James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024
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I saw Mr. Carter many times when he was president.
I watched him come out the door where Mr. Reagan got shot by John Hinkley. That hotel was a popular place for the president to talk to groups.
My office was across the street on the second floor, it looked right down on the door.
I didn't talk to him or meet him or anything, I just watched him get in the car.
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@LuFins-Dad said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
@jon-nyc said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
Odd trivia:
The five longest lived post presidencies:
Carter
Hoover
Ford
Bush Sr
AdamsAll five were one term presidents.
Iām sure Biden will make the listā¦
It sure if youāre joking or misunderstood my post. This is the list of presidents ranked by how many years they lived after leaving office. Biden and Trump will be near the bottom, right above those who died in the saddle.
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@George-K said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
Nesferatu premiered 2 years before President Carter was born.
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@jon-nyc said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
@LuFins-Dad said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
@jon-nyc said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
Odd trivia:
The five longest lived post presidencies:
Carter
Hoover
Ford
Bush Sr
AdamsAll five were one term presidents.
Iām sure Biden will make the listā¦
It sure if youāre joking or misunderstood my post. This is the list of presidents ranked by how many years they lived after leaving office. Biden and Trump will be near the bottom, right above those who died in the saddle.
It was a jokeā¦ though not necessarily a good one. Sometimes these guys hit the dementia stage and maintain.
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@jon-nyc said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
@Horace said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
@jon-nyc said in James Earl Carter Jr, 1924-2024:
Low bar is cleared. Only one reference to himself and its kind of on topic.
It's.
When Iām typing on my phone I rely on autocorrect for apostrophes and double spaces for periods.
apostropheās
Idiot.
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From Powerline - some observations that recall Carter in a less friendly way. These are from when Carter was president, or shortly thereafter.
People magazine, which Carter criticized during his presidency for its focus on self-absorbed celebrity, wrote about him 20 years ago: āAlmost everyone agrees that Jimmy Carter was not our best President, but as former Presidents go, heās tops,ā while Time magazine wrote that Carter is the āconsensus best ex-President.ā Carterās former chief of staff Jack Watson remarked effusively that Carter is āthe only man in American history who used the United States presidency as a stepping-stone to greatness.ā Howard Baker said in the 1980s that āhistory will be kind to Jimmy Carter.ā
Carterās one-time speechwriter Patrick Anderson observed that in Carterās hometown of Plains, Georgia, neighbors said of him that after an hour you love him, after a week you hate him, and after ten years you start to understand him. (Anderson added that anyone who didnāt have a personality conflict with Carter, didnāt have a personality.) Anderson also described him as a combination of Machiavelli and Mr. Rogers.
The Washington Postās Sally Quinn observed: āThe conventional image of a sexy man is one who is hard on the outside and soft on the inside. Carter is just the opposite.ā Fellow Southern Baptist Bill Moyers said āIn a ruthless business, Mr. Carter is a ruthless operator, even if he wears his broad smile and displays his southern charm.ā Part of the mystique of Carter was his careful and successful positioning as someone āabove politics.ā He gave off an air that he is too good for us, or certainly better than the rest of his peers in politics. Carter exemplified the paradox of taking pride in denouncing the sin of pride. He also displays a talent for combining self-pity and self-righteousness, sometimes in the same sentence.
David Brinkley observed of Carter: āDespite his intelligence, he had a vindictive streak, a mean streak, that surfaced frequently and antagonized people.ā Eleanor Randolph of the Chicago Tribune wrote: āCarter likes to carve up an opponent, make his friends laugh at him and then call it a joke. . . [He] stretched the truth to the point where it becomes dishonest to call it exaggeration.ā
His personal White House secretary, Susan Clough, recalled that Carter rarely said hello to her as he walked by her desk. Not a āHappy Thanksgiving,ā or a āMerry Christmas.ā Nothing, she says. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. judged Carter to be a ānarcissistic loner.ā āCarter was never a regular guy,ā Patrick Anderson observed; āthe sum of his parts never quite added up to that. . . Carter talked his way into the presidency, yet in some profound way he never learned the language of men.ā
From Ronald Kessler's "First Family Detail."
āCarter was just very short and rude most of the time,ā an agent recalls. āWith agents, heād just pretend like you were not around. Youād say hello, and heād just look at you, like you werenāt there, like you were bothering him.ā
Carter actually told Secret Service agents and uniformed officers he did not want them to greet him on his way to the Oval Office. It was apparāently too much bother for him to have to say hello back to another human being.
Nor did Carter have much use for the military. Even though he was a Naval Academy graduate, Carter ātalked down to the military, just talked like they didnāt know what they were talking about,ā a former agent says.
āCarter didnāt want military aides to wear uniforms,ā former agent Cliff Baranowski recalls.
Not surprisingly, of all the presidents in recent memory, Carter was the chief executive most detested by Secret Service agents. Agent John Piasecky was on Carterās detail for three and a half years. That included seven months of driving him in the presidential limousine. Aside from giving directions, Carter never spoke to him, he says.āāAs president, Carterācode-named Deaconāorchestrated more ruses involving his luggage.
āWhen he was traveling, he would get on the helicopter and fly to Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base,ā says former Secret Service agent Baranowski. āHe would roll up his sleeves and carry his bag over his shoulder, but it was empty. He wanted people to think he was carrying his own bag.ā
āCarter made a big show about taking a hang-up carryon out of the trunk of the limo when heād go someplace, and there was nothing in it,ā says another agent who was on his detail. āIt was empty. It was just all show.ā
Carter would regularly make a show of arriving early at the Oval Office to call attention to how hard he was working for the American people.
āHe would walk into the Oval Office at 6 A.M., do a little work for half an hour, then close the curtains and take a nap,ā says Robert B. Sulliman Jr., who was on Carterās detail. āHis staff would tell the press he was working.ā