PLAINS DEALER
Macomber, Shawn
By Shawn Macomber Jimmy Carter takes us to Sunday school. 1 6 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 s H a W n M a c o M b e R unquestionably swell trade. And, anyway,...
...But, anyway, we did it,” James Earl Carter, Jr...
...and lamenting, “I just don’t understand why God wanted us to lose the election...
...lack of public insight into the couple’s unselfish concern for the nation (“Even if we overcame the disappointment of the defeat… I believed the country was surely going to suffer”), and her husband’s own… quirks (“I have worked with problems of the mentally afflicted for years, ever since I first became aware of the needs while campaigning for Jimmy for governor...
...Just be happy you’re getting to stand next to him, alright...
...Are there any visitors with us today...
...Granted, the First Lady tacitly acknowledges non-supernatural factors in the loss...
...Williams was living up to her unofficial nickname, Drill Instructor...
...Still, I remained giddy...
...A Secret Service agent stonily met my gaze and, with my own King of the Hill cartoon-themed unmentionables, I pivoted quickly forward again...
...liberal guilt he fretted over whether his Cuban coproselytizer was being too deferential because Carter was “a native-born American, owned an automobile, and had been a state senator”—an aweinspiring résumé, to Carter’s mind at least...
...The one person in that church able to derail Mister Jimmy’s selflove train had just done so...
...economy clearly weighing heavily upon him...
...There was another JC in God’s House this morning and he’d be engrossed in his own story for some time yet...
...A mile down the road sits the large, ornate Plains High School...
...I’d say try to forGet he’s a former president but you know you can’t, so just try to remember you’re here to worship,” Jan Williams—the Carters’ longtime friend, aide, and Amy Carter’s elementary school teacher—began as she prepared us for the arrival of “Mister Jimmy...
...Jimmy Carter may not have tended sheep in his farm boy youth, but he herds them with shocking efficiency on Sunday mornings these days...
...Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes,” Carter told the American people in his Inaugural Address, yet when those wise voters decided to minimize Carter’s mistakes by sending him back to Plains in 1980, Rosalynn became convinced God had maliciously erred in not overriding their decision to prevent a certain affable Antichrist from taking office...
...It looked a bit like idolatry, but, really, it was just Jimmy Carter’s Plains...
...Call it The Unbearable Lightness of Woofing...
...JRosalynn will often skip over the law of Moses d n a e h t a h , t f n ” , h r “ I t. n e s e T imm t y a C m arter t i is s s a o bit h a sq s uea i mish a c ab t out the Old , the prophets, and the psalms during the couple’s nightly Bible reading...
...Baptist Rosaly T nn c o ouldn’t ride r t w heir b r ikes n in b B k eijing or an e y rs - teacher, on the job since January 20, 1981, had been prattling on from the pulpit for a long while, damning George W. Bush’s deficit spending and praising himself with all due modesty as a man who changed “the history of the world...
...Here it is again, God...
...An auditorium once designated for school assemblies screens a milquetoast documentary mawkishly Jimmy Carter may not have tended sheep in his farm boy youth, but he herds them with shocking efficiency on Sunday mornings these days...
...Julia put the ultimately ill-advised notion in young Jimmy’s noggin that even he could be president, you may find yourself wishing Carter’s favorite teacher had been struck with a J Who-like incomprehensibility...
...How would you like to have a congregation that big...
...Carter also noted the People’s Republic of China had been proclaimed on his 25th birthday (October 1, 1949), without letting on whether he believed this was a gift from a forwardlooking Mao...
...Imagine Planters’ Mr...
...Everything to Gain, the couple’s joint tale of how they bravely overcame the loss to Ronald Reagan, quotes Rosalynn alternately demanding angrily, “How could God have let this happen...
...A wide, toothy grin rendered after Carter’s own famous smile forever set where you might imagine a peanut’s mouth would be, though it has no other features...
...Yet another may turn to coloring a picture of a young Carter playing with a childhood friend...
...Or had she...
...This is the kind of vital knowledge imparted here...
...Because most of you are visitors...
...Williams asked, snipping before anyone could answer, “That’s right, your hands...
...Did you know Carter enjoys watching birds...
...Carter giggled, widening his eyes with feigned surprise, as if the humorous properties of his “Are there any 1 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 s H a W n M a c o M b e R visitors” bit had only just now struck even him...
...And, anyway, Carter had more serious issues with Communist China: He and Jesus was just going to have to wait...
...I always asked Santa for books except once I asked for a pony,” a recording of Carter blares, for instance, when you press the button in his childhood bedroom decorated with—what else?— Horatio Alger tomes such as From Farm Boy to Senator and A Boy’s Fortune...
...Actually, here’s a miracle Carter may want to expand into a Sunday school lesson: The parable of the very same taxpayers who handed Carter the worst defeat for an incumbent president since FDR mopped the floor with Herbert Hoover now subsidizing Carter’s town-wide delusions of grandeur to the tune of nearly $2 million per year...
