Jan.15

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10 Short Stories about Jimmy Carter, Part III

And finally, we get to another set of stories about Jimmy Carter. As a reminder, the overall tone and tenor here is generally positive, but it's not universally so. In the end, the goal is to give a feel for the man and his times. Broadly speaking, today's set covers the latter part of the Carter presidency (along with some general stuff about the politics of his presidency):

1. The Clintons: You might assume that Carter and Bill Clinton, as governors of medium-size Southern states, felt an automatic kinship. And, if so, you would be wrong. Carter, for his part, looked askance at Clinton's less-than-Biblical behavior, with particular reference to the commandments about adultery and false witness. Clinton blamed Carter after being defeated in the 1980 Arkansas gubernatorial election and, besides, did not want to be compared to a president widely considered to be a failure. So, during the 1992 campaign, Carter did little campaigning for Clinton, while Clinton repeatedly told reporters: "Jimmy Carter and I are as different as daylight and dark."
   
   Once Clinton was in office, however, the relationship warmed. Carter was, by that time, a skilled world diplomat, and the Arkansan found it useful to dispatch the Georgian to try to resolve various crises. In 1994, Carter was able to de-escalate tensions after North Korean President Kim Il Sung began to make moves toward nuclear-level plutonium production. Later that same year, a delegation led by Carter persuaded Haiti's Raoul Cédras to yield power peacefully, and to leave that nation. This meant a planned American invasion became unnecessary. In 1999, in thanks for these (and other) services to the nation, Clinton awarded Carter the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And after Clinton left office, the Clintons and Carters enjoyed a warm friendship. This photo was taken on the occasion of the Carters' 75th wedding anniversary:
   
   
   
   Interestingly, when Carter traveled to the White House to meet with Clinton about serving as a special envoy, that was the first time the peanut farmer had ever met a Democratic president. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson both died well before Carter began his rise in politics, and Carter couldn't exactly meet himself, so that left Clinton.
   
   
2. The Kennedys: Speaking of the Kennedy family, you might assume that as an aspiring presidential candidate, Carter would have forged an alliance with the "royal family" of the Democratic Party in the 1970s and 1980s. And again, if you made that assumption, you would be wrong. Though observant Catholics, the Kennedys were also known for their less-than-Biblical behavior. On top of that, there was a pretty serious cultural divide between a Southern Democrat from Georgia and a group of New England Democrats from Massachusetts.
   
   The most important divide, however, was that the Kennedys were considerably more liberal than Carter, and so did not see eye-to-eye on many issues. To be more specific, the preeminent Kennedy of Carter's era was Teddy, the Massachusetts senator. And Teddy's big issue was universal healthcare, which Carter refused to support openly, either as a candidate or as a president. This made the Senator very angry, complaining later in life that "he talked about healthcare; he talked about coverage; and he talked his way around it. You know, he used artful words all the way through this." This is part of the reason Kennedy challenged Carter in the 1980 primaries, doing serious damage to the incumbent. In contrast to what happened with the Clintons, Carter never developed a good relationship with the Kennedys.
   
   
3. Ed Koch: Yet another prominent Democrat with whom Carter had a rocky relationship was Ed Koch, who was first elected mayor of New York in 1977. In October of that year, Carter had a planned trip to New York, and had agreed to a joint appearance with Koch, at which the President would bestow his endorsement. Shortly before the trip, however, Carter came out strongly in favor of a two-state solution in Israel, which outraged the Jewish and strongly pro-Israel Koch. When Carter exited Air Force One on that cold October day, Koch presented him with a letter, already pre-circulated to the media, lambasting the President. Needless to say, there was no endorsement. Not only that, but while Koch was supposed to get a ride with the presidential motorcade back into town, he was left stranded on the tarmac.
   
   Once he was in office, Koch remained a Carter critic, referring to a group of senior anti-Israel officials in the administration as a "gang of five." During the 1980 presidential election, Koch did not exactly endorse Ronald Reagan, but he did damn Carter with faint praise. At a fundraiser in the summer of that year, Carter took Koch aside and said: "You have done me more damage than any man in America." After the peanut farmer's defeat in November, reporters wrote that Carter was defeated by the three Ks: Khomeini, Kennedy and Koch.
   
   
4. The Federal Bench: While Lyndon B. Johnson saw merit in making a few high-profile judicial appointments in service of diversity (e.g., Thurgood Marshall), Carter was the first president to see broad diversity on the federal bench as an important policy goal. Of his 261 judges, 41 (16%) were women, while 57 (22%) were non-white (that includes 37 Black and 16 Latino judges). These may not seem like big numbers, but they were all records at the time.
   
   Since Carter's presidency, every Democratic president has topped his total in terms of minority appointees. The only Republican to do it is George W. Bush, and that was in two terms, and even then was just barely (58 to 57). Similarly, every Democratic president has also topped his total in terms of women appointees. So too have two Republicans, Bush again (71) and Donald Trump (55). In particular, appointment-wise, Joe Biden has been Jimmy Carter on steroids. The current president has appointed 140 minority judges (60% of his 235 appointments), among them 56 Black judges and 32 Latinos. He's also appointed 147 women (63%) to the bench.
   
   As chance would have it, Carter's overall total of 261 judges is a record for a single-term president, with Biden's 235 in second place. However, while Biden got to make a Supreme Court appointment, Carter is the only president to serve a full term without enjoying that particular privilege. The only other presidents to be blanked on that front were William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Andrew Johnson, all of whom served partial terms. Also, if you are wondering, there are 29 Carter judges still active, though all of them have assumed senior status.
   
