Nicholas Kristof, NY Times - The press and chattering class have often been merciless to Carter. Early on, cartoons mocked him as a country rube using an outhouse or associating with pigs, writers pilloried him as a sanctimonious hick, and in recent years it has been common to hear that he’s anti-Israel or anti-Semitic (This about the man whose Camp David accord ensured Israel’s future!).
Now that Carter is 90 and has been an ex-president longer than anyone in history, it’s time to correct the record. He is anything but an empty suit.
At a time when “principled politicians” sometimes seem a null set, it’s remarkable how often Carter showed spine.
He has a new memoir, “A Full Life,” recounting that his father was a segregationist. Yet Jimmy Carter says he was the only white man in his town who refused to join the White Citizens’ Council, and he fought to integrate his church. At one point, after a racist slur was posted on his door, he considered giving up and moving away.
Carter persevered. When he was inaugurated governor of Georgia, he declared, “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.” He then erected a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the State Capitol.
A black woman who was a convicted murderer, Mary Prince, was assigned to work at the governor’s mansion in a work-release program. Carter became convinced that she was innocent and later applied to be her parole officer, so he could take her to the White House to be his daughter’s nanny. Prince was eventually pardoned.
It’s true that Carter sometimes floundered as president. He also had great difficulty, as an outsider, managing Washington, and suffered from a measure of anti-Southern prejudice. When the Reagans took over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, their interior decorator reportedly couldn’t wait to “get the smell of catfish out of the White House.”
But Carter was also a pioneer. He was the first to elevate human rights in foreign policy. He appointed large numbers of women, Latinos and blacks. He installed solar panels on the White House (President Reagan removed them). He established diplomatic relations with China.
Carter also had a deep sense of honesty — sometimes too deep. Other politicians have affairs and deny them. Carter didn’t have affairs but nonetheless disclosed that “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” File that under “too much information.”
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2 comments:
Interesting article, interesting man. It's a real shame his anti-semitism and support for extremist violence against innocent civilians has so discredited him and left such a major stain on his reputation. Hopefully someday he'll be able to admit he is wrong and apologize to the Jews for what he's said. Kind of bizarre for a while male from the American south to be criticizing others for discrimination, indicates a rather profound disconnect from reality.
No comments section would be complete without the usual unearned self-pitty and false piety of the Israel-cultists.
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