The luckless president & an American icon !

As I was completing my undergraduate program in USA, the American Presidential election of 1976 came up. The hopeful Democratic Presidential candidate James 'Jimmy' Earl Carter Jr., and the incumbent Republican President Gerald 'Jerry' Rudolph Ford Jr., emerged as the two final contestants. The mood of America was upbeat. Something new seemed to be in the offing. The era was post-Vietnam with lots of soul searching and a liberal political trend. The message of the former peanut farmer, state senator and erstwhile governor of Georgia, hailing from Plains, Georgia, with pale blue eyes and a ready disarming smile, Jimmy Carter, was simple "Trust Me" he said, to the expectant American public traumatized by the Vietnam war and the shameful exit of President Nixon following the Watergate scandal. As a foreign national, I took a lot of interest and watched the unfolding American Presidential election as a curious bystander. The year 1976, was also historically a memorable one for America. It was their Bicentennial Celebrations year, that is, 200 years as an independent nation and a democratic republic. Jimmy Carter was overwhelmingly supported by the American public weary of the republicans and the incumbent President Ford, who had exercised his constitutional prerogative to pardon Nixon, sparing him further humiliation from a Watergate prosecution and impeachment. Many voters never forgave him for that 'indiscretion'. They had wanted to see Nixon on the dock and in jail, especially the younger generation of voters who were idealistic and radicalized by the 1970s protest-era political orientation.

Carter and President Gerald Ford debating at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, September 1976

In the televised presidential debates a calm, self-assured, ever smiling Carter came out looking good. He had done his homework and scored easy points over his rival Ford, who fumbled and mumbled making everybody laugh. With his beady blue eyes, large forehead and an impassive face he sometimes looked  like a bewildered man. He often forgot to deliver his 'punch lines'. Tall and hefty, Ford had a reputation for stumbling as he deplaned, hit his big head against a doorway or just bump into someone. He could be amusingly unsteady on his feet. An American friend made us all crack up during the electioneering, when he declared with a magisterial flourish of his hand,"how can Jerry Ford lead us anymore, when he can't even manage his own body? He must go!"

As predicted Carter won the presidential election by a good margin. It made our liberal Democratic American friends jubilant, while the conservative Republicans sulked. For the first time, I viewed live on television the inauguration of an American President in January, 1977, on a cold and frosty morning. It was an exciting time. Carter a devout Southern Baptist and his attractive wife, Rosalyn Carter, a 'southern-belle' made it to the White House amidst a roar of approval from the assembled crowd. Then there was this frail, shy, bespectacled little Amy Carter with a deceptive 'whiz-kid' look. She was nine years of age at the time of the presidential inauguration, the only daughter of President Carter and Rosalyn. Amy evoked a lot of media attention since no children had lived in the White House during the intervening period since the Kennedy's in the early 1960s.

The 39th US President Jimmy Carter (born 1924)

However, as the television camera scanned the assemblage of dignitaries at the inauguration, it suddenly stopped to zoom for a while on an elegant elderly lady in a beige dress, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, her face covered by a black netted-veil. She was seated up front in a special gallery for invited guests. There was something imperious about her. She radiated class! The announcer informed the viewers that the aristocratic looking American lady was none other than President Teddy Roosevelt's eldest daughter 'princess' Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and that she had not missed a single presidential inauguration since her father's. She had a haughty, self-assured air about her. There was that unmistaken stamp of the so-called 'American aristocracy' on her person. She truly represented the American 'blue-blood'. I took great interest and decided to learn more about her. Alice was an inveterate high-society American socialite. The exalted and mighty in the corridors of power in Washington, the rich and famous in New York, Boston and elsewhere deferred to her. Society ladies almost curtsied to her. You didn't dare be on the wrong side of her, let alone cross swords with her. She had great wit and charm, but also an acerbic tongue. She did not suffer anyone, especially, fools gladly and lived life on her own terms. She was controversial and openly admitted to being an avowed sybarite. It reminded me of those legendary high society ladies of yore in Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian England, one gets to read about. However,it seemed strange that Alice did not go up to congratulate President Carter after his inauguration as she had ritually done before. She thought Carter lacked social grace and was an unsophisticated provincial man. It would also be Alice's last appearance in an American presidential inauguration.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

The highlight of the Carter era was the Camp David accord between the once irreconcilable Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977. Carter also gave up control over the Panama Canal to Panama, as a matter of legal and moral obligation. It made the American conservative groups, such as, the 'Birch Bayh' furious. His efforts at de-escalation of the cold war with the Soviets was praiseworthy.

