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Carter also pushed through civil service reforms, deregulation of airlines, trucking and banking institutions and passed strip-mining legislation. Not surprisingly for a former farmer, his agriculture program has been extremely good, raising farm price supports and helping promote sales abroad. Each year in office, exports have broken records, culminating in this year's shipment worth $40 billion. But farmers, caught in the squeeze of inflation and angered by his embargo on grain sales to the Soviet Union, have often railed against him.
The President's finest hour in foreign policy was his negotiation of the Camp David peace accords that led to the treaty between Israel and Egypt. Normalizing relations with China—in campaign speeches Carter joyously refers to "a billion new friends"—while maintaining a working relationship with Taiwan has also been a major positive step. The Panama Canal treaties, lifting the Turkish arms embargo, the sale of nuclear materials to India and the attempt to create closer relations with Saudi Arabia through the sale of warplanes were all difficult issues that the Administration fought to successful conclusions.
Yet in many more areas of domestic and foreign policy, Carter has been unable to anticipate, to present a coherent approach to a problem, to avoid zigzagging. "The President has learned how to work with Congress," says Presidential Assistant Anne Wexler, one of Carter's savviest political advisers. "At the beginning he thought he didn't need to be as personally involved, but he has discovered the only way to get bills passed is to build coalitions of support."
But Carter has learned that lesson late, and incompletely. And he was dealing with Democratic majorities on the Hill—even if those majorities were riven by unruly factions. Congress embarrassed the White House this year by twice overriding vetoes, the first time a Democratic Congress had done that to a Democratic President in 28 years.
Carter's relations with Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, once one of the Administration's staunchest allies, have soured because the White House felt the West Virginian was pushing Ted Kennedy's challenge. Carter, who never liked or respected Congress and came to office running against it, still has poor relations with the Hill in general. His congressional liaison staff, the weakest major department in the White House, has been further sapped by Hamilton Jordan's skimming off the best of the group to work on the President's re-election campaign.
Though the President has shown little ability in managing the economy, he has had to contend with many difficulties beyond his control. The seeds of inflation were well nurtured before he took office. He had no say in setting OPEC's oil prices, nor could he be blamed for the fact that Toyota and Datsun anticipated America's growing desire for small cars well before Detroit. But Carter clearly has contributed to the confusion over the economy. Last spring, for example, he first asked the public to stop buying on credit, then reversed himself weeks later.