Wonder Years with Jimmy

While all my older siblings were engaged in the psychedelic revolution of the 1970s, I was growing up just down the road from Jimmy. 

There is a magical time in a boy’s life when he’s no longer a child, but also not quite a young man. Between the ages of ten to fifteen, he starts to notice the bigger world around; girls become more of a fascination, and for me, politics became interesting all of a sudden. These are the “wonder years,” as some have labeled them. 

I was about eleven when I moved from South Carolina to Georgia for a short time while my father was deployed to Japan. We moved close to my mother’s ancestral home, which just happened to be a few miles down the road from a soon-to-be famous peanut farmer. Yes, Jimmy Carter was just down the two-lane road from me. Although, at the time, he had just left the governor’s office and was not yet president. 

The year was 1976, the bicentennial of the American republic, when Jimmy picked up the mantle and ran for president of these United States. I remember watching the Democratic National Convention via broadcast television, on the houseboat my uncle owned. We were fishing on Lake Lanier, and as the men were telling lies and drinking beer, I was watching Jimmy Carter accept the presidential nomination. I was very proud that he was a Southern man.

He was a Navy man, Annapolis graduated, submariner, and good old boy Southern Democrat at the time. Now, some may ridicule his presidency, and rightly so, but I believe he kept the Jeffersonian spirit alive in an age of increasing executive overreach.

So, my article is not to ruin his good name, but merely to testify to my recollection of those years, as I observed them.

There are lots of things to say about President Carter, but no one can doubt that he was Southern. From his accent, his agrarian nature, his association with Confederate symbols (at least at the beginning) and his wild ass redneck brother, Billy. Jimmy was one of us. Unfortunately, like so many leaders in the South, he forgot those things that had preserved our way of life, even through our hardships. He looked away from Dixieland, and toward something else. In my opinion, he did not finish his course well. 

What I do remember about those times is mixed. There was a great comfort that a man not racked with scandal was taking office, following the absurdity of the Watergate affair. But my attitude toward the whole thing was immortalized by Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Now Watergate does not bother me, does your conscience bother you.” Seemed Nixon had gotten a raw deal to many of us. Regardless, Jimmy had impeccable character, and that’s what the nation wanted at the time. 

What we didn’t need was a stagnant economy, gas lines, an energy crisis, a military in disrepair, mortgage interest rates in the high teens, and a weak foreign policy. I remember Jimmy addressing the nation, sitting in his chair with a sweater on, telling us all to turn down our thermostat to save energy. With gas lines forming, fortunately, my brother worked at a gas station and gave us special access, while different parts of the country rotated days on which you could buy fuel. Even in school, we bundled up during the winter. My parents’ mortgage interest rate was almost twenty percent, and now we complain if it gets over four. According to my father, military units were raiding others for spare parts, just to keep their force at readiness level. Carter even gave away the Panama Canal, and forfeited United States hegemony in Central and South America. Jimmy’s foreign policy, though well intentioned, was anemic. 

As my memory recalls, he was always trying to live the ideal of peace, in a world bent on tearing itself apart. Anyone could respect that, he tried his best to find a way to solve the issues in the Middle East, but in the end, his efforts led to more chaos. Our embassy in Tehran, Iran was attacked and hostages were taken. A failed mission to rescue those hostages, one a close family member had worked in support of, only doomed his presidency more. Seeing American bodies desecrated on the evening news, and the crisis going on for four hundred and forty-four days crippled his administration. 

Idealism can be virtuous, but in a world where virtue is viewed as a weakness, you have to have strong leaders. As my wonder years came to a close, so did the presidency of the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia. As I moved from childhood to adolescence, the nation would also transition from a position of frailty to one of rejuvenated vigor under the leadership of Ronald Reagan. 

History will judge him, and he has gone to his reward. The Lord God Jehovah, in the end, is the only one to which we all give an account. So, rest in peace, President Carter, and thank you for being a man committed to peace, however ill-fated it turned out to be. 

Deo Vindice!

God save the South!