CNN
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The first two seats at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral should be a grim picture.
Former President Barack Obama sat next to President-elect Donald Trump. President Obama has said President Trump is unfit for the White House, and President Trump has repeatedly asked false questions about President Obama’s U.S. citizenship.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, sat in front of President Trump, likely still hurting from their November election loss.
Former President George W. Bush sat in front of former Vice President Al Gore, who received more votes than Bush in 2000 but had to accept defeat in the election.
President Bush did not have a chance to speak with former First Lady Michelle Obama, with whom he had developed a close friendship, as she did not attend the funeral.
Mr. Gore sat next to former Vice President Mike Pence, but his strained relationship with Mr. Trump, who is one row away, cost Mr. Pence his place in the Republican Party.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also could not fully accept her 2016 victory over Trump and may be upset about sitting next to him.
And while President Joe Biden, sitting in the aisle of the first seat, still thinks he could have beaten Trump, he is clearly under pressure from Democrats, including Obama, to vote in 2024. Withdrew from the election campaign.
The job of president, given by voters after an election, is adversarial in nature.
But this meeting of current and former presidents, commemorating the passing of their own president, offered important lessons about how to put politics in its place.
It turns out that Carter and former President Gerald Ford, whom he defeated to win the White House, became close friends after Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Naturally, only one of them can fulfill their promise, but they make a telephone agreement to give the eulogy at their respective funerals. Mr. Ford died in December 2006, and Mr. Carter spoke at his predecessor’s funeral in January 2007.
Mr. Ford’s son, actor Stephen Ford, delivered the address his father had prepared at Mr. Carter’s funeral, which included a tribute to the two men who were once the most powerful people on the planet. It included a moving message about how cross-party friendships were forged during that time.
“As fate would have it for a short season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals, but in the great years that followed, our friends bonded us as the first two presidents since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.” said Stephen Ford as he read his father’s eulogy.
“It was because of our shared values that Jimmy and I were able to respect each other as adversaries before we valued each other as dear friends.”
It may be hard to believe that friendship can exist between people who compete against each other, much less between presidents.
“There’s an old saying that two presidents in the same room is one too many,” said Mr. Ford, who shared a flight with Mr. Carter to the funeral of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981. He pointed out that he was worried about this.
“It was somewhere across the Atlantic that Jimmy and I developed a friendship that transcended politics,” Ford said. “Then we decided to exercise one of the prerogatives of former presidents and forget about the harsh words one of us had against the other.”
They shared “our experience discovering that there actually is life after the White House.”
It was around this time that President Obama was seen exchanging a few words with President Trump and nodding his head. He was also seen giving a speech before the service.
Watch Trump and Obama chat before Carter’s funeral.
Mr. Ford said he agreed with Mr. Carter that the United States should more directly address the “Palestinian issue” in order to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East. According to Ford’s statement, written years ago, that confusion occurred in Washington. Today, it feels like a warning that the U.S. government didn’t heed enough.
Mr. Ford said that both he and Mr. Carter learned after taking office that “political defeat can be liberating, if we are free to discuss topics that are not necessarily consistent with short-term political popularity.” Yes, he said.
Although Trump attended his wedding to Melania Trump before entering politics, there are no expectations that similar friendships will develop between Obama and Trump, Trump and Biden, and Clinton and Trump. You shouldn’t. Mr. Carter and Mr. Ford, like Mr. Clinton, Mr. W. Bush and Mr. Obama, adhered to the philosophy of withdrawing from day-to-day politics after leaving the White House. Trump has been an anomaly so far, never leaving the political fight and fighting his way back to the White House. And he remains hostile to both Obama and Biden, at least in public.
However, Trump is prohibited by the constitution from running for a fourth presidential election. This means that he will officially join the former president’s club for four years from January 20th. Perhaps then Trump and the presidents before and after him will find some kind of peace.
