President emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass had an interesting take on Tuesday’s installment of Morning Joe on MSNBC. Ahead of former President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral, he claimed that Carter was actually the “forerunner” to Ronald Reagan.
Haass declared that “I actually think Jimmy Carter was a really interesting foreign policy person, who at one and the same time was both an idealist and a realist. In some ways, if you think about him, he was the forerunner of Ronald Reagan. He put human rights front and center on the foreign policy agenda, but he was still willing to deal with regimes like China and the Soviet Union, which to me, you know, was impressive, and he—by the end, he was increasing American defense spending significantly.”
The defense spending increases came after the failures of the first half of his term. Part of Carter’s human rights crusade included pulling the rug out from under the Shah of Iran, the consequences of which American presidents are still having to deal with. Reagan’s focus helped bring down the Soviet Union and its grip on Eastern Europe.
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