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Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

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You are here: Home / Politics / Proud to Be A Democrat / Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Happy Birthday, President Carter

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Happy Birthday, President Carter

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This is excellent… James Fallows, who was a speechwriter for Carter back in the 1970s, on “Jimmy Carter: Unlucky President, Lucky Man”:

… Americans generally know Jimmy Carter as the gray-haired retiree who came into the news when building houses or fighting diseases or monitoring elections, and whose political past became shorthand for the threadbare America of the 1970s. Most of today’s Americans had not been born by the time Carter left office in 1981. About one-fifth are old enough to have voted when he won and then lost the presidency. It is hard for Americans to imagine Jimmy Carter as young—almost as hard as it is to imagine John F. Kennedy as old.

But there are consistent accounts of Carter’s personality throughout his long life: as a Depression-era child in rural Georgia, as a hotshot Naval Academy graduate working in Hyman Rickover’s then-futuristic-seeming nuclear-powered submarine force, as a small businessman who entered politics but eventually was forced out of it, as the inventor of the modern post-presidency.

What these accounts all stress is that, old or young, powerful or diminished, Jimmy Carter has always been the same person. That is the message that comes through from Carter’s own pre-presidential campaign autobiography, Why Not the Best?, and his many post-presidential books, of which the most charming and revealing is An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood. It is a theme of Jonathan Alter’s insightful biography, His Very Best. It is what I learned in two and a half years of working directly with Carter as a speechwriter during the 1976 campaign and on the White House staff, and in my connections with the Carter diaspora since then.

Whatever his role, whatever the outside assessment of him, whether luck was running with him or against, Carter was the same. He was self-controlled and disciplined. He liked mordant, edgy humor. He was enormously intelligent—and aware of it—politically crafty, and deeply spiritual. And he was intelligent, crafty, and spiritual enough to recognize inevitable trade-offs between his ambitions and his ideals. People who knew him at one stage of his life would recognize him at another.

Jimmy Carter didn’t change. Luck and circumstances did…

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    130Comments

    4. 4.

      Falling Diphthong

      @David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: For my father-in-law’s 70th birthday, I was shopping for dinner/cake with my preschooler, and I counted to 70 to show her how old Grandpa was turning.

      “Wow,” she observed gravely. “I saw still for a really long time.”

      Reply
    7. 7.

      pabadger

      Anyone doing texting into swing states? If so via who? I signed up via my state’s coordinated and followed up twice and still haven’t heard anything for two weeks.

      Reply
    10. 10.

      stinger

      Thank you, Anne Laurie. If ever an individual deserved a stand-alone post, it is Jimmy Carter on his 100th birthday. A remarkable man of great integrity.

      Reply
    11. 11.

      jonas

      Obviously some good genes had something to do with it, but it’s clear Carter has been around so long because his faith and his work have given him so much joy in life. Sometimes, the good actually survive a really long time.

      Reply
    12. 12.

      peter

      Happy Birthday to the best former President in my lifetime!

      First presidential vote in said lifetime occurred in 1976, and my parents and I went to the polls together and voted for Jimmy Carter.

      Reply
    19. 19.

      Spanky

      Jimmy Carter was the first President I voted for who won, and that was an achievement for a Democrat back in those days.

      Reply
    21. 21.

      WaterGirl

      I was saving this for Jimmy Carter’s birthday, but I’ll just add it to this lovely post from Anne Laurie.

      In case you don’t know who that is with Subaru Diane, that’s Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn.

      Happy birthday, Jimmy Carter!

      Reply
    22. 22.

      David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch

      I know this community doesn’t like the monarchy, but the Kansas City Royals are looking majestic

      Reply
    28. 28.

      eclare

      @prostratedragon:

      I’d never heard of that!

      I worked on his tax return when I was at Arthur Andersen in ATL.  Unfortunately I was the junior member of the team and didn’t get to go with the senior to deliver it.  He was about 6’5″, and the photo of him with Jimmy and Rosalynn makes them look like munchkins.

      I hope he enjoyed the flyby and gets lots of ice cream and cake.

      Reply
    31. 31.

      Steve in the ATL

      @cain: best post-presidency ever, by a South Georgia country mile.

      Has any former republican president ever done a damn thing?

      Reply
    32. 32.

      Melancholy Jaques

      My first and last political hero. Before him, I definitely followed politics. He persuaded me that active participation was a duty and a pleasure.

