As he lies in state I feel it’s time I write about Jimmy Carter. As someone who lived through that time as a politically active voter I feel I need to clear up why he lost.     immy is more to blame than some people think, less that many of his opponents would claim. But many mistakes Carter made Democrats are still making.
    Right up front: I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t vote Reagan. When he defeated Ford I may have voted Ford: not sure. My politics were changing at the time.
    I hate to type this, but Carter, and society as it was at the time, were really responsible for him losing the 80 election. Was any of that fair? Mostly not. I am only going to cover the 3 fair reasons. Example of unfair: some people think the “malaise” comment itself had significant impact. I tend to think very little if any. Most of us, left and right, knew he was right. He didn’t use the word but he did say we had a, “crisis in confidence” which struck “at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.”
    Close enough to make the argument that he didn’t use the actual word an act of silly semantics.
    Now Reagan’s upbeat approach may have capitalized on that and helped, but so many other things went wrong.
    Coming in at a somewhat distant number 3: a minor thing but still a problem, the Kennedy affect. Ted wanted to discuss solutions to the national health care situation. BTW, HE WAS RIGHT, but Carter used the phony Rose Garden strategy. He claimed he couldn’t come out because he was busy dealing with the hostage situation. To the nation he was unveiled as a big phony when his polls severely dipped and suddenly he became available. It dragged Carter down.
    Imagine if he had agreed to discuss healthcare and publicly they came to a consensus. Who knows? Maybe we could have had at least Cartercare long before Obamacare was a mere thought headed towards a future president’s agenda?
    This whole thing was a Don Quixote-like battle for Kennedy. I’m sure he knew he probably wasn’t going to win. Few people ever accused Ted of being stupid. Irresponsible? Sure. Stupid? No. It was something he really felt had to be done, and I agree.
    To say Carter didn’t handle that very well is as a vast understatement as saying traveling from Cleveland to Cincinnati is a slightly less distance than traveling to the next solar system.
    Democratic leadership still won’t discuss our differences and come to a consensus as much as we should. We also still tend to ignore the more leftward progressive movement more than we should. Republicans have embraced their more rightward radicals. It has helped more than ignoring. Carter ignoring Kennedy’s challenge was a mistake.
    Coming in at number two, and not to be underestimated, was that actual, all too real, malaise. Nixon’s fall, Vietnamization’s horrid results, our pitiful, sad, escape from Nam, the economy under both parties, the gas crisis, and to a far lesser extent the attempt to escape reality via a rather plastic, artificial culture I would call “the disco culture.” We all knew we were bogged down, very depressed, and trying avoid discussing what had happened. That “malaise” wasn’t Carter specific. It started after Nixon resigned and went into Carter’s term. I remember the 1976 celebration just didn’t seem to inspire the kind on national joy it should have. It was more a muted, slightly sarcastic, “Oh, joy.”
    I remember that time all too well. Before that discussing the politics was more frequent. Then, to me, it seemed like a switch was slowly flipped. Try to discuss and most people wouldn’t, then quickly head off to the discos, after putting on fancy polyester leisure suits, fancy dresses and skirts. Dressed up so they could go home together and get undressed.
    Unbeknownst to us at the time like a big welcome sign for AIDS.
    Reagan, in contrast, offered bright city on the hill positiveness. In some ways FDR-ish when comparing the negativity of Hoover vs. Roosevelt. Not when it came to policies, just attitude.
    Regardless of anything I’ve typed here things just didn’t look good for Carter. Thom Hartmann claims Carter would have won if not for our number one. I think that dubious for all I have mentioned. I re4member Jimmy Carter during a debate being negative when warning us what might follow electing Reagan, adding our malaise. BTW: HE WAS RIGHT, but the negativity only reinforced Reagan’s positive spin.
    Number one, of course, was Reagan’s people negotiating behind Ford’s back with the Iranians. The Iranian government released the hostages only as Reagan became president. The hostages continual plight and the failed rescue attempt were like adding powerful downers to that malaise.
    An obvious death dealing political spear aimed at the side of an Iranian crucified Carter. We still haven’t learned how to handle when they cheat by negotiating behind our backs with enemies or mass purges of voters that I am sure were crucial to 2024. And, once again, instead of raising non-violent hell about it we blame just ourselves and tuck our heads into our shells, curl up in a “please don’t hit me” fetal position.
    As I sing, “Where of where have Harris and and Walz gone, oh, where or where could they be?”
    I tend to agree with the sentiment that Jimmy was a far more successful and heroic ex-president. And imagine if he had won and left the solar panels atop the White House? We might be even further down the road to alternate energy sources. Imagine the joint healthcare effort between him and Kennedy. Yes, there was “crisis in confidence” but Carter was, in part, to blame for “crisis in confidence” turning into “malaise.”
    Bringing it back to more current times, what have dem leaders been doing and saying about mass purges, and the increasingly perfected, improved other Republican ways of cheating? Making sure, increasingly, only their groups are allowed to vote? This has been a long term project for them.
    I’m not asking for 1/6, but Dem leadership won’t even address the topic. We should have been raising hell about this, about all the ways they cheat, instead of letting them have the stage with lies about massive numbers of immigrants voting, yada, yada, yada. Essentially the silence is like agreeing they’re right, we’re wrong.
    Carter really missed so many opportunities to turn his political fortunes around. He did do many positive things, like solar panels on the roof. Like dems STILL have the problem, he didn’t promote his own best efforts well.
    Fortunately he learned to do that quietly, over the years, post presidency.
    For all that I honor him.

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    “Inspection” is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 50 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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