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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Saturday Morning Open Thread: The Squire of Plains

Saturday Morning Open Thread: The Squire of Plains

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I get the feeling that James Earl Carter’s secret to success, as an ex-president, is that he has everything he wants. Not a formula that would work for most people who get to be President — it’s a job made for strivers — but just imagine how confusing, not to mention infuriating, it will be when someone reads this Happy Weekend Story to the current Oval Office Occupant.

From the Washington Post, “The Un-Celebrity President”:

Jimmy Carter finishes his Saturday night dinner, salmon and broccoli casserole on a paper plate, flashes his famous toothy grin and calls playfully to his wife of 72 years, Rosalynn: “C’mon, kid.”

She laughs and takes his hand, and they walk carefully through a neighbor’s kitchen filled with 1976 campaign buttons, photos of world leaders and a couple of unopened cans of Billy Beer, then out the back door, where three Secret Service agents wait.

They do this just about every weekend in this tiny town where they were born — he almost 94 years ago, she almost 91. Dinner at their friend Jill Stuckey’s house, with plastic Solo cups of ice water and one glass each of bargain-brand chardonnay, then the half-mile walk home to the ranch house they built in 1961.

On this south Georgia summer evening, still close to 90 degrees, they dab their faces with a little plastic bottle of No Natz to repel the swirling clouds of tiny bugs. Then they catch each other’s hands again and start walking, the former president in jeans and clunky black shoes, the former first lady using a walking stick for the first time…

When Carter left the White House after one tumultuous term, trounced by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, he returned to Plains, a speck of peanut and cotton farmland that to this day has a nearly 40 percent poverty rate…

“I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Carter says over dinner. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich.”

Carter was 56 when he returned to Plains from Washington. He says his peanut business, held in a blind trust during his presidency, was $1 million in debt, and he was forced to sell.

“We thought we were going to lose everything,” says Rosalynn, sitting beside him.

Carter decided that his income would come from writing, and he has written 33 books, about his life and career, his faith, Middle East peace, women’s rights, aging, fishing, woodworking, even a children’s book written with his daughter, Amy Carter, called “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer.”

With book income and the $210,700 annual pension all former presidents receive, the Carters live comfortably…

Carter is the only president in the modern era to return full-time to the house he lived in before he entered politics — a two-bedroom rancher assessed at $167,000, less than the value of the armored Secret Service vehicles parked outside.

Ex-presidents often fly on private jets, sometimes lent by wealthy friends, but the Carters fly commercial. Stuckey says that on a recent flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, Carter walked up and down the aisle greeting other passengers and taking selfies…

Plains is a tiny circle of Georgia farmland, a mile in diameter, with its center at the train depot that served as Carter’s 1976 campaign headquarters. About 700 people live here, 150 miles due south of Atlanta, in a place that is a living museum to Carter.

The general store, once owned by Carter’s Uncle Buddy, sells Carter memorabilia and scoops of peanut butter ice cream. Carter’s boyhood farm is preserved as it was in the 1930s, with no electricity or running water.

The Jimmy Carter National Historic Site is essentially the entire town, drawing nearly 70,000 visitors a year and $4 million into the county’s economy.

Carter has used his post-presidency to support human rights, global health programs and fair elections worldwide through his Carter Center, based in Atlanta. He has helped renovate 4,300 homes in 14 countries for Habitat for Humanity, and with his own hammer and tool belt, he will be working on homes for low-income people in Indiana later this month.

But it is Plains that defines him…

And that may be his superpower: Jimmy Carter grew up secure. He was the beloved first-born son of two parents who were local aristocracy, and content to be such; he survived service during WWII; he married the woman he loved and had children who made their own lives. He came home from the Oval Office, and settled happily back in the house he likes, with the woman he loves, enough money to be able to devote himself to good works, and enough influence to make those good works a global blessing. (Again: This puts him rather outside the norm for most American presidents, but he does seem to be aware that he’s been fortunate.) I don’t know how his Baptist faith would explain Living well is the best revenge… but from all indications, Carter is a man who is living well.

Reader Interactions

149Comments

  4. 4.

    satby

    He was a man ahead of his time in many ways. His post-presidential life has far exceeded his presidency, and very few who have held the office can claim that.

    Good morning all. Found kitten update: we had a semi-peaceful night after she settled down. I have to get her kitten formula, she’s eating the canned food well enough if I add some water, but she shouldn’t have been weaned yet so she needs the nutrients. She’s white with a tan blaze on the top of her head, blue eyes but I think they’ll change. Name suggestions appreciated!
    Have to head to the market but I with check back ?

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Plains is a tiny circle of Georgia farmland,

    Out of curiosity I googled Plains to see just where in GA it was (pretty much where I expected it to be) and was surprised to see it really is an almost perfect circle of GA farmland, (with an appendage to take in a retirement community). I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it on a map before.

    Hard to believe ol’ JC is 94 yrs old, Rosalynn 91 and after 72 years of marital bliss they are still going strong. I am reminded of what my Uncle Tony said when on the occasion of his and Betty’s 50th was asked if he had ever thought of divorce:

    “Divorce? No, murder on the other hand….”

  8. 8.

    Just One More Canuck

    Trump would probably try to take away Jimmy’s pension or his Secret Service protection, out of sheer pettiness

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    Jimmy Carter has a fundamental decency and modesty about him that made him a far better person and POTUS than Ronald Reagan, but I think he suffered as a candidate against Reagan for not being as much of a showman.

    @satby:
    We’ll all need to see pictures before we can suggest a suitable name. Also, agreed about the eyes: if she’s too young to be weaned, her real eye colour won’t have come in yet.