      Reply
    33. 33.

      Captain C

      @peter: Also the best former President in my life, and the first one whose election I remember.  A few years ago, I visited the Carter Center in Atlanta; it reinforced well how excellent an ex-President and how decent a man he was.  I highly recommend everyone go check it out if you’re in the area.

      Happy Birthday, Mr. Carter!

      Reply
    38. 38.

      Melancholy Jaques

      @WaterGirl:

      I once had a photo of Jimmy and Rosalynn with college me with my college girlfriend. It was lost in a flood, along with all my college and law school stuff.

      Reply
    41. 41.

      wjca

      @Steve in the ATL: Has any former republican president ever done a damn thing?

      Herbert Hoover.  (See also  @NotMax) Who was, I believe, the only other engineer to be President.

      The Hoover Commission (under President Truman) was so impactful that in following years there were any number of “Little Hoover Commissions” to look into improving government function at state and local levels.

      EDT I assume you know about Presudent Taft, later Chief Justice Taft. Probably counts as “doing something.”

      Reply
    42. 42.

      JiveTurkin

      Surprising and disheartening to see Trump with a six point lead in Georgia.  I really thought it was more in play.  Very disturbing to see him up two in NC, and that is with Robinson definitely dragging down the ticket.  As horrible as he is, as bad as his campaign is, and despite his terrible debate performance he’s still basically tied.  No faith in my country given that 50% will vote for a rapist, took me a long time to realize Trump is mostly a symptom, the disease is with his followers.

      Reply
    44. 44.

      m.j.

      Thanks Jimmy for teaching us all that austerity is a very bad economic policy. We needed the lesson after a world war boom. I hope we remember it.

      Reply
    45. 45.

      Another Scott

      HBD President Carter!

      Military.com:

      Though he started his naval career aboard diesel electric submarines, Lt. Carter began working with the Naval Reactors Branch of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission — the Navy’s nuclear submarine program — in 1952.

      [ Image – Jimmy Carter in the U.S. Navy
      Jimmy Carter started his adult life as a young U.S. naval officer. (U.S. Navy) ]

      Rickover was infamous in the Navy for demanding near-absolute perfection from those working under his command. His expectations of the then-28-year-old Carter were no different. The young lieutenant was being groomed as the engineering officer for the nuclear plant aboard the USS Seawolf, the Navy’s second nuclear sub, and was designing the training program for its nuclear enlisted personnel.

      The Navy’s work in developing the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, meant that Rickover and Carter had access to the latest and greatest in top-secret nuclear energy technology. So when Canada’s Chalk River nuclear research facility experienced a power surge that damaged its reactor, the U.S. sent Carter and his team. He was one of a few people in the world who could do it.

      Fuel rods at the research reactor experienced a partial meltdown after the power surge. It ruptured the reactor and flooded the facility’s basement with radioactive water, rendering the reactor core unusable.

      In his 2015 autobiography, “A Full Life: Reflections At Ninety,” Carter described the incident and his preparations for repairing the reactor. They built an exact replica of the reactor, true to the last detail (except the actual nuclear material) on a nearby tennis court to practice and track their progress.

      Carter and his 22 other team members were separated into teams of three and lowered into the reactor for 90-second intervals to clean the site. It was estimated that a minute-and-a-half was the maximum time humans could be exposed to the levels of radiation present in the area.

      It was still too much, especially by today’s standards. The future president had radioactive urine for months after the cleanup.

      [ Image – Lt. Jimmy Carter in main control room of USS K-1.]
      Lt. James Earl (Jimmy) Carter Jr. in main control room of USS K-1. (U.S. Navy) ]

      “We were fairly well-instructed then on what nuclear power was, but for about six months after that, I had radioactivity in my urine,” Carter told CNN in 2008. “They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. It was in the early stages, and they didn’t know.”

      The exposure was especially dangerous for Carter, whose family medical history is full of cancer deaths. His father died of pancreatic cancer in 1953, which led to Carter leaving the Navy that year. Cancerous tumors were found on the former president’s liver and brain in 2015 as he turned 91, but quick diagnosis and treatment led to a cancer-free bill of health a year later.

      His extensive knowledge of nuclear reactors and energy would come in handy when Carter became president in 1977, as other world leaders respected his knowledge on the subject.

