Eminentoes
Bakshian, Aram Jr.
by Aram Bakshian, Jr. Old Horseface, Arrogance, and Jimmy Carter All of my friends say they're afraid Jimmy Carter is just another phony; what worries me is that he's probably totally sincere....
...We also know that the Governor doesn't like busing or abortion but is steadfast in his determination to do nothing about them...
...Historically, it has been the zealots, not the gasbags and the fixers, who have been the biggest disasters, whether in the case of Savonarola burning books and paintings in Florence in the name of reform, Oliver Cromwell crushing Parliament and massacring Irish Catholics on personal instructions from the Lord, Woodrow Wilson leading Americans into a hollow holy war that ultimately made the world safe for nothing but hypocrisy, or Jimmy Carter exploiting voter ennui and disenchantment by wrapping himself in a cloak of sanctimony and promising that, if we'll just shut our eyes and follow him, he'll lead us all to a great Cornpone Camelot in the sky...
...That irreverent old scalawag, H.L...
...as pundit George Will has observed, the gentleman from Georgia seems to think it is immoral to take a concrete stand on anything...
...Of all people, pious Jimmy Carter may be proving him right...
...All that remained of his political legacy was the Federal Income Tax and the pious insanity of Prohibition —that and the lingering memory of a toothy grin that still stares out from many Aram Bakshian, Jr...
...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...
...Perhaps in this naive yet jaded era of shallow imagery and flash impression, people really do hunger for a charismatic Plastic Jesus with soothing personality and platitudes who glosses over the substantive commitments and principles that force voters to think and candidates to stand for something more than real or imaginary inner glow...
...All 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...
...is a lecturer for the Shore Line Company...
...Mencken, used to insist that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public...
...that he will reduce the number of federal programs but not necessarily the number of federal employees (an empty "reform" he implemented on the state level in Georgia...
...The same curious mixture of outspoken morality and underlying egotism that doomed Woodrow Wilson to failure as a President is already writ large on what there is of a Carter record...
...There have, of course, been exceptions...
...that he was for the right to work in Georgia but no longer gives a hoot...
...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 vagueness as for their high moral tone...
...But neither position could be taken too seriously since Governor Carter had already dismissed foreign policy questions with a flippant, "I'll deal with that in my Inaugural...
...By the time he left office, a broken man, his Fourteen Points were no more than a stale joke (even God only required Ten Commandments, the French statesman Georges Clemenceau had remarked with a shrug) and his pet project, the League of Nations, was a moribund farce...
...And the similarity doesn't end with the deathmask tightness and intensity of the wall-to-wall grimace, either...
...Quick, somebody, call the Exorcist...
...Now unless this strategy is consciously cynical in the worst tradition of the old politics, it is a victim of the Wilsonian delusion that good intentions justify everything and deserve our blind, unquestioning acceptance...
...photographs and editorial cartoons of the period...
...Jimmy Carter has been possessed by Woodrow Wilson's grin...
...I've already said that I don't think Governor Carter is a fake...
...There isn't much, because whenever anyone mentions the word "issues," Jimmy Carter reaches for his halo...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator August/ September 1976 21...
...To pay lip service to honesty, candor, and moral standards, and then to out-evade past masters of politicaldouble-talk like Hubert Humphrey, is either consciously hypocritical or unconsciously arrogant—and it says something rather sad about the intelligence of the electorate, or at least Governor Carter's low but seemingly accurate opinion of it...
...Aside from these tantalizing and often conflicting tidbits, he asks us to take him on faith, perhaps with the assumption that, like a certain candidate in 1968, he may have a "secret plan" up his saintly sleeve...
...In actuality, he raised nothing but expectations, and those so unrealistically high that they, his reputation, and general public respect for politics were cruelly dashed in the aftermath...
...Later, Japan was tossed back into the American sphere...
...That isn't candor or Christian humility...
...I think he's sincere in the worst sort of way...
...Like Governor 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...
...On the small matter of foreign policy in Asia and the Pacific, to cite but one case, we have been treated to not one but three conflicting Carter policies...
...Old Horseface," as Washington kids of my father's generation nicknamed him, had been a great candidate and a pathetic President...
...Now, don't get me wrong...
...It is precisely the genuine self-righteousness of the man that gives me the creeps...
...and that he wants to impose a national health insurance scheme on us while steadfastly upholding thrift in government...
...it's arrogance at its worst...
...So far the Carter strategy has worked remarkably well and my own bet is that he will be very hard to beat in the general election...
...Then, too, for a history buff like myself there is something hauntingly familiar about the Carter tone, pretensions, and even the accompanying grin...
...and only then, when it may be too late, will we find out all we wanted to know about Jimmy Carter but were afraid to ask...
...And, when it comes to arrogance, the White House has already filled its quota for the century...
...I think he really believes that he is morally superior to the other hounds in the political pack even though his conduct as a candidate has been no more honest, candid, or uplifting than the rest...
...Initially, Governor Carter reportedly favored an American military pullout from Korea and Japan...
Vol. 9 • August 1976 • No. 10
