Jimmy Carter in How Jimmy Won
On Health Care:
Liberal on National Health Insurance
Carter’s politics fit no simple category. He could be conservative on abortion and welfare reform and taxes, and simplifying the federal bureaucracy, liberal on programs like National Health Insurance, Day Care, ERA, cutting the defense budget.
Like Robert Kennedy, he became a new kind of liberal, leapfrogging over the old liberalism he thought to be obsolete, unworkable, divisive. He questioned the old shibboleths of welfare and federal paternalism.
Source: [X-ref Principles] How Jimmy Won, by Kandy Stroud, p. 13
Jan 1, 1977
On Principles & Values:
Born into a privileged world surrounded by poverty
President Jimmy Carter was born into a privileged world surrounded by poverty. He grew up with blacks aqs friends and self-made millionaires as relatives, an aristocrat in the midst of 20th century slavery. His father was a segregationist, his mother the
radic-lib of her day.Part of him was naval officer, Sunday-school teacher, scholar, engineer, liberal, businessman, conservative. Primarily, he was a politician. And those of us who covered him found him the most complex and
interesting of our time. His enemies said he was consumed with selfish ambition, a ruthless opportunist who would change his politics to further his climb to the top. Yet his ambition was not only for himself, but for others.
He said to me once, “I feel like I have a certain amount of talent and ability and one life to live and I don’t want to waste it. I’d like it to be meaningful to myself and the people around me.”
Source: How Jimmy Won, by Kandy Stroud, p. 11
Jan 1, 1977
On Homeland Security:
Opposed Vietnam, but very late
Carter is a moral, even a holy man, yet he is a politician trapped in the venal and compromising snake pit of America politics. That is part of his conflict. He has done things other liberal politicians and many human beings would be ashamed of.
He did not oppose the Vietnam war until almost the end. He proclaimed an “American Fighting Men’s Day” which was really a Lt. William Calley Day in Georgia.
Source: How Jimmy Won, by Kandy Stroud, p. 11-2
Jan 1, 1977
On Civil Rights:
Established Martin Luther King Day in Georgia
Carter proclaimed January 15, 1973, Martin Luther King Day, to honor the slain black leader. An above the advice of some of his closest aides he hung King’s portrait in the state capitol. He had taken a stand against prejudice in his own community of
Plains in 1965 when he and his own family were the only one sto stand up and be counted in a vote for the admission of blacks to his church. For that, he was boycotted, his children were beaten, and their cars were pelted with stones.
Source: How Jimmy Won, by Kandy Stroud, p. 12
Jan 1, 1977
On Education:
Defended private schools, even when segregated
Carter peddled himself as a racist in his 1970 gubernatorial campaign against Carl Sanders. He spoke sympathetically of racists Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Lt. Gov. Lester Maddox. He criticized Sanders for having once barred Wallace from a speaking
engagement. Carter visited a private segregated school in the Piedmont region of Georgia and told backers for 13 south Georgia counties at a rally not to “let anybody, including the Atlanta newspapers, mislead you into criticizing private education.”
And yet he announced on the day of his inauguration as Governor, “I say to you quite frankly that the day for discrimination is over.” As Governor his track record in race relations was superior. He appointed blacks to major state boards and agencies.
The number of black state employees increased under his aegis from 4,850 to 6,684. He even took a black security ofificer into his home and into his then segregated church.
Source: How Jimmy Won, by Kandy Stroud, p. 12
Jan 1, 1977
On Principles & Values:
Leapfrogged liberalism; focused on managing bureaucracy
Carter’s politics fit no simple category. He could be conservative on abortion and welfare reform and taxes, and simplifying the federal bureaucracy, liberal on programs like National Health Insurance, Day Care, ERA, cutting the defense budget.
Like Robert Kennedy, he became a new kind of liberal, leapfrogging over the old liberalism he thought to be obsolete, unworkable, divisive. He questioned the old shibboleths of welfare and federal paternalism. He was more interested in a
manageable bureaucracy, an America back at work, with financial and judicial equality for the poor as well as the rich.Above all, he was misunderstood. Being Southern, he would be, and being rural Southern, he would be even more so.
Being a born-again Bible-toting Baptist in an ever more Godless world did not help. Snobbism accounted for part of the lack of understanding. And yet, on November 2, 1976, James Earl Carter, Jr., was elected the 39th President of the United States.
Source: How Jimmy Won, by Kandy Stroud, p. 13
Jan 1, 1977
On Principles & Values:
My greatest strength is that I am an ordinary man
Carter said often, “I have never claimed to be better or wiser than any other person. I think my greatest strengthis that I am an ordinary man, just like all of you, one who has worked and learned and loved his
family and made mistakes and tried to correct them without always succeeding.” He was just plain “Jimmy.”
Source: How Jimmy Won, by Kandy Stroud, p.425
Jan 1, 1977
On Principles & Values:
Broad appeal by straddling key issues
Although Gerald Ford called him someone who “wavers, wiggle, wanders, and waffles,” Carter established a broad-based appeal by selling himself as both a liberal and a conservative,
straddling issues with the agility of a tightrope walker: for and against abortion; for and against bussing; for and against prayer in the schools; for and against right-to-work laws;
for and against big business. Pummeling his audience with statistics he convinced them he understood complex issues well enough to be President.
But with his talk of compassion and decency and truth and love, he conveyed he cared first and foremost for what touched human beings.
Source: How Jimmy Won, by Kandy Stroud, p.425-6
Jan 1, 1977
Page last updated: Jun 09, 2013