      […]

      Carter was president during the Three Mile Island accident, also too.

      Cheers,
      Scott.

      Reply
    60. 60.

      Mousebumples

      @JiveTurkin: polls are a snapshot in time, and guided by what the pollsters thinks the electorate will look like.

      I’m not a Poll Truther, but they’re aren’t infallible. They were off (in Trump’s favor) in 2016. We’ll see what happens this year.

      I’m postcarding tonight. Not the most exciting birthday celebration, but I’m driving to Madison tomorrow for a meeting, so it’s early to bed for me.

      Let’s put in the work!

      Reply
    64. 64.

      HumboldtBlue

      Circa 1986:

      CHICAGO — Former President Jimmy Carter, who served under Hyman Rickover as a young naval officer, then became his commander in chief, extolled the late admiral as ‘one of America’s greatest citizens and patriots’ and a man of peace.

      Rickover, who died Tuesday at 86, hired Carter in 1949 for the Navy’s fledgling nuclear submarine program. In 1976, Carter, as president, became Rickover’s commander in chief.

       

      Carter was informed of Rickover’s death while performing volunteer work at the construction site of a Chicago low-income housing project.

      ‘He deplored nuclear power’s use for destruction, and as a pioneer was responsible for its use for peaceful purposes,’ Carter wrote on a legal pad while sitting on the roof of one of the unfinished buildings.

      ‘A superb engineer, his record for careful design, installation and operation of nuclear power plants in ships and on shore has set an example for safety, which can never be surpassed.

      Reply
    65. 65.

      TBone

      @prostratedragon:

      In late June of 1976, just about 4 1/2 months before the election, Gregg Allman testified in a drug trial, and he was castigated by the rock and roll industry. Rolling Stone magazine even suggested he might never be able to perform again. And the one person who did not ever abandon him was the person who arguably had the most logical reason to do so, which was Jimmy Carter. He wasn’t going to abandon a friend for convenience, even in the heat of an election, even when his friend was, you know, arguably America’s most famous drug user, as Gregg Allman was.

      https://youtu.be/jc7ZDoP2egQ

      Reply
    67. 67.

      Mousebumples

      @Baud: thanks! I love sharing my birthday with President Carter. Might be the last one, but here’s hoping he surprises all of us.

      Reply
    74. 74.

      lowtechcyclist

      What’s wrong with this page? It’s so damn blurry, I can hardly read it!

      Happy 100th, Jimmy Carter!!

      Reply
    75. 75.

      Steve in the ATL

      @TBone: is that when the Allman Brothers almost broke up?  Because that was a question in last night’s trivia game and I didn’t know the answer.  I still won, of course,  but didn’t get a perfect score.  #FML

      Reply
    80. 80.

      MisterForkbeard

      @Geminid: That’s one poll that came out today, and appears to have been partially taking during the giant hurricane

      I wouldn’t worry about it yet

      Reply
    81. 81.

      TBone

      At the end of a bottle of Hershey’s Syrup (please don’t judge, hubby loves it) so I just poured the milk into the bottle and am now nursing on it.

      Reply
    84. 84.

      Mousebumples

      https://bsky.app/profile/ratelimitexceeder.bsky.social/post/3l5ev7ucvl52h (must be logged in to view)

      We’re getting like one article about this per week, and I love it.

      https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/30/republicans-alarm-trump-ground-game-00181577

       

      https://bsky.app/profile/ratelimitexceeder.bsky.social/post/3l5eutpnlad2p (must be logged in to view)

      The Trump campaign? Conning the Republican Party? How terrible!

      {screenshot from above article}

       

      But several Republican operatives said they aren’t seeing the same kind of presence either from the Trump campaign itself or from those outside groups that they did during his previous presidential runs, in 2016 and 2020. Down-ballot candidates for state legislature in some battleground states aren’t running into Trump canvassers at the doors or seeing the campaign’s literature left behind the way they used to, they added.

      One GOP operative in a battleground state, who like others was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the state of the race, cast doubt on whether the Trump Force 47 program is actually putting its recruits to work.

      “It’s almost like a timeshare scheme. You have to go in and do the training, and you get the swag and the hat and the yard sign. That’s what you have to do to go get it,” the operative said. “It doesn’t seem like people are really being activated, and the campaign’s not very forthcoming on whether they’ve been activated.”

