Jimmy Carter did many great things as president, most of which were not appreciated at the time at all.
“The general perception is bad president, great former president and I think that’s horribly oversimplified and in some ways is just wrong,” says Jonathan Alter, author of His Very Best Jimmy Carter, a Life, on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal politics podcast.
Alter details all that he accomplished, including “deregulating the beer industry so that we can have craft breweries…preventing conflict in 1994 in North Korea…deregulating airlines, which basically allowed for the establishment of the just-in-time delivery service, which is at the root of FedEx.”
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One theory for people overlooking these wins, Alter tells TNA co-host Andy Levy, is that Carter wasn’t the most bubbly member of government, a bit “prickly,” he adds.
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This I-do-what-I-want attitude didn’t make him the most loved at the time, but it did allow him to follow his morals—and troll the hell out of white supremacists.
“He quarreled with his father about his father’s rancid racial views, which were all too typical of white Southerners of that generation. But then when he got home in 1953, his father died and he came home, to take up his civic activities and run his business and eventually go into politics. Through that period after Brown vs Board of Education, when white terrorism surged in the South, Jimmy Carter ducked, and he was not a part of the Civil Rights movement because he was ambitious in politics,” says Atler.
“He told me at one point, ‘I could either be governor of Georgia or I could be an outspoken supporter of civil rights. And I decided to be governor of Georgia.’ And he actually panders to segregationists to get there in 1970 when he was elected governor. Then on the day of his inauguration as governor of Georgia in 1971, he says in his inaugural address, ‘the time for racial discrimination is over.’”
All of the segregationists who had voted for him felt he was betraying them. The Black voters in attendance watching, they were incredulous, they couldn’t believe he had said this. And he went on to integrate Georgia State government, appoint Black judges, senior Black staff, hung Martin Luther King’s portrait in the Capitol, and became very close to the King family.”
Alter also shares more anecdotes about Carter’s presidency, including some accomplishments of his that’d make him a Gen Z hero.
Also on this episode: Hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie expose what they think is Ron DeSantis’ biggest kink.
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
