Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter (1924–2024), 39th President (1977–1981), governed the crisis of the New Deal order — stagflation, oil shock, hostage crisis — and presided over the turn to what became neoliberalism, before becoming its post-presidential moral critic.
Record
- Deregulation began in earnest under Carter: airlines, trucking, railroads, interest rates (Depository Institutions Act) — Volcker's brutal monetarism was appointed by Carter and finished the job under Reagan.
- The Carter Doctrine (1980): Persian Gulf oil declared a vital US interest to be defended by force — the trilateral-imperial framework (his Trilateral Commission ties were a 1970s populist talking point).
- Camp David Accords (1978); the Iran hostage crisis; the "malaise" speech — an honest sermon on consumerism that the electorate punished.
- Post-presidency: Habitat for Humanity, election monitoring, Nobel Prize (2002); his late-career honesty about Israeli apartheid and US "oligarchy" earned establishment ostracism.
Infrared usage
Carter marks the moment the liberal establishment chose finance over the people — deregulation as bipartisan project before Reagan branded it. Haz cites him for the pattern: moral rhetoric, structural capitulation (see Third Way, New Deal).