PLAINS, Ga. (AP) 鈥 Barack Obama and his advisers had two living former presidents to consider as they planned the 2008 Democratic 春色直播 Convention.
Bill Clinton, eight years removed from the Oval Office, remained an image of centrist success that warranted a primetime speaking slot. But 's landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan lingered, even 28 years later.
鈥淚t was still an epithet: 鈥楢nother Jimmy Carter,鈥欌 David Axelrod, top Obama adviser and confidant, said in an interview.
Obama decided against inviting Carter to the podium in Denver. The Georgia Democrat was featured in a video instead. 鈥淗e, justifiably I think, he was a little miffed about that,鈥 Axelrod said, adding that the decision was a 鈥減ainful one鈥 for Obama.
Now, as Carter nears his , the 39th president is being lauded not just for his longevity but for his accomplishments in government, his work as a global humanitarian and, as Obama himself said in a birthday tribute for his fellow Democrat, 鈥渇or always finding new ways to remind us that we are all created in God's image.鈥
It's a preview, of sorts, of what will happen when Carter's long life ends and the nation pays tribute with state funeral rites in Washington. The praise, though, carries some irony for a president who campaigned against the ways of Washington and was an outcast of sorts even during his four years in the White House. To be sure, many presidential hopefuls campaign that way 鈥 Clinton and Reagan did it, too. Florida Gov. and of South Carolina tried it as recently as the 2024 GOP primaries. But for Carter, being a loner even as a power player has been, perhaps, the defining posture of his life 鈥 sometimes by circumstance, sometimes by design.
鈥淛immy Carter was always an outsider,鈥 said biographer Jonathan Alter.
Leading a 'Peanut Brigade'
That identity traced back to Carter鈥檚 earliest years, growing up on a farm outside of his tiny hometown in south Georgia.
鈥淗e was from one of the wealthier families,鈥 Alter noted, because James Earl Carter Sr. owned land that Black tenant farmers worked. But 鈥渨hen he went to school in Plains, and he had been barefoot for most of the year, the kids in town would think of him as a country bumpkin.鈥
Carter used the dichotomy to position himself for the presidency.
The commonly told version reads like clich茅 political fantasy: Earnest Baptist, peanut farmer and little-known governor from the Old Confederacy wins on a promise never to mislead Americans after the quagmire in Vietnam and Richard Nixon鈥檚 Watergate disgrace.
Yet when Carter decided to run, Nixon was the lone president he had ever met, and that was only briefly at a White House reception. Carter leaned on his extended family, close advisers and other Georgians to blanket key primary states throughout 1975 and early 1976. The inner circle was dubbed the 鈥淕eorgia mafia.鈥 The rest constituted the 鈥淧eanut Brigade.鈥 By the time big-name candidates 鈥 senators, mostly 鈥 realized Carter was a contender, they could not stop him.
鈥淗is was a unique presidency in that it came from completely outside the party establishment and then continued to operate that way even in Washington,鈥 said Joe Trippi, who worked for Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, scion of a Democratic dynasty and Carter鈥檚 perpetual liberal rival.
鈥淭here was something so outside of Washington about them, such a loyalty and pride about those people,鈥 Trippi said, noting that Carter mostly avoided appointing veterans of the Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Obama, Reagan and certainly Donald Trump challenged the establishment as candidates, but ultimately absorbed their parties. Carter, as the sitting president in 1980, had to watch convention delegates give Ted Kennedy roaring ovations even after Carter had won their bruising primary fight.
鈥淭he Democratic Party never belonged to Jimmy Carter,鈥 Trippi said.
Nor did Carter master Capitol Hill, the national press corps or Washington鈥檚 social scene.
David Gergen, White House adviser to four presidents, said Carter 鈥渉ad some legislative successes鈥 but missed on some of his most ambitious proposals because he wouldn鈥檛 always take command of negotiations with Congress.
鈥淗e handed that responsibility off鈥 to Cabinet officers and aides, Gergen said. 鈥淭hat was not his forte.鈥
Refusing to play 鈥榯he game鈥
Carter in turns embraced and was frustrated by the dynamics.
When he pushed treaties ceding control of the Panama Canal but didn鈥檛 have enough support from Democrats, Carter looked to Gerald Ford, the man he defeated in 1976. The former president cajoled Republican senators and the treaties were adopted.
