Carter’s Kissinger

To contain its self-destructive tendencies, the ancient Athenian democracy introduced two non-democratic constitutional safeguards. One ensured that experienced generals, not popular rhetoricians, would make the ultimate decisions for Athens’ military defense. The other provided that any citizen whose private means gave him inordinate public influence could be voted out of the commonwealth for a time at the discretion of a substantial minority—a procedure called ostracism because a write-in ballot resembling an oyster shell (ostrakon) was used. Our democracy obviously lacks such safeguards. Since 1961, civilian experts have planned our military campaigns, directing field operations from the White House basement. And men as powerful as the Rockefeller brothers, so far from being ostracized, are able to organize their public influence on a scale that dwarfs the Judiciary and Executive Branch of our Federal Government taken together.

Jimmy Carter’s determined pursuit of the Presidency since 1973 has been compared by expert President-watchers to John F. Kennedy’s tremendous effort that started in 1957 and was crowned with success in November 1960.

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Henry Paolucci

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Jimmy Carter

Henry Kissinger

Presidential Election

Foreign Policy

John F. Kennedy

Richard Nixon

To contain its self-destructive tendencies, the ancient Athenian democracy introduced two non-democratic constitutional safeguards. One ensured that experienced generals, not popular rhetoricians, would make the ultimate decisions for Athens’ military defense. The other provided that any citizen whose private means gave him inordinate public influence could be voted out of the commonwealth for a time at the discretion of a substantial minority—a procedure called ostracism because a write-in ballot resembling an oyster shell (ostrakon) was used. Our democracy obviously lacks such safeguards. Since 1961, civilian experts have planned our military campaigns, directing field operations from the White House basement. And men as powerful as the Rockefeller brothers, so far from being ostracized, are able to organize their public influence on a scale that dwarfs the Judiciary and Executive Branch of our Federal Government taken together.

Jimmy Carter’s determined pursuit of the Presidency since 1973 has been compared by expert President-watchers to John F. Kennedy’s tremendous effort that started in 1957 and was crowned with success in November 1960.