Former President Jimmy Carter was buried on the day (Thursday, Jan. 9) that the United States Supreme Court refused to stay President-elect Donald J. Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money conviction.
Let that sink in. Here was on the one hand a humanitarian and on the other a man whose compassion for the Los Angeles wildfires was crystallized by his calling rival Gov. Gavin Newsom “Newscum.”
And yet, there are plenty of Americans who think Carter, though a great humanitarian, was a poor president, and many Americans who can’t wait to see Trump back in power on Monday, Jan. 20, which is coincidentally Martin Luther King Jr. Day as well as Inauguration Day.
Why is that? Partly the United States, an adolescent country, is lookist. Carter appeared weak when he delivered his malaise speech and during the Iran-hostage crisis that he worked on behind the scenes even as the rival Ronald Reagan campaign strove to delay the hostages release to ensure Carter’s defeat in the 1980 election.
Narrative drives perception, and perception is everything. Carter lost control of the narrative. Or perhaps more accurately, his narrative didn’t have the ring of Reagan’s “morning in America,” a nation that he portrayed as still a “shining city on a hill.”
Trump’s “American Carnage” spiel is hardly Reagan’s city on a hill in morning, but it doesn’t have to be. The carnage is, in his view, the work of President Joe Biden, the Democrats, the liberals and anyone who opposes him. All those who think he’s going to make them rich from day one or who hate “wokism” are just fine.
In the “malaise” or “crisis of confidence” speech that Carter delivered on July 15, 1979, however, he identified a problem that any American president might be talking about today:
“…After listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.
“I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.
“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America….”
Carter was challenging Americans to look into their souls and the collective soul of a nation to become better than they were. Whatever Trump does or doesn’t do, he doesn’t challenge people to be greater than they are. Rather he tells a country that reads at a seventh or eighth grade level that it is just fine — as long as it’s supporting him.
Carter exhorted us to look inward to reach outward. Trump’s worldview is entirely insular. His “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement is about returning the United States to the white, manufacturing economy of the 1950s that is long gone and isn’t coming back. Trump’s promise to America is purely materialistic. It’s financial and transactional rather than psychological and philosophical. It’s certainly not intellectual and spiritual.
On Jan. 20, we’ll see if Trump can deliver on that promise, which may be enough for many Americans. Those who hunger for more already know that whatever Trump achieves in his second, nonconsecutive term, he’ll never get a sendoff like Carter’s.