...Cameras were exchanged...
...They had to be careful what they said...
...the National Park Service maintains the scene of this apparent debauchery, the 17-acre Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm...
...Oh, and he got that pony, too...
...Plains, Georgia “T d Church’s most-heralded Sunday school and causing traffic jams, he sighed, the unintend a c f s e i g i d a t e r e o o p y l r e m r f e h . e r o m a h n a r h j lu l a H ell them le abo a ut ! the M b a ible, J at immy...
...Here a student could be encouraged to play reporter and write a story for the Plains Examiner decrying racial injustice...
...brayed, providing congregants a glimpse, perhaps, of how a modern-day Carter administration foreign policy might be conducted...
...Peanut without eyes, arms, and top hat...
...There was another JC in God’s House this morning and he’d be engrossed in his own story for some time yet...
...Likewise, Jimmy’s flock teetered on the cusp of an awe inspired, as even Carter concedes, more by his status as an ex-president than his reputation a theologian...
...The “do not speak unless spoken to” rule was relayed, followed by the “no applause” rule...
...child gathered around a 13-foottall peanut made of chicken wire, polyurethane, and wooden hoops...
...he asked...
...Chief among these the democratic process (“Why didn’t the people understand our goals and accomplishments...
...Applause makes him very angry...
...Sliding around in the fabled slick red Georgia clay, past a buggy shed, windmill, and blacksmith shop to the modest white house restored to 1937 décor, visitors slip into the world of Carter’s youth, albeit sans young naked boys and overworked animals...
...The only restraint, which some people don’t like, is you have to register your congregation with the government,” he explained, waving his hand as if to signify subjugation for a stack of bibles was an M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 1 7 P l a I n s d e a l e R Much like Lieutenant Dan riding a ship mast amidst the raging storm in Forrest Gump, however, Carter redoubled his efforts at faith and piety, shuttling off to New England for a short stint as a missionary, where in a typical bit of navel-gazing “Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes,” Carter told the American people in his Inaugural Address...
...Our beaming 39th president was only scratching the surface of the myriad ways he alone was to thank for China’s stratospheric economic rise and, consequently, how the Chinese people writ large felt an incredible affinity for him, when that melodious, Southern twang-tinged voice interrupted...
...Cars slowly filed out of the church parking lot only to follow one another into a gas station lot a quarter mile down the road in a conga line of steel and carbon emissions...
...I glanced over my shoulder to identify this bold woman so sure of her panty quality and saw… Rosalynn Carter two pews back, a look of impatience set deep into her face...
...That he only allowed Coca-Cola products in his White House...
...I glanced back at Rosalynn again, hoping the impatience would still be written across her face, searching for a sign she might be gearing up to tweak her husband again...
...Jesus was just going to have to wait...
...Another might grab a No...
...J WHO: The Dog Who Helped Elect a President, a book aimed at adults yet written partially from a stray dog’s perspective, is an exception: “They wanted to elect their friend and neighbor Jimmy Carter president of the United States,” J Who, whose grave near the depot is a marked historical site, muses in a chapter on Plains’ residents supposed press shyness...
...Regardless, the groveling paid off...
...When during an early run for the Georgia state senate a preacher asked Carter how, as a church deacon, he could get into politics, the future president shot back, “I will have 75,000 people in my senate district...
...It is a building filled with Peanut Brigade buttons, cartoons of peanuts-eating elephants, and enough other peanut-festooned inanities to leave George Washington Carver spinning in his grave...
...TCarter felt ordained to tend the earthl n i s e u l s i r e h T . e n o s i t n t a he c C on ar e ters o ’ u relationship e with li G tt o e d q has b t e o en y flock...
...Of course, we’re here to worship, after all...
...The odds on ordinary “peanut farmers” having 71 acres of their hometown (pop: 637) declared a National Historic Site, for example, are not spectacular...
...Pictures were taken...
...Tell them about the Bible, Jimmy,” she repeated...
...Jimmy took a more sanguine approach, preferring to see God as a commiserating partner...
...detailing the heroic rise of Carter every 30 minutes, while a gift shop around the corner hawks Jimmy Carter peanut-growing kits, Rosalynn Carter rose lapel pins, along with all manner of laudatory books on the Carter presidency, written almost exclusively by Jimmy Carter himself...
...Shuttered between 1979 and 1996, it today houses the Jimmy Carter Visitor Center...
...His own Old Testament is another matter entirely...
...It’s funny...
...Many days the two of them, barefooted and shirtless,” the caption reads, “would run off with Jimmy’s bulldog, Bozo, and go skinny dippin’ in the small ponds near the Carter farm...
...Minutes later Carter swept into the sanctuary wearing a down-home bolo tie and a roomy gray suit...
...Sometimes, when I thought about the defeat and how much I disagreed with what our successor was doing in Washington,” Carter wrote in Everything to Gain, “I was having to say, ‘It’s too much for me...
...There are few modern amenities on this farm, save for large red buttons which when pressed summon forth the Voice of Carter...
