The opinion that metals matters most is your own here this is what democracy looks like pure cspan, powered by cable. Welcome to poly side 4299 and also some graduate student sitting in back to i got enough handouts for you all and, of course, readings to our friends watching this on the cspan lectures in history series pure so just a quick reminder on thursday w and go to circulate e writing assignment i get back the tests i know were getting close to spring break so if youre not able to make it you will have opportunities to get the assignment and ask plenty of questions and, of course, i will hand exams after the break as well here are right, any logistical questions about that . Venable and get started with our Schedule Program here. Today were talking aboutut the president ial legacy of jimmy carter who was president from 1977 e 1981 pure our lecture is titled why not the best . Which was also the title of carters campaign biography and i think gives us some insight so keep that title in mind as we think about carters political project and legacy. Here with win the news. So couple of weeks ago, it was announced that that former president carter, who is 98 years old, was going to live out the rest of his days in home hospice. And this kind of kicked off a lot of really testimony and a lot of conversation about carters president ial legacy and legacy in the world, some of which you read today. But up until this point, carter had a pretty kind of negative legacy and is often at the bottom of lists of great president s. So you kind of see this here. Here are couple of these are both conservative news sites comping. Democratic president s to jimmy carter. And these are kind of intended to be unflattering sorts of comparisons anescially with inflation, which well talk about youve gotten a lot of comparisons between between carter and vitamin you see it didnt start. Theres also some comparisons with with barack obama. But lately as you saw in the piece that you read, theres this kind of reassessment and resurgence, thinking about the significance of jimmy carter as an individual and as a president and really kind of rethink what happened not just in this postpresidency, which has been very famous for all of the Public Service that done, but also really, really rethinking rethinking carters time in office and its and its significance. Does anyone have any preliminary questions or thoughts on this before and launch into the rest of of this bit. Okay we talked a couple of weeks we kind of brainstormed about what do we what do we know about carter and i kept that in mind as i put this all together. So i want actually start with a little personal. 26 story. So in 2006, i was doing some dissertation or some research for my doctoral dissertation and i was doing archival work at the carter president ial library, mostly reading files exchanged by carters speechwriters and Communications Team and the carter president ial library is located in atlanta. Its its on the same grounds as the Carter Center is the area where the carters have its sort of their launching point for all of their humanitarian work. The carter has done election monitoring and other kind of global democracy promotion and activities so its a really big center is august new class of interns folks ourselves were probably arriving at the center and as i was leaving the archives one day, i really thought id spent too much time in the archives and that i was hallucinating because im like, im pret sure i just saw president carter and his wife and i saw one of the the archal sff out. She was like, did you see the president . Did you go say hi . Did you shake hand . And then i saw like security detail, know, a couple of feet away, i was like, oh, that actually was president carter. Well i guess i should go say hi. So i kind of chased him down, which i dont recommend with former World Leaders and, went up and introduced myself to it was him and his wife rosalyn introduced myself and immediately started babbling, which will probably not be that surprising to any of you and and said, you know ive been reading a bunch of your speeches for my dissertation. Im in grad school, whatever i said and i said, ive been reading a lot of your speeches and youre sort of said, im sorry to hear that. Oh, which was very funny and kind of unexpected, but also it kind of actually rang a bell in my so this is 2006, right . Lets think about context at that moment in time, you have going to building cynicism in in the country specifically. This is the administration of George W Bush well cover later in the semester about the way that that administration what they did, but also how they talked about what they did. There was a kind of growing sense that the public been lied to a growing sense that we werent really getting the full story about the kinds of trade offs involved in governance. And it wasnt a lot of humility and in that rhetoric. And that was really appealed to me as a grad student reading carters speeches are really struck me so i dont have living of this administration. But i was reading all of these speeches and thinking, well, carter speaks, he talks about tradeoffs. He says, look, you know, here is here are sacrifices were going to have to make heres what were heres what will work here. Heres may not work. Speaking about own election to office, he talked a lot about keeping campaign promises, but he also kind of had this this comment once in back and forth of the media where he says, you know, i didnt win by that much. It was very close election and just kind of had approached that with a sense of humility and so at the time, i remember thinking, this is really different than any kind president ial speech or rhetoric that i have encountered before and that really stayed with me. Is not only as i wrote my dissertation and book about about president ial mandate, claiming which i dont get to talk about the kind of significance of carter there at the end, but also in putting this and putting together, i want us to kind of think about this framework. So heres where were at. Heres where were going to go. Here are somemes. The