I got God blessed by Jimmy Carter. I walked out of my Manhattan office building on March 17, 1976. The St Patrick's Day Parade was marching down 5th Ave 1/2 a block away. Politicians love to march in it. Down the block came Jimmy Carter. I decided this was a once in a lifetime situation. I walked up it to him, stuck my hand out, and said: “I know your sister.” Ruth Carter Stapleton was a Christian speaker. Mr Carter said to me, with a slight hint of surprise in his voice, “Oh, God bless you.” In retrospect, this blessing appears to have worked.
Nice story.... I never met the great Jimmy Carter but when I was a a TV news photog at KEYE-TV in Austin, Tx in 1996, another crew (in-house) interviewed him when he was in town. Whoever edited the story left the raw tapes on top of the BetaSP editing machine. I stumbled on it and popped them in and watched the raw footage in awe...I remember noticing that the photographer left the camera rolling after their interview was over and when president Carter was taking his mic off and rolling it up and then handed it to the photog (who was off camera) and said "I think you want this back"...hahahahaha that was such a golden moment....Rest in peace Jimmy !
Jimmy Carter was my second presidential vote... I turned 18 in 1972 and voted for McGovern even knowing it was a lost cause. I was devastated that Carter lost to Reagan, and I will never forget or forgive the GOP for their antics from then until now.
Every Republican praise Reagan. How about this fact: Reagan made a secret deal with Iran to keep our prisoners until the day after he was inaugurated. A very sneaky, shitty thing to do. Then again, he was a Republican!
I believe that Jeff referred to that in his post. For that, and a host of other GOP dirty tricks and wrongdoing, I will never vote for a Republican in my life. Nor will my formerly Republican husband. He was done after the shitgibbon's first term.
S'okay... nothing bad about being young and idealistic. My mom was a little more politically informed, so I knew more than most of my peers at that point. I did hope that Ford would do more after he took over for Tricky Dick, but definitely voted for Carter in '76.
Many of you are commenting about Reagan's treason, which was a mirror of Nixon's treason with Vietnam & LBJ. But what isn't mentioned often enough, is that after his second term, Reagan was collecting million dollar speaking fees in Japan (aside: outrageous speaking fees is one way to pay an ex-office holder for "services rendered") Jimmy Carter was at the exact same time building houses for the poor. Reagan was getting paid, and Jimmy was giving back. That's how I want to remember President Carter.
I turned 18 in 1975, too, and was proud and delighted to cast my first vote for president for such a good man. In the 49 years since then, he has proven himself time and time again as a person of integrity and honor and compassion.
My first vote was for McGovern in 72 because the voting age didn't drop from 21 to 18 until 71. I'll never get over the injustice of the Reagan campaign colluding with Iran with no regard to the lives of the hostages. That extortion was squelched until the early 90's--even then my MAGA friend I contend with poo poohs the info. Carter was faced with fall out from inflation from Nixon & Ford admin on top of it. Did he whine. He prayed. He conquered his ego and became self-realized and enlightened. He made the seriously lonely valley walk of christ. So glad we have some fine example of a leader to look up to in these dark days when the cellar of rats is so deep you can barely see their weasel faces and their claws are out waiting to scramble and scrabble for Trump morsels...thanks for lifting my thoughts to a saint on high!!!!! RIP Pres Carter
My first vote was in 1971 because I had turned 21 in 1970 and the age was still 21 to vote. I grew up in an Eisenhower era Republican rural family. The Republicans are unrecognizable now. The older I got, the more I appreciated Carter's integrity and decency. Something we no longer see in politics. A truly decent human being. RIP.
I turned 18 in 1972 and my first vote for president was for Nixon. My father was a former republican committee member from Hampden County, Mass and told me I should vote for Nixon. What did I know back then, I was a dutiful daughter who did as her father told her. When Watergate happened I vowed to never make that mistake again by voting for republicans. My vote in 1976 & 1980 was for Jimmy Carter. May he rest in peace along with my father who would disavow the current iteration of GOP snakes and weasels.
My stepdad dated Shelley before he married my Mom. Shelley was devoted to Nixon, and so he spent election day 1960 at a Nixon party, remembering that every time a state was called for Kennedy they kept showing how great Nixon was doing in... Nebraska! Shelley became a private secretary to Nixon and married Pat Buchanan. Election day 1968 my parents both looked stricken, and mom asked him "So, did you cancel me out?" -- "No, I could not vote for that man again." But as a result of the Shelley connection we got Christmas cards from the White House every year of the Nixon administration, to the intense annoyance of my mother
Lynn, excellent tribute to former President Jimmy Carter. I'm agnostic, but Jimmy & Rosalyn Carter embodied their Christian faith purely. Your words "He made the seriously lonely valley walk of Christ." Perfect. 🙏
I remember the election of 1960. I was 10. My family were staunch Republicans (Midwest, small town) and couldn't stand the Kennedys. I also remember hearing on the radio LBJ's speech where he said he wouldn't be running again in 1968. My mother was a lifelong Republican, although she did vote for Clinton. She died in 2005 and I wonder what she would say about all of this. She was nothing like a MAGA.
Thanks for this Jeff. Sadly Heather Cox Richardson in her otherwise excellent piece failed to mention Reagan's ratfucking that contributed so much to his win in 80.
