These days, we often learn of the death of a famous person by connecting the dots as we scroll social media. It takes a minute, sometimes, to realize what we’re reading and why.
Somebody posts a sweet, funny anecdote about Rickey Henderson’s awkward kindness to a fan. You read it and smile. That’s a good Rickey story, you think. And when you hit another good Rickey story a moment later you’re not surprised because the first one already had you remembering others and thinking about sharing them. Everybody loves a good Rickey story.
But then you see another one, and another, and then you think Oh. Oh, no. And then you switch apps to check the news and sadly confirm the reason why so many people were sharing Rickey stories.
This way of learning the news also sometimes produces false positives — a moment of fear and concern before you realize that this random eruption of Dolly Parton stories is just a moment of spontaneous appreciation for a beloved or respected figure and not a response to news of their passing. After that happens several times for the same person, the actual news of their eventual death hits a little harder when the day finally arrives when everyone is sharing Betty White stories and it’s not just a spontaneous thing and nobody is going to reassure you that it’s fine, she’s OK, relieved-Denzel-dot-gif.
That’s what it was like yesterday when social media feeds started filling up, yet again, with stories about former President Jimmy Carter, and then the realization that this outpouring of respect, affection, and remembrance wasn’t a response to a birthday or an anniversary, but to the news of his death at age 100.
Jimmy Carter was a former president for longer than anyone else and he was better at it than almost anybody else. That’s the image most people have of Carter — the former president who left the White House after one term, losing in a landslide, then picked up a hammer and spent the next half-century building homes for families in need and eradicating horrible diseases that afflicted some of the world’s poorest communities. His unambiguously positive work with Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center probably haven’t gotten the attention they deserve over the years. There’s always a lot to say about controversy and scandal, but not as much to say about the eradication of Guinea worm.
Here’s a round-up of some of the Jimmy Carter remembrances I’ve been reading.
• Kate Riga at TPM writes about “The Jimmy Carter Renaissance,” the more positive re-evaluation of his presidential legacy that has taken place over the last 40+ years. One example of that is Carter’s infamous “Crisis of Confidence” speech, which for decades was held up as the clearest example of his moralistic scolding and his zero-charisma inability to connect with the American public. The myth of that speech is hard to reconcile with the speech itself, which today seems honest, prescient, wise, and pragmatic.
• Erik Loomis offers a more qualified assessment:
Carter was a pretty bad president and then one of the two greatest ex-presidents, along with John Quincy Adams. He’s become something of a beloved figure among liberals in the last twenty years or so, both because of his brave stance denouncing Israeli apartheid against Palestinians and because he lives his faith through Habitat and his other actions, with no sense of the hypocrisy so common among evangelicals. But still, Carter really sucked as president.
… He was a moral voice. He wasn’t a good president, not by a long shot, and recent efforts to revive his reputation aren’t very convincing. He was outstanding in some areas, but the number of unforced errors severely undermined him. But he was absolutely a good man. We will all miss him. But definitely not for his presidency, which was bad.
• Adelle M. Banks on “Jimmy Carter, beloved Sunday school teacher.”
“I belong to Maranatha Baptist Church and that’s where I teach Sunday school every Sunday — last Sunday and this next Sunday as well — about 35 times a year,” he said.
“I had been teaching Bible lessons since I was a midshipman in Annapolis, 18 years old.”
• Randall Balmer and David Swartz write about Carter’s relationship to other white born-again Christians — the white evangelicalism that, ultimately, had no place for a pious Baptist Sunday school teacher who rejected their conservative politics. (Oh, you know the ones.)
Balmer is particularly blunt in contrasting Carter’s scrupulous honesty with the brazen duplicity and dishonesty of evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell and, yes, Billy Graham.
• Slate has a podcast talking with Jim Wallis about Carter’s legacy. And Slate’s Fred Kaplan reflects on Carter’s intelligence and diligence, and how they were “necessary, but not sufficient” qualifications for the job of president.
• And here’s a post from 2015 on “That Time Jimmy Carter Walked into a Nuclear Reactor.”
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In