  10. 10.

    debit

    @satby: I demand (okay, request) pictures please.

    President Carter has been a source of inspiration and hope, a true public servant and I admire him so much.

  12. 12.

    ThresherK

    He didn’t grow up log-cabin poor, but he got poorer while President?

    It takes a strong man to handle that. He’s made of stern stuff. (Then again we all sorta knew that.)

  15. 15.

    tobie

    There is something about coming from a small town and living in a small town and knowing every one in your small town that can lead to genuine decency, modesty and humility and the Carters seem to embody that. I’ve seen the mythology of it in Norman Rockwell paintings. That it exists in the flesh is amazing. Nice way to start the day. Thanks, AL.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    he survived service during WWII;

    For the record, he did not serve in WWII. According to his Wiki page:

    Carter graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 with a Bachelor of Science degree and joined the United States Navy, where he served on submarines. After the death of his father in 1953, Carter left his Naval career and returned home in Georgia to take on the reins of his family’s peanut-growing business.

  22. 22.

    TS (the original)

    It’s so delightful to see someone who “has enough” & doesn’t want more.

    With book income and the $210,700 annual pension all former presidents receive, the Carters live comfortably

    They don’t see the need to live any other way & have been blessed with long lives and good friends. I loved that the story was center front on the Washington Post. Such an antidote to the current political horror stories.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @ThresherK: I love maps, always have, even as a kid. One of the best xmas presents I ever go was a National Geographic world atlas from my parents. I can get lost in it for hours. That love served me well when I was still caving where I not only used maps but drew them.

  26. 26.

    Jim Kakalios

    @Raven: Huh. Did not know that.

    The Carter Center is a wonderful place, and if you have an afternoon in Atlanta is well worth your time.

    As someone said, the word to describe Jimmy Carter is secure. I’ve seen this in truly smart people – they don’t need to show off and beat you over the head with their brilliance or erudition. They know who they are and don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

  27. 27.

    Steeplejack

    All the dates this week have been palindromic—8-15-18, 8-16-18, 8-17-18, etc.—but a woo-adjacent friend reminded me that today the time is added in: 8-18-18 8:18.

    Use this information wisely.

    (I guess you could add in 18 seconds if you’re really going for it.)

  29. 29.

    lahke

    Up here Massachusetts it’s common to run into the Dukakises–same vibe. Genuinely nice people

  30. 30.

    Raven

    @Jim Kakalios: yea, they actually flattened Bald Hill to put in an interstate ramp. He watched the Battle from there and Hood was where the Oakland Cemetery is. There isn’t much left but signs when you take the tour.

  32. 32.

    Chyron HR

    Sometimes I forget that the alleged “left” stood aside in the name of “political purity” and let rapacious plutocrats destroy the country THREE times in my lifetime, not just two.

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven:

    What are Sanborn® Maps used for?

    Perhaps the most frequent use is to acquire a copy of a section of a Sanborn® Map, showing a structure which is being presented for addition, for inclusion with an application to have that structure added to The National Register of Historic Places. It is one of the proofs requested, to provide justification for adding the property. In addition, they may also be used:

    by people engaged in bottle collecting or metal detecting to research sites.
    to study/research sequential occupance changes in a building, a block, or a section of town.
    in some aspects of environmental research (e.g. whether an old service station may have ever occupied the property with the gas tanks possibly never having been dug up).
    to attempt to ascertain the original plan of a structure or the arrangement of structures on a property.
    to obtain some information related to genealogical inquiry.

    Used for bottle collecting, I have heard the best places for collecting bottles are old outhouse sites.

    My son was down at STL city hall last week pulling some permits for some of his jobs. Got to talking with one of the gals at the desk and just for the hell of it had her pull up one of the early maps of the city and looked for his house in the Benton Park neighborhood. It didn’t look quite right so he had her pull some more records for him and it turns out the room addition at the back of his rather strangely built house isn’t an addition at all, but in fact the original structure on his lot.

  38. 38.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    I was going though the pics I shot last Saturday up at Arroyo Hondo and noticed a few that I hadn’t processed, increased the exposure on this one and look what popped up next to the Milky Way…a meteor. When I looked at the next pic I took, there was another meteor(there was a meteor shower last weekend).

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven: @?BillinGlendaleCA: @Baud: Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Now Online

    The Library of Congress has placed online nearly 25,000 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, which depict the structure and use of buildings in U.S. cities and towns. Maps will be added monthly until 2020, for a total of approximately 500,000.

    The online collection now features maps published prior to 1900. The states available include Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Alaska is also online, with maps published through the early 1960s. By 2020, all the states will be online, showing maps from the late 1880s through the early 1960s.

    In collaboration with the Library’s Geography and Map Division, Historical Information Gatherers digitized the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps during a 16-month period at the Library of Congress. The Library is in the process of adding metadata and placing the digitized, public-domain maps on its website.

  41. 41.

    tobie

    @Chyron HR: I’m trying to figure out what the third time is. Purity ponies spoiled 2016 and 2000. Is the third time 1980, when the Kennedy/Carter race spilled over into a contentious convention? If that’s what gave us Reagan, then god damn, the left really did destroy the country.

  43. 43.

    Betty Cracker

    Jimmy Carter was among the most decent human beings to ever occupy the Oval Office. I was a kid when he was president and don’t remember much about it besides people being pissed off about the price of gas and fuel shortages. I seem to recall a short time there where you could only get gas every other day, according to the final number on your license plate. Does anyone else remember that?

