Without Jimmy Carter we might not have gotten Ronald Reagan, without Ronald Reagan there would probably still be a Soviet Union.

It took Jimmy Carter to give us Ronald Reagan.

President Ford was taken for a ride by his predecessor, whom he unpardonably pardoned; Jimmy Carter was also taken for a ride, but by his successor, Ronald Reagan, over the return of the Iran hostages.

Jimmy Carter began his planning in the early summer of 1976, Ronald Reagan a year prior. The Clinton Administration, elected in 1992, lingered in naming its team, and as a result, took almost a year to staff its ranks.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Reagan and Thatcher displayed Churchillian magnanimity towards Gorbachev's broken nation. Relations were never better. There was no triumphalism.