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By making character an important factor in his presidential campaign, Carter forced Americans to consider how important it was to them. After all, not so much
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President Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100, lived long enough to catch a glimpse of history’s judgment against him. It was not as bad as the “failure of the presidency” commonly applied when he lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980, and was widely praised as “the greatest former president of all time” as a good man who did good deeds.
The 2002 Nobel Peace Prize cemented the latter title, but later awards to Al Gore (2007) and Barack Obama (2009) diminished the prize’s prestige. The three Democratic presidential candidates in seven years have come across as somewhat partisan.
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The impact of Carter’s presidency was greater than the deregulation that accompanied the Camp David Accords and later the Reagan Revolution. Carter was a relative unknown when he announced his candidacy for president in late 1974, but he presented himself to the American public as the person he would be after leaving office: a good man who did good deeds. did. In 1976, being a good person was important. It was a cultural debate, and Carter ’76 played cultural politics.
“What I want is the same thing you want,” Carter said in 1976 in 100 different ways. Americans. ”
“A government as good as its people” became his mantra, coupled with a promise to “never lie” to the American people. It was not a policy platform, much less a political philosophy. It was a promise not to cheat or lie.
Both had very low standards, but the prevailing standards at the time were even lower. For five years before Carter ran for president, Americans were drowning in the “long national nightmare” of Richard Nixon’s lies about Watergate. And before that, there were more serious revelations that both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations repeatedly lied to the American people and Congress about Vietnam.
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Therefore, Carter argued, we don’t need good government as much as we need good people. And he was a good man, more outspoken than any of his predecessors about his conversion and the centrality of the Christian faith.
This change in campaign strategy, contrary to what Mr. Carter had hoped for, would have two long-term effects.
The first was to highlight the political influence of American evangelical Protestants. It was Carter who introduced many Americans to “born again” Christians who did not belong to the older Protestant mainstream established churches. But that newly mobilized political power would quickly move in a conservative direction. In 1980, the “moral majority” swung heavily in favor of Reagan, and those same voters proved their partisan loyalty for generations by voting for Donald Trump.
The second long-term effect is that character becomes less and less important in political leadership. Unwittingly, by making character an important factor, Carter forced Americans to consider how important character was to them. Did it matter that America’s president was as good as the American people liked to believe he was?
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In 1976, that consideration worked in Carter’s favor. But in the end, Americans decided that they were content enough to have a leader as compromised and corrupt as their culture had deteriorated, and a good outcome would come: the economy. Fool! — was more important than being a good person.
In 1992, one of the great good guys, George H.W. Bush, lost to “Slick Willie.” Bill Clinton never tried to present himself as a good person. Bush was shocked and devastated to have lost to a “draft-dodging, pot-smoking female playboy.”
In the 2016 election, Democrats thought they had a convincing argument against Trump, arguing that he was morally unfit to be president, his character too vile, and his integrity too questionable. President Trump’s response was effective. “I’m no better than Bill Clinton.”
Carter raised the stakes for the character. That worked to his advantage in 1976 and after he became president. He died as a respected man. But character no longer matters, as the persistence of morally questionable figures in public life proves.
President Jimmy Carter died on the fourth day of Hanukkah. In 1979, he became the first American president to publicly light the Hanukkah menorah, starting an annual Washington tradition that raises the profile of the Jewish holiday. He lit the fourth light of the menorah in 1979, during the darkest days of his presidential term. The new Iranian regime had just taken hostages at the American embassy in Tehran.
Carter was a devout Christian whose life had a sense of Hanukkah and Christmas, a flickering light that persists in the darkness. A light that shines in the darkness that cannot overcome the darkness.
Jimmy Carter walked his life toward the light. Requiescat at pace.
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