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Jimmy Carter: Prophetic President. (psst...This is a GREAT read!)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/jimmy-carter-prophetic-presidentby Rick Perlstein
"James Earl Carter is nearing the end. In an extraordinary press conference last week, the 39th president discussed his impending death from metastasizing liver cancer, with a grace, humor, and wisdom the rest of us can only hope to emulate when our own time comes.
Soon will come the eulogies: then, the assessments. Forgive me if I jump the gun with a gust of affection. Ive been grappling with his 1976 candidacy and presidency for most of my workdays for at least a year now for my next book on Ronald Reagans rise to the presidency. I want to share some loose thoughts while they are fresh in my mind.
Jimmy Carter had been an engineer. He had also been a Baptist missionary. Both identities, in their different ways, converged on the same habit of thought: that there was a Correct Way to do thingsonly one. The engineer believed that a solitary individual, working assiduously with the right tools and information, with enough ingenuity and perseverance and a clear and clever mindall of which Jimmy Carter possessedcould arrive at the right solution to any problem. And for the devout Baptist, no less than for the engineer, a conviction, once arrived at, was something tocommunicate, not to compromise.
You could see how the balance informed his rhetoric in that press conference last week, the preacher calling us to contemplate last things, the engineer calmly and carefully guiding us through the technicalities of his cancer treatment: Carter the post-president at his most glorious. But for a president in office in the 1970s, confronted with impossible complexities, moral conundrums and the beginning of the polarized partisan politics that make governing almost impossible today, it was an unusual base of mental operations"
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snip - lots more. well worth the time it takes to read.
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Jimmy Carter: Prophetic President. (psst...This is a GREAT read!) (Original Post)
NRaleighLiberal
Aug 2015
OP
brer cat
(24,625 posts)1. That is a very good read, NRL.
Thanks for posting.
haikugal
(6,476 posts)2. Bookmarked for later...K&R....thanks!
Worried senior
(1,328 posts)3. I believe he was a good
president and I hated what Reagan did to him.
It will be a very sad day when he is no longer here, he is one person I can say is truly a Christian.