      Another reason to question polls reflecting reality. If we have Dems running a full scale (especially compared to 2020 peak pandemic) GOTV operation, with union support, and the GOP has *that*… We’ll see how turnout looks…

      Reply
    86. 86.

      Kelly

      @Nukular Biskits: Jimmy Carter spoke at the U of Oregon student union while he was gaining but still a bit of a longshot. He convinced me. Also I got a glimpse of the Secret Service arsenal in the trunk of one of the cars. The agent that saw me looking past him said a very polite but clear “get the fuck away kid” .

      Reply
    87. 87.

      TS

      @Another Scott:

      From your link

      Former President Donald Trump has backed out of a previously scheduled interview with “60 Minutes,” the most-watched newsmagazine in the United States, CBS News said Tuesday evening.

      CBS disclosed Trump’s change of plans a few hours before the network hosts a vice-presidential debate between Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

      “For over half a century, 60 Minutes has invited the Democratic and Republican tickets to appear on our broadcast as Americans head to the polls,” the network said in a statement. “This year, both the Harris and Trump campaigns agreed to sit down with 60 Minutes.”

      Trump had committed to the interview first, followed by Harris, through campaign spokespeople, CBS said. Veteran CBS anchor and correspondent Scott Pelley was lined up to interview Trump.

      “After initially accepting 60 Minutes’ request for an interview with Scott Pelley, former President Trump’s campaign has decided not to participate,” CBS said.

      The network was notified earlier Tuesday, throwing a wrench into its programming plans, since the Harris and Trump interviews were supposed to air on a special Monday night edition of “60 Minutes” next week.

      Don’t see any mention of this in the Washington Post – all they complain about is MVP not talking to them.

      Reply
    90. 90.

      TBone

      Cars coming down my street off of Rte. 15 are starting to slow down to stare at the 7′ tall Gritty standing there on my lawn glowing. 😆

      Reply
    92. 92.

      eclare

      @TS:

      I saw on Twitter that TCFG backed out because CBS wanted to fact check, live.  It was a statement from his spokesperson, Stephen Cheung.

      It was a retweet, I don’t follow him!

      Reply
    95. 95.

      Betty Cracker

      Gratifying to see from the Carter Center tweet that Hair Furor didn’t profane President Carter’s birthday message with an insincere, sociopathic comment. He’s not worthy to clean Carter’s shoes.

      I’m a single issue voter: I don’t ever want to see, hear or read about the orange fart cloud ever again after November 5. So let it be written; so let it be done!

      Reply
    96. 96.

      TS

      @TS:

      Don’t see any mention of this in the Washington Post

      I have to rescind that remark – from WaPo

      CBS announced Tuesday that Donald Trump backed out of an interview on “60 Minutes” after previously agreeing to it, a characterization that the former president’s campaign disputed.

      The network said Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris each agreed to be interviewed for a special Monday episode about the election — and that Harris’s interview was moving forward with correspondent Bill Whitaker.

      Double time for MVP

      Reply
    97. 97.

      lowtechcyclist

      @Kelly:

      Jimmy Carter is the first President I voted for and the only one I’ve seen live.

      The only President I’ve seen live and up close is Bill Clinton.  He made a brief campaign stop in Florence, SC where we were living at the time of the 1992 primary season.

      Reply
    98. 98.

      twbrandt

      DougJBalloon outdid himself today (no link):

      Immigrants are flooding across our border and weakening our country. Many are drug addicts, who father out-of-wedlock children, refuse to pay their bills, and show more loyalty to our foreign adversaries than they do to the United States. by Elon Musk

      Reply
    103. 103.

      Nukular Biskits

      @Kelly:

      Also I got a glimpse of the Secret Service arsenal in the trunk of one of the cars.

      Same here when Bush I came through.  The SS were in black Tahoes (?) (been a long time) rolling slowly with the doors open as Bush walked down the line shaking hands.

      There was a LOT of firepower in those SUVs.

      Reply
    104. 104.

      lowtechcyclist

      @Mousebumples:

      I love sharing my birthday with President Carter. Might be the last one, but here’s hoping he surprises all of us.

      You can just pass the baton to my wife – she shares a birthday with Kamala Harris. Day and year!  My wife’s the older of the two by a few hours.

      Reply
    106. 106.

      pat

      Remember the solar panels on the White House?  That were removed by Reagan?  Carter knew and believed what the experts were saying about climate change.

