An Unlucky President

Paul Krugman: “Jimmy Carter was a very good man — something that seems especially poignant to think about as we enter an age of kakistocracy, in which being a terrible person seems to be a necessary qualification for high office. And he was surely the best ex-president we’ve ever had. But his presidency itself is widely regarded as a failure.”

“I don’t think that’s fair. Carter wasn’t a Harry Truman, a great president whose greatness only came to be recognized many years later. But was he a bad president? Not in any way I can see. He was just a victim of time and chance… The truth is that luck plays a much bigger role in politics than we like to think.”