Remembering Jimmy Carter

Ever since he entered hospice care a few weeks ago, at age 97, reminiscences and accolades of Jimmy Carter have fluttered across the cyber-sphere. They triggered my own memories of the peanut farmer turned President turned humanitarian: the only President with whom I have any personal experience.

I first saw Jimmy Carter at Quincy Market in Boston, 1976, gladhanding tourists, making his pitch to be elected President. The city was aglow that year, playing a central role in our nation’s Bicentennial celebrations. Quincy Market was still fresh and innovative. I had my doubts whether the soft-spoken Southerner was up to the executive task of the Presidency, but I understood that he was a necessary salve to our national bruises of Vietnam, and Watergate.

My fears proved accurate. The one term governor of a mid-tier state with almost no D.C. connections took forever to put his government in place; key appointments lagged for months. Before equilibrium set in, inflation raged, gas lines stretched blocks, and Iranians took hostages. The former Navy officer’s ship of state never found an even keel.

What Jimmy Carter lacked in executive function, he compensated for in moral leadership. The modest walk to his inauguration, the cardigan sweaters, the direct appeals to turn down our thermostats, his Playboy admission to committing “adultery in my heart.” The man from Plains was the perfect antidote to Richard M. Nixon. And though many of us proclaimed that Jimmy was the kind of man we wanted, we had to reckon with the truth…