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.”
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Gilad Thaler, Jon Miller, Stephanie Swart, Rafaela Balster, Whitney Shefte and Nikolay Nikolov
May 29, 2026
Politics
Federal judge orders Trump’s name removed from Kennedy Center, says only Congress can rename it
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A federal judge on Friday ordered that President Donald Trump’s name be removed from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, said the iconic venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress, ruling that the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees overstepped its “statutory bounds by unilaterally renaming” the building.
As part of his ruling, the Trump administration will be required to take down all physical signage bearing Trump’s name and eliminate any references to a “Trump-Kennedy Center” from official materials.
TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER’S BOARD VOTES UNANIMOUSLY TO APPROVE $257M RENOVATIONS AND TWO-YEAR CLOSURE
A sign is displayed on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts building. (Getty Images)
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Roma Daravi, the Trump Kennedy Center vice president of public relations, said the board plans to appeal the decision.
“We will review the decision carefully though the reality remains — the Center requires an urgent and significant restoration – a truth that even the plaintiff acknowledges,” Daravi said. “With $257 million secured by President Trump and approved by Congress, the resources are in place and we remain committed to pursuing every lawful avenue to ensure the Trump Kennedy Center is restored as a national cultural landmark for all Americans to enjoy.”
The ruling was part of a lawsuit filed by U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
BOARD VOTES KENNEDY CENTER TO BE RENAMED ‘TRUMP-KENNEDY CENTER,’ LEAVITT SAYS
President Donald Trump stands in the presidential box during a tour of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on March 17, 2025. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s name must be removed from he iconic venue. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Cooper previously denied a request for a preliminary injunction filed by a preservation group to block the planned two-year closure of the Kennedy Center for a rehabilitation project.
Trump secured $257 million from Congress as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to address disrepair and deferred maintenance of the Kennedy Center, which critics say has been neglected and mismanaged before Trump intervened.
The funds appropriated by Congress are spent on maintenance, repairs, security, and capital projects related to the building and site.
Beatty, who serves as an ex officio member of the board, praised Friday’s ruling.
“Today’s ruling rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law,” Beatty said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital. “The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump. He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”
Workers install Donald J. Trump signage above the existing Kennedy Center sign in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 19, 2025. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
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Trump’s name was added to the venue last December following a unanimous decision by the board. In February 2025, Trump was elected chairman of the Kennedy Center board after removing 18 trustees appointed by former President Joe Biden.
WASHINGTON — A framework agreement to end the U.S. war with Iran is all but settled, pending sign-off from the presidents of the two warring sides, President Trump said Friday, projecting optimism that a deal could finally be at hand.
Yet doubt cast a shadow over the diplomatic process entering the weekend as Trump faced a politically fraught decision to enter an agreement that would invariably require significant concessions to Tehran.
The negotiations have faced severe headwinds in recent days, with both sides accusing the other of violating a fragile ceasefire that has largely stopped the fighting since April.
On his Truth Social site, Trump said he had summoned his top aides to the White House Situation Room to decide on the deal.
The agreement would see an end to the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports and the removal of Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway through which 20% of the world’s energy supply passes each day. The strait, Trump wrote, will reopen with “no tolls” for “unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions.”
And “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb,” Trump wrote, noting that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for nuclear weapons, “will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED.”
“No money will be exchanged, until further notice,” he added.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said the deal would require Iran to disavow the continuation of its domestic nuclear program — a diplomatic feat never before achieved throughout a quarter-century of international negotiations over Iran’s nuclear work.
It is unclear whether Tehran would go that far. And Iran’s negotiators expressed defiance on Friday, stating that there was “no trust in guarantees or words” from the American side.
“No step will be taken before the other side acts first,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament. “We do not gain concessions through dialogue, but through missiles.”
It remains unclear when the Trump administration would ease sanctions on Iran, how extensive that relief would be, or what form it would take — questions that fueled Republican criticism of the Obama-era nuclear deal more than a decade ago.
The working diplomatic document would formally extend the existing ceasefire for 60 days, allowing for a more detailed negotiation to take place over Iran’s nuclear program. But the truce as it currently stands is on perilous ground. Iran launched a ballistic missile on Thursday at Kuwait, a close U.S. ally, after American forces took “defensive” actions against Iranian missile launchers and mine-laying boats it had launched in the strait.
The war has proved historically unpopular with the American public, and has seen oil prices soar since the U.S. military, in partnership with Israel, launched its first strikes against Iran in February.
Bessent said he is hopeful that oil prices would drop quickly once an agreement is signed. But industry analysts say the effects of the war on the oil market could last for months, if not years, with the stability of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz now in question for commercial shippers.
While oil has dropped to under $100 a barrel, markets appeared skittish on Friday over the prospects for a deal, with mixed messages appearing to emerge out of the region.
It is also unclear whether a U.S. agreement with Iran would in any way bind Israel’s hands in its military operations, either in Iran or in Lebanon, where an Iranian proxy militia, Hezbollah, has vowed to keep up the fight.
Israel has ramped up strikes against Hezbollah targets in recent days, jeopardizing a delicate ceasefire negotiated with the Lebanese government, a deal encouraged by the Trump administration in order to grease the wheels for its talks with Tehran.
Trump has been uncharacteristically silent on the prospects of an agreement in recent days, expressing cautious optimism in limited exchanges with reporters.
“It’s hard to say exactly when or if the president’s going to sign,” Vice President JD Vance, who has led the U.S. diplomatic team, told reporters, noting that “the nuclear stuff” is still subject to negotiation. “We’re going back and forth on a couple of language points.”
“I do think that we’ve made a lot of progress here,” Vance added. “Hopefully we’ll continue to make progress, and the president will be in a position where he can endorse the agreement. But obviously, that’s still TBD.”
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