A Favorite President

Here's to you, Jimmy Carter

When I was nine, President Jimmy Carter called up Daddy and asked him to come work for him. “Head up public health, George,” he asked. So Daddy did. This uprooted us from Madison, Wisconsin to Reston, Virginia where I would spend fifth through eighth grade years.

Carter’s presidency was largely upended and then cut short by a hostage crisis in Iran where 52 Americans were held captive for a year before election day. Carter seemed hampered by all of that. Hog tied. And in came Reagan, a slick B-list celebrity from California who somehow made an earnest humanitarian seem like a weakling and a fool. With Reagan’s “landslide” victory, our family would retreat back to Wisconsin for my high school years. And the hostages were all released the day Reagan was sworn in, which was said to be further evidence of Reagan’s strength.

Reagan may have won that 1980 election, but Carter won over time.

• He knew about the relationship between fossil fuels and climate. So he had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. (Reagan removed them - can you imagine if we’d managed to go solar then?)

• He knew enough about globalization to appreciate that the whole world should be on the same measuring system: Metric. But he couldn’t persuade enough Americans of the wisdom of this, and alas we’re stuck with inches, feet, miles, gallons, and pounds.

• He knew that peace is the essential order of things, and centered American foreign policy around human rights. He arranged the Camp David Accords which led to a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt for which the leaders of those countries (Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

• He knew that after safety, humans need shelter. So he devoted close to forty years to being a champion for Habitat for Humanity which builds homes around the world. This was after being a U.S. President. When he could have just retired to play golf. No. Jimmy Carter took up a hammer and a nail and joined a team that would make life a whole lot better for countless people.

• In 2002, twenty-two years after leaving the White House, he earned the Nobel Peace Prize for all he did while President, and after.

• And closer to home, President Carter offered Daddy the opportunity of a lifetime by inviting a Black man who was born in the Jim Crow South to join his administration. It was extremely hard work. Daddy suffered a heart attack while in the role. But he seemed to adore the opportunity – the imperative – to improve public health for the most under-served in our nation. This portrait of him is in our upstairs hallway. Look at him looking so damn regal and proud to be serving these United States under that president.

President Carter was a deeply thoughtful, compassionate, kind human being. A humble person who came from humble beginnings as a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia. What a blessing it was to have someone like him serving in the highest office in the land.

Mom had a relationship with President Carter, too, albeit in more of a one-way pen pal kind of way. She wrote him regularly to share her thoughts on this and that. Frankly, she’s done that with every president since she got to the U.S. in 1969.

My favorite Carter story is really about my mother. She and Daddy had been invited to the White House for a dinner honoring a visiting head of state. Daddy went through the receiving line followed by Mom. When it was her turn to shake President Carter’s hand, he said in his southern drawl, “Hello Jeannie.” And she beamed “You know me!” Daddy didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d just said, “President Carter, this is my wife Jeannie.” Mom thought he’d just been reading every single letter and somehow knew this was her. God I love the optimism and heart in Mom and I relive it every time she tells this story.

President Carter is now 99. He’s a cancer survivor, and he’s now just contending with the vagaries of super old age. He went into hospice a full year ago, and frankly it sounds like no one can believe he’s still alive – the average amount of time a person is in hospice care is something like 17 days – particularly since he just lost his beloved wife of 77 years, Rosalynn in November. But the dude keeps on kicking. Read this lovely piece about his legacy in the New York Times. It begins:

Practically no one ever thought he would be elected president in the first place. Or that he would forge a landmark treaty in the Middle East. Or that he would win the Nobel Peace Prize. Or that he would beat cancer.

But Jimmy Carter has been confounding expectations throughout a life that has lasted nearly a century. And so he is again, now near the end.

No person is perfect and certainly no President. But Jimmy Carter, man, we were so fortunate you stopped by and decided to stick around for awhile and live your life so magnificently.

xo

🤗 Here’s a hug for Jimmy Carter. I’m grateful to you, sir.

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