Former President Jimmy Carter arrived in Washington on Tuesday to honor him in death, even though the city never truly honored him in life.
That he ends his long story with a pompous visit to the nation’s capital is a nod to ritual rather than favoritism, and less a testament to the days when he presided in the citadel of power. Rather, it is a testament to the rituals of the American presidency. .
To put it more bluntly, Mr. Carter and Washington were not a good match at all. When the peanut farmer from Georgia took up residence in the white man’s mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he was a truer outsider than any president before him, and remained so, determinedly, stubbornly, and proudly. Ta.
He never cared for the culture of the capital, did not respond to the demands of Mandarin or Doyen, did not bow to customs. Meanwhile, the city had no regard for him and his “Georgia Mafia,” dismissing them as a bunch of brash rednecks from the outback who didn’t know what they were doing. Other outsider presidents eventually adapted to Washington. Not Mr. Carter. And as he himself admits, it will come at a cost to him.
“I don’t know which was worse: the unofficial Carter faction’s distrust and hatred of Washington, or Washington’s disdain for the new arrivals in town from Georgia,” said a longtime Washington lawyer and two others. Gregory B. Craig, who worked at two law firms, recalls: Democratic government. “I know it happened on the first day.”
A mixture of piety, pettiness, jealousy, and condescension proved toxic between both sides. It wasn’t partisan. Mr. Carter’s most profound difference was from other Democrats. But the streak of contempt and contempt on both sides was long and protracted. Everyone remembered the phone calls that weren’t returned, the invitations that didn’t come, the projects that weren’t approved, the promises that weren’t offered.
After all, Mr. Carter ran against Washington when he came out of nowhere to win the presidency in 1976, but unlike others who have done it, he meant it. I did it. He leapfrogged into office as an antidote to Watergate, Vietnam, and other national setbacks. He didn’t come to the city to become a creature of the city.
He considered the demands of the Washington power structure to be profligate and pointless. He had no interest in having dinner at Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham’s home, and his top aides, including his chief of staff Hamilton Jordan and press secretary Jody Powell, expressed disinterest.
“Mr. Carter’s state funeral in Washington is full of irony,” said Kai Bird, whose 2021 biography of Mr. Carter was titled “The Outlier.” “He was actually an outsider who opposed the Washington establishment. And improbably, when he entered the Oval Office, he turned down multiple dinner invitations from the Georgetown set.”
In a conversation for this book, Byrd added: But he preferred pizza and beer with Ham Jordan and Jody Powell, or working late into the night. ”
E. Stanley Godbold Jr., author of a two-volume biography of Mr. Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter, said: People who voted for him. He was free to do whatever he wanted within the confines of the Constitution and the presidency. ”
Or so he thought. But what Mr. Carter saw as principled, Washington saw as naive and counterproductive. The planners devised a system of checks and balances, but historically they were lubricated by personal relationships, favors, horse-trading, and socializing.
“When it came to politics in Washington, D.C., he had no idea how the system worked,” House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. wrote in his memoirs. “Jimmy Carter was one of those outsider presidents who found it difficult for Washington to find the right way to do things,” Mrs. Graham wrote.
This was a time of giants in Washington, where no such giant exists today. Giants of law, lobbying, politics, and journalism, including Joseph A. Califano Jr., Edward Bennett Williams, Ben Bradlee, and Art Buchwald, meet for lunch at Sans Souci every Tuesday to catch up on the latest happenings. It was a time when we talked. Although Mr. Carter was a frequent topic of conversation, he did not always do so affectionately.
Mr. Carter got off to a rocky start with Mr. O’Neill, the ally he needed to get anything passed. Immediately after the election, Mr. Carter visited the speaker, but appeared to ignore Mr. O’Neill’s advice on working with Congress, potentially going over the heads of MPs to appeal to voters if they did not agree. He said there is. “Absolutely, Mr. President, you’re making a huge mistake,” O’Neill recalled responding.
The situation worsened when Mr. O’Neill sought tickets for his family to attend the inauguration eve at the Kennedy Center and discovered that his relatives were seated far away on a balcony. Mr. O’Neill called Mr. Jordan the next day and yelled at him. He nicknamed his chief of staff “Hannibal Jerkin.” In his memoir, Mr. O’Neill complained that Mr. Jordan and Mr. Carter’s aides were “amateurs” who “came to Washington with a chip on their shoulder and nothing has changed.”
But if they did have a chip, it was fueled by a number of patronizing quips mocking the Carter team’s Southern roots, including a newspaper cartoon depicting the Carter team as hayseed. . It didn’t help that Mr. Carter, not the Georgia native, arrived in a city full of politicians who thought they were the ones to win in 1976.
