Goodbye, Jimmy

by John Maelan, WashCo Dems Communications CommitteeRed, white and blue confetti and stars, with title reading Goodbye, Jimmy

Now, we must mourn the passing of a truly great American, who also happened to be a Democrat. I say that because, of all the things Jimmy Carter was, his political affiliation may have been the least consequential.

Far from being a partisan warrior, President Carter’s legacy is that of a moderate who worked to heal a nation divided by such things as Watergate and the Vietnam War. Unlike more recent political actors who seem to delight in throwing gasoline upon a fire, Carter’s civil attempts at governance were, perhaps, just what the country needed in the late 1970s. And it’s noteworthy that this gravitas did not materialize out of the blue the moment he was inaugurated president. Jimmy Carter’s character had been a work in progress his whole adult life.

Coming of age with the world at war, young James Earl Carter joined the US Navy in 1943 as a midshipman at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. To be clear, Annapolis has always been a tough school with extremely high standards. But, graduate Carter did in 1946, as a newly minted naval ensign.

By then, however, the war was over, yet Carter still found ways to be a hero. He volunteered for the US Navy’s infant nuclear submarine program. And when an accident with the reactor of Canada’ s Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown, Carter was chosen as the most qualified to lead a crew of naval experts to shut the reactor down. The radiation was so intense that each man could only work for ninety seconds inside the reactor before lethality. And, not one to lead from the rear, Carter took his turn like all the rest. The mission was a success, with no loss of life–although, according to Navy doctors, Carter’s urine tested as radioactive for the next half year.

After the Navy, Carter returned to his native Georgia and soon got involved in Democratic Party politics. First as a school board member, then a senator in the state’s legislature, and finally in 1971, as governor. At his inauguration, he boldly declared that “the time of racial discrimination is over.” This, naturally, angered many of the pro-segregationists who’d expected him to be “one of the boys.” But Carter never went back and stood in opposition to racism all his life.

In 1976, with our nation celebrating its bicentennial, Carter ran for president against Republican incumbent Gerald Ford. It was a hard-fought race, but a race between gentlemen.

Carter won in a landslide, and then rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Among his accomplishments, he pardoned those who’d resisted the Vietnam draft, forged a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt that has endured to this day, signed the SALT II nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union, established the Department of Education, and passed the EPA Superfund law to help those affected by extreme environmental mishaps.

Unfortunately, the late 1970s were also a time of great difficulty in American history. The economy was reeling from the expense of Vietnam, increased foreign competition in manufacturing, and the OPEC nations doubling gas prices at the pump. And on the international front, chickens were coming home to roost as well. In 1979, the Iranian revolution deposed the Shah—who had been a US puppet since an Eisenhower sponsored coup—in favor of a hardline religious government. The US Embassy was stormed, and for the last year of Carter’s presidency, fifty-two Americans were held hostage in Tehran.

Carter lost the presidency in 1980 to Ronald Reagan. This, sadly, began a period of ever-rightward drift for the Republican Party, and for American policy in general, that we have yet to fully recover from. Social services were cut, homelessness rose, the wealth gap increased, and the world’s climate rapidly got hotter. Interestingly, the Reagan era is also well known as the time when the Republican party opened its doors wide to right-wing Christianity. And today, more and more, conservative politicians turn to religious arguments to back up regressive positions.

And yet, the ironic thing is that Jimmy Carter was as fine an example of a Christian as they come, and his faith very much informed his life. True, religious faith can mean many things to many people. But to Carter, his Christian faith expressed itself as a sincere desire to lead a good and generous life. And as president, he treated his faith as a personal matter that informed his own behavior, not a tool to manipulate the gullible. Carter once said that as a young man he was inspired by a sermon wherein the preacher asked, “If being a Christian was a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Well, in Jimmy Carter’s case, I would say, “Yes, guilty as charged.”

 After leaving the presidency, he established the Carter Center to “wage peace, fight disease, and bring hope” to the world. And as a “citizen diplomat,” Carter worked tirelessly to ensure free and fair elections around the world, negotiate peace between belligerents, and fight the spread of preventable diseases.

His charitable works at home are no less impressive. For instance, for the past several decades he spent a week out of every year personally swinging a hammer to build housing for Habitat for Humanity.

And now this good man has passed. What awaits us beyond the veil, I will not speculate. However, safe to say, if there is an Almighty who values people of good character, who spend their allotted time on Earth sincerely striving to make our planet a better place for their fellow human beings, then I think Jimmy Carter need have no fear as he enters the hereafter.

So, rest in peace, Mr President. The world is clearly a better place for having had you in it. And your example is an inspiration to all of us Democrats left behind.