Jimmy Carter: The Man & The Myth

...Then, too, for a history buff like myself there is something hauntingly familiar about the Carter tone, pretensions, and even the accompanying grin...

...Carter's fall from grace as governor now seems to be well on its way to reenactment on a national scale...

...So my advice is to read Jimmy Carter: The Man & The Myth now, while it's still timely...

...It is all very much like the "final days" of the Wilson Presidency when Woodrow, reduced to the condition of an angry turnip by strokes and frustration, pottered about the White House grounds with a chagrined look while his wife and one or two hack appointees tried to run the country...

...Even that singular Californian, Jerry Brown, could pose a real threat in the primaries and it is pretty clear that Edward Kennedy, if and when he decides to take the plunge, will not need to worry about having his posterior or any other part of himself savaged by the bewildered little man in the White House...

...As for moral leadership, the career of the President's best friend, Bert Lance, should be example enough...

...As governor, Carter clashed with the state legislature and lost...

...One finds the same smugly proclaimed idealism coupled with shady backroom money deals and other dubious arrangements, the same dirty trickery on the part of political aides coupled with vague, grandiose promises of "reform" which never seem to make it off the drawing board...

...Sitting in my study tonight, as the 11 o'clock news chronicles the latest cracks in the Carter Presidency, I can only regret how right I was when I wrote: All of my friends say they're afraid Jimmy Carter is just another phony...

...Strategically as well as economically, the remnants of the Free World really do catch cold each time America sneezes-as the worried private statements of allied leaders and the abysmal decline of the dollar in foreign money markets have made abundantly clear...

...In a few more months both the book and its subject may be gathering dust on the remaindered shelf...

...Writing in these pages in the summer of 1976 ("Old Horseface, Arrogance, and Jimmy Carter," August/ September 1976), I sounded an early warning that the gentleman from Georgia possessed a number of un-endearing Wilsonian quirks and was probably doomed to failure as a leader...

...Domestically, he has piddled while the economy burned with the result that we now face another serious round of stagflation and possibly a major recession...

...Hamilton Jordan runs the White House, Rosalynn Carter is described as the President's most influential advisor, and the man himself shakes clenched fists and blames his own failures on the alleged moral inadequacy of the American people-when not gibbering through the White House fence at puzzled passersby or adding to the list of fired lower-echelon aides...

...He, too, was a middle-class son of the South with a rigorous religious upbringing and, after heading north, he served one little-noted term as a governor before coming out of nowhere to capture the Democratic nomination and, ultimately, the White House...

...Like Gover-nol" Carter, he read the Good Book every day and never tired of reminding everyone of how godly he was, though unfortunately this led him to the sin of pride and the delusion that all those who opposed him were not merely mistaken but downright immoral-after all, they refused to recognize his personal mandate from Heaven, didn't they...

...With the canning of the few members of his cabinet who had any independent stature or perspective, and with the Georgia Mafia joining hands around the remaining debris in an ever-contracting circle, one is tempted to diagnose the condition as terminal...

...Lasky treats them in commendable detail, and the longer one examines that early record the more his dismal performance as President resembles a larger, more grotesque reprise of his term as governor of Georgia...

...It didn't work then either, but at least the stakes weren't as high...

...To date, with the ill-considered SALT II treaty still under debate, his only "triumphs" as a Free World leader have been handing over the Panama Canal to a pro-Castro dictator and ensuring the success of a Marxist-oriented coup in Nicaragua...

...The previous owner of the Carter smile promised to bring a new morality and candor to the debauched political process although his own campaign utterances were almost as remarkable for their Aram Bakshian, Jr., a former aide to two Presidents and a Fellow of Harvard University, writes frequently on politics, humor, and the arts for numerous American and overseas journals...

...It is highly unlikely that they will do so again in 1980...

...It is not a pretty picture, the portrait of an obsessively self-deluded climber whose messianic streak, fortunately for us all, doesn't seem to be catching...

...what worries me is that he's probably totally sincere...

...Despite a little cosmetic surgery on the state executive branch, he left office one of the least popular Georgia governors in recent history...

...True, the League of Nations was stillborn as a result of his initial arrogance and subsequent collapse on the domestic political front, but America, far from the reach of enemies and virtually un-scarred by World War I, jogged confidently into a decade of unprecedented growth and prosperity...

...vagueness as for their high moral tone...

...But in this latest book, as in his earlier debunkings of John and Robert Kennedy, he performs a useful function by stringing together long lines of dirty linen-most of it already published in newspaper and magazine stories but not previously available in a single convenient package...

...Lasky lias strung together so many individually minor examples of shoddy Carter behavior, bungled Carter leadership, and platitudinizing, self-indulgent Carter piety that a pattern begins to emerge...

...His prose style ranges from the tasteless to the anaesthetic, albeit with occasional flashes of rude good humor...

...For one thing, Wilson's paralysis was not contagious...

...Only the passage of time, a bloc vote from the black community, and the chance to inflict a native son on the Yankees led a majority of Georgians to overlook Carter's state record, hold their noses, and pull the Democratic lever in November of 1976...

...All of which makes Victor Lasky's new political expose, Jimmy Carter: The Man & The Myth, more than just another partisan tract...

...Lasky is hardly one of the literary ornaments of our age...

...And it is precisely because Mr...

...So much for poor Woodrow...

...Carter's early years tell most if not all there is to know about the kind of public man he is...

...Things aren't quite so simple today...

...In actuality, he raised nothing but expectations, and those so unrealistically high that they, his reputation, and the general public respect for politics were cruelly dashed in the aftermath...

...Alf too often, today's bold new journey is only a rehash of yesteryear's bad trip and, curiously enough, the previous owner of the Carter grin and aura also had his professional start in Georgia, although that was way back in 1882 in an Atlanta law office...

...Now Jimmy Carter has proven himself more of a cracker parody of Wilson than even I had expected...

...Carter's pathetic performance in office has hurt American prestige and security, and hurt them badly...