My political journey was a little more convoluted than yours (and I have four years or so on you). I grew up a military brat and my beliefs more or less hewed a conservative (perhaps Cold War mentality would be more accurate) line. Sadly, my first vote was for Nixon (and then fell in love and married a McGovernite two years later 😂), but the 1970’s became my age of cognitive dissonance. When I transferred to UCLA from community college, I re-registered independent and voted for Eugene McCarthy in ‘76. I had attended a Carter speech at Ackerman Union and was not impressed. I was floundering in an ideological purgatory the rest of the 70’s. My radical move to the Left originated in the workplace and was accelerated by Reagan’s election, the birth of a second child, and the assassination of John Lennon. Grad school gave me a frame for understanding and U.S. foreign policy in Central America heightened my growing dissent.
It seems that the reaction to President Carter’s death run the gamut of the surliness of George Will to Chris Hedges. I acknowledge the goodness of the Carters post-presidential works. What stands out is the humility and charity. The service to others as opposed to the self-serving ethos of our time is a contrast that induces a sad shake of the head and tug of the heart.
I was in 8th grade in 1980 and the only kid in my civics class mock election to cast a vote for Carter. I know this because the teacher gave the results and it was like 28 to 1.
I turned 20 in 1975, and Jimmy Carter was my first of several Democrats for whom I voted. Thanks Jeff for your tribute to this great president, husband, humanitarian, and a great man.
Same except I was 20 and the legal age in Oregon was dropped from 21 to 18. It felt so good and i have never missed an opportunity to vote since, mainly due to my gratitude for the suffragettes who paved the way through brutal arrest and imprisonment. Oh, and God Bless Jimmy Carter! Beautiful and true epitaph you wrote there!
Jimmy Carter was intelligent, compassionate, humble, and capable. The thing coming in on January 20th is none of those things. How did America go from that to this?
I still remember being in my dorm room and finishing up a paper when I heard that Raygun won. I started crying—it was the first of a spate of presidential elections that would disappoint and dismay. Though, never in my life could I have imagined the shitshow that elections have become today. I only hope I outlive Trumpism, MAGAism, and Republicans.
I hope to live long enough to see the end of it too, too see us turn away from the sickening corruption of money in our politics; in the Democratic Party too
It's what his puppeteers told him to do. James Garner talked about being under Reagan when he ran SAG. Garner said Reagan did none of the work, and shoved it off on Garner, but Reagan was such an idiot, he couldn't have done it anyway. But he certainly took all the credit.
It started with Nixon (I'm sure the seeds were already there). Until the Orange Blob, his presidency was the biggest political scandal we had. Add in the Evangelicals in the 70's, add a dash of Reagan and the Tea Party and this is what you get now. MAGA took decades to form into what they are today. The Tea Party started the stupid, silly stuff though. Wearing tea bags hanging from your cap. Really????? Trump gave the green light for the racists/bigots/misogynists to come from out of the woodwork. They were already there. It was just not socially acceptable to wear your KKK robe or wave your Nazi flag in public in years past. I moved to Indianapolis in 1976 from upstate NY where I grew up and was surprised at how southern it seemed (racial). I grew up in central Illinois until I was 12 and I don't remember that, but I was just a grade school kid too. We first lived in an apartment complex. I remember looking out the door one day and my neighbor across the parking lot had put up a huge NAZI flag on his patio. It covered almost the whole patio. I was shocked. It was taken down soon after that. I started working as a nurse there in 1981 and the blacks I worked with told me how they never would go to southern Indiana and didn't even like to go to the southside of Indy to go to the mall. That was my first real encounter with racism. This is a quote from the book "Grand Dragon". "The Ku Klux Klan reached its height in the 1920s, and nowhere was it as large and politically powerful as in Indiana, where about 30 percent of the native-born white male population were Klansmen." So all of this just didn't start in the 70's.
The Tea Party was thinly veiled racism in action. Notice how they formed right after Barack Obama was elected. Their stated mission was to reduce spending. Yeah, right. Where the hell were they when W was wasting hundreds of $billions on the neocons' two Middle East quagmires? War profiteering was on ample display as contractors such as Brown and Root, now called KBR (which was derisively called "Burn and Loot" by protesters), had huge government contracts to build bases and supply our military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brown and Root was owned by Halliburton, whose CEO was Dick Cheney before he resigned to become VP. Bet he still had shares in Halliburton while in office.
The fucking Tea Baggers only wanted to troll and obstruct Obama. They had no principles and no legitimate concerns. Just a bunch of loud mouthed white people.
After Obama was elected president the first time I remember Mitch McConnell emphatically saying,” we will NOT work with this president.” Moscow Mitch has damaged our country like no other politician could.
Oh yeah, Moscow Mitch explicitly stated that their (repubes) #1 objective was to obstruct Obama. The prick actually said it. His legacy is the most obstructionist ever in congressional history. I hate that guy
The standard answer for why someone votes GOP is always how worried they are about the national debt. I say utter BS! Most of them don't even know what it is. A party of total hypocrites.
Jimmy Kimmel sent a correspondent to the Trump Coachella rally before the election. These red hat wearers were Californians, not your rural southerners. After expressing strong opinions on GDP, DEI, fracking, Critical Race Theory, wokeness, they were asked to define these terms and they could not. Fucking zombies parroting what they heard on Fox
The Koch machine funded the "Organic grass roots" organization known as "the tea party." It's hilarious because to "Teabag" someone, means to dangle your scrotum over their eyes. (presuming you have one)
Yes. I spent my last two years of high school in a town in between Indianapolis to the east and Danville IL to the west. The town had a weird mix of hateful racists and liberals. I returned for a 52 year reunion in 2022 (50 years postponed by covid) and we could take a tour of underground railroad sites in town. There were many Quaker settlers in town who assisted and hid formerly enslaved people, while there were other proslavery townspeople connected to the South who would readily return escapees to the South. Our tour ended at an AME church. When the church member completed her talk, I mentioned that about ten years earlier, there was one of those signs thanking a group for picking up trash along a road. The group being thanked was the KKK! I was confirm her comments about ongoing issues. She told me that when we finished high school in 1970, anyone running for office in town had to be approved by the KKK in order to get on the ballot! Interesting, none of my former classmates on the tour (all of us white) had ever noticed the sign! Some still live there. "How could you not see the sign!!" as I scanned our little group and looked them in the eye . Indiana seemed to collect folks from both directions. I did not name the town, as I expect any town in that area has a similar mix of people.