    I also vaguely recall a speech Carter gave while wearing a sweater and urging people to use less energy. He was ridiculed for it. But imagine how different the world might be today if we’d listened to him, instead of electing a shitty actor who puffed us up on jingoism and told us greed and rapaciousness were our true birthright. How many wars might have been averted…how much less damage to the climate. SMH.

  45. 45.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Betty Cracker:

    I seem to recall a short time there where you could only get gas every other day, according to the final number on your license plate. Does anyone else remember that?

    Yup, Carter also put solar panels up on the White House roof. Of course, St. Ronnie had them promptly removed.

  49. 49.

    Matt McIrvin

    @tobie: 1980 was not really a close election. When John Anderson entered the race, in the polls he immediately took a big chunk of the electorate from Carter–but I don’t think those were purity-pony leftists, they were mostly centrists who weren’t quite sure about Reagan yet. Over the course of the year you can see them sliding into Reagan’s camp more than sticking with Anderson.

    The Kennedy insurgency in the primaries was an early sign that something was seriously wrong, but I see it more as a symptom than a cause–Carter not being reelected was overdetermined, what with the economy being in the toilet and the Iran hostage crisis all over the news. (The crisis actually helped Carter when it first broke, but that support evaporated when it became clear he wasn’t going to resolve it.) He was an unpopular president.

  51. 51.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: For a while they were one of the sources Google used to mark buildings in their map view. I think they use their own database now, though.

  52. 52.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin: Carter was more conservative than the Dem Congress he had, and there’s a debate to be had about who should have compromised more with whom to get more done.

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin: that support evaporated when it became clear he wasn’t going to bomb the piss out of them, because that’s what manly American mans do.

  56. 56.

    tobie

    @Betty Cracker: Carter put solar panels on the White House. Reagan had them removed. What a different planet we would have had if we had committed to conservation and alternative energy in the late 70s.

    @Baud: @Matt McIrvin: @?BillinGlendaleCA: I don’t doubt you’re right. I was just trying to figure out what Chyron’s three instances of purity ponies destroying the country were. The economy was in the toilet during Carter’s term and he was blamed mightily for that.

  57. 57.

    Aleta

    He said something I liked in an interview for a book, that he uses faith to live in very troubled times but that doesn’t mean the importance of christian faith. He said “It could be faith in anything.” Iirc he gave some examples like faith in education, or in our friends, or in democracy. A verb not a noun, he said.

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Gotta go but I’ll leave you with this: Dear Mr. President

    During his presidency, Barack Obama read 10 letters from members of the public every day. He reveals what they meant to him

  59. 59.

    SenyorDave

    With book income and the $210,700 annual pension all former presidents receive, the Carters live comfortably…

    It would give me immense joy to see Donald Trump not receive this pension due to forcible removal from office. It is truly a measure of how much I detest this man.

    If he is impeached and convicted he forfeits all his post-president benefits, including pension and secret service detail.

  63. 63.

    Schlemazel

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    The economy was in shit shape from Nixon/Ford mostly because of Henry Kissinger’s brilliant idea to have the Gulf states feed was machine with money it would make by joining together to control the price of oil.

    It is long ago enough now that I imagine some people need to be educated about Poppy Bush meeting with Iranians to ensure they did not release the hostages until St. Ronnie was President in return for his getting them weapons they wanted to defend against Iraq.

  66. 66.

    MazeDancer

    Cat Adoptions are Free this weekend at Dutchess County SPCA in Hyde Park, NY.

    A lovely, spotless facility, it is worth a long drive from anywhere, not just to take home a great, free kitty – neutered and with shots – but to see how a wonderful shelter can be run.

    If you click on their FB page, and scroll down to “Walk Through Wednesday”, you can view a video of every cat. The cats are also listed by name and picture on their web site.

    They also have lots of dogs with sponsored, or half-sponsored fees. They bring up animals from Puerto Rico, Cayman Islands, as well as other, surrounding shelters, as often as space allows.

  67. 67.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chyron HR: ’68 was a better example of the left fracturing, I think. That actually was a very close election, and it took place in the context of society in complete upheaval and a big chunk of the left regarding the Democrats as unforgivable warmongers. But I’m not sure I can really blame them, under the circumstances. Also, the thing that really made it close was that the George Wallace faction had sheared off from the Democrats, which was all really about right-wing racist politics.

  68. 68.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: My then-boyfriend and I drove to Corpus Christi from Springfield at the end of June 1979 to see his mother and siblings. We were extremely worried we would run out of gas along the way since so many gas stations ran out of gas before the end of the month because of rationing. Once we crossed into Oklahoma there was not one open station until we reached Texas! Then there was plenty of gas, and it was cheaper – around $0.76/gal! Those were different times for sure.

  69. 69.

    Schlemazel

    @Chyron HR:
    The total number of elections the left has abandoned the Democratic candidate in my lifetime is 4: 68, 80, 00 and 16

    An interesting side note is that in 1960 JFK was NOT the choice of the liberal wing of the party. Famously Eleanor Roosevelt walked out of the convention when he got the nomination largely because he was not on board with the civil right program. He became the darling of the left though and via a timely bullet through his spine provided the momentum to pass the Civil Right and Voting RIghts acts thanks to LBJ strong arming Southern Dems into suicide

  72. 72.

    TS (the original)

    @OzarkHillbilly: From your link

    The “10 LADs”, as they came to be known – for “10 letters a day” – would circulate among senior staff and the stack would be added to the back of the briefing book the president took with him to the resi­dence each night.

