That Certain Smile

I turned 18 in 1976, America’s bicentennial year. I did not celebrate by donning breeches and a tricorn hat. Nor did I have anywhere near the hedonistic fun later depicted in the film Dazed and Confused, which celebrated the debauchery of a certain party-centric Class of ’76. (If I’d lived that particular high school experience, I might’ve donned the breeches and tricorn hat but now have no recollection of it.) What I did do in 1976 was vote in my first presidential election.

That was the contest that pitted the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford, against Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter. Ford was and still is the nation’s only un-elected chief executive, having ascended to the post upon Richard Nixon’s resignation two years earlier. Carter was a former governor of Georgia who came out of nowhere to secure the Democratic nomination. It was a great year to come out of nowhere, because in the wake of the Nixon stench Americans were in much the same throw-the-bums-out, anti-Washington-insider mood that prevails in this year’s bi-elections. For the same reason, it was not a good year to have given Richard Nixon a full presidential pardon, as Ford, his successor, had done.

The race between the un-flashy longtime Michigan congressman—inaccurately but rather endearingly caricatured by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live as a bumbling klutz based on one real-life tumble and an incident on a golf course—and the intriguingly obscure Southerner promised to be close. And indeed it would prove to be. But for me the choice was pretty easy.

I was a freshman in college that year, and most of the students in my coed dorm, unsurprisingly, were primed to vote for any candidate who hadn’t pardoned Tricky Dick. But I’d been sufficiently influenced by my parents’ conservatism to have registered as a Republican, and there was a dull earnestness about Ford that I liked. Also, then as now, I had a wide contrarian streak and was drawn to the idea of bucking the dorm’s tide. Mostly, though, Jimmy Carter’s smile drove me nuts. (No peanut-farmer pun intended.)

It was fitting that one of the more prominent campaign buttons that year was dominated by a cartoon depiction of Carter’s gleaming choppers, because they were his dominating physical feature. Every time you saw him on TV—in those days, the only visual option other than a live campaign appearance—he displayed that full-bore smile that made it look as if he’d picked up extra teeth along with convention delegates during the spring primaries. But the thing was, Carter's smile, to my mind, was not one of friendship and goodwill but one of deep self-satisfaction and know-it-all-ism. His populist catch-phrase that fall was something like, “My name is Jimmy Carter and I’d like to be your president.” The smile said, “My name is Jimmy Carter, I have all the answers, and if you don’t vote for me you are at best ill-informed and at worst a moron.”

The truth was, I was a registered Republican in 1976 only in the sense that a virgin is a spokesperson for abstinence. On paper, yes, but frankly I just hadn’t gotten out much. Even at that point in my life I was philosophically liberal enough to probably have voted for Carter, who actually straddled a centrist line slightly to the left, while Ford stood slightly to the right. But I just could not get past the shit-eating smile that scolded me for even thinking of voting for Ford.

As it happened, of course, Carter narrowly won the election, my ballot notwithstanding. But that was the first and last time I voted for a Republican presidential candidate. And given how far to the right the GOP has shifted in the years since, it’s hard for me to imagine a scenario in which I’ll see a Republican as a viable candidate in 2012 or any foreseeable presidential-election year.

I bring all this up because of a couple of recent instances of former President Carter, now 86, being in the news. The widespread view of Carter by Democrats and Republicans alike—save perhaps those who take issue with his frequent harsh criticisms of Israel—is that he was an ineffectual president but has been a dynamite ex-president. We’ve all seen him pounding nails for Habitat for Humanity, helping monitor elections in countries where ballot-stuffing and voter intimidation are government sports, and doing more than his part to Make the World a Better Place through the conflict-resolution work of the Carter Center. Maybe he was too prickly and rigid and holier-than thou to get anything done in the Oval Office, the line goes, but in the years since, Private Citizen Carter has kicked some serious do-gooding ass.

And you know, I don’t dispute any of that. To a large extent, his actions and legacies speak for themselves. The problem is, Jimmy Carter won’t let his accomplishments stand as mute testimony to his intelligence, hard work and strong moral core. He has to talk about them. And when he does, his 2010 words mirror his 1976 smile in impatient sanctimoniousness.

Discussing his post-presidential work recently with NBC News anchor Brian Williams, Carter skipped right over the humble “I do what I can” and the reasonable “I think I’ve accomplished a lot” in favor of the immodest but revealing, “My role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents.” (Perhaps he thought the “probably” was qualifier enough.) In the same interview Carter added, “I feel I have an advantage over many former presidents in being involved in daily affairs that have shaped the policies of our nation and the world.”

I’ve always hated the word “hubris” because it’s So Washington and I’ve never been sure exactly what it means, but it immediately springs to mind when I read quotes like those ones from Jimmy Carter. Hubris always has seemed, in context, to be an inside-the-Beltway synonym for “smug” or “self-satisfied” or “about 10 sizes too big for his or her bicentennial breeches.”

But Carter didn’t stop there. It’s not enough for him to be recognized as the ex-president who was out saving the world while his historical peer group was golfing or giving lectures or dying shortly after leaving office. No, he feels compelled to burnish his presidential credentials, too. And to do so at the expense of a beloved pol who’s too dead to defend himself.

On 60 Minutes a few weeks ago, Carter stated that all of today’s angst and acrimony over health care reform would’ve been rendered unnecessary if only Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy—who coincidentally had challenged Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination—hadn’t royally screwed him over back in the late 1970s.

“The fact is,” Carter said, “we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed. It was his fault. Ted Kennedy killed the bill. … He did not want to see me have a major success in that realm of life.”

Hubris, hubris, hubris, hubris! So, if not for Ted Kennedy, Carter would have accomplished decades ago what has eluded scores of skillful and accomplished lawmakers ever since? And the same Ted Kennedy who made health care reform his life’s work scuttled Carter’s brilliant plan simply out of spite, and not perhaps because, just maybe, he deemed it flawed?

See, this is the Jimmy Carter for whom I didn’t vote: The guy who not only teaches Sunday school but sees himself as, if not a messiah, at least a very, very Wise Man. The guy whose heart is often in the right place but whose head tends to be up his ass when it comes to humility, generosity and self-awareness.

Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. The world is a better place for everything you’ve done. And whatever my views of your presidency, maybe America needed Jerry Ford to go down in 1976 in order to hasten the post-Watergate healing process. But you know what? I’ve never regretted my ballot choice 34 years ago. In fact, lately I’ve been feeling better about it than ever.