It goes without saying that the big historic event of last week—maybe of the year—is the catastrophic L.A. Fire, which I will write about in the weeks ahead. But before we say farewell to Jimmy Carter’s Long Goodbye, I wanted to tell you a bit about my experience over the last two weeks, including one freaky moment of synchronicity, and to re-post some of what I wrote in October about the contrast between Carter and Donald Trump.
I was shopping for a non-Elon EV on Saturday, December 28, when I received a text from Jeff Carter, Jimmy and Rosalynn’s third son, telling me that his father, who had been in hospice for nearly two years (a record for prominent people that may never be broken), would be gone within a day or two. I found this fitting. Carter wanted EVs by the mid-1980s, just one example of his visionary and much-misunderstood presidency. That and his recognition of the threat of global warming lend a tragic dimension to the 1980 election.
The following day, my daughter, Charlotte Alter, and son-in-law, Mark Chiusano, delivered on their Christmas present: We all went to see the matinee performance of my favorite American play, (and Edward Albee’s), Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, now playing to rave reviews on Broadway.
At the play’s climax, the stage manager (Jim Parsons in the Broadway production) grants Emily’s request to leave the afterlife for a moment and return to earth and watch her family having breakfast on her 12th birthday.
I’m not a weepy guy, and I can count on one hand the number of movies or plays that have jerked tears from my eyes. But that number does not include Our Town. I’ve seen the play performed at least a half-dozen times and held it together for the first two acts. But in the Third Act (“Death and Eternity”), I cry every time—for my mortality, my family, and, more recently, for my inability—even after cancer—to take more time from my busy life to savor and appreciate every day.
The play, centered on the small town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, has long been celebrated as an unpretentious depiction of how fleeting our existence is and how we need to see—really see—other people and make the most of our brief time on earth.
This production began at 2:00 p.m. and ran an hour and 45 minutes without an intermission. About five minutes before it ended, Emily says, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?”
As I later learned, at that minute, 3:40 p.m. EST, nearly a thousand miles south of the Barrymore Theatre in Plains, Georgia, a town the size of Grover’s Corners, a man who made the most of every minute breathed his last.
Jimmy Carter had his shortcomings, which I acknowledge in my book. But he “realized life as he lived it” as much as any person I’ve ever met.
I was on the subway when the Carter Center announced his death, got off at 14th St., and made a beeline for 30 Rock, where I spent the better part of the next two days on various NBC outlets. After a break for New Year’s came another week of dozens of media interviews as news organizations from around the world scrambled to join the growing chorus of appreciation. As the critic Van Wyck Brooks wrote more than a century ago, the creators of our national narratives require a “usable past.” This month, we’ve seen one built on a foundation of decency and respect, with the hope that this good man and his many good works might eventually light our way back to a better place.
On the night before the funeral, I went to the Capitol Rotunda, where Carter lay in state atop Lincoln’s catafalque. It was harshly cold and windy, but thousands of people lined up outdoors, waiting as long as five hours to view the casket. I was most struck by the age of those who came to pay their respects. Many were born after Carter was president. I found this a source of hope as we amble forward into the darkness.
I spent much of the day of the funeral just outside the National Cathedral on the makeshift MSNBC set, freezing my butt off. I’m a hardy skier, but this was ridiculous. The wind was so strong that the space heaters and electric blankets provided for me and Andrea Mitchell had little effect. I wore the wrong shoes and feared I might be getting frostbite. We looked as if we were sledding in the Arctic, not broadcasting an inspiring national ritual, but fortunately, the camera was on the flag-draped casket of the late president and the body language of five of his successors.
I don’t have any idea what Barack Obama and Trump were chuckling over, but it doesn’t matter much. Obama, sitting in the seat designated initially for no-show Michelle, was doing his duty, which is to maintain a good enough relationship with Trump to call him once or twice and at least try to keep him from doing something that will seriously harm the country.
The funeral itself, which we were able to watch indoors, was moving and evocative. Every eulogy and musical performance was first-rate, and I almost had an Our Town cry when Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood (who built houses with the Carters) sang “Imagine.” Jason Carter’s description of his grandfather greeting him in “short shorts and Crocs” brought me a laugh of recognition.
In September of 2015, I was scheduled for my second of what became 12 interviews, this one at the Carters’ modest home in Plains, where Jimmy, a master woodworker (one of dozens of skills), had built all of the furniture. I learned that Carter, then nearly 91, had gone fishing that morning and fallen fully clothed into a pond, spraining or breaking his wrist. The Secret Service treated him, but I assumed the interview was canceled. It wasn’t. He insisted that I (and our son, Tommy) come over. He greeted us at the door in, yes, short shorts and Crocs and showed us where he’d hung his wet shirt and jeans on a flapping clothesline in the backyard.