    Presume trump’s briefing book (if it exists) contains the times for fox news TV shows.

    The world so misses a President who knows how to do his job & does it well.

  76. 76.

    Nancy

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    Thank you for this photograph. It was cloudy while I was awake and when the skies were clear I was sleeping on the couch during the meteor shower. Nice to see that someone can stay awake when they want to ;-) and that someone is a brilliant and talented photographer.

  82. 82.

    p.a.

    @Schlemazel: LBJ was wrong when he claimed he’d lost the south for
    Dems for a generation. It’s been more. At least at the state, local levels- Carter & Clinton may historically be * presidents re: the south and dems.

  85. 85.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: Holy shit, they admit publicly they they rolled out the announcement this week as a distraction, and admitted that they are holding others in their pocket in order to do the same thing when another distraction is needed.

    These people have apparently lost the ability to see themselves and hear themselves. It seems like they do about a hundred evil things every day – with long-lasting consequences. Please let this be over soon.

  86. 86.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @OzarkHillbilly: That story almost made me cry. It certainly made me regretful of what so many in this country didn’t appreciate. Thanks for sharing.

  88. 88.

    Matt McIrvin

    @p.a.: Carter’s election in 1976 was the most exceptional, weird election in the second half of the 20th century–the map looks like nothing else from modern times; it’s like something that dropped out of the 19th century, with the Solid South going Democratic and Republicans dominating in the North. Carter’s Southern identity combined with Watergate did a number on the electorate, but then the pattern resumed that had been building ever since the Civil Rights Act.

    Clinton’s elections weren’t that exceptional, they’re more the beginning of the geographic pattern that’s dominated US politics ever since. It’s just that Clinton got just enough Southern support on the margins to pull off respectable wins. Also, the inland white South wasn’t quite done voting for Democrats yet–it was a holdover from the pre-1964 era.

  90. 90.

    kindness

    It’s funny because The WaPo shredded Carter almost every day he was President. I read it yesterday and yes. it is a wonderful piece on a good and decent couple. Something we can’t say about most politicians. I just wish the WaPo had been more generous in the 70’s. We might not have had Ronnie Raygun in the 80s which really was the beginning of the descent of the Republic Party to what it is today. God rest it’s soul(d).

  91. 91.

    NobodySpecial

    @Chyron HR: *I’ve* never been silent, good buddy. But then again, I’m not a purity pony. It’s just tiring watching folks like you set up all these fake arguments to knock them down.

    Carter was doomed from the moment gas rationing started. Bad economies kill presidents. There was no magical argument that was going to unify ‘the left’, (whatever that meant back then when a Rockefeller Republican was promoting openly lefty policies in the GOP) AND stop the Reagan-curious from rolling into the White House. Trying to make it out to be some grand refighting of the Bernie business through history is bunk.

  92. 92.

    SFAW

    1968? Yeah, I guess that Vietnam’s effects were vastly overblown. And raven’s “Fuck LBJ” is just something for him to say/write, to be contrary. Almost forgot: Bobby’s assassination had no effect, either. So, yeah, it’s all on “The Left’s” purity ponies.

    And Teddy Kennedy did not cause Carter’s loss. Unless we believe that Carter’s 30-percent approval, Reagan’s debate performance, and “Reagan Democrats” were all aided-and-abetted by Teddy and “The Left.”

  94. 94.

    SFAW

    @BruceFromOhio:

    I wonder what the Secret Service guys think about being posted in Plains.

    The non-insane ones are probably thanking their stars that they don’t have to be anywhere near the Liar-in-Chief.

  95. 95.

    Schlemazel

    @p.a.:
    Yup. The “conservative” Johnson is the guy who actually made the great leap forward on civil rights that the liberal Kennedy was not interested in. It has now been 2 and a half generations and there is no end in sight to the ‘Southern Strategy”

  96. 96.

    West of the Rockies

    Don’t know if it is true, but I heard Jimmy had solar panels installed on The White House, and that Reagan’s first act was to have them removed.

    If true, that perfectly encapsulates the distinction between the Democratic Party (science, progress, creation) and the Republican Party (shunning science and progress, destruction).

  97. 97.

    Schlemazel

    @SFAW:
    I am going to guess you were not around for ’68 or have forgotten what it was like. Yes, things like Vietnam hurt Dems but the election was so close that the people who didn’t vote for Johnson because he was not a liberal easily made the difference. In ’80 it was the liberal establishment in Congress that seemed hell bent on undermining Carter. Of the 4 cases though that one is the weak sister.

  98. 98.

    smintheus

    @NobodySpecial: Carter’s election in 1976 was something of a freak occurrence. He won the Dem nomination almost entirely based on rhetoric, coming out of nowhere to defeat far better known (and better) candidates: he was smooth and presented himself as all things to all people. First time I heard him in a debate (when he was still virtually unknown), I feared he would end up winning the nomination because his “all things” schtick was so good. But it didn’t sell all that well during the general election and Ford nearly managed to beat Carter – it turned out to be a surprisingly tight race, given that Ford was so unsuccessful as president, the economy was a mess, and Ford’s pardon of Nixon by itself ought to have been sufficient to defeat him. Carter really didn’t have a record as governor he could run on.

    The truth is that Carter didn’t have many achievements at president either, and he bungled some important things like the Iranian hostage taking. He also ran an atrociously dumb campaign in 1980, predicating it almost entirely on Reagan bashing. He depicted Reagan as dumb and crazy and dangerous, and his strategy fell apart predictably when Reagan managed to appear coherent in the debates. There was a reason that Anderson was running – a lot of people doubted well in advance that Carter could manage to win re-election. He had little to recommend him in 1976, and in 1980 hadn’t done much to strengthen his record.

