President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale at the 1976 Democratic convention
With the national funeral for President Jimmy Carter scheduled for 10 a.m. tomorrow (Jan. 9, 2025) at the Washington National Cathedral, this post replaces the one that had been scheduled in the Words on Paper series. “Authors. Who are they? Characteristics and concerns of writers addressing social issues” will appear next week.
How many presidents have you seen in person? For me, just one, President Jimmy Carter, and then I could barely see him. He was in Minnesota at the old Minneapolis auditorium campaigning for re-election in 1980. I stood in the second-tier press pool, herded into a space so far from the stage that you needed binoculars and a telephoto lens. But I did see him.
Another president almost fell within eyeshot in 2012. President Obama campaigned at a rally on the University of Minnesota campus. We waited in a long line only to see the capacity cutoff occur just before our place in line. We ended up at a remote location and watched the show on a large screen.
While the memories of those experiences emerge with some fuzziness, more clarity appears in some editorials that I wrote in the summer and fall of 1980. (I found them among old clippings that my mother-in-law had saved from the St. Paul suburban weekly newspaper where I attempted to write editorials meeting the social responsibility and community journalism standards of the day.)
I feel a bit guilty now, seeing what I wrote about the 1980 Democratic convention, where the balloon-drop malfunctioned, saying it “was symbolic of (Carter’s) administration.” The main problem with his administration is that he remained an outsider in Washington. Instead, we should remember all the good he did throughout his life, and be greatly inspired by his Christian faith, manifested in his considerable humanitarian work.
Perhaps we need a trade-secret confession here. On many occasions editorial writers lack sufficient knowledge about the subject. You have space to fill and a hard stop deadline, and you do the best you can. Also, the balloon-drop reference came from a personal column and not an editorial. Using “Out on a limb” as the column tagline gave me a bit more latitude. Or, as Mark Twain said, “Why not go out on a limb? That’s where all the fruit is.”
Back then I likely was being influenced by all the bad press about Carter, in particular, the American hostage crisis in Iran. And economic woes, at least in public sentiment if not reality, sort of like today. There is evidence that the Reagan campaign worked under cover with Iran to make sure the hostages were not released before the election. That happened only minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in on Jan 20, 1981. Not a coincidence.
The populist wave that carried the peanut farmer and Georgia governor into the White House in 1976 faded four years later. That’s what waves do. Unfortunately, for the populists and the general public, the next guy they put into office, Ronald Reagan, was not really on their side, again sort of like what’s happening today.
Reagan was the face of the corporate oligarchs who stacked the deck in following decades against working people and for the economic elite. It would not have happened to that extent had Carter been re-elected. And even better if his vice president, Walter Mondale, had succeeded him. At a newspaper convention years later, we did get a chance to meet Mondale in person. Besides being a very nice man, he would have been a great president.
We tried to help Carter, at least editorially. Atoning for my snarky column about him at the convention in August 1980, in late October our newspaper printed its political endorsements. Sagely I opined: “Needless to say, Jimmy Carter over the last four years has not met the expectations of many Americans. His administration has been characterized by indecision and ineptness. But, as many Americans still do, we believe that Mr. Carter is an intelligent, decent man in a very difficult job… we support the re-election of Jimmy Carter.”
Carter’s presidency set him up with the resources and public awareness to do more great things. His faith and selfless commitment to the greater public good will be the source of much reflection on Jan. 9. What a difference from the early days of January 2021. Let’s hope that the life and legacy of Carter linger in our collective civic consciousness and restore some of those values going forward.
Thanks!
Forrest