It's very sad and disturbing that we've gone from a man who truly loved his country to a guy who runs for president only to stay out of prison and get even with those who oppose and legally took him down. How 77 million voters believe that he's better for the good of the US and the rest of the free world just goes to show how bad we've spiraled down the drain since the days of the Carter presidency.
Until my dying day, I will believe that she lost because of racism and misogyny. A white guy would have beat Trump. Peel back the layer of what the Statue of Liberty stands for and it's not a pretty picture. The South also never got over losing the Civil War. 159 years ago. Yet Americans can live side by side with Germans and Japanese. Sad.
December 1980, post election, Reagan won. I was playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theater. It was a great gig, didn't think it could get better. Then the cast was summoned to the White House. Some singer who was supposed to perform at the last party of the Carter administration had cancelled. We were called in last minute to entertain. Ye gods, that place was gorgeous, and the coolest part was being parked in the basement where tourists don't go, so we saw parts of the building most people don't see.
So we did a scene or two from the play in the East Room. The whole administration was there. At the end, we sang Silent Night. Everyone was in tears, finally letting some emotion out after the election loss. Walter Mondale was practically sobbing. The cast took a bow. Jimmy jumped up on stage, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Good ghost." All I could think about was that my costume was reeking! We normally had the costumes laundered on Sunday night, but we had to perform in them after having done eight shows, and my dress stunk. I was being complimented by the leader of the free world and all I could think about was whether he can smell my dress. Anyway, we had our picture taken. I still have the photo.
Then it was off to the lobby (?) or wherever they keep the tree. So pretty! I spoke to Rosalynn, so nice. Then the Marine Corps band played and we danced. Zbignew Brezinski asked me to waltz, and fortunately, I knew how. If he smelled my costume, he didn't seem to mind. The room was gorgeous, and it was the first time I ate a pastry with a slice of kiwi on top. (Our producer fed us those damn pastries for the rest of the following week.)
It was a fantastic evening, even if Jimmy did look sad and tired as hell. Now Jimmy's the good ghost. Rest in peace, Mr. and Mrs. Carter.
How wonderful! Wow what a great memory to have. Thanks for sharing this.
Dec 1980 was also the month when John Lennon was assassinated. In retrospect, I now think of that tragedy, along with Ronnie Raygun’s cheating President Carter out of reelection, as the offical beginning of the ‘80s.
MzNicky, my husband and I were at Oakland Coliseum attending a Stevie Wonder concert. The first song he sang was “Happy Birthday” prefaced by him saying that “Tonight is a special night.”. After he performed for
for over 2.5 hours, he told us John had been shot and killed. There were at least 40,000 in attendance. Everyone gasped, cried, and then started screaming. We didn’t sleep for days! Similarly with Trump winning in 2016…
What an amazing story—thank you so much for sharing it. Having spent some time in the theatre I could relate to your costume concern. Sounds like it was a magical evening.
As you said, thank goodness he passed while Biden is still president. I can only imagine the CF Trump would turn it into, and he'd find some way to make it all about himself. Mr. Carter deserves an honorable send-off and the country deserves the chance to say goodbye properly, without having to navigate Trump's goons or having him claim the crowds were all there for him and not for the late President.
Roslyn Carter helped build houses too. She told that when she started, it took her 7 blows to drive in a nail, but she got it down to three. Imagine doing that.
There are Still plenty of uses for hammers and old time tools 🛠️,they’re a lot like people sometimes the latest thing isn’t the answer for the task at hand !
Unfortunately this doesn’t apply to the present situation ,Kamala would have made a perfect new tool for repairing the broken old political system and preventing the inevitable disaster of Trump !
I have several hammers, a tiny upholstery one, that was my mom’s, a medium sized, regular hammer, and a large heavy one that I think is for stonework. I no longer own a compressor (and I miss it I loved pressure-washing with it) so no nailgun anymore 🥺😟
I remember a picture of her at a tree-planting, in high heels, and she was supposed to symbolically turn over the first shovelful of dirt, but she looked unsure which end of the shovel to shove into the ground.
President Carter puts most of the other presidents we’ve had to shame. Especially the one getting ready to take office. Good on Jimmy for saying out loud what we all know about the 2016 election.
Yesterday my regional Democrats Abroad head shared a letter Former President Jimmy Carter had written to Democrats Abroad in 2014 as an honorary chair of the organization. In it he says his mother lived in India as a Peace Corp volunteer, and that after he and his wife Rosalynn had lived in 145 countries they were sort of Democrats Abroad themselves. It was a very gracious letter. Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn were a class act.
He was a man who you could tell your children to emulate, a man that made you proud to be an American, a man who lived his faith instead of autographing bibles and trying to make money off of it. He truly believed all people are created equal. We won’t see another politician like him again in my lifetime. The trash that is there now makes me ashamed of this country
The country and the world hung their collective heads at American ignorance, and elitism in his first term! I’m afraid of malaise we’ve forced the world to witness today!!