first one i want us to kind of think about carters pathway to the presidency, not just to in the nomination contest, although you all know i love those, but also about what he was responding to. So this is really what weve been talking about the last couple of weeks in this class about what was going on leading up to the sixties in the seventies. So we know quite a bit about that. And to talk about that i want to talk about his policy priorities and general approach to, the presidency, what was accomplished, what wasnt accomplished, but also kind of the politics of that. And then finally, the big the legacy. What does this all mean for american politics . And then finally, i want to end by talking about carter as a transition point. Again, im kind of using my own work as a as a jumping off point. But why carter is in the class the of transition point also between our or two units as well as a transition point in in the presidency and its role in american politics. All right. Any preliminary questions, comments concerns . Okay. So were just start with our political backdrop here. Again, this is really familiar territory to. You all so here weve got president richard nixon, the last president , elected before before carter. Theres this brief gerald ford interlude after resigns and watergate. We talked about a couple of weeks ago. Right. This is a real of a kind of declining trust in in the government decline, in trust specifically in the president. And this idea that whats going on in the presidency, the one person has a lot of power and, a lot of people working kind of directly for them, and theyre really able to use Public Resources for private good or for their own kind of political ends and the country by 1976, remember watergate is nixons resignation 74. So by 1976, when carter running for president , that is still pretty fresh in peoples minds, going further back than that. Weve also talked quite a bit about what was going on in the Democratic Party, and we talked lot about the kind of chaotic ending of the Lyndon Johnson administration in 19 in 1968. Right. That has also got some implications for for carter. We talked about this country kind of sense that johnson had gone back on campaign promises, the war in vietnam, that they been lied to about that war by multiple administrations and we have a Democratic Party, this kind of crumbling around the issue of civil rights. And we talked a bit about kind of impact on the broader political situation. And of course, thats to press at some real pain in the democratic coalition. And so incomes jimmy carter is both a southerner not just from from the border but from the deep south, from georgia, but also has a reputation as a racial as someone whos kind of stood up to some of these segregationists southerners, is someone who has a kind of Forward Vision on race. And so thing that the carter kind of exemplar us in this coalition is somebody who can actually bridge this really painful divide in the coalition. You know, its morally painful. Its also politically painful. And that gives carter thats one of the ways that carter has kind of in in theres a other things. Theres a couple other things going here by. 1976, the country has kind of a new president ial nomination system. And whereas before, if you wanted to get nominated as president weve talked a lot about these conventions. Right. Weve a lot about 19th century president ial nomination conventions. You had to really get in good with delegates to those conventions. Well, now, as of 1976, the system was starting to look like the one that that, you know, we know. And what you need to do is do well in the primary system. You need to in order to win delegates, you got to win state state primaries. And theyre in crazy order. And states are early and some are late. Theyre all over the country and the system, again, this is like relatively new. That point, no one really knows how to game it. No, really knows how it works. No one really knows how to strategize. And carter is able to take advantage of that and think his own strategy. Theres some some strategy, some luck. And he goes to iowa. We now know and ive talked with a couple of you outside class. I dont think weve talked lot about the iowa caucuses, but theyre now they have this kind of common importance. That wasnt so much the case in 1976. But carter took advantage of this hes this very little known one term governor from georgia was in the state legislature that not a big national figure. But hes able to go to iowa and meet people and, really appeal to the voters there on basis of his kind of personal characteristics. And this is where that other piece of the political backdrop is so important. He really kind of presents himself as somebody, going to be honest, someone who is an evangelical and born again and has a sort of deep moral kind of basis, deep kind of faith basis for is worldview and his morality. And this is maybe this all like were used to hearing about religion in politics. Now, at the time, this was a little bit different, a little here, a little bit differently. And whats really appealing. If you think about the Nixon Administration if you think about the johnson administration, the way the public felt so alienated and lied, carter kind of comes in and says, i am different from all that. Im an outsider. Im not part of this washington mess. Im not part of whats gone wrong over the last decade or so. And that really lands with this kind of crucial voters. And after doing well in iowa, carter is able to get a lot of media attention. And that kind of becomes known after that is the way the way that you a president ial nomination is you land in these early contests and then you get a kind of National Media presence. Already were starting to see that even though we might think of carter as the person in those early slides, the person the president who other president s dont to be compared to or anything to see how nevertheless the things that did were actually really consequential and kind of helped create the system that we now understand for how president s to the people, their parties