SACRAMENTO — Jimmy Carter was a worthy candidate for president in 1976. A smiling, naive anti-Washington outsider who promised truth and decency.
He was a populist by nature, but he appealed to voters’ better angels rather than their worst qualities. He preached love, not hate.
That’s how I remember the former governor and peanut farmer from the small plains of Georgia. I covered him up close, from campaigning in the living rooms and street corners of the Iowa caucuses in January to the Democratic National Convention in July, when he won his party’s presidential nomination. .
However, he may not have been the right president at the time.
America was hit with astronomical inflation of up to 14%, making what the country experienced over the past two years look like an economic boom. Mortgage interest rates have reached nearly 16% in some areas.
On November 9, 1979, one of the hostages at the US embassy in Tehran is shown to a crowd outside the Iranian diplomatic mission.
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In addition, Iranian revolutionaries captured 52 American hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and the Carter administration’s chances of re-election in 1980 were doomed by the embarrassment of a failed rescue attempt.
To many voters, the Democratic president appeared naive and incapable of standing up in Washington. This is despite the fact that he oversaw the historic peace agreement between Israeli and Egyptian leaders at Camp David.
Carter’s stock speech on the 1976 campaign included the solemn declaration: “Like the American people, I want a government filled with compassion, decency, candor, honesty, brotherhood, and love.”
In 1980, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan ran against the incumbent and found a receptive audience. Carter gave us no better government than the people. He gave us a government as good as Jimmy Carter’s. And we know it’s not enough. ”
Reagan won by a landslide in the Electoral College.
Former President Carter teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, on August 23, 2015.
(David Goldman/Associated Press)
But Carter’s humanitarian and diplomatic contributions made him perhaps the greatest former president.
Throughout his life, he was extremely energetic and persistent, and he persevered until the end.
Almost two years ago, I wrote a memorial column for Mr. Carter, who decided to forego “additional medical intervention” for his melanoma that had spread to his brain and liver and entered hospice care. Then he held on until Sunday, when he turned 100.
In 1976, Carter brought fresh faces and a breath of fresh air to cynical voters who had lost respect for the presidency over Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal and the lies he and his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had told about the Vietnam War. It gave me breath.
“My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president,” the initially largely unknown candidate began his stump speech, with his ever-popular smile on his face. He was running against a crowded field of more established candidates, including eventual California Governor Jerry Brown.
Carter quickly continued. “My wife Rosalynn and I have been married for 29 and a half years. She is the only woman I have ever loved.” – Pause – “Loved.”
Frankly, I thought this was a little strange. The candidate felt the need to tell voters that he only loved one woman. But voters clearly ate it up. He won contest after contest, eventually ousting incumbent Gerald Ford.
There was no rival who could beat him.
And he was always close to the news media and wasn’t afraid to joke with reporters. In his early years, he would travel 100 miles to be interviewed by a small-town newspaper reporter.
One day I found him standing alone on a street corner in Iowa. “Stay here, George,” he told me. “I’m holding a press conference.” He walked to a pay phone, called an aide, and a few television reporters and newspaper reporters quickly showed up.
Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and Mayor Richard J. Daley at the Illinois Democratic Convention in Chicago, September 9, 1976.
(Thomas O’Halloran/Photoquest/Getty Images)
In the subsequent Illinois primary, Carter also demonstrated that he could get along with a powerful organizational boss, namely Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. In Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Carter attacked politicians. In Chicago, however, he forged a strong alliance with his boss Daley.
Carter, Daley and actor Mickey Rooney led Chicago’s extravagant St. Patrick’s Day parade the day after winning the Illinois primary and becoming the undisputed front-runners in the race. I vividly remember walking side by side.
But Mr. Carter never changed his rhetoric, always using plain language and avoiding flashy language.
“What voters want is someone who can run the government competently, who understands the people’s problems and who speaks the truth,” he told a television interviewer. This year we won’t be dealing with ideology. ”
Another trademark line from his standard speech. “I will never mislead you. I will never lie.”
But in truth, he confused many people with his contradictory positions on several issues, including abortion and busing to integrate public schools.
After Carter’s caucus victory in Iowa, the state’s Democratic Party chairman, who was neutral in the race, was asked if he thought voters misunderstood the candidate’s position on abortion.
“Wrong, wrong? Mr. Carter has three different positions on that,” the party leader responded.
One morning, while campaigning in the Wisconsin primary in Milwaukee, I heard Carter support a position on school busing that would please members of a predominantly black church. Ta.
At noon, he addressed white voters at a bowling alley and won their agreement, arguing that busing should be voluntary and locally controlled.
Anything. It worked politically.
On January 8, 1977, President-elect Jimmy Carter flashed his familiar smile while speaking to newspaper reporters at his home in Plains, Georgia. He announced that Vice President-elect Walter Mondale will make a series of foreign trips early in his administration. .
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Carter loved to show off his charming hometown of Plains, population 683. I interviewed him there on an unforgettable day.
Locals gathered around the loading dock and watched reporters sit on swings and lockers and ask questions of the future president. The freight train was interrupted.
“We have to wait until the train passes,” Carter said. “It doesn’t happen often, but it’s customary on the plains to watch the trains go by.”
At the time, voters were drawn to Mr. Carter’s rustic style and grinned. Would they be there today?
Unfortunately, probably not. After half a century, we are tired of being too polarized.
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