The President Carter We Don’t Know
How time compresses when history erases the memory of a great man. A cautionary tale for America’s politics and institutions.
America does not know Jimmy Carter, or rather it seems unlikely that with his death, America will get to know Jimmy Carter. This is because Carter, like those Presidents who preceded him, fell before the yoke of the privileged class, those interests who believe that big government should serve them, not the whole of American society, envisioned and experienced by Truman and Johnson and Kennedy and before them FDR.
On January 20, 2025, President 47 will be sworn in, America’s “lame duck” President.
There is no succession to Trump mania, given a four-year office tenure. America in 2025 in this regard is like the last days of Carter’s Presidency in 1979.
Except, as Carter biographer Jonathan Alter points out, the Ayatollah who released the hostages “seconds after Reagan’s swearing in” as fortieth President — “put it to Carter” — it’s Elon Musk and the billionaire class that is “putting it” to President 47 elect. (December 30, MSNBC.)
How fitting to call our newly elected President not by his given name but by his tenure, with a four-year cap. A cap and check on autocracy that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter worked to spread to other nations through the mission of the Carter Center.
What America will remember Carter for is his work for humanity and for working tirelessly to mitigate the anti-democratic forces that threaten to devour our globe. More than we know. More than the world would acknowledge. It took the Nobel Prize Committee, twenty-three years to recognize former President Carter and award him the Peace Prize for his efforts during his Presidency in pursuing peace accords between Egypt and Israel.
Some say he will be remembered as a man who could only accomplish what he did despite his being President.
We could take note.
December 31
