after all these years.