Or appointing Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, who Carter knew would tame inflation by raising interest rates and almost certainly dooming his reelection efforts. But the filmmakers know how to tell a good story about the political capital Carter expended, pushing a renegotiated Panama Canal treaty through Congress. The Pattiz Brothers are unapologetic partisans. And there's a bit of artful fudging around the Iran hostage crisis that dragged down the final year of his presidency. Nor more than glancing references to blocks-long gas lines. You won't hear in Carterland about Carter's much-mocked "lust in my heart" phrasing in a Playboy interview, which nearly capsized his election effort. Diversifying a federal judiciary with only eight female judges in its history.Ethics in Government legislation passed in reaction to Watergate that established the mechanism of an independent counsel to look at allegations of Presidential malfeasance.A Camp David Accord that found the President of the United States personally carrying proposals back and forth between the cabins of Israeli and Egyptian presidents who refused to talk to each other."What would life have been like if we had continued to invest in a clean energy economy?" wonders conservation activist and former Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario in the film.Īnd others make similar points about other Carter administration initiatives: The heater and the solar panels were all removed by President Ronald Reagan a few years later. will still be here, supplying cheap, efficient energy." "In the year 2000," Carter predicted as he showed off the panels, "the solar water heater behind me. They were removed a few years later by the Reagan administration. Jimmy Carter Presidential Library President Carter unveils solar panels on the White House roof on June 20, 1979, in what proved a short-lived experiment in energy efficiency. Solar panels on the White House roof in 1979įilmmakers Will and Jim Pattiz detail how he led by example on energy conservation, putting on sweaters rather than cranking up the heat, and doing something newscaster Walter Cronkite had to explain to viewers in 1979 because it sounded like science fiction – capturing solar energy by putting solar panels on the roof of the White House. Carter's successes are highlighted and his less successful moments are explained. "The story usually goes about President Carter," says his former Vice President, " 'Well, he's a nice guy and a good person, a great ex-president, but he's a failed president, who was never really able to rise to the challenges of his time.' That's the story we've been told, but it's all wrong."Īn unabashed corrective to the common narrative is what follows. The measured tones of the late Walter Mondale, Carter's running mate in 1976, lay out Carterland's operating premise right at the start. Offering fresh evidence for that notion is the documentary Carterland, which depicts the often disparaged one-term presidency of Jimmy Carter as an expansive and largely successful exercise in problem-solving. We're told that politics is different than in decades past - more ideological, less productive.
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