Later this month, on the 23rd, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale will have become the longest-lived post-administration President/Vice President pair, having survived 25 years and 123 days after leaving office. The previous (or, for a few weeks, current) record holders are John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
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Have you noticed how much the Christian right-wing bloggers hate Jimmy Carter? I mean, not just disagree with him, but hate his guts with a white-hot intensity? I don’t get it.
I’m not saying he was a great president, but if I had to pick the one president in the last 100 years who seems most, well, “Christ-like”, it would be Carter. But the ostensible conservative bloggers go out of their way to vilify him.
Can you explain? I am genuinely mystified.
Carter had a rep as a wuss. As such, he doesn’t exemplify the Strong Aggressive Marketplace-Smashing Christian, but the Namby-Pamby Love-Thy-Neighbor Christian.
He was also an electoral opponent of Ronald Reagan, the conservative demi-god (even if Reagan would likely have objected to quite a bit of current conservative political thinking and activity, ironically enough). To the extent that Reagan was portrayed as a simpleton next to the educated Carter, he’s a target for spleen.
He’s also continued to be a vocal critic of this, that, and the other thing, and has continued to dabble in politics (or pronouncements in that arena) post-presidency, which is looked at askance in many quarters (myself included).
I didn’t much care for Carter as a president (though he was really the first one I was aware of as a president), but, his meddling in US policy aside, he’s been an interesting and admirable past-President.
OK – I guess that gives me some insight into ‘conservative’ values.
Educated, decorated veteran whose Christian faith inspired him to take the difficult path of peace (and whose engineering experience caused him to realize decades ahead of the rest of us that energy independence was ‘the moral equivalent of war’ in its importance to our national security… bad.
Tough-talking, chickenhawk movie actor who grabbed credit for the fall of communism (yeah, it was all his doing) whose disregard for separation of powers drove our country to a constitutional crisis, and who left a trail of bodies in central America… good.
The current crop is as dangerous to Christianity as it is to the Republican party. But they don’t strike me as actually being either one.
Yup.