Politics
A Legacy From Carter That Democrats Would Prefer to Escape
Since his death, Jimmy Carter has been lauded for brokering the Camp David Accords and for his post-White House mission to help the poor and battle disease. But glossed over amid all the tributes is the burdensome legacy that Mr. Carter left for his Democratic Party: a presidency long caricatured as a symbol of ineffectiveness and weakness.
This perception has shadowed the party for nearly 40 years. It was forged in the seizure of American hostages by Iranian militants in 1979 and the failed military attempt to free them, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. And it lingered in memories of Mr. Carter wearing a cardigan as he asked Americans to conserve energy, or bemoaning what he called a “crisis of confidence” in an address to the nation that became a textbook example of political self-harm.
Over the decades, these events have provided endless fodder for attacks by Republicans, who reveled in invoking Mr. Carter’s name to deride Democrats. And that mockery, in turn, influenced the way Democrats have presented themselves to voters. Without Mr. Carter’s image of weakness on national security and defense, for example, it is hard to imagine the party’s war-hero candidate for president in 2004 introducing himself with a salute at its nominating convention and saying, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.”
Mr. Carter’s political legacy produced what many analysts argue was a kind of conditioned response: an overreaction among Democrats anxious to avoid comparisons to him on foreign policy issues. This was evident in the roster of prominent congressional Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who voted for the 2002 resolution that authorized President George W. Bush to take the nation to war in Iraq, a vote many said they came to regret.
It could even be discerned in the taciturn response from President Biden after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 descended into chaos, said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton.
“Democrats always feel defensive about these messy situations,” Professor Zelizer said. He linked that reflex to the taking of the Iranian hostages and to the raid Mr. Carter ordered to save them, which ended in a helicopter crash that killed eight Americans.
“They don’t act with command in talking about tough foreign policy events,” Mr. Zelizer said, pointing in particular to the struggle by Democrats in Congress over Iraq. “The instinct when things go bad is to either be silent or apologetic.”
Historians and Democrats say the characterization of Mr. Carter as weak is in many ways unfair and exaggerated, ignoring some of the major accomplishments of his four years in office. He ordered an American boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and a grain embargo against the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, “He became an exemplar of why you had to look tough and not weak in foreign policy,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic consultant who worked for Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts when Mr. Kennedy challenged Mr. Carter for the presidential nomination in 1980.
Indeed, more than 30 years after Mr. Carter left office, Republicans reached back to the Carter years to dismiss a momentous decision by President Barack Obama that delivered a forceful rebuttal to the idea of Democrats as weak or ineffective: approving the American raid to assassinate Osama bin Laden in 2011.
“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” said Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president.
(None other than Mr. Biden, as Mr. Obama’s vice president, made that raid a staple of his speeches in their 2012 re-election campaign. “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive,” Mr. Biden said often.)
This aspect of Mr. Carter’s legacy was ultimately set in cement by his defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, a former actor and governor who presented himself as a decisive and forceful contrast to the sitting president. “He was the standard by which Democrats and Republicans judged political effectiveness,” Tim Naftali, a presidential historian, said of Mr. Reagan. “So by definition, Carter, whom Reagan had beaten, was the opposite of effective, the model to be avoided.”
“The killer Reagan line, ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ was first aimed at Carter,” he said.
So it was that from the moment Mr. Carter left office — on the day Iranian militants released the hostages — Democratic candidates for president have sought, with word and action, to escape his shadow.
Bill Clinton frequently invoked strength in talking about both international and domestic issues when he ran for president. During his 1996 re-election campaign, he boasted of putting 100,000 police on the street and promised to keep America “the world’s strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity.”
For her part, Mrs. Clinton, who as the Democratic candidate in 2016 also had to allay voters’ doubts about whether a woman had the fortitude to be president, repeatedly cited her experience as secretary of state under Mr. Obama, and made “Stronger together” her campaign slogan. She used the words “strong,” “stronger” and “strength” 13 times in her speech accepting the party’s nomination.
In last year’s presidential campaign, Kamala Harris, the vice president and Democratic candidate against Donald J. Trump, boasted of owning a Glock pistol, and left little doubt about her belief in military might as she accepted her party’s nomination in Chicago.
