Confessions of a second-look liberal

Abstract

WHITE: If you ask me, I think Jimmy Carter gave the American people no sense whatsoever of where he was going. He promised them the gospel and human rights and equal rights for everybody. He was going to take care of the sick, the old, the women, the rmnonties, the students, and the teachers. He was full of good will, but he had no sense of where the country was going or of all these vast events going on from the outside. You had the sense of humiliation over the hostages m Iran. You had the sense of an uncontrollable inflation. All Jimmy Carter was promising were visions--but the visions were more of the same. They were the same visions that had been promised to the American people since at least the time of John F. Kennedy, perhaps since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Finally, the American people had it. They could not see where these visions, where the Democratic party, if such exists, was going. In that sense, it was a repudiation of a sitting president--and that hasn't taken place since Herbert Hoover.