President Jimmy Carter will always be my favorite President, in my lifetime of 13 of them, so far. He was the most decent, honest, and respectful man, before, during, and after his presidency. To see him in his 80s working on Habitat for Humanity housing with his wife of 75 years was a study in how to live your life. He was the first President I voted for who won, and I am proud I did.
President Carter embodied the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount.. the best example of loving your neighbor, welcoming the stranger and improving the world. RIP Mr. President.
I don't follow Trump's social media, but I did see that message posted on the Carter centers website, along with messages from other living former presidents. His little mention about the presidency being an exclusive club tells you all you need to know about that asshole.
I wasn't old enough to have voted for Jimmy Carter, and I regret that. When my father died in 2021, I got a personal letter from President Carter. Whether that's because my father was a fellow Navy veteran from World War II or because he was a long time donor to the Carter Center, I don't know; but my father was nobody famous, and the fact that Jimmy Carter's organization would send me a letter of condolence meant a great deal to me as a nobody in the Midwest.
I am glad that he is reunited with his beloved Rosalynn and wish his children and grandchildren comfort. May his memory be for a blessing. I know it is a blessing for me to remember him.
I have the letter that President Carter sent to my grandpa in 1979, congratulating him on his 100th birthday. It had been tossed into a box of old photos I went through when my mother died. The only liberal Democrat ever in my family, I rescued the letter and had it framed. So glad now that I did. 🇺🇸
To be fair, I don't really remember any other former presidents, pre- or post-Carter, doing this after their administrations were done—except just one big, fat, ugly, greedy, nasty, lying piece of shit with weirdly-colored skin and a combination of cotton candy and dead ferret placed atop his head.
But Jimmy knew how to go into post-presidency the right way—by selflessly doing things for the good of people and trying to make the world a better place. He was such a great guy. 😢
As a carpenter I always intended to volunteer to work
On a project ,as well as giving money to Habitat ,unfortunately life got in the way .I would have loved to have met J. C. and Rosalyn back in the day ,I should have made time .
Reagan was under investigation for treason for his actions in the Irangate, Bill Barr killed the investigation. A pattern he repeated with HR and the execrable wastrel!!
Definitely a life well lived. Pioneer of the nuclear Navy when he served under Admiral Rickover. Ended Jim Crow in Georgia when he was Governor. Won a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace between Israel and Egypt. Thought about alternative energy before nearly anyone. Fought for the expansion of democracy through the Carter Center. Founded and participated in Habitat for Humanity. We would all do well to follow his shining example. It's extremely fortunate that Joe Biden will be presiding over the State Funeral and not Tangeranus. If you see flags that aren't at half mast, insist that this be done. (I already did this twice today)
Yes and the flags should remain lowered until the day after his funeral. I agree that I too am relieved that President Biden will be presiding over his funeral. That in itself is a blessing.
My mistake it’s actually for 30 days after his death. Biden has issued this for the White House and on all public buildings and grounds, all military posts, naval stations and naval vessels.
It’s certainly up to you what you do at your home.
I turned 18 in 1975, and am proud to have cast my first presidential ballot for Jimmy Carter
I got God blessed by Jimmy Carter. I walked out of my Manhattan office building on March 17, 1976. The St Patrick's Day Parade was marching down 5th Ave 1/2 a block away. Politicians love to march in it. Down the block came Jimmy Carter. I decided this was a once in a lifetime situation. I walked up it to him, stuck my hand out, and said: “I know your sister.” Ruth Carter Stapleton was a Christian speaker. Mr Carter said to me, with a slight hint of surprise in his voice, “Oh, God bless you.” In retrospect, this blessing appears to have worked.
Nice story.... I never met the great Jimmy Carter but when I was a a TV news photog at KEYE-TV in Austin, Tx in 1996, another crew (in-house) interviewed him when he was in town. Whoever edited the story left the raw tapes on top of the BetaSP editing machine. I stumbled on it and popped them in and watched the raw footage in awe...I remember noticing that the photographer left the camera rolling after their interview was over and when president Carter was taking his mic off and rolling it up and then handed it to the photog (who was off camera) and said "I think you want this back"...hahahahaha that was such a golden moment....Rest in peace Jimmy !
Jimmy Carter was my second presidential vote... I turned 18 in 1972 and voted for McGovern even knowing it was a lost cause. I was devastated that Carter lost to Reagan, and I will never forget or forgive the GOP for their antics from then until now.
Every Republican praise Reagan. How about this fact: Reagan made a secret deal with Iran to keep our prisoners until the day after he was inaugurated. A very sneaky, shitty thing to do. Then again, he was a Republican!
I believe that Jeff referred to that in his post. For that, and a host of other GOP dirty tricks and wrongdoing, I will never vote for a Republican in my life. Nor will my formerly Republican husband. He was done after the shitgibbon's first term.
POS!
I remember thinking that no president could ever be as bad as Reagan. Ha. How naive we were.
Good lord, this will probably happen to us again then 😣
🙏🏽🤪 I was so Pollyanna that I didn’t know McGovern was a lost cause. 😞
S'okay... nothing bad about being young and idealistic. My mom was a little more politically informed, so I knew more than most of my peers at that point. I did hope that Ford would do more after he took over for Tricky Dick, but definitely voted for Carter in '76.
Me too!
Many of you are commenting about Reagan's treason, which was a mirror of Nixon's treason with Vietnam & LBJ. But what isn't mentioned often enough, is that after his second term, Reagan was collecting million dollar speaking fees in Japan (aside: outrageous speaking fees is one way to pay an ex-office holder for "services rendered") Jimmy Carter was at the exact same time building houses for the poor. Reagan was getting paid, and Jimmy was giving back. That's how I want to remember President Carter.