      Reply
    108. 108.

      KatKapCC

      A truly good man, and the embodiment of what Christianity ought to be, not the abomination is has become as its loudest voices worship their orange idol.

      Reply
    109. 109.

      lowtechcyclist

      @Kelly:

      Jimmy Carter spoke at the U of Oregon student union while he was gaining but still a bit of a longshot.

      Shoot, I’d completely forgotten that he spoke at Trinity College in the fall of 1975 and I went to hear him speak. That reminded me.

      Reply
    114. 114.

      peter

      @lowtechcyclist: I worked in the Old Post Office in DC when Clinton was President. One day when a co-worker and I were playing catch on the grass across from the Commerce Department, Clinton and a few of his Secret Service friends walked toward a waiting car and he called to my co-worker, “Hey, nice catch!”

      Reply
    116. 116.

      Timill

      Well, there’s interesting. Jimmy Carter is not the oldest living (former) head of state. From wiki: “The oldest living former state leader is Guillermo Rodríguez of Ecuador at the age of 100 years, 332 days.”

      Indeed – Jimmy is only #4 on the list, after Khamtai Siphandone of Laos and Tomiichi Murayama of Japan.

      But he beat HMQ…

      .

      Reply
    117. 117.

      lowtechcyclist

      @KatKapCC: ​
       

      Presidential age trivia: for about 175 years, John Adams was our longest-lived President. He was 90 years and 8 months old when he and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826. No President through Nixon lived longer than Adams did.

      But so far, every President after Nixon has: Ford and Reagan both lived to be 93, GHWB lived to 94, and now Carter is 100. We’ll find out by the summer of 2033 whether Biden can keep the streak alive.

      Reply
    118. 118.

      Sister Golden Bear

      So that cultist who paid $4K for a guitar and smashed it…

      contrary to media reports, the guitar the man destroyed had not been signed by Swift — and was not a certified official guitar used by the singer, a source close to her merch company confirmed to Variety. The organization that held the auction, the Ellis County WildGame Dinner, presented the guitar with a signed CD insert but the guitar itself was not signed.

      Still outta go to jail without any bail for smashing a perfectly good guitar.

      Reply
    119. 119.

      jackmac

      I had the opportunity to see Jimmy Carter up close and personal while attending the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York as a college newspaper reporter. Great experience and great memories. Several months later he was my first vote for president.  Happy Birthday Mr. President!!

      Reply
    121. 121.

      Geminid

      @MisterForkbeard: I don’t worry about one poll. And I don’t worry about people bemoaning their unworthy fellow Americans because there’s no stopping them anyway.

      Same with all the amateur strategists who think they know how a campaign should be run better than the pros in charge of Harris’s. This trip is tense enough without all the backseat drivers chirping away, but there’s no stopping them either

      I guess I’m in a bad mood tonight.

      Reply
    123. 123.

      JiveTurkin

      @Geminid: Trends worry me more than individual polls.  I used to work for a market survey company, and I still have contacts.  This company does occasional internal polls for candidates.  These are the polls that are MUCH more expensive than the ones you read about.  Presidential and even senate candidates will drop $500k for a state poll if they have to.  The Quinnipiac or Rasmussen polls cost a fraction of that because they don’t correct for nearly as many demo features.

      Reply
    127. 127.

      Geminid

      @JiveTurkin: I look trends too. There’s an Arizona outfit called OHPredictives that seemed to do good polling back in 2022 and I would look at their polls month over month, and week over week towards the end.

      They were also a market research company. I think they go by Noble Predictives now.

      Reply
    128. 128.

      Kosh III

      I remember the first time I saw Carter. It was in early 1974 on The Tomorrow Show..

      The only thing I remember him saying was that he wanted to rebuild our railroad system. Sadly, and not his fault, we are still waiting.

      Reply
    129. 129.

      Geminid

      @Kosh III: Happily, we’re not still waiting. The underrated Infrastructure bill allocated $66 billion to Amtrak. At the time, Amtrak’s chief pointed out that this exceeded total capital investment in the system since its creation 50 years before, and that Amtrak could finally expand a service map that had remained static as the nation added 130 million citizens. If you look up “Amtrak” you will find articles about of new routes and enhancement of existing ones. Some of them might serve communities in your state.

      The bill is also funding metropolitan mass transit, including $10 billion for New York City’s MTA.

      Reply

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