Of her quotable quotes some of the most famous are, "if you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me". To the infamous American senator Joe McCarthy, who had jokingly remarked at a party, "Here is my blind-date. I am going to call you Alice", she sarcastically retorted, "Senator McCarthy, you are not going to call me Alice. The truckman, the trashman and the policeman on my block may call me Alice, but you may not". With a stiff-upper- lip she informed President Lyndon Johnson that she wore wide-brimmed hats in his presence so that he couldn't kiss her. When a prominent Washington senator was discovered having an affair with a young woman less than half his age, she winced and quipped, "you can't make a soufflé rise twice!"

The American 'princess' Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the darling of Washington society, died of prolonged illness and old age complications in 1980. In the official statement marking her passing away, President Carter had eulogized her thus, "She had style, she had grace, and she had a sense of humor that kept generations of political newcomers to Washington wondering which was worse - to be skewered by her or to be ignored by her". She was really one of a kind. Her death diminished the world she left behind. The final tribute came from the American media. It was unequivocally said that, "There will never be one quite like her!" She was the American high society's ultimate - an icon!

William Alton ‘Billy’ Carter (1937-1988)

Now, back to the 39th President of the US, Jimmy Carter. He started off well, endowed with the goodness of heart and an untarnished reputation. He was well meaning and forthright. However, he was perhaps too simple a man devoid of pretensions and some of the Machiavellian qualities that his office demanded.  A deeply religious Southern Baptist, he held politics to high ethical and moral standards, conveniently forgetting that it was naïve to do so and that the real world was unpredictable and a 'wicked' place. He made human rights and democracy the cornerstone of his foreign policy. He put an effective stop to any covert operations overseas by the US. Once he famously confessed in an interview with the Playboy magazine for having sinned. He candidly said, "I have committed adultery in my heart." In a promiscuous, hedonistic western society we were amused. It all sounded so innocent and naive! However, subsequent world and domestic events would greatly disappoint Carter, and eventually cost him a re-election and, thereby, the cherished presidency into a second term.

Carter's mother the elderly Miss Lillian Carter (1898-1983) made news as all fortunate living mothers do whose son makes it to the American presidency. She belonged to an antiquated old world generation from the onetime deep 'ante-bellum' American South. She once had a short twenty-one month stint working in India as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the mid-1960s. By then she was already 68 years of age.  The Jimmy Carter siblings also made it to the pages of newspapers, magazines and tabloids, especially,The National Inquirer and The Globe. Jimmy's sister Ruth Carter Stapleton was an evangelist and a faith-healer, living for a while in San Antonio, Texas. Besides preaching and healing, she was also into writing spiritual books. We met her briefly quite by an accident in the summer of 1979, in a park one afternoon near San Antonio where she was speaking to a small group. We were visiting a friend in San Antonio from Houston, and needed a little break and use the restroom in the park. It is there that we heard from excited passersby that Carter's sister, Ruth, too, was in the park. It's sad that we did not have a camera with us. We introduced ourselves as foreign students and Ruth in turn, kindly invited us to come  to her evangelical session in San Antonio, which we could not attended. She was unpretentious. There was a certain simplicity and calmness about her, which I found rather endearing. Jimmy Crater's other siblings, too, made headlines. Sister Gloria Spann, was once briefly arrested for loudly playing a harmonica at a restaurant to the great annoyance of diners. The police had to be called in for her belligerent behavior. Portly younger brother, Billy Carter a beer guzzler, with a sizable paunch launched his own brand of beer simply called 'Billy'. He tried to cash in on his brother's fame. He was a typical southern hillbilly, a country bumpkin with a ready idiotic grin. Nonetheless, as a Carter sibling with a loud mouth and embarrassing antics, he made it to the cover of both the TIME and Newsweek magazines. Needless to say, his 'Billy' beer which was marketed with much panache and fanfare, did not make the grades and soon ceased production altogether.

The highlight of the Carter era was the Camp David accord between the once irreconcilable Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977. Carter also gave up control over the Panama Canal to Panama, as a matter of legal and moral obligation. It made the American conservative groups, such as, the 'Birch Bayh' furious. His efforts at de-escalation of the cold war with the Soviets was praiseworthy. However, the Iranian revolution in 1979, and the taking of American hostages from the American embassy in Tehran by young Iranian radicals, resulted in a protracted 317- day hostage crisis, including a belated failed American  rescue mission of the US hostages. All these negative events were counter-productive to Carter's image nationwide. It surprises me now, that throughout the prolonged American hostage crisis, we as foreign nationals in Houston, Texas, never felt threatened and no untoward incidents like a grave assault or death were reported in the US. I shudder to think what would have happened to Muslims in the US, especially, those of foreign origin, if the same incident had occurred today? Regrettably, the world today is an intolerant one.

