Jimmy Carter, President and Citizen.

More observations on what he meant in his time, and why he matters for the future.

Jimmy Carter may not have been a fashion icon (black socks). But he was a surprisingly talented athlete—tennis, softball, running, ball sports, “general athleticism.” During the campaign summer of 1976, he was usually chosen on the merits as pitcher for weekend softball games in his home town of Plains, Ga. His side would be staff members, plus ringers from the Secret Service. The opponents were usually from the press.
I’m not sure, but I think this photo is from a game that summer in which Ralph Nader, wearing a suit, was the home-plate umpire. Deb and I were there. Fortunately for the Carter team, neither of us played. (Photo Owen Franken/Corbis via Getty Images.)

In a post two days ago, which I wrote after a stay in Panama but before learning of Jimmy Carter’s death, I talked about the importance of Carter’s strategic vision, and his practical-politics skill, in marshaling 68 US Senate votes to ratify the Panama Canal treaties back in 1978.

As I mention in that piece, but is largely forgotten now, the most outspoken opponent of the Panama agreement was a pre-presidential Ronald Reagan, who rabble-roused against it as an American “giveaway.” (And then lived with it comfortably when he became president.) That was an early Trump-style resentment message, though delivered with Reagan-style “sunniness” rather than a Trumpian scowl.

Meanwhile the most important supporters of the Panama handover may have been the US military and national-security establishment. Since the time of Richard Nixon, military officials had been warning that the longer the US held outright-colonial control of the Panama Canal Zone, the harder it would become to defend this huge, sprawling, critical asset. Let history note that, to offset Ronald Reagan, none other than cowboy-icon John Wayne stepped up to defend the strategic wisdom of the handover.

Now, a few other year-end updates on Jimmy Carter, his times, and his legacy.

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1) CBS Sunday Morning: Jimmy Carter and the ‘magic’ of 1976.

Last year, when Carter’s end seemed near, I recorded a commentary for CBS Sunday Morning about the part of his story that few of today’s Americans would remember. That was the magical in-touch-ness with the country’s post-Vietnam, post-Watergate mood that propelled Carter from one-percent name recognition, to the Oval Office, within less than a year.

Waiting for the “appropriate” time, CBS has now posted that commentary on its site. You can see the three-minute video below, and here.

I append the written transcript in a footnote.¹ The entire CBS segment is elegantly produced and worth watching. I hope you will see it.

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2) Conversation with Peter Bergen, on Jimmy Carter and the World.

With my longtime friend Peter Bergen, host of the award-winning podcast “In the Room,” I had a chance several months ago to discuss Jimmy Carter’s foreign-policy legacy.

Peter has now posted that podcast, here. I hope you will listen to it. The old joke about Wagner’s music is that it is “better than it sounds.” I argue that Carter’s foreign policy achievements were “better than they looked.”

Thanks to Peter for this discussion.

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3) Jimmy Carter and his grandson, on American democracy.

I wrote several weeks ago about the honor of being part of the award to Jimmy Carter of the 2024 “Dayton Literary Peace Prize,” in recognition of his literary and diplomatic work over the decades.

In the footnotes you’ll find part of a trenchant speech at the close of that event by one of Carter’s grandsons, Joshua Carter, on how Jimmy Carter—who had monitored elections around the world—would assess American democracy in our times.² [Update: When I am sure I have the DLPP’s permission to do so, I will post the recorded audio of Joshua Carter’s brief and tremendously powerful speech.]

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4) How Jimmy Carter created the craft-beer movement.

The WSJ tells the story, here.

Screenshot from WSJ story on Jimmy Carter and craft brewing.

As part of Carter’s staff, I literally “wrote” the executive order deregulating home brewing and opening the way to today’s craft-beer revival. (As I did for the mixed-blessing of airline deregulation.) I try to impress brewery owners with this factlet, whenever I visit. But of course I was just a cog in the machine. Carter himself made it possible, as part of his de-regulatory agenda. The brewing part is one of his more positive achievements.

A young president, a seemingly immortal ex-president, an example for our times and our nation. (Screenshot from CBS Sunday Morning.)

Jimmy Carter lived to see himself recognized as a man of consequence. I am glad that Joe Biden will be able to preside over his state funeral, and not anyone else.

1. Here is what I recorded for CBS:

Few people would remember now, but the Jimmy Carter who sprang from obscurity to the White House had magic.

His piercing blue eyes. His big-toothed smile that became a trademark on campaign posters. His ease with the different cultures of a traumatized post-Vietnam America: Poets and farmers, Evangelicals and rock-and-rollers, war protestors and his fellow veterans, white and Black people alike. His ability to connect with so many of them led voters to take a leap of faith with him. Watergate was still an open wound. Carter offered balm and healing. He said, "I'll never lie to you." He promised to give us his best.