   
5. Solar Power: In this series, we're trying mostly to highlight things you might not find in standard obituaries. This story is pretty famous, and so might not meet that standard, but it's instructive, so we are including it anyhow.
   
   As many readers will know, Carter foresaw a future in which fossil fuels would need to be supplanted. And so, he committed his administration to developing renewable energy sources. He asked for, and got, an 85% increase in the Department of Energy's renewable fuel sources budget. He signed a bill giving subsidies to corporations that invested in wind turbines, and private citizens who installed solar panels on their homes. And, of course, Carter had solar panels added to the White House. In an address on the day they began operation (June 20, 1979), he said: "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."
   
   As it turns out, Carter was wrong about the "in the year 2000" part, but right about the museum part. On taking office, Ronald Reagan got rid of the White House solar panels, which eventually ended up... on display in the Smithsonian Institute and the Solar Science and Technology Museum in Dezhou, China. Reagan also got rid of the funding for renewable energy, and the subsidies for turbines and solar panels.
   
   
6. Refugees: These days, for reasons well known to readers, refugees seeking asylum in America are often held in roughly the same regard as toxic waste. Not so in Carter's day, as Americans on both sides of the political aisle were deeply concerned about the fates of folks in Vietnam, Cambodia, and other war-torn nations (with, in many cases, the war having been substantially the handiwork of the United States).
   
   Consequently, in 1979, Carter proposed what became the Refugee Act of 1980. It tripled the number of refugees allowed into the United States each year, made allowances for increasing that number beyond the cap in times of emergency, and streamlined the process for evaluating claims of refugee status. When the bill came before the House, it passed 328-47. And when the Senate took it up, it passed... unanimously. Can you imagine such a thing happening today? We can't.
   
   In the year after Carter signed the bill into law, 200,000 refugees were accepted into the United States. The total generally remained above 100,000 people for years thereafter. By the final years of the Trump presidency, however, the total was down to less than 20,000. There's only been a slight uptick during the Biden years.
   
   
7. A Sporting Fellow: Various presidents, off and on, invited successful athletes or teams to visit the White House. However, it was Carter who established it as a tradition that the champions of the various major sports leagues received an automatic invite to visit with the president. In 1980, he welcomed the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, both of them reigning champions of their leagues, to the White House. (Don't expect that particular combo to happen again anytime soon.) As you might imagine from this, Carter was himself a devoted sports fan. And his favorite team, hands down, was Major League Baseball's Atlanta entry:
   
   
   
   Carter, then the governor of Georgia, was present when Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's career record (center image). Well into their retirement, the Carters were captured on the team's "kiss cam" (left). And a few months back, on the occasion of the former president's 100th birthday, the team presented him with a commemorative jersey (right).
   
   The former president was not able to travel, so as to be at that jersey ceremony in person, nor was he able to attend the team's 2021 World Series appearance (and victory) in person. However, he WAS present when the team won the World Series back in 1995. In fact, he threw out the first pitch in the sixth (and ultimately decisive) game.
   
   
8. The Stupid Economy: The narrative of the Carter years is that the economy was bad. And, of course, it was, in many ways. That said, as a reminder that there are many different aspects to "the economy" and that sometimes perception overrides reality, real wages were actually considerably better during the Carter years than they were during the presidency of his immediate successor (and of several of the presidents thereafter):
   
   
   
   The real problem for Carter here is that wages were trending in the wrong direction while he was in office. Better to be steady at a lower number (Ronald Reagan) than trending downward at a higher number (Carter).
   
   
9. #MeToo?: Things were certainly different in Carter's time, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in not-so-good ways. Something he did that was barely mentioned at the time (especially since it happened the same day the Iran hostages were released), but became controversial after he left office, and that would be unthinkable today, was pardoning folk singer Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul & Mary, for sexual crimes against a minor.
   
   We are going to try to explain what happened, in as family-friendly a way as we can. In August of 1969, after a concert in Washington D.C., Yarrow received a visit to his hotel room from 14-year-old Barbara Winter and her 17-year-old sister, Kathie Berkel. The singer answered the door sans clothing, and required Winter to service him by hand. He was later convicted of taking "immoral and improper liberties" with Winter, and sentenced to 3 years in prison, though he served only 3 months. In 1980, Yarrow applied for a pardon, and received one in the final week of the Carter administration. Thereafter, neither Yarrow (who died last week) nor Carter was willing to comment on the matter.
   
   That means we are left to do some detective work and to figure out how such an outcome, which would be inconceivable in our time, came to be. And the short answer is that, in the 1970s, people generally had a very different view of these sorts of crimes. Without excusing Yarrow (or Carter), we will point out that the factors that seemed to justify mercy included the following: (1) a perception that Winter and Berkel were the instigators and were, perhaps, in search of attention or money; (2) that Yarrow was charged under much harsher D.C. laws, and that if he'd been back home in New York, his crime would have been treated as a misdemeanor; (3) that Yarrow admitted he had done wrong, and took steps to atone, including much voluntary community service.
   
   None of these things would make this pardon remotely acceptable today, but they did back then. Again, sometimes the good old days weren't so good.
   
   
10. Concession: Speaking of the old days, Carter served in a strange and very different era in which presidential candidates, if they lost, graciously conceded defeat. When it became clear that he had fallen to Ronald Reagan on election night, 1980, he told the crowd at his election headquarters: "I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you, so I can't stand here and say it doesn't hurt. I've wanted to serve as president because I love this country and because I love the people of this nation. Just one more word. Finally, let me say that I am disappointed tonight but I have not lost either love."

One more set, covering the post-presidential years, on Friday. (Z)