Jimmy Carter came from Georgia to speak at the law school in early January. Having never seen a presidential candidate in person, I decided to go. The man was a little-known long-shot in a large field. Seventeen politicians had announced their candidacy for the 1976 Democratic Party nomination, including another Southern governor with a more recognizable name - - George Wallace of Alabama. It had been predicted that Carter would be an also-ran who dropped out of the race early.
The turnout to hear the dark horse candidate was impressive for a winter evening that included a cold drizzling rain. Lamar Hall, the old law school building, faced The Grove, bordered Sorority Row, and had no adjacent parking save for a few spaces reserved for senior law faculty. Besides reporters from the local newspapers, The Oxford Eagle and The Daily Mississippian, and several politicians from the town, I imagine that most of those in attendance were there out of pure curiosity.
Carter was surrounded by a small group of listeners at the front of the moot courtroom when I arrived. He was of average height and build; clean-shaven with a full head of sandy-colored hair. He wore a cotton button-down-collared shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a stylish wide tie that was loosened inches below the neck. His smile and teeth reminded me of pictures of Teddy Roosevelt. A counsels’ table had been moved up to the gate of the bar, and he eventually sat on it with his legs hanging loosely, swinging as he talked. As I recall, a good part of his campaign speech was delivered from that informal position.
Carter’s self-introduction was as casual as his attire and posture. In his unmistakable Southern accent he said with a wide grin, “Hi, my name’s Jimmy Carter and I’m running for President.” We later learned that when he had used the last half of that same line to tell his mother about his plans she had asked, “President of what?”
Carter gave his impressive bona fides in a conversational voice. He was raised on a family farm and attended rural, public schools. He was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, finishing in the top ten percent of his class. He married his hometown sweetheart, Rosalyn, after graduation. One of his first duty assignments was on the Battleship USS Mississippi. After serving two years aboard surface ships he volunteered for submarine duty and received training as a nuclear engineer. (As a submariner he served directly under the command of Hyman Rickover, the Admiral who became known as “Father of the Nuclear Navy.”) He believed in a strong military.
The candidate shared how he had given up his Naval career when his father died, returning home to run the family farm and become a businessman. His children were sent to public schools. He had served in the state legislature before he was elected Governor of Georgia. He stood by his record on law and order as well as civil rights, which for a Southern politician in those days was “liberal.”
Carter said that he believed in private enterprise and limited government. He told us that in Atlanta he had merged 300 state agencies and boards into 30 agencies. And, if elected president he would bring this management and organizational philosophy to Washington and shrink the bureaucracy there (a pre-DOGE plan). He also claimed to know how to balance the federal budget and promised to do so, as he had done with the state budget in Georgia.
Getting his best applause of the evening, Carter pledged to appoint a federal judiciary that didn’t make law; rather, he looked for judges who would apply the law by following the U.S. Constitution. He was critical of overreaching federal judges who had ordered school busing to achieve desegregation. He also criticized the Supreme Court for overstepping its authority in decisions such as those on school prayer and in Roe v. Wade that had been handed down less than three years earlier.
In 1976, Republican Gerald Ford was president. Like candidates before and since who have sought to replace an incumbent, Carter claimed that the country needed “a change” and swore that he would “return integrity to the White House” and “unify the nation” if elected.
That evening’s experience was the first time that I had ever paid more than a passing interest in political promises. Naively, I believed what I thought I heard and that those promises could be achieved. By the end of his address, I was sold on the candidate and vowed to join the Democratic Party and campaign for Jimmy Carter.
Accompanied by my toddler daughter, I stuck his green-and-white election signs in Northside yards.
In February Jimmy Carter won the New Hampshire primary by a 30 percent plurality, giving him the momentum to carry the Democratic ticket. He was elected President the following November, 1976, the last Democrat to carry the state of Mississippi in a presidential election.
During his presidency it soon became clear to me that what I had thought he meant in January 1976 and what he really meant were not the same thing. It was chilling when his first month in office he signed an executive order pardoning those who had illegally evaded the draft during the recently ended Vietnam War. Many of my friends and neighbors, drafted or volunteering, had done their duty during that war. Four of my college classmates were killed serving our country, while draft dodgers back home were smoking dope and fornicating. That same year President Carter supported and signed a treaty that had only passed the Senate by one vote to give the ultra-strategic and vital trade route Canal Zone to Panama, when that country’s founding document had memorialized the 40-mile long and ten-mile-wide corridor to be a permanent U.S. possession. Those two acts of “empathy” were absolutely wrong in my then-and-now opinion.
The reality then, as today, is that Americans have differences. In remarks made at the dedication of the Carter Presidential Library in 1985, his former opponent said to his host and the attending crowd that “we can be proud of our differences, because they arise from goodwill – for [a shared] love of country.” (Source: Craig Shirley, “The lesson we can learn from when Ronald Reagan toasted Jimmy Carter,” foxnews.com, February 23, 2023.)
The speaker I heard that winter’s night almost 50 years ago impressed me with love of his country, as well as his faith and family. And despite their flaws, I am still moved by men and women who share those convictions.
Chip Williams is a Northsider.