Mr. Carter cast himself as a man of the people from the beginning, stepping out of his limousine and walking down Pennsylvania Avenue during the inaugural parade. He initially banned playing “Long Live the Chief” when entering a room and sold the Sequoia, the presidential yacht once often used to woo key leaders in Congress.
He does things that aren’t politically expedient, like canceling water projects important to legislators trying to serve their constituents or forcing a vote on an unpopular treaty to hand over the Panama Canal. I took it as a medal of honor. Whether it was when Washington concluded that Ted Sorensen, John F. Kennedy’s right-hand man, didn’t fight hard enough to become CIA director, or when he took on the Washington powerhouse Mr. Califano, who was secretary of health. It didn’t work. , Education and Welfare.
“I think President Carter tried to make peace when he took office,” said Chris Matthews, who worked for Mr. O’Neill and served as Carter’s speechwriter before starting a long career in television journalism. But “Mr. Carter told me he should have tried harder to bring the Democrats into power,” and Mr. Matthews said, “his challenges in Washington are in strange places,” including a spat over a seat at a gala. It arose from,” he said.
This conflict had both legislative and political consequences. Ultimately, he passed many bills through Congress, but not all, and not easily. Finally, in 1980, he was challenged for the party’s nomination by Sen. Edward M. He lost to former Governor Ronald Reagan.
“His poor relationship with Democrats in both the House and Senate hindered his ability to push his agenda through Congress,” said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian at the Ronald Reagan Institute. “Furthermore, these poor relationships damaged his reputation in Washington, as many Democratic members of Congress who would normally defend the administration in the press were reluctant to do so.”
Mr. Carter did not naturally embrace the frivolous arguments that come with politics. One time, an aide persuaded him to invite several important senators to play tennis at the White House. He agreed, but as soon as the set was over, he returned to the mansion without chatting or inviting me out for drinks. “You said let’s play tennis with them, and I did,” Mr. Carter later explained to disappointed aides.
“Mr. Carter didn’t like politics,” Douglas Brinkley, author of “The Unfinished Presidency,” said of Mr. Carter’s acclaimed humanitarian work after leaving office. “And he didn’t like politicians.”
After the official dinner, Mr. Carter would leave immediately. “He’ll be blunt,” Brinkley said. “He only got up because he had work to do. He never developed a friendship with Washington.”
Mr. Williams was a classic example of a missed opportunity. Mr. Williams, founder of the law firm Williams & Connolly, owner of the then-Washington Redskins and later the Baltimore Orioles, and Democratic Party treasurer, is a typical capital He was an insider.
But he felt shunned by Mr. Carter. Williams recalled that when he met the future president at the 1976 convention, all he got was a “wet flounder” handshake. He was angry that Mr. Carter never showed up to the alfalfa dinner, one of the most exclusive black-tie events in Washington social circles. According to Evan Thomas’ book “The Man to See,” Mr. Williams yelled at Georgetown University’s president, saying, “Carter is an asshole.”
Only after several years in Washington did the Carter team finally seek help from Mr. Williams, this time to counter negative media coverage about Mr. Jordan. Once successful, Mr. Carter was invited to a state dinner and later sat with Mr. Williams at a football game at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. But Mr. Williams never warmed to Mr. Carter and joined in a last-minute, futile effort to block Mr. Carter’s nomination at the 1980 convention.
Mr. Carter was also not kind to Washington, calling it an island “isolated from the mainstream of our national life.” After losing re-election, he faced distant relations with the capital. In “The White House Diary,” he cast it not as a major problem but mostly as a problem for social butterflies who resent his lack of confidence.
He wrote that Rosalynn Carter, Powell and others criticized him for not being “involved in the social life of Washington, either by me or by key staff members,” to his great detriment. “We believe this apparent aloofness has driven some kind of wedge between us and a number of influential cocktail party hosts,” he wrote. “But I wasn’t the first president to oppose this mandate.”
He wrote that Mrs. Carter was determined to avoid regular outings when she was Georgia’s governor, but that “for better or worse, she has no intention of changing this approach when she moves into the White House.” There was none at all.”
Of course, at this point, all that is ancient history. Washington’s focus Tuesday will be on Carter’s successes as president, his post-presidency inspirations and the decency of his character. He will be taken to the Capitol in a horse-drawn caisson and placed in state repose. He will be honored Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral.
Regardless of how Washington feels, he has a way of holding a great funeral.
