Jimmy Carter Makes it to 100

 

Congratulations on Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday today. In my 50 years In Washington, I followed Carter more closely than any other president.

 

From 1971 to 1977, all of my work at The Associated Press had been writing and editing from a desk. Then suddenly, a week after a bureau shakeup, I found myself sitting in the front row of the audience for Carter’s inauguration, my feet freezing on the icy ground. While watching him and Rosalynn walk from the Capitol to the White House in the parade, I may have wished I was still warm and inside.

 

Within a few months, while covering the Treasury Department next door, I was often called on to help out the nearby White House staff when the President spoke on an economic subject or when his helicopter took off for Camp David. The White House press staff seemed helplessly dependent on the President or press secretary for news. There were few interviews or visits to White House offices. TV crews and still photographers sat around watching soap operas and game shows all day, something I had never seen in a workplace.

 

I did get to shake hands with Carter several times at White House Christmas parties for the press. After a series of stuffy presidents, it was great to see the leader of the Free World grooving along to the music during entertainment. However, I thought the jack-o-lantern that was painted over the front of the White House at Halloween was hopelessly tacky.

 

Though I normally focused on arcane economic issues, I got drawn into Washington’s biggest story when Carter’s right-hand man, Bert Lance, got into trouble for making too many risky loans at rural banks he ran in Georgia. If a guy can’t run a small bank, how can he manage the budget of the most powerful country in the world?

 

I was first with news that banking regulators had cleared Lance of wrong-doing, but details in their report troubled members of Congress. Their hearings on this mess were big national news. As Lance’s bank faltered, he had been making questionable loans to people who would seek influence with Carter. I covered the hearings that followed, and Lance was forced  to resign. I never thought the offenses were that terrible. Now Carter was soon deprived of advice he badly needed to fight inflation, which was out of control on his watch.

 

I give him poor marks for his economic policies, but he did bring Egypt and Israel together for a historic agreement. He made great, though unfruitful, efforts to advance human rights around the world.

 

His charitable acts as a private citizen were admirable, though I think it is what a president does in office that really counts.

 

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Note: I wrote this over a year ago when Carter entered hospice care. But he has been hanging on bravely, so I decided to publish this on his birthday.