“As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she said.
But some efforts to escape the Carter legacy only seemed to reinforce it.
Michael S. Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts, was ridiculed when he donned a green tank helmet and “military coveralls over his Filene’s suit,” as a New York Times report said at the time, to ride a 63-ton M1 tank around a field at a manufacturing plant in front of a battery of television cameras. “Rat-a-tat,” Mr. Dukakis said.
“Dukakis was trying to demonstrate strength,” Mr. Shrum said. “Instead, he demonstrated weakness. People are always fighting the last campaigns, and they are often wrong.”
In the case of Mr. Kerry, who, like Mr. Kennedy, was a Shrum client, Republicans sought to turn his decorated military record against him by accusing him of fabricating details of his Navy service, in an advertising campaign — later discredited — that was launched by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. (One producer of those ads was Chris LaCivita, a co-manager of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.)
To be fair, the seeds for this line of attack against Democrats predated Mr. Carter: In 1972, four years before Mr. Carter burst on the national scene, Republicans invoked the “weak on defense” argument against George McGovern, the Democratic senator from South Dakota, when he challenged Richard M. Nixon for the presidency.
“The 1972 presidential campaign and the landslide defeat of McGovern made the weak-on-defense argument a centerpiece for the G.O.P.,” Mr. Zelizer said. “The problems that Carter faced in the final year — Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — cemented this political imbalance, placing Democrats in a position to constantly stress that they would be tough on defense.”
President-elect Trump pointed to a strategic benefit of the one-bill approach to budget reconciliation that he’s said he prefers during a closed-door meeting with Republican senators on Wednesday evening at the Capitol.
By combining legislation relating to both the southern border crisis and taxes into one reconciliation bill, Trump suggested that one issue could potentially force some lawmakers to make a difficult decision. For example, if a Republican doesn’t support a piece of the tax component, they would also have to vote against the border provisions because they are in one measure.
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Trump explained a strategic component to his one-bill reconciliation approach. (Getty Images)
With portions of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expiring this year, the party is looking to act quickly. But the tax debate in 2025 is expected to be more divided among Republicans than that regarding the border. In particular, there is some disagreement in the party on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, which can benefit some states more than others and have been hit by some Republicans as inefficient.
“If somebody, for example, in the House is balking because there’s not SALT in the tax agreement or some other provision they want, if that also means they’d be holding out and voting against the border, it might make it harder for them to do so,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told Fox News Digital. “That’s a very valid point.”
While SALT was not posed as an example of this by Trump himself, it was mentioned by a GOP senator in a side conversation among other attendees as they went over the advantages of a one-bill approach, Hoeven said.
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Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., speaks May 4, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Hoeven faces a defector from his own party and a lightly funded Democrat on Tuesday, Nov. 8, in his race for a third U.S. Senate term from North Dakota. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
A source familiar told Fox News that Republicans are preparing to go with Trump’s one-bill preference, but they are also keeping the potential for two bills, one on the border and another to address taxes, in their back pocket in the case of any significant obstacles.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Trump that if one bill is what he wanted, that is what they are going to try first, the source said.
A number of senators have their own preferences for two separate reconciliation bills instead, and some made their cases to Trump during the meeting. However, the conference is set to move forward with Trump’s one-bill approach.
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Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal came up during the discussion following Trump’s remarks about each. Trump has recently said he wants U.S. to take back control of critical trade medium the Panama Canal, while also expressing interest in making Greenland and Canada part of the U.S.
Sources familiar told Fox News that Trump brought these up himself during the meeting, telling senators at one point that these countries “were screwing with” the U.S.
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Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with media outside Rideau Cottage on Monday, Jan. 6, in Ottawa. (AP/Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Several GOP senators took the opportunity to tell Trump that his comments on Canada were “transformative,” the sources said.
The senators believe his approach to Canada is already managing to change the country’s “behavior” and could have even contributed to the recent resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the sources added.
SAN FRANCISCO — Four hours before he took the oath of office Wednesday to become San Francisco’s 46th mayor, Daniel Lurie started his day walking through the bleak confines of the Tenderloin district with the city police chief and passing out coffee to people at a homeless community center.