I turned 18 in 1975, too, and was proud and delighted to cast my first vote for president for such a good man. In the 49 years since then, he has proven himself time and time again as a person of integrity and honor and compassion.
Thank you for your tribute to President Carter.
Same here, (18 in 1976)
Me too.
I turned 18 in ‘74, so Jimmy Carter was my first presidential vote, too.
Thank you for encapsulating this wonderful man in a great column.
I truly loved this man. It broke my heart when I heard the news announcing his death.
I’m so glad he was able to cast his ballot for Kamala Harris.
I’m grabbing the most beautiful parts of the universe to wish his family condolences.
This wonderful man who gave to everyone less fortunate by building them homes with his own hands, and the world grieves him along with us.
You were an example to us all. I only hope I’m able to live my life with love and care.
Thank you President Carter.
My first vote was for McGovern in 72 because the voting age didn't drop from 21 to 18 until 71. I'll never get over the injustice of the Reagan campaign colluding with Iran with no regard to the lives of the hostages. That extortion was squelched until the early 90's--even then my MAGA friend I contend with poo poohs the info. Carter was faced with fall out from inflation from Nixon & Ford admin on top of it. Did he whine. He prayed. He conquered his ego and became self-realized and enlightened. He made the seriously lonely valley walk of christ. So glad we have some fine example of a leader to look up to in these dark days when the cellar of rats is so deep you can barely see their weasel faces and their claws are out waiting to scramble and scrabble for Trump morsels...thanks for lifting my thoughts to a saint on high!!!!! RIP Pres Carter
My first vote was in 1971 because I had turned 21 in 1970 and the age was still 21 to vote. I grew up in an Eisenhower era Republican rural family. The Republicans are unrecognizable now. The older I got, the more I appreciated Carter's integrity and decency. Something we no longer see in politics. A truly decent human being. RIP.
I turned 18 in 1972 and my first vote for president was for Nixon. My father was a former republican committee member from Hampden County, Mass and told me I should vote for Nixon. What did I know back then, I was a dutiful daughter who did as her father told her. When Watergate happened I vowed to never make that mistake again by voting for republicans. My vote in 1976 & 1980 was for Jimmy Carter. May he rest in peace along with my father who would disavow the current iteration of GOP snakes and weasels.
I can't imagine my parents, who were born in the 20's, would ever go along with any of this. My stepdad fought in France in WWII and hated Nazis.
My stepdad dated Shelley before he married my Mom. Shelley was devoted to Nixon, and so he spent election day 1960 at a Nixon party, remembering that every time a state was called for Kennedy they kept showing how great Nixon was doing in... Nebraska! Shelley became a private secretary to Nixon and married Pat Buchanan. Election day 1968 my parents both looked stricken, and mom asked him "So, did you cancel me out?" -- "No, I could not vote for that man again." But as a result of the Shelley connection we got Christmas cards from the White House every year of the Nixon administration, to the intense annoyance of my mother
Annoyed because your step-dad dated her prior or because the Xmas cards came from the Nixon white house? Probably both I'm guessing.
Lynn, excellent tribute to former President Jimmy Carter. I'm agnostic, but Jimmy & Rosalyn Carter embodied their Christian faith purely. Your words "He made the seriously lonely valley walk of Christ." Perfect. 🙏
I was 20 in 1960, so just a year too young to vote for JFK. My first presidential vote was for Johnson in 1964.
I remember the election of 1960. I was 10. My family were staunch Republicans (Midwest, small town) and couldn't stand the Kennedys. I also remember hearing on the radio LBJ's speech where he said he wouldn't be running again in 1968. My mother was a lifelong Republican, although she did vote for Clinton. She died in 2005 and I wonder what she would say about all of this. She was nothing like a MAGA.
Thanks for this Jeff. Sadly Heather Cox Richardson in her otherwise excellent piece failed to mention Reagan's ratfucking that contributed so much to his win in 80.
Ditto that. I had no idea then how proud I'd be over my lifetime for that 1976 absentee ballot vote from college.
I was/ did as well Jeff, many of us here share same sentiments!
My political journey was a little more convoluted than yours (and I have four years or so on you). I grew up a military brat and my beliefs more or less hewed a conservative (perhaps Cold War mentality would be more accurate) line. Sadly, my first vote was for Nixon (and then fell in love and married a McGovernite two years later 😂), but the 1970’s became my age of cognitive dissonance. When I transferred to UCLA from community college, I re-registered independent and voted for Eugene McCarthy in ‘76. I had attended a Carter speech at Ackerman Union and was not impressed. I was floundering in an ideological purgatory the rest of the 70’s. My radical move to the Left originated in the workplace and was accelerated by Reagan’s election, the birth of a second child, and the assassination of John Lennon. Grad school gave me a frame for understanding and U.S. foreign policy in Central America heightened my growing dissent.
It seems that the reaction to President Carter’s death run the gamut of the surliness of George Will to Chris Hedges. I acknowledge the goodness of the Carters post-presidential works. What stands out is the humility and charity. The service to others as opposed to the self-serving ethos of our time is a contrast that induces a sad shake of the head and tug of the heart.
He was my first vote as well. My parents were appalled that I voted Democrat. Actually, they still are....
Yep. My first vote too.
I was in 8th grade in 1980 and the only kid in my civics class mock election to cast a vote for Carter. I know this because the teacher gave the results and it was like 28 to 1.
Good on you
I turned 20 in 1975, and Jimmy Carter was my first of several Democrats for whom I voted. Thanks Jeff for your tribute to this great president, husband, humanitarian, and a great man.
Me, too, and I volunteered for his campaign then, too, as well as the down-ballot races!
