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Jimmy Carter Calls Snowden Leak Ultimately "Beneficial"
eldavojohn writes "According to RT, the 39th president of the United States made several statements worth noting at a meeting in Atlanta. Carter said that 'America has no functioning democracy at this moment' and 'the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far.' The second comment sounded like Carter predicted the future would look favorably upon Snowden's leaks — at least those concerning domestic spying in the United States — as he said: 'I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial.' It may be worth noting that, stemming from Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, Jimmy Carter signed the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 into law and that Snowden has received at least one nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize."
I had not heard of these before and had to look it up. The privacy act ONLY applies to newspaper reporters, stemming from this incident:
"Respondents, a student newspaper that had published articles and photographs of a clash between demonstrators and police at a hospital, and staff members, brought this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against, among others, petitioners, law enforcement and district attorney personnel, claiming that a search pursuant to a warrant issued on a judge's finding of probable cause that the newspaper (which was not involved in the unlawful acts) possessed photographs and negatives revealing the identities of demonstrators who had assaulted police officers at the hospital had deprived respondents of their constitutional rights." source
On a side note, when explaining the Privacy Act to the general public, Jimmy Carter is probably the only president ever to make this statement: "We have reduced the size of these Government files by more than 10 percent."
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I hate agreeing with Carter.
Why?
Looking back on history, I never got the dislike towards him. He was handed a bad deck into his presidency (inflation from Viet Nam, Oil embargo, stagflation, Iran hostages, military incompetence, and a couple of other things he was blamed for).
One of the most ballsy things he did was Tip O'Neil was elated that "one of them" was in the White House and Carter wouldn't play ball. And as we have seen many times, when one party controls both the Whitehouse and Congress, the pork flies and the budget sinks!
He was also one of our smartest presidents and one of the few who had some sort of science training - he was a nuclear engineer (BS, US Naval Academy).
So, why the dislike?
From the article you cited:
The best thing to do with the Cheney quote is forget Cheney said it about Snowden. Re-read the quote, and imagine somebody else said it about Cheney. Which version rings more true?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I have always said that Carter was the best man we’ve had in the white house in my life time.
I’m more convinced than ever.
we would be lucky to have someone of his caliber today.
Oil prices relative to historic norm is a quite good predictor of both economic growth in the following year and people's assessment of presidential performance, much more so than the paritcular politics, policies, brain power, or charisma of the man in the White House. As single factor analysis goes, it is vastly better than one would expect. Strangely enough, most political analysts largely ignore it.
Carter was left holding the bag when oil prices hit historic highs. His policies were not fundamentally different from Nixon/Ford, who also suffered in the public's eyes.
Reagan was liked...after the oil prices came down. Perceptions of his competence were not particularly good before oil finally dropped below 50 a barrel.
HBush was actually rather well liked but oil trended upwards during his term, then trended down for Clinton's term.
WBush and Obama are presidents after the rise of China -- we are never going to see the kind of low oil prices we enjoyed in the 90s or 60s again. Never. Thus it would not be surprising if 2-3% growth is the new norm for the good years, into the foreseeable future; as a consequence, Obama and whoever takes office in 2016 are not likely to be greatly popular, even if they walk on water or raise the dead.
Things can change. If China's economy craters, oil price might drift downwards for a while. Whoever is in the White House in 2016 or 2020 might get a free bump there. Also fracking might put some significant downward pressure on energy prices. We shall see.