Carter was better (and Reagan was worse) than you think

Yglesias thinks Jimmy Carter - still vilified by American conservatives decades after his four-year presidency - took the fall for circumstances beyond his control:

Does that mean Carter was a great president? No. Obviously, he left little in the way of enduring achievements. But by looking at his rivals you can get a sense of what alternative courses had serious levels of support at the time, and there was nothing better on offer. Carter’s horrible reputation owes to the fact that moderate presidents faced with bad macroeconomic luck just get disowned.

Very true. Carter to a large extent was mugged by history.

But I think people, including Matt, really (mis)underestimate Carter's big long-term successes. Carter was the president who first supported the Afghan mujahideen against the USSR, which probably hastened the Soviet empire's downfall a lot more than Reagan's deficit spending in the 80s. Carter made other strategic moves to weaken the Soviets, including using human rights to worsen the USSR's global reputation. And Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chairman, an epochal shift in central banking that would see inflation tamed within a few years and would leave the Fed more independent than in years past. These were big deals!

And as for Reagan, his foreign policy was generally good (arms control treaties with Russia, keeping us out of wars, strengthening our European and Asian alliances, improving our global image), and he killed a lot of harmful regulations. But his tax-cutting and deficit-spending bonanza changed us permanently from a fiscally responsible country into a country where "deficits don't matter". Once Reagan started us on the slippery slope of debt, it was an inevitable slide to the pickle in which we now find ourselves.

Conservatives don't want to admit this, but Carter kept the deficit under control, appointed the man who tamed inflation, and harassed the Soviets into a disastrous war. Reagan mainly gave us sunny rhetoric and a back-breaking mountain of debt. Scoreboard, people. Scoreboard.