Same except I was 20 and the legal age in Oregon was dropped from 21 to 18. It felt so good and i have never missed an opportunity to vote since, mainly due to my gratitude for the suffragettes who paved the way through brutal arrest and imprisonment. Oh, and God Bless Jimmy Carter! Beautiful and true epitaph you wrote there!
Jimmy Carter was intelligent, compassionate, humble, and capable. The thing coming in on January 20th is none of those things. How did America go from that to this?
Reagan right after Carter, then the steady downhill demise!
Totally agree. In my view, it was Reagan who began the destruction of the American middle class.
I still remember being in my dorm room and finishing up a paper when I heard that Raygun won. I started crying—it was the first of a spate of presidential elections that would disappoint and dismay. Though, never in my life could I have imagined the shitshow that elections have become today. I only hope I outlive Trumpism, MAGAism, and Republicans.
I hope to live long enough to see the end of it too, too see us turn away from the sickening corruption of money in our politics; in the Democratic Party too
*hugs* me too.
It's what his puppeteers told him to do. James Garner talked about being under Reagan when he ran SAG. Garner said Reagan did none of the work, and shoved it off on Garner, but Reagan was such an idiot, he couldn't have done it anyway. But he certainly took all the credit.
I love James Garner. Interesting but I guess not surprising that Reagan would just essentially be a mouthpiece and not a doer. Thanks for that story.
I keep meaning to look up a link, because Garner told it so much better.
California apologizes.
It started with Nixon (I'm sure the seeds were already there). Until the Orange Blob, his presidency was the biggest political scandal we had. Add in the Evangelicals in the 70's, add a dash of Reagan and the Tea Party and this is what you get now. MAGA took decades to form into what they are today. The Tea Party started the stupid, silly stuff though. Wearing tea bags hanging from your cap. Really????? Trump gave the green light for the racists/bigots/misogynists to come from out of the woodwork. They were already there. It was just not socially acceptable to wear your KKK robe or wave your Nazi flag in public in years past. I moved to Indianapolis in 1976 from upstate NY where I grew up and was surprised at how southern it seemed (racial). I grew up in central Illinois until I was 12 and I don't remember that, but I was just a grade school kid too. We first lived in an apartment complex. I remember looking out the door one day and my neighbor across the parking lot had put up a huge NAZI flag on his patio. It covered almost the whole patio. I was shocked. It was taken down soon after that. I started working as a nurse there in 1981 and the blacks I worked with told me how they never would go to southern Indiana and didn't even like to go to the southside of Indy to go to the mall. That was my first real encounter with racism. This is a quote from the book "Grand Dragon". "The Ku Klux Klan reached its height in the 1920s, and nowhere was it as large and politically powerful as in Indiana, where about 30 percent of the native-born white male population were Klansmen." So all of this just didn't start in the 70's.
The Tea Party was thinly veiled racism in action. Notice how they formed right after Barack Obama was elected. Their stated mission was to reduce spending. Yeah, right. Where the hell were they when W was wasting hundreds of $billions on the neocons' two Middle East quagmires? War profiteering was on ample display as contractors such as Brown and Root, now called KBR (which was derisively called "Burn and Loot" by protesters), had huge government contracts to build bases and supply our military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brown and Root was owned by Halliburton, whose CEO was Dick Cheney before he resigned to become VP. Bet he still had shares in Halliburton while in office.
The fucking Tea Baggers only wanted to troll and obstruct Obama. They had no principles and no legitimate concerns. Just a bunch of loud mouthed white people.
After Obama was elected president the first time I remember Mitch McConnell emphatically saying,” we will NOT work with this president.” Moscow Mitch has damaged our country like no other politician could.
Oh yeah, Moscow Mitch explicitly stated that their (repubes) #1 objective was to obstruct Obama. The prick actually said it. His legacy is the most obstructionist ever in congressional history. I hate that guy
He's a total POS.
The standard answer for why someone votes GOP is always how worried they are about the national debt. I say utter BS! Most of them don't even know what it is. A party of total hypocrites.
Jimmy Kimmel sent a correspondent to the Trump Coachella rally before the election. These red hat wearers were Californians, not your rural southerners. After expressing strong opinions on GDP, DEI, fracking, Critical Race Theory, wokeness, they were asked to define these terms and they could not. Fucking zombies parroting what they heard on Fox
The Koch machine funded the "Organic grass roots" organization known as "the tea party." It's hilarious because to "Teabag" someone, means to dangle your scrotum over their eyes. (presuming you have one)
Yes. I spent my last two years of high school in a town in between Indianapolis to the east and Danville IL to the west. The town had a weird mix of hateful racists and liberals. I returned for a 52 year reunion in 2022 (50 years postponed by covid) and we could take a tour of underground railroad sites in town. There were many Quaker settlers in town who assisted and hid formerly enslaved people, while there were other proslavery townspeople connected to the South who would readily return escapees to the South. Our tour ended at an AME church. When the church member completed her talk, I mentioned that about ten years earlier, there was one of those signs thanking a group for picking up trash along a road. The group being thanked was the KKK! I was confirm her comments about ongoing issues. She told me that when we finished high school in 1970, anyone running for office in town had to be approved by the KKK in order to get on the ballot! Interesting, none of my former classmates on the tour (all of us white) had ever noticed the sign! Some still live there. "How could you not see the sign!!" as I scanned our little group and looked them in the eye . Indiana seemed to collect folks from both directions. I did not name the town, as I expect any town in that area has a similar mix of people.
Wow! I'm from Georgia and had no idea Indiana was like this in the 70s.