Stu Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy adviser, who began the efforts to revise the historical judgment of Carter’s record as president, did a fine job in his eulogy articulating that case. I was the first biographer outside the Carter circle to advance that reappraisal, soon joined by Kai Bird, Stanly Godbold and others. We are trying to do for Jimmy Carter what David McCullough did for Harry Truman, who left office derided as mediocre before his stock rose sharply.
Truman was Carter’s favorite president, in part because he desegregated the armed forces, which Carter believed propelled the civil rights movement. On the day he was sworn in, Carter asked that Truman’s famous sign—“The buck stops here”—be placed on his desk in the Oval Office. In our conversations, he clearly wanted me to be his McCullough, even though I told him I’d be more critical. McCullough’s book came out exactly 40 years after his subject left office, and so did mine. Unlike Truman, Carter lived to read the long-overdue revisionism.
We had help in this resurrection project from one Donald Trump. As the study of historiography tells us, works of history and their reception are often heavily influenced by the eras in which they are published. The reassessment of Carter—and his appeal to younger generations—has a lot to do with the contrast to Trump. As I wrote in October in The New York Times:
The contrast could not be starker. Trump is corrupt, chaotic and vulgar; Carter is honest, disciplined and respectful. Trump is a physically big man who acts small; Carter is a physically small man who acts big. Trump appeals to the worst in us; Carter to the best in us. Trump is a nationalist and an authoritarian. Carter is an internationalist and devoted to the promotion of democracy. Trump has told thousands of well-documented lies; Carter promised in his 1976 campaign not to lie to the American people and—despite plenty of exaggerations—never did.
Trump’s a grifter who is selling gold watches; Carter’s an uplifter who lives in a modest home in Plains, Ga. Trump thinks he’s really smart; Carter actually is. Trump is on wife No. 3 and was found liable for sexual assault; Carter was married for 77 years and lusted only in his heart. Trump refused to release his tax returns; Carter originated the practice. Trump botched his handling of the Covid pandemic; Carter (with the help of Rosalynn) convinced most states to require vaccination before children can enter school and has spent his post-presidency eradicating diseases and otherwise advancing global health.”
That only scratches the surface of the contrast, which was driven home to me on Friday, when the cruel con man I had seen the day before in the National Cathedral sitting impassively while President Biden talked of “Character, character, character” and “abuse of power” (one of the counts in both impeachments) was compelled to appear virtually for sentencing in Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom.
My Amtrak train back to New Jersey was delayed, so I didn’t get home until 2:00 a.m. and had to be on a 6:00 a.m. train to New York in order to arrive in time at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. It felt like old home week to be with the reporters I hadn’t seen in the seven months since the jury foreperson said “guilty” 34 times.
Merchan has been criticized for not sentencing Trump last summer, before the election. But if he had done so, the Supreme Court would likely have figured out another way to delay accountability.
And the sentence he deserved was not in the cards. Jail for an older first-time offender—for felonies that lead to imprisonment only 15 percent of the time—was always unlikely. Fines would have offered little justice. When Merchan last spring fined Trump $10,000 (the maximum for ten counts of contempt), it barely made the front page. And after the assassination attempts, community service (my preference) was unworkable.
So Merchan got creative. “Conditional discharge”—a sentence that would have allowed Merchan to haul the president into court at any time—would never have flown with this Supreme Court, which we learned last week has four knee-bending justices. They apparently concocted out of thin air some kind of immunity for presidents-elect (or at least this one), as if they are princes, not private citizens.
But by writing on January 3 that he favored “unconditional discharge,” Merchan gave Chief Justice John Roberts a way to allow sentencing and stigma to move forward. In the Supreme Court’s one-paragraph, 5-to-4 ruling, issued Thursday night, Roberts wrote that “a brief virtual hearing” and a sentence of “unconditional discharge” left a “relatively insubstantial” burden of time on the president-elect. This showed that Merchan had shrewdly anticipated Roberts’ requirements. And sure enough, the sentencing on Friday took less of Trump’s time than playing the back nine at his club in West Palm Beach.
Trump will appeal, but he’s not likely to get the case thrown out. Even this Supreme Court may be loathe to reverse a jury verdict without any compelling constitutional reason to do so. That means it’s a good bet the unCarter will forever be known as a convicted felon, which is less than he deserves but still a life sentence of disgrace. Meanwhile, the unTrump will live on as a moral exemplar—a model for future generations of how we can do better.
