The Rise of Jimmy Carter

...A Kennedy similarity is not enough, any more than Senator Edmund Muskie's strikingly Lincolnesque aspect was enough to gain him the Democratic nod in 1972...

...Expulsion would be made as painless as possible by letting the troublemakers play basketball or music, plant trees or dig ditches to occupy their time...

...One concrete indication of this flight to the faith of the fathers is the rapid rise of the fundamentalist denominations in the United States...

...Despite the results of these efforts to slow down Carter's momentum, he went on to an impressive showing in Pennsylvania and continues to be the prime threat to all rivals, including Humphrey, the undeclared front-runner...

...Some suspect this may ultimately mean a Carter-Kennedy ticket...

...In the past, the emergence of new and influential geographic sectors in the United States has led to political rescramblings...

...if he were to come in second in New York and a strong first in Wisconsin, he would still be very difficult to beat...

...The rise of "fundamentalism-as an organized church, a flight toward faith and a disciplined way of life-coincides chronologically, if not causally, with the rise of the South as an important economic, demographic and political factor in the United States...

...Countdown '76 THE RISE OF JIMMY CARTER BY GUS TYLER Long before his victory in Pennsylvania, in fact by the time the preconvention Presidential nominating process had rolled around to New York and Wisconsin, the name of the game on the Democratic side was Stop Carter...

...This New South has been a. problem child for the Democrats: The region has not been solidly behind the party since 1948...

...Yet the former dropped out after the first lap and the latter got left at the starting gate...

...Today the rise of the South is once more disturbing traditional alliances and patterns...

...At all costs, though, what was most important for black students was learning "the basics...

...For even those who are antichurch, who passionately seek salvation through altered states of consciousness, divine revelation, meditation, or exotic ritual, share an acceptance of the "spiritual" experience, a world beyond the five senses...

...others see evidence that Camelot has found a new man to preside at the round table...

...If the former Georgia governor were to run first in both primaries, it was said, he would be unstoppable...

...Jimmy Carter fits the formula...

...and Atlanta Congressman Andrew Young to win their support in his bid for the White House...

...Each of the nonfundamentalist Protestant sects has lost adherents in recent years, while the Southern Baptist Convention...

...And because they do, they forgive the elusiveness that allows Jimmy Carter to appear to some as a closet Wallace, to others as a closet Kennedy, and to still others as a closet William Jennings Bryan...

...Andrew Jackson's earthy egalitarianism upset the elitist occupancy of the White House very much on the impetus of the frontier states...

...Jesse Jackson, the vigorous voice out of Chicago, hammers at black parents to curb the time their children spend watching TV, to bear down on the youngsters, to get them to do their homework and make something of themselves...

...The major problem for candidates is just getting recognition, as Governor Milton Shapp found out recently when he tried to project a nationwide image in the blitzy way that had proved successful in Pennsylvania a few years ago...

...Expressed as thoughtful theory, the theme is the limits of social policy, especially the parameters of governmental power...

...A thoughtful segment of the black community is drawn to Carter, too, because of the life style he represents: a return to "basics...

...and Terry Sanford, the former governor of North Carolina, were both as articulate and attractive as Carter, with the same trace of a drawl...

...The Republican party was originally an expression of Northern regionalism challenging the Southern domination of the Presidency...

...He has the skill to be a loquacious sphynx, to keep his meanings silent even when he is sounding off...

...But if the people really wanted an ersatz Kennedy they could have chosen Sargent Shriver, a true member of the family and practitioner of its style...

...It is no longer an 18th-century relic, a reminder of things past...

...Carter's was not the only fresh face in this year's show, however...

...To the extent that there is a Carter-Kennedy connection, the tie may be far less facial than political...

...So the question remains: Why has such a large part of the American electorate been attracted to Jimmy Carter...

...Intellectuals may sneer at his apple-pie mode, but it should be noted that a well-informed, articulate portion of the nation has been projecting its own version of this antipolitical trend...

...has grown from 9.25 million members to 12.75 million in about a decade and a half...

...Normally, in fact, a new face is no face...

...In New York, Jackson won handily with 104 delegates to Udall's 70, and Carter was a poor third...

...The marquees of the old burlesque houses used to draw the gentlemen in with the simple slogan: new girls, new faces...

...An always-latent cynicism about politicians has been reawakened by Watergate and by the inability of any administration to cope adequately with the profound problems of our times: race and crime, recession and inflation, war and peace...

...Another explanation popular with the image makers is Carter's profilic resemblance to the Kennedys...

...It ultimately merged with the Democrats under the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan...

...They want all black childrenwhether middle class or ghetto poor -to do as well or better, and they are distressed when they see them dropping out...

...He answers programmatic queries with amorphous ambiguities that strongly suggest good intentions are better than grand designs...

...The exploitation of a toothy grin and modish hairdo by his media men seems to urge that a vote for Carter is a vote for the resurrection...

...A prominent black leader, whose first choice for President is Humphrey and whose second is Carter, explained the practical political reason for his confidence in the Georgian...