  99. 99.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly: Thanks so much for that link, Ozark. I am only a few paragraphs in but I am already crying. Crying with love and appreciation for the wonderful president we had, crying because we are no longer blessed with him at the helm, crying at the terrible contrast with the current resident of the White House.

    I’m going to have to read the article in pieces because it’s overwhelming for me to read it all at once. Beautifully written, and powerful, at least so far.

  100. 100.

    Rick

    Jimmy Carter is my hero, and as an atheist, that’s damned impressive. I worked on his campaign in 1976 and again in 1980. I’m from Wisconsin, and he won this primary, too. Jimmy Carter is everything I had wanted and he’s thought of as better than even Barack Obama.

  101. 101.

    Matt McIrvin

    @West of the Rockies: The solar-panel story is true. They weren’t very impressive solar panels by today’s standards–just simple water heaters. But they did save energy consumption at the White House and served as a symbol of leaders doing their bit.

  103. 103.

    Boussinesque

    I always tear up a little whenever I read anything about the Carters, because they’re just such damn decent people, and yet he and his presidency have been so unfairly maligned. I remember reading about him when I was in junior high, with his sweaters and efforts at conservation, and (being a budding environmentalist myself) not understanding why anyone would have a problem with that or mock him for it. I’m glad to read that he’s still going strong, enjoying life, and doing good works, despite the brain cancer scare.

  105. 105.

    Matt McIrvin

    @WaterGirl:

    These people have apparently lost the ability to see themselves and hear themselves.

    No, they know exactly what it sounds like. They’re acting like obvious crooks and bullies on purpose, to hurt us, by proving they can get away with it–it’s a power move.

    The goal is to drive us to despair, suicide and self-destructive behavior, self-loathing and factional infighting as we ask ourselves how we could lose to these creeps.

  106. 106.

    Brachiator

    @Schlemazel:

    I am going to guess you were not around for ’68 or have forgotten what it was like. Yes, things like Vietnam hurt Dems but the election was so close that the people who didn’t vote for Johnson because he was not a liberal easily made the difference.

    Huh? What? Johnson wasn’t running in 68.

  107. 107.

    WaterGirl

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The goal is to drive us to despair, suicide and self-destructive behavior, self-loathing and factional infighting as we ask ourselves how we could lose to these creeps.

    Fuck them.

    I guess I have trouble comprehending how anyone could do such evil things, while realizing how evil they are, and say “yeah, I’m good with that”. If you are right, they are sociopaths, one and all.

  109. 109.

    GregB

    The information war is heating up in the opre-election season and the media is getting roped into the dame stupid pattern of inviting propagandists on their shows and letting the suck the oxygen from the room, steam rolling hosts and injecting propagandistic whatsboutism into the information stream.

    I just watched Rev. Al get bowled over by Sam Nunberg who talked so much the other two panelists were sitting in stone silence as Sam compared Angela Merkel saying positive things about Hillary to the Trump tower meeting with Russian spies and rat-fuckers.

    Bannon is making the rounds…The odious Brexit shitheel Farage has resurfaced like a boil.

    Plus we now see that Twitter is teeming with phony bots with military and guns rights names pushing for civil war.

    Not to mention that three Democratic legislators have been probed Russian active measures.

    Games need to be stepped up or they will swamp democracy and humanity with their avalanche of lies and filth.

  110. 110.

    lamh36

    Good morning!

    The number of stories of just how great Aretha Franklin was (behind the Diva persona folks liked to talk about) she did so many things like this:

    Aretha waived her fee to headline the Sam Cooke tribute I produced some years ago. That didn’t mean it was cheap. Traveling light wasn’t her thing. As she told me later, she did it for Sam. Solomon Burke was on the same show. He said he’d waive his fee also . . . if I could create a moment onstage during which he and Aretha would sing together. Likely he knew as well as I did that such a decision was not mine to make. It was Aretha’s. And she hadn’t even gotten back to me about which songs she’d be doing. I told her manager about Solomon’s wish. No response. When the day of the event came, Aretha closed the show with a pure and beautiful performance. After that, Solomon was going to lead the many performers gathered in an encore of “A Change Is Gonna Come.” We’d created a moving throne for Solomon that enabled us to get him on the stage pretty quickly. As he was being wheeled out, Aretha watched from a chair at the side of the stage. To our surprise, she didn’t go back to her dressing room. Solomon went into the song. “I was born by the river . . .” It was gorgeous stuff. I watched Aretha watching Solomon. Then, a few lines in, I saw that Aretha had held onto her mic. And for whatever reason, it was still on. This still doesn’t make sense. But there it was. With Solomon a verse in, Aretha still hidden at the side of the stage where the audience couldn’t see her, she lifted the mic up and started singing with Solomon. For a few seconds, no one, including Solomon, knew where this voice was coming from. I just watched her, stunned. When it finally registered with Solomon, Aretha stood up, straightened her gown, and walked onto that stage. There were tears running down Solomon Burke’s face. It may be the deepest musical moment I’ve ever witnessed. Solomon called me into his dressing room after the show, holding me to his chest and not letting go, thanking me. But I told him I couldn’t take any credit. It was all Aretha. The next night, we did a gospel show, with Aretha opening. She wore a long robe with a golden cross on the back. Her contract said she’d do two songs. She walked onto the stage, kicked her shoes into the audience, and didn’t leave until she’d done six of her favorites, like she was talking to God. Rest in Peace, Miss Franklin.
    https://www.facebook.com/1448624078/posts/10217583277880971/

    Here is the video of it along unfolding:

    ‪Solomon Burke and Aretha Duo-Sam Cooke Tribute.avi https://youtu.be/z-LZ_IxvNVM via @YouTube‬

  111. 111.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Villago Delenda Est: As it was, I see Wallace mostly helping Nixon. I doubt he was going to pick off enough votes from Nixon to lose him many more states. But that’s in hindsight–Nixon is the guy who went dirty in 1972, an election he won in a roaring landslide, so I don’t suppose he took these things for granted.

