Jimmy Carter

I don't espouse an absolutist viewpoint when it comes to Jimmy Carter. ... well, other than he was a shitty president. As a person, he was not the complete skunk of a human being that Donald Trump and Richard Nixon were (looking at presidents during my lifetime), but like almost every holier-than-thou type I have ever come across, I do believe that he was a completely self-serving phony who did a ton of things to cultivate a semi-fraudulent image (which he milked into the presidency in the wake of a country that was tired because of Richard Nixon). And I wouldn't be surprised if the Mary Prince stories at the time were cultivated the same way that a lot of stories about Jimmy Carter were.

I doubt Mary Prince is babysitting the Carters' grandchildren today, given that they are all in their 30s or 40s, I believe. But my guess would be that the Carters were legitimately fond of Mary Prince. Amy Carter adored her from stuff I was reading, and I would bet that the Carters genuinely wanted to help her. I am sure they did take care of her throughout her life, and I am sure it went beyond the play that he got from being the benevolent saint who rescued her from prison.

I was just pointing out that people craft narratives around things, and because it is Jimmy Carter, I was guessing some people who I am certain are itching to create a slave master narrative around that set of facts instead add it to the Jimmy Carter hagiography.

 

He didn't found Habitat for Humanity.

But you are correct about him using his status as an ex president to raise a ton of money for Habitat for Humanity, and that he was personally involved in Habitat for Humanity projects every year for years. There were no shortage of cameras documenting it all.

 

No, he's not simply a publicity seeker. He has used his status as an ex president to lend his name to a lot of very charitable causes. As much as any ex president has. He also lent his name to a lot of dictators for reasons that never made much sense to me, FWIW.

Being an ex president for 40+ years afforded him the ability with which to craft a legacy. ... and I do think he was very invested in doing just that. It doesn't take away from any good causes he lent his name to or make him building homes for habitat for humanity into a bad thing. I also suspect most of what Jimmy Carter did was self serving, and by the time he was an ex president, all that was left for him was cultivating an image that would rehabilitate a failed presidency. There were way too many accounts of him when he was a governor and president of being a phony populist who made a show of things to cultivate the simple, everyman, pious image, but who was often not that guy in private. From reporters who dealt with him, from legislators who couldn't stand him, even in that book with secret service agents talking anonymously about the presidents they protected, which everyone was quick to try to discredit because it said he was a phony.

I think Jimmy Carter sold bullshit to a public that had buyers remorse when it got a taste of the hubris that characterized his actual term in office, and he got voted out after one term. I highly doubt he became a different person when he was out of office, even if being an ex president makes anyone except Donald Trump into a beloved figure.

 

There's that too!

 

This was a contemporaneous account of Jimmy Carter (his run for the presidency; the book isn't just about Carter, but he was the main player), not the 2023 hagiography. It's not very flattering -- factually, not things anyone suspects. It just gave the reality of Jimmy Carter at the time, and Reeves labeled him a phony, actor and a salesman.

Take "I also suspect" for whatever you want. It's all any of us have on the true character of Jimmy Carter. But there a lot of accounts of what he was really like as governor of Georgia and president, and if there is any truth to him being a phony populist (who actually buried his presidency as a result of it, because he alienated so many people who had to deal wiht him), like I said, I suspect that he didn't become a completely different person when he settled into the life of an ex president.