The KKK was very public in the South from it's inception to today. They still kill people at will and get away with it.
I saw the KKK in my hometown in rural NC. Very unnerving for a kid who had parents who were Holocaust victims. Horrifying for the black people too!
I left in 2005. It's much redder than when I lived there. We at one time had some Dem elected officials. Not any more.
On the part of Republicans.
Betsy 🎯 Yes. It is the rescumliCons who blocked every chance if making any improvement for middle class down.
It's very sad and disturbing that we've gone from a man who truly loved his country to a guy who runs for president only to stay out of prison and get even with those who oppose and legally took him down. How 77 million voters believe that he's better for the good of the US and the rest of the free world just goes to show how bad we've spiraled down the drain since the days of the Carter presidency.
Until my dying day, I will believe that she lost because of racism and misogyny. A white guy would have beat Trump. Peel back the layer of what the Statue of Liberty stands for and it's not a pretty picture. The South also never got over losing the Civil War. 159 years ago. Yet Americans can live side by side with Germans and Japanese. Sad.
I can’t wait to hand out “I TOLD YOU SO” shirts to Maga people I know…
A: Newt Gingrich.
Barf
Speaking of execrable tosspots Derek!!
And craven poltroons.
Lickspittles and ne'er-do-wells.
I think Tangerine Toddler knows the Grinch is smarter, and would take over, if he let him in the cabinet.
If the space nazi let him.
Ah, too true.
St Ron & Newt, yes, but how did 2 men influence half a country?
Money and greed!
Excellent question HI2!!
I like how you call him “the thing”.👏🏼👏🏼
My Jimmy Carter story:
December 1980, post election, Reagan won. I was playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theater. It was a great gig, didn't think it could get better. Then the cast was summoned to the White House. Some singer who was supposed to perform at the last party of the Carter administration had cancelled. We were called in last minute to entertain. Ye gods, that place was gorgeous, and the coolest part was being parked in the basement where tourists don't go, so we saw parts of the building most people don't see.
So we did a scene or two from the play in the East Room. The whole administration was there. At the end, we sang Silent Night. Everyone was in tears, finally letting some emotion out after the election loss. Walter Mondale was practically sobbing. The cast took a bow. Jimmy jumped up on stage, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Good ghost." All I could think about was that my costume was reeking! We normally had the costumes laundered on Sunday night, but we had to perform in them after having done eight shows, and my dress stunk. I was being complimented by the leader of the free world and all I could think about was whether he can smell my dress. Anyway, we had our picture taken. I still have the photo.
Then it was off to the lobby (?) or wherever they keep the tree. So pretty! I spoke to Rosalynn, so nice. Then the Marine Corps band played and we danced. Zbignew Brezinski asked me to waltz, and fortunately, I knew how. If he smelled my costume, he didn't seem to mind. The room was gorgeous, and it was the first time I ate a pastry with a slice of kiwi on top. (Our producer fed us those damn pastries for the rest of the following week.)
It was a fantastic evening, even if Jimmy did look sad and tired as hell. Now Jimmy's the good ghost. Rest in peace, Mr. and Mrs. Carter.
A perfect place to take us today Ann!!
Let’s all raise a parting glass! Sla’inte!
Great memory Ann 💙
How wonderful! Wow what a great memory to have. Thanks for sharing this.
Dec 1980 was also the month when John Lennon was assassinated. In retrospect, I now think of that tragedy, along with Ronnie Raygun’s cheating President Carter out of reelection, as the offical beginning of the ‘80s.
MzNicky, my husband and I were at Oakland Coliseum attending a Stevie Wonder concert. The first song he sang was “Happy Birthday” prefaced by him saying that “Tonight is a special night.”. After he performed for
for over 2.5 hours, he told us John had been shot and killed. There were at least 40,000 in attendance. Everyone gasped, cried, and then started screaming. We didn’t sleep for days! Similarly with Trump winning in 2016…
Such a great memory!
Ann, lovely story. Thx for sharing.
Oh, Ann! "Now Jimmy's the good ghost." What a wonderful phrase. Thank you for sharing your story.
What an amazing story—thank you so much for sharing it. Having spent some time in the theatre I could relate to your costume concern. Sounds like it was a magical evening.
What a beautiful story. A fine tribute.
Terrific memory for you Ann.
What an experience to never forget. Lucky you.
What a lovely memory!
As you said, thank goodness he passed while Biden is still president. I can only imagine the CF Trump would turn it into, and he'd find some way to make it all about himself. Mr. Carter deserves an honorable send-off and the country deserves the chance to say goodbye properly, without having to navigate Trump's goons or having him claim the crowds were all there for him and not for the late President.
100%! Plus the flags in DC will be at half mast for T💩p’s swearing in.
How very appropriate! Jimmy would approve of the irony!
Oh brilliant! And so appropriate.
Roslyn Carter helped build houses too. She told that when she started, it took her 7 blows to drive in a nail, but she got it down to three. Imagine doing that.
They were both total badasses. trump can't lift a hammer and doesn't even know what it's used for.
Breaking kneecaps?
Not trump...he's a giant pansy-ass. His goons, maybe.
He’s as dumb as a bag of them.
I don't know how many blows I would need. We use nail guns now:-)
My ex was using one back in the 80's
There are Still plenty of uses for hammers and old time tools 🛠️,they’re a lot like people sometimes the latest thing isn’t the answer for the task at hand !
Unfortunately this doesn’t apply to the present situation ,Kamala would have made a perfect new tool for repairing the broken old political system and preventing the inevitable disaster of Trump !