It was a deliberately symbolic move by Lurie, a nonprofit executive and heir to the Levi Strauss family fortune, who won office in November largely by appealing to disillusioned voters weary of the public drug use, brazen retail theft and sprawling homelessness that during the pandemic became commonplace in the Tenderloin and spilled into the downtown financial district.
Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie and his wife, Becca Prowda, take part in Wednesday’s inaugural festivities.
(Gabrielle Lurie / San Francisco Chronicle)
In his inaugural speech shortly before noon in front of San Francisco City Hall, Lurie pledged to crack down on the street anarchy that has plagued some areas of the city in recent years, feeding a “doom loop” scenario endorsed by conservative pundits.
“This is where our comeback begins,” Lurie said to a crowd of thousands that included his wife, Becca Prowda, daughter Taya, 13, and son Sawyer, 10, along with outgoing Mayor London Breed and a host of local and statewide political figures.
“I’m asking all of you, every single one of you, to join me in reclaiming our place as the greatest city in the world with a new era of accountability, service and change,” Lurie said.
Daniel Lurie is sworn in as San Francisco’s 46th mayor.
(Gabrielle Lurie / San Francisco Chronicle)
Lurie, a moderate Democrat who had never held elected office, entered the mayoral race as an underdog against Breed and three other City Hall veterans. In an election seen as a referendum on the city’s post-pandemic struggles with homelessness and street crime, Lurie pitched himself as a change agent who could lead San Francisco into an era of recovery.
His campaign gained momentum as he promised to end open-air drug markets and arrest fentanyl dealers, push homeless people into drug and mental health treatment and reinvigorate a downtown economy drained by the exodus of tech workers after COVID-19 shutdowns made remote work an easy option.
Lurie was able to spread his message broadly by drawing on personal wealth. He funneled nearly $9 million of his own money into his campaign, while his mother, Miriam Haas, widow of deceased Levi’s executive and heir Peter Haas, contributed an additional $1 million to an independent expenditure committee backing his election.
Lurie’s inaugural speech, though light on policy details, offered a glimpse into how he planned to accomplish the bold goals he laid out on the campaign trail.
“San Francisco has long been known for its values of tolerance and inclusion, but nothing about those values instructs us to allow nearly 8,000 people to experience homelessness in our city,” he said. “Widespread drug-dealing, public drug use and constantly seeing people in crisis has robbed us of our sense of decency and security.”
At the top of his to-do list: introducing a package of ordinances declaring a fentanyl state of emergency. Lurie said he would ask the Board of Supervisors, an 11-member body that acts as the legislative branch for the city and county, to quickly approve the ordinances, directed at curbing use of the deadly opioid and allowing the city to “bypass the bureaucratic hurdles standing in the way of tackling this crisis.”
The board gained five new members in the November election, a turnover expected to bring a more moderate tone to a board that for years was seen as ultra-liberal and often tussled with Breed — also a moderate — over tough-on-crime policy proposals.
Lurie said he would work to embed more behavioral health specialists in first-responder units to address the overlapping crises of homelessness, addiction and untreated mental illness, and announced plans to open a 24/7 center as an alternative to jail for police to bring people in need of treatment and other services.
He also said he wants to expand a city program that provides funding and assistance for bus tickets and other transportation to send homeless people who aren’t from San Francisco back to their home communities.
And in the face of a projected $876-million budget deficit, Lurie promised “zero cuts” to sworn police officers, 911 operators, EMTs, firefighters and nurses on the front lines of public health emergencies.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he was encouraged by Lurie’s plans and his recognition of the need for “around-the-clock resources” not just for police, but also for city workers across departments working to solve San Francisco’s public safety and health challenges.
“The Police Department is 24/7 … but a lot of the departments that we rely upon to help solve some of these problems aren’t 24/7,” he said. “It’s not all about enforcement. It’s not all about policing.”
Scott said he would like to see Lurie continue recent efforts by Breed’s administration to more aggressively clear sprawling tent encampments that have fanned out across the city, as well as public health efforts credited for a sharp decline in drug overdose deaths in the city last year.