...by far the largest fundamentalist group and the biggest Protestant church in the country...

...Jimmy Carter is a serious member of the Southern Baptist Church, a devout worshipper who continued to teach Sunday School when he was governor...

...So all those Democrats who did not want Carter to be their standard bearer began to close in on him...

...Senator Lloyd Bent-sen (D.-Tex...

...They didn't...

...Thus Jackson stayed out of Wisconsin, except for one appearance, to give Udall the morganatic aid without which he would have been a big loser...

...Many Americans are turning to the politics of antipolitics...

...The Populist party was largely an outcropping of Plains States protest...

...What makes Carter so formidable is not his delegate strength (with 40 per cent of the contests settled, he held only about 30 per cent of the delegates), but his rapid rise from obscurity in ways that baffle political analysts as well as his opponents...

...Hubert Humphrey presented himself more visibly and actively as a viable alternative...

...Yet fundamentalism is not Carter's only tie to American blacks...

...Those who see elections as just so much show biz ascribe the Geogian's popularity to his New Face...

...Voters who have been disenchanted by policy failure and personal peculation prefer a candidate who acts like a non-candidate, who pokes along like Will Rogers as played by Jimmy Stewart...

...When Carter says he has had a profound religious experience and confesses, "I am twice born,'' he sets off the harmonious vibes of millions who never ate corn pone and were never immersed in baptismal waters...

...Other Kennedy honchos, whom one might have supposed would back Udall, have clustered around Carter and given policy advice and endorsements...

...His quiet revivalism promises personal rebirth in our anomic age, a purpose to relieve the boredom of empty exercise...

...The same idea recurs less elegantly in the repeated attacks on social engineers, those pretentious eggheads who seek to weave the masses into some personalized new Zion...

...This multi-layered revolt against government is part of a larger revolt against Reason that has been gaining momentum since the early '60s...

...Although Gore Vidal likes to chide him for taking his initials too seriously, the worshippers greet the candidate's preachments with "amen" and "hallelujah...

...He wants to bring the South into the mainstream of American politics and to restore its historic role in the Democratic party...

...His deep identification with the Baptists helps him not only in the Bible Belt but with every American who longs for the certainties of the old time religion...

...Carter's staff has been loaded with Kennedy associates from early on...

...novelty in a Presidential contest has generally been a handicap in this big country...

...What used to be called Dixie is now, in slightly expanded form, the "Sun Belt...

...And the answers that suggest themselves reveal more about the mood of the nation than the manner of the candidate, although the two tend to merge into an emerging political Zeitgeist...

...Henry Jackson concentrated on New York and Morris Udall on Wisconsin...

...When he ran for governor, he told us we wouldn't like the kind of campaign he would run, but we would like the kind of governor he would be.' And he went on to establish sufficiently close associations with Martin Luther King Sr...

...Carter's evangelical air is probably also his single strongest link to black voters across the country-with whom he continues to be surprisingly popular, despite his "ethnic purity" remark...

...Virtually all the white liberals present rejected the idea of having every youth spend a period of time serving country or community, but Andrew Young thought the service should be "mandatory...

...it is where the action is, and a harbinger of what is to come throughout the country...

...The same insistence on discipline was repeated recently at a Hyde Park conference of the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute called to discuss the concept of a National Universal Youth Service...

...After the Florida and North Carolina primaries, where he defeated Wallace, many voters apparently came to share Carter's objective...

...To such blacks, Jimmy Carter seems to convey a push for the fundamentals, a no-nonsense approach to child-rearing and life...

...The key political question of our times has become: Will the South stay Democratic, go independent or swing to the Republicans...

...Carter has his answer...

...There was no official director to orchestrate the counter-Carter strategy, only tacit agreement on the parts to be played...

...He further suggested that a national uniform for the youngsters would help instill self-pride, and that since its methods have proved most successful, the Army should be in charge of all training to promote race relations...

...Another black leader proposed the removal of unruly kids from schools, so that the other children might have a chance to learn...

...It is a return to Faith at a moment when all the rational solutions appear to have produced irrational results...

...Indeed, with the appearance of the Dixiecrat party under Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and the subsequent Wallace movements, it seemed that the South might well become the nucleus of a third political force in America, to the distress and detriment of the Democrats...

...Many black leaders are in a war against the lax life...

...The permissiveness of the upper-middle income white liberal is anathema to most blacks who, by diligence and devotion, have "made it...

...Among those aged 18 to 24, Carter is the runaway favorite...

...The result there was a thin Carter victory, making it a sort of 50-50 event...

...JC's appeal comes out dramatically in his appearances before black congregations...

...By running against Washington and against issues, he dissociates himself from all that has happened in the capital and plays to many voters' own notions about uncomplicated government...

...Americans don't really believe that lookalikes are alike...

...At the plebian level, the impulse expresses itself in the yearning for a candidate who seeks the highest political office in the land by belittling the role of politics in our daily lives...