To some extent, we're all trapped by events because, after all, none of us has created the entirety of the world in which we find ourselves. But Jimmy Carter seems to have been hammered by contingencies. As the saying has it, "If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all." He was born and raised on a small farm on the outskirts of Plains, Georgia. Mizz Lillie's spunk and the authoritarianism of his father must have combined to get him out of small-town rural Georgia with its mosquitoes, chewing tobacco, and African-American sharecroppers and into the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He took with him a wife, Rosalynn, who had startlingly feline eyes and was as anxious to leave town as he was.
Two terms as state Senator and one term as Governor later, he was elected President over Republican Gerald Ford. Ford, a decent man who inherited the ill feeling left from the Watergate scandal, may have suffered as much from circumstances as Carter was to suffer later.
Carter was a decent man too, and he was honest, moral, and candid. In an interview with Playboy Magazine, he revealed that he had lusted after women and committed adultery in his heart. Oh, my God! A SHOCKED NATION RECOILS! Of course we've come a long way since 1975. Bill Clinton described his own underwear to a gushing fan.
Carter entered the White House with no strong political agenda. One of the many talking heads in the film refers to him as "a modest man with no imperial impulses." He may be best described as a social moderate and a fiscal conservative. He aimed for a balanced budget by the end of his first term and adjusted the White House air conditioning so that everyone sweated in the summer heat. Probably his greatest achievement was the Camp David Accords, in which he was personally instrumental in forging a peace agreement between the warring nations of Israel and Egypt. It has remained in force.
He may have created two new departments (Education and Energy) but he cut pork mercilessly, even from social programs. This alienated him and his small group of advisers even more from the Washington Democrats who knew the game far better than he did. He was always considered an individualist and an outsider.
In the end, he lost his second term in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, who had polished interactional skills and whose "ideas were not numerous but they were clear." Carter was perceived as a weak and perhaps impotent President chiefly for two reasons.
One is that inflation was rampant, reaching double digits and endangering everyone's future. The impetus was provided by fuel prices that doubled during his administration and led to gas rationing. But there wasn't much the President could do about it. They doubled during George W. Bush's first term too, and Bush said wistfully that if he could wave a magic wand and have oil prices drop he would do it at once. But Carter didn't have that wand, any more than Bush did. The Omnipotent Presidency is a myth -- in my editorial opinion anyway. Who -- really -- understands a complex, patchwork tar baby like the economy? Nobody. Even to try is like reverse engineering a UFO from another galaxy.
Carter's second blow came from Iran. The US had been involved in Iran's affairs since 1945 and installed the Shah in 1954. The Shah ran a brutal regime. The US took the blame and was bitterly resented. The take over of the US Embassy in Teheran might have been anticipated except for the Shah's continual reassurance that things were coming along swimmingly under his rule -- even as the CIA agents on the other end of the phone line could hear gunfire in the background. The CIA got it wrong, as they were later to get Iraq's weapons of mass destruction wrong. I'm going to propose another fantasy -- The Myth Of CIA Infallibility. After the hostages were taken, there wasn't a great deal that any president could do. If an invasion were staged, the hostages would simply be murdered. In the end, Carter hastily mounted a desperate rescue attempt which was destroyed by a sandstorm. If it weren't for bad luck, he'd have no luck at all.
Carter and Rosalynn returned to Plains to run the farm, now a million dollars in debt, but they didn't stay despondent for long. Unlike most presidents, Carter couldn't retire to a golf course. He had too much of what the Greeks called thumos for that. He remained active and, somewhat like Herbert Hoover, went on to a distinguished post-presidential career, negotiating peace agreements, building housing for the poor with his own hands, monitoring foreign elections by invitation, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
The documentary covers his life in considerable detail but none of it is irrelevant. There are a multitude of commentators and friends, including Rosalynn but not Carter himself, but no actors playing parts, and no hearts and flowers about personal tragedies. The final impression is that of an ambitious man who "went about doing good" but was overwhelmed by events that some men might have handled better but none could have managed with complete success.
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