The chief medical examiner’s office recorded 586 fatal overdoses in San Francisco in the first 11 months of 2024 — a nearly 23% decrease, or 174 fewer deaths, compared with the first 11 months of 2023. San Francisco public health experts attributed the decline to the widespread availability of naloxone, a medication that can rapidly reverse the effects of opioid overdoses, as well as more emphasis on prescribing buprenorphine and methadone, medications that treat opioid addiction long-term.
On Tuesday, Breed’s last full day in office, her administration noted that crime rates had also fallen in 2024, with reports of car break-ins dropping 54%, property crime down 31% and violent crime down 14%.
Though San Francisco’s struggles have made national headlines in recent years, particularly in right-wing media promoted by President-elect Donald Trump, Lurie largely left national politics out of his messaging, nodding only once during his speech to the “great sense of fear and loss about the state of our country right now.”
“San Francisco must be a city where every individual feels safe, valued and empowered,” he said. “That means standing firm against discrimination and fighting for the dignity of all communities, no matter what comes our way.”
Lurie said the city is showing progress and maintained that “hope is alive and well in San Francisco.” But he warned that “lasting change doesn’t happen overnight.”
Still, “if we are consistent, if we have vision, if we aren’t afraid to make tough decisions,” he said, “San Francisco will rise to new heights.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural committee is no longer selling tickets for major donors to attend his swearing-in and accompanying private events in Washington, according to five people briefed on the conversations.
The committee has raised over $170 million, according to the people, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to share internal financial information. The haul is so big that some seven-figure donors have been placed on wait lists or have been told they probably will not receive V.I.P. tickets at all because the events are at capacity.
Mr. Trump often talks privately about who has supported him, and the frenzy to donate to his inauguration — even if it comes without the usual exclusive access — underscores the degree to which deep-pocketed donors and corporations are seeking to curry favor with him. Far more than in early 2017 at the start of his first term, corporate America has largely embraced Mr. Trump during his transition, partly out of a desire to get on his good side.
Prospective donors began to be told early this week that no more seats were available for certain events around Washington, according to the people briefed on the conversations. The personalized donation link that fund-raisers had circulated to their networks of major contributors no longer worked on Tuesday and Wednesday. The packages offered to corporate and individual donors had originally been marketed as available through Friday, but they ended early given the extraordinary demand.
“Space is limited,” read the marketing materials for the donor packages.
Individual donors and others can still attend the swearing-in ceremony by obtaining free tickets made available to the public through members of Congress.
The sums raised by Mr. Trump had already set a record for inaugural fund-raising. Mr. Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee raised $107 million, and the current one is on pace to approach $200 million, according to one person briefed on the fund-raising.
The leftover money is likely to be transferred to a committee for the eventual Trump presidential library. Mr. Trump’s allies have now raised more than $250 million since Election Day for his political projects, including the inaugural committee and some allied outside groups. There are no limits on donations to inaugural committees, though foreign nationals are prohibited from giving. The contributions are eventually disclosed.
On account of the shortage of seating at V.I.P. events, some donors have taken the unusual step of offering donations as high as $1 million without receiving anything in return. Seats at the inaugural address, tickets to the ritzy balls or access to other events are typically a major part of why major donors cut checks. Inaugural events are a key time for the lobbying industry, and they draw donations from corporations and wealthy donors eager to gain influence or make amends with a new administration.
Fund-raisers have not always told prospective donors that they can still give money even though the events are full, and so some last-minute donors have felt shut out of contributing.
“Anyone interested in making a contribution to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee is encouraged to do so,” said Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the committee. “There is an incredible interest and excitement for President Trump’s inauguration and the events surrounding.”
Inauguration events begin on Jan. 17. Those who gave $1 million or raised $2 million were supposed to be entitled to six tickets each for six different events, according to an updated list of benefits, including the swearing-in ceremony and a sought-after “candelight dinner” on Jan. 19 with Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, that is described as the weekend’s “pinnacle event.”
They also received two tickets to a dinner with Vice President-elect JD Vance and his wife, Usha.
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