One morning in the mid seventies I woke to the radio, and yawned. I was nestled in bed in the great room of our little log cabin home on Lake Creek near the southern border of Floyd County Georgia in the little rural community known as Chubbtown. The radio droned on as I made a pot of coffee and began my morning routine. My ears pricked up at the mention of the West Georgia Tollway. Jimmy Carter, our governor, had killed the tollway! That's when I told Sheila that, however Quixotic Carter's presidential campaign seemed, he had my support.
Georgia transportation officials and many leaders in West Georgia had made plans for a route to connect Chatatnooga and Tallahassee via a new multi-lane toll road roughly following US 27 down the west side of the state. If the plans were not changed the highway would tear out the hills and woods on the west bank of Lake Creek within sight of our little cabin. Tree-huggers like me were adamantly opposed. Why not improve US 27 without ripping up a swath of earth the length of the state for a new route?
Jimmy Carter turned out to be a wily and pretty ruthless politician. He and folks like the young Jody Powell and Ham Jordan plotted a campaign tailor made for the new realities of the post-McGovern, post Vietnam, post-Watergate world. He promised not to lie to us. Sounds pretty basic, but that was an important pledge in 1975-76. His southern accent and official use of an informal nickname drove the Democratic establishment nuts, but he prevailed.
Then an amazing thing happened. The wily, ruthless Jimmy Carter took his oath so seriously that he left politics almost entirely to others and made his decisions based purely on his conception of the nation's good. Of his failings this was his greatest. His conception of the nation's good did not factor in the harm that losing to a Reagan would do.
Still Jimmy Carter was a much better president than he is given credit for:
- He made important gains toward mideast peace through intense and stubborn personal diplomacy.
- He led us through the necessary return of the Panama Canal to the people of Panama.
- He upgraded our military despite the political costs and the lies to the contrary; later presidents owe a great debt to Carter for the greatest military in history.
- Carter led an ethical and honest administration.
- He was willing to risk his presidency to rescue our hostages in Iran. He knew the odds, just as Obama did in the case of the Bin Laden raid; Both were brave, but Obama was lucky and Carter (and those heroes in the desert) were not.
- He appointed Paul Volker to the fed to stop the economic disaster that resulted from Nixonian policies. Conservatives love to blast him despite his careful and important deregulation where it was safe and economy-boosting to do so.
- Oh, and he started no wars.
Jimmy Carter was indeed a ruthless and effective politician in his quest for the presidency, but from the moment he recited that Constitutional pledge on January 20, 1977 until that sleepless night and heartbreaking morning of January 20, 1981, I challenge anyone to find a moment when he put his own politics above the good of his country.
My endorsement of Carter in 1976...
More than a decade ago we got to attend Carter's Sunday School class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, GA...
