He slowly won me over, as he struggled with various crises and perfect storms that would cost him the support of many voters.
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As president, Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, had his wins and losses, which can be and have been enumerated. But, viewed more holistically, he’s a fascinating case study in the “judgment of history.”
A one-term president once considered “weak” and something of a failure, his star has risen both far and fast (on a historical time scale). This “redemption” owes much to Carter’s stellar post-presidency — more than four decades devoted to selfless public service as a human rights, civil rights, and cultural ambassador, public health hero, founder of the Carter Center, and builder of houses with Habitat for Humanity.
His reputation has also been enhanced in part by exposure of the circumstances of his non-reelection (the Reagan/GOP hostage scheme). And his character glistens in comparison with the dubious ethics of several of his successors.
But there has also been a clarified appreciation of his achievements in office, which time has largely rescued from the shadow of his failures. From his creation of the Departments of Energy and Education and the Superfund, to his handling of a series of domestic and international crises, to the Camp David Accords and the SALT II Treaty, his presidency was, in retrospect, rich with lasting accomplishments.
I confess that I was no fan of candidate Carter in 1976. I was a fervent supporter of Rep. Mo Udall (D-AZ), who was a stalwart liberal with an independent streak and exemplary integrity, and who promised a chance for genuine progressive governance — a chance that, for many reasons, America has not seen again. Carter was well to Udall’s right and, frankly, brought a New South ethos that did not inspire my northerner’s trust. It is all but forgotten how tight the Democratic nomination battle was, with Udall coming in, as I remember it, close second in a string of winner-take-all primaries. I cried the night Carter clinched.
That November I cast my first presidential vote for him but, when he defeated Gerald Ford, I was just on the glad side of indifferent. I wasn’t convinced it would matter all that much (I little knew then that it would be the last such six-of-one election; every one since has felt momentous, those of the Trumpocene existential; it is hard, verging on impossible, to imagine returning now to anything like a Carter-Ford non-hyperpolarized electoral politics). But Carter slowly won me over, earning my respect even as he struggled with various crises and perfect storms that cost him the support of many voters.
One moment stands out to me: the Sweater Speech. Faced at the start of his term with a looming energy crisis, Carter pleaded with Americans to think less selfishly, to sacrifice, to wear a sweater rather than jacking up the heat in a cold house. He did it in a way that was a lot less theatrical than JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Carter dared to take JFK’s gauzy rhetorical flourish and make it specific, calling upon Americans to do, collectively, a few simple things for the common good. And it was mocked as a risibly naive gesture — a major political gaffe.
But, for me, it set a marker against all the shallow, crafted, pandering bullshit that has followed. Joe Biden is a little bit in the Carter mold — and it cost him. But admirable is admirable — even if it takes a later generation of historians to redeem you and set the record straight.
If there is one thing in Carter’s long public life I wish could have been otherwise, it was the reluctance and ultimate failure of the Carter Center to grapple aggressively with the threat posed to American democracy by concealed, computerized vote counting.
The Center did such important work in monitoring elections abroad but demurred when it came to US elections, with the strange reasoning that our domestic elections did not meet the basic criteria that enabled such monitoring elsewhere. And thus our own elections were deprived of the scrutiny applied to so many other countries — a failure with an enduring impact on our politics and our democracy that I suspect historians will come to regard as tragic.
Carter famously said, “I will never lie to you” (something of an over-promise — for any politician); and he did bring a few problematic political allies with him from Georgia to the White House. A relative outsider, he had a steep and lengthy learning curve.
Another outsider, Donald Trump, lied over 30,000 times in his four years in office and learned only how to break things, get his way, become an autocrat — and he has not stopped lying since. No chance the historians (unless they are on Trump’s payroll) will rescue him from ignominy. I would have wished for Jimmy Carter that he might have seen the rule of law, and the democracy he served so well, triumph over its mortal enemy.
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