Why Jimmy Carter serves as abject proof of America’s myriad moral failures

We don't deserve kindness and compassion

No rational person could harbor the belief that politicians are and should be persons of high moral character desirous only of doing right by the people they serve. History shows that politics often attracts those willing to scrape the bottom of the moral barrel in order to assuage their greed and delusions of grandeur. That said, there’s no reason why good and decent people can’t thrive in politics. There’s no cause to believe one must be willing to compromise one’s principles and shelve any sense of compassion, dignity, and/or humanity in order to be a successful political animal.

While in office, Jimmy Carter was ridiculed by the Far Right as weak and pusillanimous. What they failed to understand- or willfully ignored altogether- was that Carter owned a functional moral compass and tried to live and lead by it. In the almost 40 years since he left the White House, Carter has become the closest thing we have to an American Gandhi. While such a comparison may seem fanciful and misguided, consider how the former President has lived his life. Consider the causes he’s supported. Consider the manner in which he’s honestly endeavored to live his Christian faith.

How many of us- ex-Presidents or not- could say the same thing?

Three years ago, I wrote a piece for my former blog about how Jimmy Carter can and should be used to reflect our collective moral failures. Unfortunately, instead of assuming the best of our fellow Americans, we consistently leap to the conclusion that those who don’t share our beliefs and ideology are evil, misguided, and unworthy.

Why co-exist with those we differ with when we can destroy them?

When it comes to our Presidents, politics has become a blood sport. We have no patience for kindness, compassion, and decency. We expect our Presidents to be devoid of basic human decency and to function as if the only thing that matters is national security, the stock market, and the unemployment rate.

That there’s no place in modern American politics for such honesty, selflessness, and service is something of an understatement. It’s also an indictment of how little we demand and expect of our elected representatives. Millions tolerate self-interested bigots and fools like Donald Trump, even as they consider those whose motives are far more pure as weak and unfit to serve.

We demand sheer perfection- of emotion, action, and response- of our (Democratic) Presidents. Yet we tolerate the worst sort of ineptitude and moral turpitude from our Senators and Congressmen. I’d call it hypocrisy, but it’s something far worse- so much so that I’m not certain I can find a name for it.

What makes it worse is that we tolerate execrable behavior from Republicans that we’d NEVER countenance from Democrats. When a Democrat comes along who’s genuinely selfless and good, we wonder what’s wrong with that person. Our politicians are supposed to be selfish, soulless, sociopathic…and we’re genuinely surprised when they’re good and decent people who take “public service” at face value.

We can argue about the successes and failures of Carter’s four years in the White House, but why? That would entirely miss the point of his life and the example he’s set. No one could credibly question his morality, his devotion to his wife, his commitment to serve his country and community, nor his commitment to peaceful conflict resolution. In an era when muscular, myopic nationalism and xenophobia is in vogue, Jimmy Carter seems like an anachronism…but should he be dismissed so blithely? And does he need to be disrespected as weak and inconsequential?

I’d submit that Carter’s example- and our collective reaction to it- says far more about our moral shortcomings that it ever could about him. Jimmy Carter is the mirror held up to reflect our arrogance and self-righteousness back at us; that we don’t like what we’re seeing isn’t his fault. It’s our own karma.

If he makes us uncomfortable, it’s because we have much to be embarrassed about. Until we recognize and acknowledge that, we have little hope of truly moving America forward. Jimmy Carter’s Presidency is widely viewed as a failure by those who lived through it…but was it really? Perhaps once the history of our time is written, his time in the White House will serve as the yardstick by which Donald Trump is evaluated and found wanting.

During his time in office, Jimmy Carter was widely viewed as a joke- weak, pusillanimous, and indecisive. The reality was the exact opposite, and it was his personal demeanor that allowed Americans to see him as unPresidential. We’d grown accustomed to Presidents who displayed little in the way of emotional warmth and humanity. We wanted our leaders to be soulless automatons 24/7/365. Then, Carter came along and showed that you could be President and still be a decent person- Mr. Rogers in the Oval Office, if you will.

After losing to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Carter took his defeat gracefully. He accepted the will of the people, didn’t whine about his fate, and seamlessly moved on to the next phase of his life, which he handled with dignity and alacrity. One could argue that the example he’s set established a pretty high bar for former Presidents, but Carter never set out to do that. All he wanted to do was live his beliefs and do what he felt was the right thing.

Jimmy Carter’s Christianity has always been what’s defined him as a person. He’s one of those admirable Christians who seek to live their faith without attracting attention. If more who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ followed Carter’s example, I might feel differently about modern Christianity. Unfortunately, his sincerity and commitment to living his beliefs make him an outlier and expose Evangelical Christianity as the hollow and corrupt sham it is.

Carter may seem like an anachronism, which is unfortunate. The world could use more anachronisms like him. But, regardless of what you might think of his four years as President, the forty-one years since he left office have been filled with all manner of service, compassion, and kindness.

How many of us can say that?

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