  112. 112.

    cmorenc

    What’s really frustrating and ironic about Carter’s win in 1976 is how close Gerald Ford came to winning that election down the stretch. Had Ford instead won, all the stagflation woes and the Iranian hostage crisis would have been around his neck, and Ted Kennedy would have likely won the 1980 election handily as the dem nominee over Reagan. And history would have been very different, and we’d have had universal Health Care and a very different Supreme Court the last 35 years.

    Carter’s the greatest ex-President this nation has ever had, and one of the best people to ever be President, but he was not one of the better Presidents.

  113. 113.

    Ian

    @tobie:
    Anderson and Carter did not pull together in votes what the Californian showman pulled off in 1980. I have had some friends try to argue that Ted Kennedy could have *really pulled it off and won* but it sounds about as pointless an argument as listening to bernouts saying the same for 2016.

    To me personally 1994 felt a lot more like liberal and progressive voters abandoning their own side than 1980, but YMMV.

  114. 114.

    SFAW

    @rikyrah:

    I have sobering news: Trump effectively IS a king. The anti-Constitution party (the GOP) is making sure of it.

    I have sobering news for Peter Daou: they’re not the “anti-Constitution party,” they’re the “Party of Fascist Traitors.” Every fucking one of them.

    ETA: Not to be confused with the “Traitorous Fascists Party.” Splitters!

  116. 116.

    khead

    @Betty Cracker:
    @Soprano2:

    Yeah, I can remember. Every year we packed up the family truckster (a rebuilt ’68 Caddy) and headed out from southern WV “Griswold family style” for a two week visit with my aunt (Mom’s sis) and her family. She was married to a Pontiac division manager so we visited them in exotic locales such as Columbus, Houston, and Jacksonville in the 70’s. The trips to Jacksonville in the late 70’s were tough because you had to travel on the right day or basically beg people for gas. Plus the amount of gas you could get was rationed. We caught a break somewhere in SC or Georgia one year when someone took pity on us hillbillies and let Dad fill the entire tank (26 gallons!).

    On a side note, the only thing I remember about Columbus is hiding downstairs under a table during the tornado in June ’75.

  117. 117.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Betty Cracker: “Odd-even gas days” were a feature of the first OPEC embargo, in the autumn of 1973 under Tricky Dick. I remember it well: I was back home licking my intellectual wounds after a first failed attempt at grad school. On appropriately-numbered days, Dad would take my car & get it in line at the Shell station across the street (now a credit union) while I was getting ready to leave for my grad-assistant’s job at recently-famous UMBC (then <10 yrs old) on the far side of town.

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    In ’72, Nixon feared Wallace more than any other Dem, because Wallace could eviscerate the “Southern Strategy”.

    To call Wallace a Dem is misleading. Southern racists had been moving away from the Democratic Party since 1948. A break was inevitable.

    Republicans had already been winning the South, with the exception of Texas and Arkansas. Nixon made it a clean sweep, and gave racists in the rest of the country a reason to vote GOP.

  119. 119.

    James E Powell

    @Matt McIrvin:
    @cmorenc:

    There are times I wonder whether we’d have been better off if Ford had won a very narrow victory in ’76. Would he have taken the blame for the economic problems that were already in progress? Would he have kept Kissinger? How would they have responded to the Iranian revolution? And so on. I don’t know that it would have done anything to change the right-wing revanche that erupted in 1980 (and has more or less ruled American politics ever since), but it’s something to argue about for those who have the time and inclination.

  121. 121.

    Matt McIrvin

    @James E Powell: The thing about these counterfactuals is that you can never be sure, especially in advance.

    (A genre of political essay that drives me up the wall is the “it would be better if our side loses this one” chin-stroker. Somebody writes one of those in every single major election season that I can remember.)

  122. 122.

    Mike in NC

    @Amir Khalid: No doubt he still has one or two people whose sole responsibility is to pore over magazine and newspaper articles in search of favorable coverage, which they put into a binder for him to drool over.

    In other words, “fake news”.

  123. 123.

    James E Powell

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Well I certainly never engage in that kind of political essay. I never think it’s good to lose. For supreme court justices alone, we have win every time.

    The fact that we can never be sure about counterfactuals is why they make good subjects for argument. As long as we stay away from the “What if Napoleon had a B-52 at Waterloo?” type of argument, that is. Not everyone enjoys this kind of thing, but it can be interesting and it helps keep the mind open to the contingencies in things. For people in my general age bracket, it all starts with November 22, 1963.

  125. 125.

    DavidC

    Annie: “I don’t know how his Baptist faith would explain Living well is the best revenge… but from all indications, Carter is a man who is living well.”

    Paul: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” – Romans 12: 14-21

  126. 126.

    Kathleen

    @Schlemazel: I agree with you on your assessment. I thought Humphrey was good candidate but his affiliation with LBJ administration hurt him. He was an early Dem supporter of Civil Rights. On of the stories I heard growing up was Dad’s account of Dixiecrats walking out of 1948 convention because of his barn burner speech supporting Civil Rights.

