Would be nice to have principled man in today's politics

In 1977, when Jimmy Carter took the presidential oath of office, I was there. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a big deal, except to me.

Back then, I was wandering from town to town and job to job, so much so that I didn’t even cast a ballot in the 1976 general election that elected Carter. It’s the only presidential election I ever missed, and I’ve always regretted it.

A few weeks earlier, I had hastily left a job in West Virginia, leaving behind a few things that I couldn’t carry away with my thumb. I left my things at a “settlement house” in Osage, planning to return at some point to pick them up. I got my chance that January, when a couple of friends in Nashville told me that if I wanted to ride with them to the inauguration, we could all go through Osage to pick up my stuff.

The stop in West Virginia I’ve long since forgotten. The inauguration, however, was unforgettable — especially for a wide-eyed 20-year-old man-child from the South.

Four years later, I did vote, but not for Carter. And not for Ronald Reagan, either. I was angry with America and its embedded injustices, so I broke with the status quo and cast my ballot for independent candidate John Anderson.

History may have relegated Anderson’s run to a footnote in the 1980 race, but for a rebellious and idealistic young voter such as me at that time, his “campaign of ideas” kept me from voting for Carter, whom I was mad at, and Reagan, whom I considered to be way too conservative.

Carter’s landslide loss to Reagan, however, disappointed me deeply, and I turned to grassroots community organizing, which I did through most of Reagan’s first term. That’s when I learned how movements come together, and how politics really is “local,” as then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill famously said.

Like many if not most Americans, I saw Carter as an ineffective president — not altogether true, history points out, but very much so with a defining issue in his presidency, the Iranian hostage crisis. Talk about foreign interference in an election: The Iranians held 53 American hostages for more than a year during Carter’s time in office, before freeing them after Reagan was elected.

Like many young idealists, I came to realize that life, and especially politics, isn’t all black and white; there are many gray areas as well. And in that gray, you’ll find the most effective politicians. 

I think Carter turned out to be a great man, not a great president.

Carter’s election was a very big deal for Southerners back then — the first Southern president to be elected since Reconstruction. Especially for the Southern liberals of that time, he was proof that the South was “rising” again, this time for the better.

Of course, that was nearly a half-century ago, when a candidate could say he’d “never lie” to us, as Carter promised, and we wouldn’t laugh cynically at the notion of an honest politician. I’m not sure a Jimmy Carter could survive in today’s political climate, but it sure would be nice to see someone with such solid principles stand up again for the America I love.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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