In Remembrance of President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024)

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

After President Jimmy Carter passed away, my wife asked me if President Carter was liberal? This is not a question that occurred to me. I felt sadness, that another page from my childhood had moved on. Politics was not my first thought. Should it have been? I remembered Carter as a Southern Moderate. Use of the label “liberal” was inappropriate for a son of Plains, Georgia. Even in the Upper South back in the day, liberals were non-existent as a thing. But see Virginia Lieutenant Governor Henry Howell (1920-1997). Moderates were as left as one got when I was growing up in Central Virginia.

I said as much which jarred my wife. In Brooklyn, my wife perceived Carter as a conservative. She acknowledged that one’s perception of Carter depended upon where one lived. Rightly so. As a young kid, I remembered thinking about life and longevity. I was in my Grandma’s backyard on Terminal Avenue. I vowed I would live as long as the oldest U.S. President. Back then, the presidential record was held by President Herbert Hoover who lived to the grand old age of 94. Carter has upped my childhood aim by 6 years. A president has now lived to be 100.

I have written about Carter this year. Cousins The N Word The Book Club Slouching Towards Bethlehem Circa 2024 Carter was a man of his place and time. There were no racial liberals in Plains in the 1920s or 1930s. In that race time, the best one could hope for was to be a moderate, a man of decency. Many have begun to unload on Carter, to speak ill of the dead while the body remains warm. Several essays on National Review took my breath away. Other outfits like Yahoo News are cranking out the positive remembrances. Carter was a human being infused with good and bad qualities. There will be ample time leading up to the State Funeral to remember the man.

As a native southerner who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, Carter represented the ambition of a southern small-town on the national stage. One of us could became President. The last southerner from the former Confederacy was none other than the infamous drunk himself, President Andrew Johnson, a native of North Carolina and former military Governor of Tennessee. I know it is a low bar but Carter was a decent southerner in the Oval Office compared to Johnson.

It would be a splendid touch for racial truth and reconciliation if members of the Berry Gordy family attended the funeral of their second cousins. I can only hope, and imagine.

Good evening!

President James Earl Carter, Jr.