  128. 128.

    PJ

    Jimmy Carter is still an optimist:

    Carter says he thinks the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has “changed our political system from a democracy to an oligarchy. Money is now preeminent. I mean, it’s just gone to hell now.”

    He says he believes that the nation’s “ethical and moral values” are still intact and that Americans eventually will “return to what’s right and what’s wrong, and what’s decent and what’s indecent, and what’s truthful and what’s lies.”

    But, he says, “I doubt if it happens in my lifetime.”

  130. 130.

    mali muso

    I was lucky enough to meet Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter twice during my two years of service in the Peace Corps in Mali. The Carter Foundation did excellent work there in eradicating guinea worm, and the Carters were frequent visitors to check in on the progress. Every time they visited, they invited all of the Peace Corps volunteers in the area to a little reception at the ambassador’s residence to thank us for our service. They would talk about how his mom and their son (I think?) had served in PC and Rosalyn would tear up. They were so genuine and down to earth. One of my big regrets is that I never got a copy of our group photos with them.

  131. 131.

    Ruckus

    Carter is a man who is living well.

    Jimmy Carter is not a fake. He’s what you see, the entire picture. He’s living well because he’s not looking for something, anything to fill the hole in his life, there is no hole to fill. He doesn’t need to be rich because money doesn’t drive him – doesn’t possess him. He does good work, and that’s enough. Success doesn’t drive him – doesn’t possess him. It finds him because he isn’t looking for more. Jimmy Carter has balance, something that most of us lack, existing well is all he needs. Not frill, not splash, not the trappings of wealth. A man to emulate.

  132. 132.

    Chris Johnson

    With book income and the $210,700 annual pension all former presidents receive, the Carters live comfortably

    I can’t think of a former President I’d rather see living this way, but JFC let’s not carry on like he’s hard up but for the book sales. He’s living on 17 times the money I live on right now. I don’t see him complaining, and again, if there was ever a guy I don’t begrudge it, Jimmy Carter is that guy, but I’m always worried it’s becoming a ‘oh the poor dear how does he manage on just $210,700’ narrative.

    He is absolutely rich. If he got that ONCE and put it in the bank I’d call that rich.

  133. 133.

    SFAW

    @Schlemazel:

    I am going to guess you were not around for ’68 or have forgotten what it was like.

    Interestingly enough, I could probably say the same things about you. McCarthy eventually endorsed Humphrey, and Humphrey was on track to win (probably) until Nixon’s October Surprise. It’s also tough to overcome LBJ’s shadow when one has been his VP. And Humphrey was significantly more liberal than LBJ. So, nice try, and you get points for effort.

    And Carter was not done in by the left. Frankly, it was amazing he did as well as he did, for a while, considering his low approvals, etc. And I don’t think there were enough on The Left to drive his numbers that low.

  134. 134.

    WaterGirl

    @mali muso: I never got a copy of the photo of me with Barack Obama when I was volunteering in Iowa in January before the Iowa caucus in 2008. They said they would send it, but they never did. Right after I got home from that trip I got myself a smart phone so I would always have a camera, but there’s no lost photo I could care about as much as that one.

  135. 135.

    WaterGirl

    @Ruckus: Carter knows who he is, and he’s comfortable in his own skin. Barack Obama shares that trait, and I believe that’s part of why they hate him so. But skin color is #1.

  136. 136.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    I’m keeping this open and reading it bit by bit. It’s too good and right now, too painful to read all at once.
    But. I read this:

    It wasn’t us selling a policy mani­festo, and it wasn’t even because we were selling me. It was because some young person in a town they’d never been to went around and talked to people, and listened to them, and saw them. And created the kinds of bonds that made people want to then try to work together.”

    That line that’s in italics. That’s the line. Think about then, and now pop into the present. It was them and now it’s only ME!
    There was a episode of West Wing where the crew gets stranded in farm country where they were, for most of the episode, only talking, never listening. It turned out to be a pivot point in the show, that listening is vital, that hearing others is the entire point. Because without that their is no learning and no perspective.
    Being president is not about the economy, or the military, or….. It’s about the people, all of them, how do they live, how do they stay well, how do they feed their kids……. All those other things are the how and the what, all the people is the why.
    And one can’t do that and see the world only in terms of ME! Selfish people are not just selfish monetarily, they are selfish with life itself.

  137. 137.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:
    Read #136.
    You are correct it is skin color as well. But they hated Jimmy Carter and he ain’t black. But Jimmy Carter is not one of them either.
    Carter and Obama are two colors of the same coin.
    And they hate that coin because they can’t steal it, hold it, fondle it, or ever earn enough of it for it to rub off on them. They have no idea how or why they should be that coin but they know that people actually like that coin. Admire that coin. And they either have no idea why or none of the tools to be that coin. So do whatever they can to find, hold, steal, fondle actual coin because they know there is a difference but they have no idea what it is. And they know that if they can’t have that coin then others can’t have any coins. What they don’t know is that being a better person is what gets one that coin, not stealing it, earning it, finding it or even making an ass of one’s self on TV.

  139. 139.

    J R in WV

    @Schlemazel:

    …1968 … Yes, things like Vietnam hurt Dems but the election was so close that the people who didn’t vote for Johnson because he was not a liberal easily made the difference….

    Johnson didn’t run in ’68 because Vietnam was killing him. HHH ran instead, and the anit-war movement rejected him because he wouldn’t say he would get us out of Vietnam ASAP.

