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I once met a nice old couple in West Texas who were still sore about Jimmy Carter. His crime? Enforcement 55 mph The speed limit on the country's roads about four decades ago.
However, attacking the 39th US president, who died on Sunday, was not just conservative sport. It was a recurring phrase The Simpsons also. This was tough for a respected and often far-sighted man, whose governance struggles – with inflation, with Iran – were largely beyond his control. On the other hand, without this anger, that historic popular impatience at the end of the 1970s, there would have been no corresponding appetite for new ideas. No anger, no Reagan.
I am increasingly convinced of what we might call the Carter Rule: that rich democracies need a crisis in order to change. It is almost impossible to convince voters of radical reforms until their country falls into severe trouble. The chronic type is not enough. Remember, Reaganism was on display before 1980. Carter himself was a deregulated and new thinker in office. But voters were not weary enough at that point to contemplate a complete break with the post-war Keynesian consensus. There should have been more pain. The resemblance to Britain in the same period is uncanny: an atmosphere of malaise, a false start or two in reform, then a dramatic humiliation (the 1976 IMF loan) that finally persuaded voters to give Thatcher carte blanche. Things had to get worse to get better.
If you understand this, you will understand a lot about contemporary Europe. Britain and Germany are stuck in flawed economic models, because ultimately things are not so bad there. The status quo is uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as the upfront costs of change. Therefore, the slightest reduction in retiree benefits or inheritance tax exemptions sparks popular anger. Now compare this with southern Europe. Most Mediterranean countries have reformed their way to economic growth (Spain), financial health (Greece(And high employment rates (Portugal) precisely because of the crisis in the Eurozone around 2010.) The fundamental arguments about the “character” of the South, about its work ethic, etc., turned out to be nonsense. Forced to change, it did .
Of course, leaders can and should try to break this rule. They are honor-bound to act before their nation's predicament becomes acute. But doesn't this describe Emmanuel Macron in recent years? And look at his plight. If the French president had tried to pass his controversial budget in response to the sovereign debt crisis, rather than avoiding it, more listening would have been required. If he had raised the government retirement age in the middle of a crisis, and not to avoid it, the protests would not have been so intense. There are no votes in the preventive measures. Few of us mean it when we urge governments to think long term, repair roofs while the sun is shining, and so on.
Once you see Carter Base in one place, you'll start to see it everywhere. It is now clear that Europe could have weaned itself off Russian energy long ago. But it took a war to force the issue. India had decades to repeal the licensing law and other draconian government measures. But it took the severe economic crisis of 1991 to focus minds. (Including the eminent Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister and later Prime Minister who died three days before Carter.)
The problem with this argument is that it is akin to a kind of strategic defeatism: an active desire to make things worse and potentially get better. Well, to be clear, the “burn everything” slogan is unreasonable. In most cases, a crisis is just a crisis, not a prelude to reform. Otherwise, Argentina would have put its economic house in order decades ago. But if crisis is not a sufficient condition for change, I suggest that it has become a necessary condition. This is even more true in high-income countries, where enough voters have enough to lose that even small tweaks to the status quo can be provocative.
And so for Britain. If there is any leader today who should reflect on Carter's life and times, it is Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister has useful ideas, as does Carter. As with his “feel bad” speech, his gloom about the state of things at least shows that he understands how much change is needed. But as soon as he asks voters to bear some loss or disruption in the short term in order to achieve greater gains, he finds himself alone. He, like Carter, is stuck in one of those historical pockets where the national appetite for change is growing, but not at the right time to manage it. And why? Brexit is a drag on economic growth, but not so catastrophic as to require an immediate review. The NHS is forever teetering on the precipice without quite falling off it. While some areas threaten to get worse (schools), something else is improving to compensate (planning). Things are potentially bad. That's not bad enough. Those who think Starmer is too cautious may be overestimating the role of individual agency. It is the public that decides when it is ready to make the difficult trade-offs.
In politics, as in marriage, there is a big difference between dissatisfaction and breaking point. Any radical political program in the United States in 1972 or 1976 would have been dropped dead from the press. It didn't take long for it to fit in nicely with the general mood. Carter's tragedy was a tragedy of timing, not talent. Now Britain, like America in his time, is still a few years away from that moment in the lives of nations when voters look around and finally say: “Enough is enough.”
