The Wall Street Journal quotes former U.S. President Jimmy Carter:
“In a democracy, I realize you don’t need to talk to the top leader to know how the country feels… When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that’s the dictator, because he speaks for all the people.”
Right on! Who needs an elected representative government when one guy that seizes power for himself makes things so much easier.
Wait a second… didn’t Anakin Skywalker say pretty much the same thing in Episode II? Hide the Younglings when Jimmy’s around!
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Silly me. All this time, I thought the concept of a dictatorship was that dictators didn’t speak for the people and were only accountable to their own enforcers, not that they spoke for all the people.
Me too! Thank God we have a former democratically elected U.S. President to tell us he didn’t actually speak for the people of the United States while he was in office.
full context, for those interested, is here.
i don’t think i have much to say other than that it seems like he’s talking more in terms of getting things done, or the spectrum of allowed or expressable opinion, rather than the true spectrum of opinion available. still a boner.
His entire presidency was a boner.
zach, thanks for the link. Unfortunately when we add the context it scares me even more: Negotiating with dictatorships is easy because the dictator represents the people of his country. (One stop shopping, I suppose.) But, on the other hand, when a democracy like Israel rejects his intervention, he takes comfort in the fact that their elected leaders don’t actually represent popular opinion. Hmm.
At least that’s what I think he’s saying. I lost my Jimmy Carter decoder ring years ago.
I like this line, too:
“Carter said he understood the pressures on the presidential candidates to release statements critical of his meetings with Hamas. “I forgive them all and I understand their motivations,” he said.”
Yeah, they’d be cheering for him if only they were as brave and uncompromising as himself. I’m sure the presidential candidates all sleep much easier knowing that Carter has no hard feelings.
bcostin,
I’m sure the presidential candidates all sleep much easier knowing that Carter has no hard feelings.
lol.
urthshu,
His entire presidency was a boner.
i’d say by comparison to his post-presidential work his presidency wasn’t half bad.
Carter has a dictator fetish (link), probably due to his conflict with the Khomeini regime for the last 444 days of his presidency.
Who is this Jimmy Carter person that you speak of?
Juxtapose this with Obama saying he’d talk to our (dictator) enemies.
That’d make a great campaign ad for McCain.
Oh it will, Dishman, it will…
The more I think about this, the less I like Carter…
and that wasn’t much to begin with.
As far as I can tell, Carter believes that Dictatorship is a legitimate form of government, and dictators speak for the people they rule over.
Fascist bastard.
Who is this fascist bastard that you speak of?
Isn’t that how foreign policy worked in the not-to-distant past (i.e., work with kings & dictators no matter what, sometimes against the general good of thier country)? And didn’t it frequently prove to be a problem for the U.S.?
In the not-to-distant future I can imagine that hisotry will view the Iraq war is an example of the U.S. working directly for the people against a dictatorship.
Please, for Gawd’s sake, Jimmah, go home and rest! You damn near wrecked the country in the 70′s, and some of us have long memories.
And, no more wreaths on Arafat the first Terrorist’s grave — Jeez!
HankB
Hmm. Reminds me a little of when Bush said that things would be a lot easier if America was a dictatorship, as long as he was the dictator. Some people still think he meant that literally.
Context matters.
But Bush didn’t make moves to turn the U.S. into a dictatorship (no matter what the far left thinks).
Carter, on the other hand, is actually talking to dictators as if they truly represent the will of the people.
Context doesn’t matter as much as actions.
Bush talks to and negotiates with dictators all the time. So does his Sec State.
I think it’s pretty self-evident that it *must* be easier to negotiate with your average dictator simply because he generally can unilaterally say or promise whatever he wants. Of course, I suspect your average dictator is also more likely to break his promises, but that’s another issue.
It appears to me that, perhaps, the former President is not suggesting that dictatorships are better, although I will acknowledge that he’s often much too buddy-buddy with them. I just think that’s something every President of my lifetime could say.
Does Bush talk and deal with dictators? Yes. But you miss half of what I said about Carter.
Carter is talking to dictators and believes they represent the will of the people.
I don’t think you’ll find a quote from Bush saying the same thing.
Kevin,
not to split hairs, but Carter never said that dictators represent the will of the people, just that the dictators SPEAK for the people. This seems to be manifestly true, despite the fact that they usually do NOT represent the will of the people.
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