Seemingly every Democratic president or presidential wannabee for a generation has been labeled “the next Jimmy Carter”—a reference to the 39th president meant to be highly unflattering. (Of course, for years in the mid-20th century, Republicans got tagged as the “next Herbert Hoover.” Such is the ebb and flow of politics.) One instance that sticks in my mind is this bit of a speech by former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas at the 1992 Republican National Convention:

At the New York [Democratic National] convention, [presidential nominee Bill] Clinton was like a used car salesman peddling his vehicle for change. The wax job was shiny, the hubcaps sparkled, the upholstery was spotless, the paint was new. But when you look under the hood, he’s peddling a model from the 1970s, a Carter mobile with the axle broken and the frame bent to the left. It was a lemon for the nation in the 1970s when it sent inflation through the roof and income through the floor, and it is a lemon for America today.

Rising prices were a massive blemish on the Carter economic record and helped lead to his landslide loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980. But the Carter presidency was a long time ago, and inflation became a non-issue for years. The “next Jimmy Carter” zinger kind of lost its zing — until last year, that is, when prices started surging. Republicans again embraced the Carter insult with zeal, hurling it at President Joe Biden. A fair criticism? Well, the American Rescue Plan probably has played a role in the inflation surge, along with the Federal Reserve’s slow response, global supply-chain snarls, and spiking global energy prices.

We should hope the Powell Fed is successful in its effort to bring down inflation without throwing the economy into recession. We should also hope that Biden takes a page from the Carter economic handbook and embraces deregulation. I wonder how many Democrats under the age of 40 know that Carter, with bipartisan support, deregulated the airline, oil, railroad, and trucking industries. This from Capitalism in America by journalist Adrian Woolridge and former Fed boss Alan Greenspan: 

The political system [in the late 1970s] also began to generate antibodies to the virus of malaise. The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute joined forces to produce more than a hundred books, journal articles, and dissertations explaining why deregulation mattered and how it could be implemented. Legislation under Jimmy Carter, one of America’s most ideologically polymorphous presidents, prefigured many policies that are more commonly associated with Ronald Reagan. “Government cannot solve our problems,” Carter declared in his second State of the Union address. “It cannot eliminate poverty or provide a bountiful economy, or reduce inflation, or save our cities, or cure illiteracy, or provide energy.” He squeezed the size of government. He passed three “national austerity” budgets that trimmed social programs and deregulated a succession of key industries. “We have slashed government regulation and put free enterprise back into the airline, trucking and financial system of our country,” he said in his speech accepting his party’s nomination in 1980. “This is the greatest change in the relationship between business and government since the New Deal.” 

Deregulation this time around should begin with bipartisan legislation to reform the decades-old environmental review process to make it easier to build clean energy projects. (I’ve written frequently about this issue, including here.) The White House said Monday that President Joe Biden is “committed” to such legislation promised to Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, in exchange for his support of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. And while Democrats figure out their next steps—some progressives oppose reform—Senate Republicans have introduced a separate permitting-reform bill. Passing a meaningful permitting bill wouldn’t lower inflation today nor would the environmental regulatory system be totally reformed. But it would be a welcome start if you think it’s hard to build stuff in modern America—which it certainly is.

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