APOLOGETIC NOTE: I’ve been trying to write this since before Jimmy Carter’s funeral. It kept trying to be less about Jimmy Carter, whose post-presidency and general character I admire greatly, and more about why I wasn’t paying much attention to national politics in the 1970s, even though — or actually because — I lived in D.C. most of that decade. Finally I’ve decided that WYGIWYG, or What You’ve Got Is What You’ve Got, so go with it. I need to get back on track because OMG there’s a helluva lot to write about and lately I’ve been writing mostly on other people’s Substacks.
I was living in D.C. during all but four months of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, but the D.C. I lived in was not preoccupied with the federal government.1 The closest I came to the Carter White House was during the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, October 14, 1979. Passing along the high wrought-iron fence at the back of the White House grounds, my cohort chanted “Two, four, six, eight, how do you know that Amy’s straight?” Amy Carter was 12 at the time.
When I first moved to D.C. as a college freshman in September 1969, D.C. residents could vote for president2 but the only local office they could vote for was school committee. And outsiders wondered why the school committee was so politicized! When I registered to vote for the first time, age 18, it was as a member of the D.C. Statehood Party.
I had started paying serious attention to national politics the previous year: 1968. I’d been studying Middle Eastern history on my own for several years, but apart from U.S. foreign policy I was pretty clueless about domestic politics. I do remember President Johnson’s haggard face when he announced on March 31 that he would not run for re-election, and I more or less understood why: the Vietnam War was not going well.
When Robert Kennedy was assassinated immediately following his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary — he died two days before my 17th birthday — I was not surprised when his assassin turned out to be a Palestinian-born Jordanian citizen. In my 16-year-old wisdom I was already supporting Eugene McCarthy because I considered RFK too pro-Israel.
But the nationwide blow-up after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4 took me by surprise. I knew who King was but that was about it. So that summer I attended a series of seminars on racism at my family’s Episcopal church. At the end of August came the turbulent (understatement of the century) Democratic National Convention in Chicago. By the time my senior high school year started a week or so later, I was paying attention to national politics.
When deciding on colleges, I first chose a place — Washington, D.C. — and then the school: Georgetown University’s School of Languages and Linguistics. One month into my freshman year, I was helping organize the October 15 Moratorium on campus. A month later, on November 15, I was a marshal for the epic March to End the War in Vietnam.
In the course of the 1970s, basically my twenties, my focus shifted from antiwar organizing and student politics to feminism, the lesbian community, and the Women in Print movement. The 1970s also marked the apex of Jimmy Carter’s service as an elected official: he was governor of Georgia from January 12, 1971, to January 14, 1975, and president of the U.S. from January 20, 1977, to January 20, 1981.
Carter’s term as president, in other words, coincided almost exactly with the nadir of my interest in both national politics and electoral politics in general. By then D.C. residents could vote for mayor and for a non-voting delegate in Congress, but Congress was not where feminism was happening.
So I didn’t vote for president in 1980.
The onset of Reagan taught me that voting might not make anything better, but it could help keep things from getting worse. I’ve voted regularly ever since, in just about all elections, from the local to the national.3
All of which is to say that almost everything I know about the Carter administration, I learned long after it was over, and my impressions of Jimmy Carter were formed long after he left office. This is most likely true for most of those reporting on his passing: to have firsthand memories of his presidency, or his time as Georgia governor (1971–1975), you have to be at least in your early 60s unless you were politically very precocious.
Everyone else learned about the Carter administration the way I learned about the JFK, Eisenhower, Truman,4 FDR, and earlier administrations: by reading books and watching documentaries and listening to people talk about them.
And this matters. It matters a lot. I was much moved by Carter’s memorial service at the National Cathedral, enough to watch it again and to include my favorite YouTube recording here, from WFAA in Dallas. It’s refreshingly free of pre- and post- commentary:
I’ve gone back to listen to several favorite parts. One, which I especially recommend if you’re looking for a review of what President Carter accomplished and why he was different from presidents before and after, is that of Stuart Eizenstadt, Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser who later served in the Clinton administration. He comes on at about 1:02:40 in the WFAA recording; his December 29, 2024, column in the Washington Post covers much of the same territory.
My most favorite part, though, is the tribute/remembrance by grandson Jason, which starts around 1:15:45. He reminds listeners that though Carter was Georgia governor and U.S. president and wife Rosalynn his first lady for a combined eight years of their lives, “the other 92 years they spent at home in Plains, Georgia.” They were in essence “small town people who never forgot who they were and where they were from no matter what happened in their lives” and that they recognized “the power of regular people, even if they are in tiny villages, to change their world.”
I’ve been thinking of an old truism: “Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.” It was the motto of Firebrand Books, a feminist press that published great stuff from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s or so. The line preceded Firebrand. It has staying power.
But Jimmy Carter was neither a conformist nor a troublemaker, so I don’t know what our society, such as it is, will make of him going forward. The contrast to the current resident of the White House is stark to the point of unbearable, but bear it we must. May Jimmy Carter’s memory be a blessing and his example an inspiration.
NOTES
I know this is hard to believe for people who only know D.C. from the outside, but in the 1970s and ’80s it was definitely true, and despite the gentrification/white-ification that’s happened in the decades since, I wouldn’t be surprised if it still was. Some people I knew were employed by the federal government, usually at the clerical or lower administrative levels, but for them it was mainly a job.
The 23rd Amendment (1961) gave D.C. residents the right to vote for president and vice president for the first time. The first presidential election they were able to vote in was 1964. Without looking it up, I can tell you they didn’t vote for Barry Goldwater.
I don’t go around saying “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain”. People who do piss me off. I don’t think voting should be compulsory either. Voting is, among other things, an act of faith, and faith can’t be compelled. The many reasons people don’t vote are important and must be paid attention to. However, what makes it glaringly obvious that voting is at least potentially important is the fierce efforts made to suppress it by those afraid that a “free and fair” vote won’t go their way.
It cracks me up that I was born during the Truman administration. Trust me, I have no recollection of it whatsoever. One of my great-grandmothers was born in 1861. I daresay she had no personal memories of the Lincoln administration — though since she was born south of the Mason-Dixon Line, she might well have had opinions about it.
I think President Carter is the most intelligent and kindest person of this country's presidents or any other country in the world. Instead of making huge money on speeches or becoming wealthy, he went to work for his community to help the poor. His unostentatiousness is admirable.
Gr8 read again.
Now, #23A. Like so many other parts of the 2nd US Constitution, it fails any common sense, fairness, and logic test.
Makes no sense to bestow the vote when the very voters are deprived of voting representation in Congress that other citizens enjoy, Representative(s), Senators. If the District is separate and apart from the US (which it can't be due to being carved out to neighboring states, then residents must be separate and apart but they are not because they are Americans.
Same w/#26A. Bestowing the vote on 18-20-year-olds when they can't vote for any person for Federal elected office in their age range fails the same 3tests. Even 21-24-year-olds can't vote for any person who represents their age range.
Both Amendments continue the history and plain text of the 2nd US Constitution as being intentionally exclusionary in design and substance. And to date, no US President has said so.