JIMMY CARTER Excerpted from an essay by Hendrick Hertzberg Jimmy Carter is a saint. Now, by saying that, I don't mean to assert that Jimmy Carter is perfect, or that he is a total stranger to base motives, or that he is one of the elite of God's electthough for all I know that third item, at least, may well be true. Nor am I referring strictly to Mr. Carter's post-presidential career. It is now the conventional wisdom to say that Mr. Carter is a far better ex-President than he was a President. And in this instance the conventional wisdom has got it right. No historian would place Carter among the three or four greatest presidents of our history, and not even his most fervent admirers would place him in the top ten. But as an ex-President, he has only a tiny handful of rivals..... Carter put his post-presidential ambitions this way in the opening sentence of his farewell address from the Oval Office . He said (and I should note that while I may have typed this line, Mr. Carter, by virtue of his character, was its true author), "In a few days I will lay down my official duties in this office, to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of President, the title of citizen." In the fourteen years he has held that title, he has brought honor to it. He hasn't just talked about housing the homeless, he has built houses for them with his own hands and has inspired and organized others to do likewise. He hasn't just talked about comforting the afflicted, he has mounted a little known program through the | |
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