A Word About Jimmy Carter
16 September 2009 4:09 pm by Taylor Marsh
Jimmy Carter is being Jimmy Carter. Again.
The former president shatters yet another taboo.
Mr. Carter, the man who had me rooting for Teddy Kennedy in the 1980 election season, because I was so angry about Iran and standing in gas lines, making me a Reagan Democrat for one election cycle, has spoken out on yet another unspeakable subject. Race. It’s as nuclear, maybe even more so, than the first issue he cracked open.
Jimmy Carter dared to say Palestinians are people, too. Until Carter’s incredibly brave statements on the plight of the Palestinians, no important public figure of his stature had ever dared take on the conventional wisdom, which was that you never said anything good about Arabs, especially if it was judged to be at Israel’s expense, which is how it was seen no matter what was said. To be pro Palestinian, even when due and Israel was clearly in the wrong, was to be automatically deemed an anti-Semite. Still is by some. Rush Limbaugh using that label to describe Carter earlier today.
The right is also eager to link Carter and Obama, because even as his post-presidency has been laudable, few remember the Carter presidency that way. Having lived through it as a very impressionable activist and artist living in New York City and doing Broadway at the time, every time I filled up my car with gas based upon rationing guidelines predicated on my license plate number, all I could do was sit by frustrated, steaming, particularly when news blasted from the radio announcing another day of the Iranian hostage crisis.
As an independent agent, Jimmy Carter never considers the ramifications of his actions on others, whether as a current or former president, with his actions causing continual friction with the Clinton’s, though that didn’t keep WJC from bestowing the Medal of Freedom to the Carters. But it has been in the Middle East, especially, where Carter has been most abrasive, with just one example from the summer as evidenced in this title: Obama’s Carter Problem?
Why should the race issue be any different?
People don’t think of Missouri as being very southern. It’s not Alabama, but the state has a very difficult history when it comes to race (as well as cultural issues). My brother, a lawyer who was also an asst. A.G. under Ashcroft, worked on important desegregation and busing issues, but I grew up watching it from the time I was a kid. When my high school started busing in students from Normandy, on the first day I had a knife pulled on me in the quadrangle. Nothing came of it, because as she lunged I took off.
I know that there are many, many people, non Democrats, Republican and Independents, who are furious at Obama on policy grounds, because they feel he hasn’t delivered on his promises. People in my own family, as well as distant relatives and cousins, are completely turned off at this point and it has absolutely nothing to do with race.
Carter’s comments correlate very specifically to Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” –insert “boy” here (as Maureen Dowd rightly wrote)– which his personal history verifies. Joe Scarborough can whine all he wants and make outlandish claims that make light of this country’s racism, but he’s certifiable if he believes that there isn’t a racial current running through the tea bagger, town hall brawlers, 9/12 protester contingent. You simply cannot look at the Republican Party’s history, the southern strategy, as well as how they have run elections, and not see the truth in Carter’s statement.
Like always, Jimmy Carter’s blunt outspokenness has ignited debate. No one wanted to hear what he had to say about Palestinians and apartheid either (an understatement). Saying Obama’s wingnut critics were inspired in some part because they’re racist, paraphrasing the implications of what Carter said, isn’t going down well either.
The trouble comes if the wingnuts can use it successfully against Pres. Obama, something Mr. Carter didn’t consider, because he simply speaks his mind, damn the consequences.
Is what Carter said helpful to Obama? It’s a good question, which I’ll leave you to answer. Kris has a diary up where people are chiming in and I hope you do.
Jimmy Carter is a brave veteran, humanitarian, but had a lousy presidency by anyone’s standards, something he never quite got over.
”We left Washington in something of despair and embarrassment and frustration. We didn’t know what we were going to do, and I was about your age. I found out from some friends at the C.D.C. I still had 25 years of life expectancy, and what was I going to do with it.” – Former President Jimmy Carter
He’s trying to make up for it by making his life count. He’s not worried about the good opinion of others, as Dr. Wayne Dyer would say.
But did former President Jimmy Carter play the race card? Of course he did. But he certainly wasn’t the first to do so.