...The meek shall not inherit this town, apparently...
...If in Carter’s estimation the Good Lord had closed a door in 1966, He opened a huge window in 1970, which Carter climbed through to become governor of Georgia before ascending to the United States presidency in 1976...
...The journey into “Jimmy Carter’s Plains”—as the National Park Service now calls the town—begins with a stop at the ceremonial headquarters of the 1976 campaign cum campaign museum town train depot...
...The congregation responded with more hearty guffaws...
...1 6 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 s H a W n M a c o M b e R unquestionably swell trade...
...Now when Mister Jimmy comes in, he’s going to ask if there are any visitors today,” Williams ordered...
...President Carter made sure this was exactly right,” a Park Ranger told me, nodding at the outhouse —Carter always did have a knack for discerning the truly 2 0 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a R c H 2 0 0 8 There man, woman, and shawn Macomber is a contributing editor to The American Spectator...
...On cue, the crowd let out a boisterous cackle...
...But anyway that’s where John [the Baptist] preached,” the author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid said, leaving the river-libel on the Jews and moving on...
...Alas, Rosalynn’s words proved merely a prompt for Carter to preen over convincing Deng Xiaoping to allow Bibles and some degree of religious freedom in China...
...important—before leading the way into the farmhouse itself, complete with a buffet of plastic fried chicken and biscuits on the kitchen table and a copy of Social Justice newspaper with the headline “Roosevelt to Seek Third Term in 1940” on the easy chair...
...Stroll ing through the seventh-grade classroom where Ms...
...This aura of homespun modesty is as shatterproof as a crystal vase...
...That he considers himself a poet...
...You can laugh...
...Try to remember you’re here to worship...
...No one batted a lash when, for example, during the biblical portion of the lesson Carter railed on about how the majestic Jordan River of the Bible has been decimated by Israelis “tapping it upstream for irrigation purposes...
...He hates applause,” Williams lectured, as if we were a room of Van Helsings preparing to pelt Dracula with garlic cloves from every angle...
...That’s a hard thing for us to comprehend, how the two are interrelated,” Carter explained to churchgoers...
...One of many rules relayed to us before President Carter arrived was that under no circumstance were we to speak to “Mister Jimmy” unless either spoken to or “wearing good underwear” suitable for a visit to a Secret Service-run backroom for rowdy churchgoers...
...Yet when the Lord of Hosts didn’t deliver the almighty swing vote in the 1966 Georgia governor’s race, Carter admits in Living Faith, he was “tempted to abandon [his] faith altogether...
...What’s the best way to pass germs...
...By Shawn Macomber Jimmy Carter takes us to Sunday school...
...Normalizing relations with “Red China” in 1978 had been a controversial move, our spiritual guide preached, since “Communists back then were looked at almost like terrorists are now and to negotiate with the Communists was consequences of single-handedly creating a market not a very popular thing to do...
...Ators are asked to leave the church grounds - i i v , s n o a r y t i r u e s r . ng l s i d d p n r d o the ng n it u w a as o over F . o Jan c William e s s was aga s in immediately after having their picture taken with the former president...
...Irrigation projects by Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan warranted nary a peep...
...2 pencil and trace his way through a photocopied maze based on Carter’s Naval Academy plebe year, studiously attempting to avoid cartoon-illustrated corners headlined “KNOCKED DOWN: Paddled By Upper Classmen” and “TAUNTED: You’re A Cracker Mr...
...With each new decree she motioned at a Secret Service agent, not so subtly suggesting the officers were there as much to enforce Williams-approved etiquette as to protect the president...
...She looked content, though, doting even...
...Take it again.’” Yes, forgive the voters, Father, for they know not what they do...
...This town hasn’t changed that much since we became famous,” she dubiously claimed, apropos of nothing at one point, although most Baptist services presumably do not have this level of enforced orchestration...
...No one understood my bark...
...Carter loves to wrap himself and Plains up together in a big folksy bow, heralding the town in Everything to Gain as a place where he and Rosalynn “could be the same couple we had been before the White House years,” loved “for ourselves and not for whatever power or influence we might have had,” same as if “we had remained peanut farmers...
...That he is a “lover of Bob Dylan’s songs...
...You are part of history this morning because this is a history lesson as well as a religious lesson...
...The pre-game continued...
...Then there were the “no autographs” and “no trying to shake Mister Jimmy’s hand” rules...
...Down the hall, beneath a large bust of Carter and a mural of transcendent moments from his life, M a R c H 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 1 9 Three miles outside of Plains P l a I n s d e a l e R visiting schoolchildren are encouraged to meditate on the epic world-bettering deeds of Jimmy and Rosalynn...
...This same man possessed the galling temerity, in his 2005 book Our Endangered Values, to finger George W. Bush as a theocrat...
...Every button finds Carter relating another anecdote that invariably taught him some lesson about stewardship or trust or racial harmony crucial to his glorious presidency...
Vol. 41 • March 2008 • No. 2