鈥淚 appreciate his help,鈥 Carter wrote in his diary on March 16, 1978. 鈥淗e鈥檚 done everything he promised.鈥
With the media, however, Carter had no escape hatch.
In late 1975 and 1976, as Carter grew into a plausible underdog, 鈥渢he media loved him,鈥 Alter said. But as a Southerner, he also faced deeply held biases, media historian Amber Roessner said.
鈥淎ny leading candidate was going to get extra scrutiny after Watergate,鈥 she said, 鈥渂ut for Carter it was even more intense.鈥
When Carter described himself as a 鈥渂orn-again Christian,鈥 the reference was commonly understood anywhere Baptist evangelicals are prevalent, but not so much in the Northeast, where national media is headquartered and where most voters in 1976 were mainline Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or nonreligious.
鈥淪ome members of the press," Carter complained in a Playboy magazine interview, "treat the South as a suspect nation.鈥
Long after leaving office, the U.S. Naval Academy graduate and engineer still bemoaned a political cartoon published around his inauguration that approaching the White House with his mother, 鈥淢iss Lillian,鈥 chewing on a hayseed.
In December 1977, when Carter's team had been in the West Wing less than a year, Washington Post society columnist Sally Quinn labeled them 鈥渁n alien tribe,鈥 incapable of 鈥減laying 鈥榯he game.鈥欌 An elite Georgetown hostess herself, Quinn nodded to Washington鈥檚 鈥渇rivolity鈥 even as she assessed 鈥漷he Carter people鈥 as 鈥渘ot, in fact, comfortable in limousines, yachts, or in elegant salons, in black tie鈥 or with 鈥減lace cards, servants, six courses, different forks, three wines ... and after-dinner mingling.鈥
Shaking up establishments
The uneasiness in Washington tracked Carter鈥檚 rise in Georgia.
After Earl Carter died, Jimmy Carter followed his father鈥檚 path as community leader and businessman. The younger Carter didn鈥檛 openly fight Jim Crow segregation laws but publicly refused to join the White Citizens Council. Then he took a state Senate seat in 1962 by challenging a local political boss who had rigged the election against him.
As a good-government lawmaker, Carter cast an outlier vote against money for a new governor鈥檚 mansion where his family eventually resided.
He first ran for governor in 1966, dissatisfied with the General Assembly. When he narrowly missed the Democratic runoff, Carter opted not to endorse a fellow racial moderate who had advanced, despite their shared distaste for the other contender: Lester Maddox, an avowed white supremacist. Maddox won. That silence enabled him to peel off Maddox supporters to become governor four years later in a race that built his grudge against media megaphones.
鈥淭he Atlanta Constitution,鈥 he told Playboy in 1976, 鈥渃ategorized me during the gubernatorial campaign as an ignorant, racist, backward, ultraconservative, redneck south-Georgia peanut farmer,鈥 while framing his big-city opponent as 鈥渁n enlightened, progressive, well-educated, urbane, forceful, competent public official.鈥
Once in Atlanta, Carter previewed his Washington tenure, bucking legislators with a reorganization of state government that he pitched as necessary efficiency.
鈥淗e spent a lot of political capital making people mad, going after their fiefdoms,鈥 said Terry Coleman, a Carter ally in the Assembly.
Georgia law dictated that Carter couldn鈥檛 succeed himself as governor. In Washington, it wasn鈥檛 his choice to serve just one term.
Carter returned home in 1981 鈥渉umiliated by the voters鈥 and 鈥渁t least somewhat depressed,鈥 Alter said, but found his most sustained success as an outside influencer once he and Rosalynn Carter in 1982.
Decades of global democracy and human rights advocacy followed. Some of the former president鈥檚 international maneuvering annoyed his successors and Washington鈥檚 foreign policy establishment. Carter criticized U.S. wars in the Middle East, the West鈥檚 isolation of North Korea and Israel鈥檚 treatment of Palestine. He won a Nobel Peace Prize along the way.
鈥淭he best way to understand Carter as outsider is to see him as always understanding the rules of the insider circle,鈥 Roessner said. 鈥淗e just didn鈥檛 always play by them.鈥
