“Unlucky President, Lucky Man”
Some guy from Georgia, a former governor, spoke at my university in 1975. Jimmy Carter. He seemed nice enough, but a long shot for the presidency. It wouldn’t be the last time I misjudged a candidate’s chances.
James Fallows worked for him as a speech writer and reflects on the legacy of a lucky man and unlucky president. Jimmy Carter has always been the same person:
Whatever his role, whatever the outside assessment of him, whether luck was running with him or against, Carter was the same. He was self-controlled and disciplined. He liked mordant, edgy humor. He was enormously intelligent—and aware of it—politically crafty, and deeply spiritual. And he was intelligent, crafty, and spiritual enough to recognize inevitable trade-offs between his ambitions and his ideals. People who knew him at one stage of his life would recognize him at another.
Jimmy Carter didn’t change. Luck and circumstances did.
Carter was easy to admire but harder to work for. He was driven to succeed and always engaging. “No other candidate has gone from near-invisibility to the White House in so short a time,” Fallows writes. And a fusion of cultures from the Naval Academy to Bob Dylan to the Allman Brothers.
“What if Carter’s trademark lines on the stump—I’ll never lie to you and We need a government as good as its people—had not been so tuned to the battered spirit of that moment, and had been received with sneers rather than support?” Carter’s timing was lucky, but he made his own, too. As president, it lasted only four years.
He did a lot in those four years, not all of it popular — he made mistakes, and was unlucky. Fallows offers a list of accomplishments.
Jimmy Carter took office in the “before” times. We live in an unrecognizable “after.” He did his best, in office and out, to promote the values he cared about through it all.
Carter has been luckier in life than in his presidency, Fallows observes, having lived vigorously until 98. Carter invented the modern post-presidency and became known worldwide for his human and voting rights advocacy and more.
Jimmy Carter survived to see many of his ambitions realized, including near eradication of the dreaded guinea worm, which, unglamorous as it sounds, represents an increase in human well-being greater than most leaders have achieved. He survived to see his character, vision, and sincerity recognized, and to know that other ex-presidents will be judged by the standard he has set.
He was an unlucky president, and a lucky man.
We are lucky to have had him. Blessed.
I bristle whenever I hear chest-thumping “values” types who are MAGA now deride Carter. Read the whole thing.