Adding to the problems of the Carter administration, was the sudden local communists take over in Afghanistan in 1978, followed soon by the unexpected Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December,1979. It was a rude wake up call for Carter. The cruel reality of world politics finally dawned on him. However, it rejuvenated the hitherto subdued conservative Americans and the military-industrial-complex, who were biding their time, having retreated after the debacles in Vietnam and Cambodia in utter disgrace. By end 1979, Cater faced multiple political challenges of global significance. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter immediately sanctioned a USD 200 million military-aid package to Pakistan a front-line state against the Soviet incursion, which President General Zia-ul-Haq ( 'snake-eyes' to Benazir) of Pakistan famously termed as "Peanuts", meaning a sum too paltry. Zia, the military dictator also had the temerity to admonish the US. He commented on the US retreat from South East Asia (Vietnam and Cambodia), and told the Americans, "you lost the war in Vietnam, then went home and cried". We were surprised to hear such an audacious comment from the president of an US aid recipient, dependent state. However, the sudden Soviet invasion of Afghanistan also provided a golden opportunity for the usurper military President Zia-ul-Haq. It would overnight legitimized his illegal regime and catapult him into the 'darling' of the West (Anglo-Americans in particular) from his former status of an international pariah, following his controversial extra-judicial hanging of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the 'diabolical dark prince' of Larkana, Sind, Pakistan, in 1979.

In 1980, the now forgotten 'Mariel harbor boatlift' of illegal immigrants from Cuba to Florida, USA, eventually became a veritable eyesore even to foreigners like us in the US. What had initially started as a trickle on 15 April 1980, soon became a deluge by 31 October 1980, when an agreement between the two countries finally stopped the illegal flow. In the beginning the generous Carter administration had welcomed the first boat loads of Cuban refugees on the coast of Florida seemingly with open arms. A gleeful Carter naively said publicly that when all of Cuba was emptied of its people, Fidel Castro would be left all alone to cut the sugarcane, while smoking his cigar. This sort of foolhardy statement openly encouraged the Cubans to send in more refugees by the boatloads, till the Floridians and rest of America started to protest accusing the Carter administration of laxity and callousness. By the end of the Cuban exodus, approximately 125,000 illegal Cubans had landed in Florida. It was also alleged not without reason, that the initial American failure to stem the tide of Cuban refugees, provided the Castro regime with a golden opportunity to ship off malcontents, vagrants, drug addicts, political prisoners as well as empty its jails and lunatic asylums of criminals and mental patients. Angry and exasperated, American protesters in Florida carried placards and shouted at Carter to settle the newly arrived illegal Cubans in Plains, Georgia, his hometown instead of Florida, so vehement was the outrage in the end. It cost Carter the much needed public support not only in the state of Florida but also elsewhere in the US. Remember the Hollywood crime thriller movie in the aftermath of the Mariel boatlift in Florida, 'Scarface' (1983) starring Al Pacino?       

As his naivety and ill luck would have it, Jimmy Carter, by the end of his first term as the US president would go on losing his popularity with the American public. They thought of him as too soft natured, unduly cautious and thus a weak president. However, he is also remembered as the luckless, transitional president after Vietnam. Tumultuous world and domestic events, sheer bad luck and loss of public support at home cost him his re-election bid in 1980. He would lose the coveted office of the presidency for a second term to the conservative Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood movie star, who went on to become the 40th president of the US. The Republicans and the conservatives were   once again back at the helm of affairs, and started projecting their 'Macho' image! However, sooner than later history will vindicate Carter. To-date, he remains the longest surviving ex-US president. His worldwide peace keeping missions and humanitarian efforts after leaving office has earned him global praise and won him many accolades as a popular, elderly world statesman endowed with wisdom, vision, sagacity and compassion for which he was finally awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Carter's exemplary global peace initiatives in various conflict zones has made him one of the most successful, universally respected and admired ex-president in American history. He is a good man at heart and a decent soul, a rare breed these days. In the end of it all when the curtain falls, it's that singular aspect of his character which will ultimately shine through. On October 01, 2024, Jimmy Carter becomes a proud  centenarian. May God bless him! 

Waqar A Khan is the Founder of Bangladesh Forum for Heritage Studies