In my 20s, I was thrilled to meet him at one of his famous softball games in Plains, and honored to work as a speechwriter on his campaign. Americans crave the prospect of healing, renewing, fulfilling the best in our national ideals. That is what the earnest, intense, no-frills Jimmy Carter offered, and what much of the country accepted, with hope.

Through his first year in office, it worked. As a new president, Carter was more popular than nearly anyone who came after him.

Then, things went wrong. Runaway inflation. Endless gas lines. A hostage crisis in Iran. Much more.

Some of it was Carter's fault, through his rigidity and inexperience. A lot was bad timing and bad luck. He was relatively young for a president, and very fit. Yet merciless cameras caught him being attacked by a "killer rabbit," and looking deathly on a 10k run. These stuck as symbols of an administration on its last legs.

After working for him in the White House, I wrote a critical and controversial article, saying that his was a "passionless" presidency. What none of us could know was that most of his adult life still lay ahead of him – the years in which he would show his passions, values and achievements, as a builder, disease-fighter, peacemaking Nobel laureate.

He would live to see his character and idealism recognized, and his time in office re-assessed.

Jimmy Carter had magic at the beginning. And he found it again.

2. From Joshua Carter’s address, as recorded at the time, which was immediately after the Trump-Harris election results came in:

Many of you have asked if my grandfather knows the results of 2024 election. I don't know for sure, but I do know Jimmy Carter, so I must tell you that answer is Yes.

My guess would be that he has the now familiar response of being shocked and saddened, but not surprised.

He has written about improving our democracy since he left the White House, because our democracy has many flaws.

Our ballots don't look the same. We don't vote at the same time. There is no start day for our campaigns. We have no requirement for equal time for our candidates. The same states always start first, and most other states are ignored. We are the only democracy in the world that does not have a central authority to declare the winner of our election. Tuesday's verdict did not come from an American official. It came from the news.

But still, my grandfather has warned us that problems run deeper than the machinery of our ballots on election day.

Jimmy Carter has consistently reminded us that the presidency of the United States is the only elected office in the world where the person with the most votes is not guaranteed to win. The flaw of our electoral college, which was as unwise as the compromise of counting only three fifths of a Black person guarantees that the votes in most of American States will never have an effect on the presidential outcome.

Jimmy Carter has also pointed out that gerrymandering breeds extremism and it destroys civil discourse by design. In a country where politicians choose their voters, gerrymandering awards the office to whoever wins a partisan primary with no pressure for a politician to move to the center to attract opposing votes.

In this system, civil discourse is seen as an unwanted threat to party loyalty and is actively rejected. It is true that the biggest jobs—US senator, governor, president—are not subject to the constraints of gerrymandering, but the overwhelming majority of our elected positions are and that poisons the well. So if my grandfather was standing here today, I guarantee he would state that the most damaging Supreme Court decision in modern history was Citizens United, which removes all meaningful limitations of money in our politics.

He would say it's now our system. Politicians are bought, but not as a bug, as a feature.

But his most damning indictment of American politics today might come from his Nobel Peace Prize lecture.

Toward the end of his speech, he says “At the beginning of the new millennium I was asked to discuss here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces, and among all possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth that was 22 years ago, and the problem has only grown by an order of magnitude since.”

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So where does this leave us? What are my grandfather’s lessons?

What do we do when we feel and see that everything we care about is under attack, and not just immigration policy and terrorists? I mean the very idea of human rights and democracy and truth.

The answer is that we hold on to our unchanging principles of truth, human rights, service, democracy and peace, and we tell our story.

Jimmy Carter's superpower was his ability to connect with anybody and tell the truth. He could talk to kings and popes just as easily as he could talk to farmers in a poverty stricken village in Africa. He worked with billionaires and he worked with people who lived on less than $1 a day, and the way he found his audience was by listening to their concerns with compassion and then working to improve their lives.

We must recognize bad actors and lost causes, but we also must recognize that legitimately bad actors are few.

In fact, we could probably stand here and name them, but despite on how they voted, most Americans still want the same thing.

We want peace. We want stability. We want opportunity. We must also recognize that screaming, or distilling a friend or family member into the person that they voted for, has not produced the desired results.

There will be hardship coming from our government over the next four years, the incoming President campaigned on it, and the people who will be in his government have reaffirmed it. These hardships will impact red voters, blue voters and non voters alike.

So now more than ever, our most powerful weapons are our stories.