Reading the recent obituaries honoring the late president Jimmy Carter, including some from official U.S. Navy sources, one would think he was a powerful Navy supporter. Carter certainly had Navy bona fides; as a graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy and an early selectee for nuclear power training by nuclear Navy father Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, Carter served honorably on active duty for six years before departing active service in the wake of his father’s death from cancer, whereupon he took over the family peanut farming business in Plains, Ga. Carter counted himself a Rickover disciple throughout his life and often spoke of how his Navy training shaped his desire for public service.
Yet Carter’s presidency was not friendly to the Navy. His senior defense department officials, including Defense Secretary Harold Brown, under secretary of defense Bob Komer, and deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Randy Jayne, were vociferous opponents of a larger and more capable Navy. Carter sought major cuts in the Navy throughout his presidency and only reversed those in the face of Soviet aggression in Afghanistan and the military disaster of the failed Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission. Those military-related foreign policy reverses played a significant role in Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. President Carter was a caring individual who set new standards of service to others for former presidents and should be justly honored for those efforts, but he was no friend of the U.S. Navy when serving as president.
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