I have several hammers, a tiny upholstery one, that was my mom’s, a medium sized, regular hammer, and a large heavy one that I think is for stonework. I no longer own a compressor (and I miss it I loved pressure-washing with it) so no nailgun anymore 🥺😟
I love my nail guns but sometimes you just have to get ….oops" have a 🔨hammer , or get hammered ! Inauguration Day May be that time ?!
I can't imagine her doing anything, she's rather like a wax, painted, mannequin.
I remember a picture of her at a tree-planting, in high heels, and she was supposed to symbolically turn over the first shovelful of dirt, but she looked unsure which end of the shovel to shove into the ground.
President Carter puts most of the other presidents we’ve had to shame. Especially the one getting ready to take office. Good on Jimmy for saying out loud what we all know about the 2016 election.
Yesterday my regional Democrats Abroad head shared a letter Former President Jimmy Carter had written to Democrats Abroad in 2014 as an honorary chair of the organization. In it he says his mother lived in India as a Peace Corp volunteer, and that after he and his wife Rosalynn had lived in 145 countries they were sort of Democrats Abroad themselves. It was a very gracious letter. Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn were a class act.
His mother Ms. Lilian, joined the Peace Corp in her later life, so she set a great example that he more than lived up to.
He was a man who you could tell your children to emulate, a man that made you proud to be an American, a man who lived his faith instead of autographing bibles and trying to make money off of it. He truly believed all people are created equal. We won’t see another politician like him again in my lifetime. The trash that is there now makes me ashamed of this country
The country and the world hung their collective heads at American ignorance, and elitism in his first term! I’m afraid of malaise we’ve forced the world to witness today!!
President Jimmy Carter will always be my favorite President, in my lifetime of 13 of them, so far. He was the most decent, honest, and respectful man, before, during, and after his presidency. To see him in his 80s working on Habitat for Humanity housing with his wife of 75 years was a study in how to live your life. He was the first President I voted for who won, and I am proud I did.
My first presidential vote was for George McGovern, in 1972. After that devastating landslide loss, I was extra-overjoyed when Carter won in 1976.
As was I and yes, my first was for McGovern also. I was devastated when he lost.
President Carter embodied the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount.. the best example of loving your neighbor, welcoming the stranger and improving the world. RIP Mr. President.
Ever so much this^^^
I don't follow Trump's social media, but I did see that message posted on the Carter centers website, along with messages from other living former presidents. His little mention about the presidency being an exclusive club tells you all you need to know about that asshole.
I wasn't old enough to have voted for Jimmy Carter, and I regret that. When my father died in 2021, I got a personal letter from President Carter. Whether that's because my father was a fellow Navy veteran from World War II or because he was a long time donor to the Carter Center, I don't know; but my father was nobody famous, and the fact that Jimmy Carter's organization would send me a letter of condolence meant a great deal to me as a nobody in the Midwest.
I am glad that he is reunited with his beloved Rosalynn and wish his children and grandchildren comfort. May his memory be for a blessing. I know it is a blessing for me to remember him.
I have the letter that President Carter sent to my grandpa in 1979, congratulating him on his 100th birthday. It had been tossed into a box of old photos I went through when my mother died. The only liberal Democrat ever in my family, I rescued the letter and had it framed. So glad now that I did. 🇺🇸
Appropriate now that they both have joined the century club!
Yes indeed!
<<𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘥𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘑𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘺 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵-𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺. 𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘣𝘶𝘤𝘬. 𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘸𝘬 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴. 𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘱 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳-𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘴.>>
To be fair, I don't really remember any other former presidents, pre- or post-Carter, doing this after their administrations were done—except just one big, fat, ugly, greedy, nasty, lying piece of shit with weirdly-colored skin and a combination of cotton candy and dead ferret placed atop his head.
But Jimmy knew how to go into post-presidency the right way—by selflessly doing things for the good of people and trying to make the world a better place. He was such a great guy. 😢
Well said Jeff. Yes, Jimmy Carter remains a man one should emulate.
JC was my inspiration to volunteer at Habitat...25 years ago. I'm 75yo and still at it:-)
As a carpenter I always intended to volunteer to work
On a project ,as well as giving money to Habitat ,unfortunately life got in the way .I would have loved to have met J. C. and Rosalyn back in the day ,I should have made time .
Reagan was under investigation for treason for his actions in the Irangate, Bill Barr killed the investigation. A pattern he repeated with HR and the execrable wastrel!!
No one has voiced this lately, but FUCK BILL BARR, AND HIS FAT LYIN' ASS!
Always and forever R'Amen!
Definitely one of, if not the biggest, POS’s.
An icon…almost a saint in my opinion.
Yep, if any mortal deserved to be canonized (most do not including most so-called saints) it is James Earl Carter.
Definitely a life well lived. Pioneer of the nuclear Navy when he served under Admiral Rickover. Ended Jim Crow in Georgia when he was Governor. Won a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace between Israel and Egypt. Thought about alternative energy before nearly anyone. Fought for the expansion of democracy through the Carter Center. Founded and participated in Habitat for Humanity. We would all do well to follow his shining example. It's extremely fortunate that Joe Biden will be presiding over the State Funeral and not Tangeranus. If you see flags that aren't at half mast, insist that this be done. (I already did this twice today)
Yes and the flags should remain lowered until the day after his funeral. I agree that I too am relieved that President Biden will be presiding over his funeral. That in itself is a blessing.
I thought it is for 30 days - past drumpf’s inauguration.
My mistake it’s actually for 30 days after his death. Biden has issued this for the White House and on all public buildings and grounds, all military posts, naval stations and naval vessels.
It’s certainly up to you what you do at your home.
My mistake…it’s actually 30 days after his death.