The death of President Carter, coming as it does as a change of governments is underway, is a moment to reflect on his mixed record in the White House. On the domestic front, Carter deserves credit for deregulating the airline, rail, trucking, energy, and communications sectors. His defense buildup gave President Reagan a head start in his confrontation with the Soviets. His appointment of Paul Volcker to lead the Fed helped to end “stagflation.”

In his generous application of the pardon power, too, Carter followed a merciful policy whose breadth few other presidents have matched — although President Biden isn’t finished yet. Several hundred thousand Americans found legal relief via Carter’s pardon of Vietnam-era draft dodgers. The move helped the nation move past a divisive era. Yet in matters of foreign affairs, Carter’s policies have in many respects borne bitter fruit.

Feature what could be the cardinal error of the Carter presidency: The betrayal of our ally Free China in a strategic shift — albeit commenced by President Nixon — to accept the communist regime at Beijing as the legitimate ruler of China. That led to America’s unilateral withdrawal from its mutual defense pact with the Republic of China and de-recognition of Free China’s government, today China’s only democracy.

At the time of Carter’s demarche, the shock felt by the residents of Free China’s capital, Taipei, was such that they tossed peanuts at the American embassy, which would soon be downgraded to an “institute.” America’s abandonment of its longtime ally — with whom we Yanks had fought Japan during World War II — left Free China “isolated,” as the Financial Times has put it, “on the international stage.”

In an editorial at the time, the Wall Street Journal condemned how Carter had “paid a high price in conceding the People’s Republic’s claims to Taiwan with so little assurance of Taiwan’s security.” The terms to which Carter agreed, the Journal added, offered no guarantee to Taiwan that “reunification will not be attempted by force.” A subsequent Journal editorial chided Carter, averring that this was “not the way a great power should behave.” 

Almost a half century later, in light of the unfolding disaster of corporate America’s attempts to cozy up to Beijing — only to have their technology stolen and their sales plummet against local rivals, amid the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs — the logic of Carter’s pivot toward Communist China looks less compelling. Carter’s embrace of the détente policy toward the Soviet Union reflected an equally misguided position of weakness. At one summit, he kissed Leonid Brezhnev.

Carter’s giveaway of the Panama Canal looks even less wise in retrospect. The canal, a triumph of American engineering, was described by the Sun when the waterway opened as “an American canal, forever to be wholly under the control of the United States.” Carter and Congressional Democrats ignored that insight in a reflection of the self-described “malaise” that characterized the 39th president’s tenure — and was repudiated by Reagan’s election.

America’s choice of Reagan marked a pendulum swing away not only from Carter’s foreign policy but the tenor of his leadership. While his modesty first charmed Americans, Politico reports, when he, say, walked to the Capitol after being sworn in, his “stern and scolding tone” soon wearied his countrymen. He lectured Americans about lowering their thermostats to save energy, barred liquor from White House parties, and sold the presidential yacht.

Even so, Carter’s personal probity was never in doubt. Along with many Democrats of his era, he transcended the bigotry of his origins in segregation-era Georgia to become a staunch advocate for Civil Rights. His record of military service in the United States Navy, too, where he was a submarine officer after graduating from Annapolis, was an early marker of his commitment to civic duty — and all too rare among presidents of more recent vintage.

It was, though, America’s frustration with Carter’s fecklessness on the global stage — evidenced by the seizure of American hostages by Iran — that made him a one-termer. His later characterization of Israel as an “apartheid” state also reflected a lapse in judgment. On that head, Mr. Biden and Democrats have by and large failed to learn the lessons of Carter’s century. Ahead of Trump’s second term, is a pendulum swing akin to Reagan’s in the cards?