Writer James Fallows on the "magic" of Jimmy Carter
Former President Jimmy Carter died Sunday at age 100. James Fallows, who was a White House speechwriter during the Carter administration, has thoughts on the passing of a most singular president:
Few people would remember now, but the Jimmy Carter who sprang from obscurity to the White House had magic.
His piercing blue eyes. His big-toothed smile that became a trademark on campaign posters. His ease with the different cultures of a traumatized post-Vietnam America: Poets and farmers, Evangelicals and rock-and-rollers, war protestors and his fellow veterans, white and Black people alike. His ability to connect with so many of them led voters to take a leap of faith with him. Watergate was still an open wound. Carter offered balm and healing. He said, "I'll never lie to you." He promised to give us his best.
In my 20s, I was thrilled to meet him at one of his famous softball games in Plains, and honored to work as a speechwriter on his campaign. Americans crave the prospect of healing, renewing, fulfilling the best in our national ideals. That is what the earnest, intense, no-frills Jimmy Carter offered, and what much of the country accepted, with hope.
Through his first year in office, it worked. As a new president, Carter was more popular than nearly anyone who came after him.
Then, things went wrong. Runaway inflation. Endless gas lines. A hostage crisis in Iran. Much more.
Some of it was Carter's fault, through his rigidity and inexperience. A lot was bad timing and bad luck. He was relatively young for a president, and very fit. Yet merciless cameras caught him being attacked by a "killer rabbit," and looking deathly on a 10k run. These stuck as symbols of an administration on its last legs.
After working for him in the White House, I wrote a critical and controversial article, saying that his was a "passionless" presidency. What none of us could know was that most of his adult life still lay ahead of him – the years in which he would show his passions, values and achievements, as a builder, disease-fighter, peacemaking Nobel laureate.
He would live to see his character and idealism recognized, and his time in office re-assessed.
Jimmy Carter had magic at the beginning. And he found it again.
See also:
- Jimmy Carter, former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, dies at age 100
- Biden praises Jimmy Carter as example of "simple decency"
- Jimmy Carter set the standard for the modern post-presidency
- From 2019: Jimmy Carter's journey of faith ("Sunday Morning")
- From 2006: Jimmy Carter on life after the White House ("Sunday Morning")
- President Carter's straight talk on "60 Minutes"