and how sort of position themselves. And this becomes very common as this kind of outsider, the last thing i want point out here is something that is really and yet that you dont a lot about, especially in light of carters very service, heavy postpresidency. And that is that to be in this kind of position to come at this and say, okay, this outsider, im from georgia, im you know, im really just coming at this for Public Service and values. But to really go from being a state level politician in georgia to being im in a run for president , you have to have some serious political ambition to really be ambitious. And thats kind of a piece of the persona, the piece of the person that carter was in the 1970s, that often lost as people talk about him, as this kind of selfless public. And i dont think it takes away from that selfless public. Public servant narrative to also emphasize how ambitious carter and the way that we think about those things together. Thats one of the questions i want to pose to at the end. You know, why do we think of these things as being so deeply incompatible. Questions. Right . So just little bit about the about the general or the general election here. So again, carter kind of runs in this in this weird. He positions himself as not really liberal and not really conservative. He kind of positioned himself as conservative in the in the primary race to, let all the liberal democrats knock each other out. But of course, to win, to really consolidate the coalition, he has to have some liberal ideas. Still a democrat, but hes just kind of like ideologues, ambiguous. He talks about government efficiency, about tax and welfare reform, about things we might think as more conservative, but its also very concerned about the plight of people less fortunate. As well talk about later, he does bring the sort moral vision to a lot of us policy issues. So so its kind of hard to pinpoint ideologically and its hard to pinpoint in terms of where the two parties have been up to that up to that point but he really emphasizes this idea of why not the best of the american government, whereas is other texas a government is good is its people that the American People you kind of like build on this sense. The American People are fundamentally good. The people are good and they deserve a better government. They deserve a Good Government. And so we kind of might have some questions about, okay, is that what is a Good Government . Who gets decide who who are the winners and losers of a good kind of political. Were going to find out. And that is part of a set of of political appeals and. The result is very close. So we went with just 50 , just over 50 of the vote. And the other thing about this map is its very weird. It is a weird map. So anyone have any observations about how this is different . Looked at a lot of these maps and weve thought a little bit about geography. Any observations here. So a little but you know we looked at normal we look at these maps one of the things weve observed is a sort of dynamic between the middle and the kind of coasts. Right. And weve seen that not just in contemporary maps, but in some older maps. And the one is the north in the south, carter and hes from the south. He kind of locks up the south. But if you look at this map from 1976, you might away and say, huh, the United States has this deep east, west and really get that from a lot of other a lot of other electoral maps. Again, its sort of like a middle and dynamic that were used to seeing or if its more geographic, its north. South. Why is that . Honestly, that is a really interesting that hasnt gotten a lot of the same attention that some of these other questions some of it might be kind of a party story about the Republican Party under nixon investing not just in the south, in the west. Some of it is a kind of state politics story. You know, theres a couple of different theories, but its actually really, i think, kind of fascinating open, open question. But once carter wins, hes to face this question. Its one thing to appeal to the voters with this kind of broad set of ideas about Good Government, whos going to say they dont like Good Government . This is a trick question because once you start governing. It turns out Good Government is a lot more controversial than you might imagine. So this campaign, the governance transition for carter, its always hard. Its always hard. But it really proves to be kind of tricky for the new Carter Administration here. I want to talk a little t before. G into policy about approach to the presidency. And this was a lot of at was what i was researching, writing about back back in the day. Sohiis carter with his Office Management and budget director bert lance, his friend from georgia, who came with him and carteharun in the nomination, had run in the general as i am going be a leader of Good Government is going to be clean government i mean not corrupt honest. And then burt lance gets implicated in a banking scandal. This is like the highest you know, economic official in the administration. And he gets accused of some financial corruption back georgia. He actually gets cleared of it a couple of years later. In 1980. But carter cant wait around for that. And so eight months in birtley vance resigns because hes his alleged has already undermined promise and turns out promising youre going to be transparent accountable not corrupt at all times. This turns out to be a very kind of tall order and in politics. And so carter is already kind of set himself up for some challenges. Theres also this kind of imagery element to it that is quite an in quite fascinating. Carter really tries to bring down the level of the of the white house so using a lot of kind of public facing symbolism to respond to this this political environment of of watergate and vietnam in this kind sense that the government has gotten out of touch with the people and out of control. So carter, whos inaugurated wearing just like a regular suit and not like a more formal kind of attire, hes actually the first president to get out of the the motorcade and just walk along pennsyl