Word: carterisms
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...accounts, Jimmy Carter was a pretty bright guy. He studied nuclear physics at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and could read over 2000 words per minute. But Carter's presidency was disastrous for the American economy. As ordinary people were subjected to high tax rates originally intended for the wealthy alone, unemployment and growth sputtered while inflation soared into the double digits. Richard M. Nixon's intelligence was recognized by California psychologists at an early age--Nixon was one of the "termites" in the famous "Terman Study"--but this didn't prevent the Golden State prodigy from undermining...
...stark contrast, many of America's greatest booms have taken place against a backdrop of unimpressive presidents. Ronald Reagan's intellect was always held under high suspicion, yet Reagan knew enough to remove the confiscatory tax rates and inflation that were squelching investment and entrepreneurship under Nixon, Carter and Gerald R. Ford. The big posthumous tax cuts proposed by John F. Kennedy '40 made the 1960s the first decade without recession. Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, both "do nothing" presidents not renowned for mental prowess, were the stewards of the great 1920s boom when GNP increased by more than...
...century page-turner by the French author Henri Stendhal. But let's be honest here--who reads Stendhal, really? (Aside from the Paris-bound Alec Baldwin, perhaps.) The fact is, people of average intelligence often make excellent presidents (Truman, Reagan, even FDR) while brilliant chief executives like Hoover, Nixon, Carter and Clinton tend to trip over their own feet. Intellectual snobbery is all well and good, but it shouldn't be carried into the voting booth...
...Gore, there's zero tolerance for anything but the literal truth. Reagan, the President who told the tallest of tales, won his debate by employing the famous line "There you go again" against Jimmy Carter, who told the fewest tales. Reagan claimed he took pictures of Nazi death camps and was happy like other vets after the war to be able to finally "rest up, make love to my wife...," though he never left the country. Biographers say he got away with it because he was so emotionally accessible. But he was that way only with Nancy (or Mommy...
...shared warm stories about his family. At the Democratic Convention, his team shoved him back into the race by making him as human as was humanly possible: one long kiss, a bright blond daughter, a speech flavored more by its conviction than its condescension. But even Gore strategist Carter Eskew thinks the whole "likability" question is "another sort of pundit myth," comparable to the charge that Bush doesn't have the "gravitas" to be President. "The question is, What is decisive in people's vote?" Eskew says. "That is a harder question, and if I had the answer to that...