    Kissinger told the North Vietman negotiators in Paris NOT TO WORK WITH LBJ’s state department, because they would get such a better deal from Nixon. They were stupid enough to believe that.

    NIxon lied about the war and kept us in it as long as possible, because Kissinger and Nixon never saw a bombing plan they didn’t love and ejaculate upon.

    ETA: Fuck NIxon, Kissinger with a wire brush, LBJ for Raven.

  140. 140.

    Bess

    @West of the Rockies:

    Carter’s solar panels were not PV panels, did not generate electricity, but were heat collection panels for water heating.

    By the time Reagan moved into the White House the system was in need of repair. Reagan removed the system rather than having it repaired.

  142. 142.

    WaterGirl

    @Ruckus: Well said, Ruckus.

    I also cannot figure out how approximately half of our country was apparently raised to believe that everything is a zero sum game. To believe that if I tear you down, then I look better. Did millions and millions of moms and dads completely fail their children? Ethics, morals, a sense of giving back, of citizenship.

    For all the apparent “religion” in this country, half the people seem to have missed the “do unto others” part. It truly boggles my mind.

  143. 143.

    Gemina13

    @Raven: Were Carter a Roman consul, that would be an excellent cognomen for him. He embodies all we believe to be the best of America – humility, kindness, decency, honesty, and bravery. Mom and my second brother weren’t enamored of him while he was in office, but both liked him – and appreciated him – much more after he lost the Presidency. I think the only other person my brother felt sorrier for on losing an election was Hillary.

    But damn, he’s living so well. He’s a jewel to this country, a shining example of what leadership is and should be, even without the glamour and globetrotting.

  144. 144.

    Another Scott

    @Bess: Scientific American tells the story differently:

    The White House itself once harvested the power of the sun. On June 20, 1979, the Carter administration installed 32 panels designed to harvest the sun’s rays and use them to heat water.

    Here is what Carter predicted at the dedication ceremony: “In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”

    For some of the solar panels it is the former that has come to pass: one resides at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, one at the Carter Library and, as of this week, one will join the collection of the Solar Science and Technology Museum in Dezhou, China. Huang Ming, chairman of Himin Solar Energy Group Co., the largest manufacturer of such solar hot water heaters in the world, accepted the donation for permanent display there on August 5. After all, companies like his in China now produce some 80 percent of the solar water heaters used in the world today.

    But they are based on the same technology developed here in the U.S. and once manufactured in Warrentown, Va., by InterTechnology/Solar Corp., the company behind the Carter panels.* Roughly three meters long, one meter wide and just 10 centimeters deep, the blue-black panels absorb sunlight to heat water piped through their innards. The Carter administration set a goal of deriving 20 percent of U.S. energy needs from such renewable sources by the turn of the century. Today, the U.S. gets a mere 7 percent of its energy from renewables, the bulk of that from the massive hydroelectric dams constructed in the middle of the 20th century. Solar thermal and photovoltaic technology combined provide less than 0.1 percent.

    By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies—recommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers. “The Department of Energy has a multibillion-dollar budget, in excess of $10 billion,” Reagan said during an election debate with Carter, justifying his opposition to the latter’s energy policies. “It hasn’t produced a quart of oil or a lump of coal or anything else in the line of energy.”

    And in 1986 the Reagan administration quietly dismantled the White House solar panel installation while resurfacing the roof. “Hey! That system is working. Why don’t you keep it?” recalls mechanical engineer Fred Morse, now of Abengoa Solar, who helped install the original solar panels as director of the solar energy program during the Carter years and then watched as they were dismantled during his tenure in the same job under Reagan. “Hey! This whole [renewable] R&D program is working, why don’t you keep it?”

    After they came down it took a soft-spoken administrator from a small environmental college in Maine to rescue the Carter panels from being a forgotten curiosity stored in the dark corner of a vast government warehouse.

    […]

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  145. 145.

    Bess

    @Another Scott:

    As I said, and your C&P says, the Carter system was for water heating, not for generating electricity.

    Some reports I have read stat that when Reagan came into office the system needed some work. Some state, as yours does, that the panels were taken down because the roof under them needed repair. It is not clear as to the exact reason.

  146. 146.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:
    Your zero sum comment is why I used the coin phrasing.
    In this country everything figures about money, having a shit ton or not having enough. Those people who see life as zero sum usually are in the second category and they put themselves there by believing propaganda of the right, which is that only if a few have way too much will the rest of us have any. It’s totally not logical, it’s totally nonsensical. But this is the entire party line of every republican since Ike and a few before him. And it’s been the conservative line since we were first divided into political groups eons ago. It boils down to “Give us everything or we won’t be able to give you anything.” Notice there’s nothing in there about them giving up anything if they get it all is there? Over 50 yrs of selling this one concept has worked, nearly half the people believe it is absolutely true. And a small group of extremely wealthy benefit daily. And we know that it’s not the money that does it, there are wealthy who don’t feel this way at all and donate lots of money to groups other than those trying to get all the rest of the money.

  148. 148.

    Procopius

    I don’t begrudge it to him. He performed what is probably the hardest job in the world for four years, and seems to be a good man. I don’t know of any evil he did, although his idea of deregulation has not had good results. But to say that he “lives comfortably” on a pension of $210,700 is disturbing. That’s not rich, but it should be. That should be the lower cutoff for a 95% income tax bracket, with the highest bracket starting at $1 million a year at 98%

  149. 149.

    karen marie

    @Quinerly: i thought Wolf did a great job at the press dinner but her show was unwatchable. Her style probably works well in noisy clubs but translates very poorly to TV.

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