How a rabbit encounter became a ‘nightmare’ for Jimmy Carter’s presidency

The Washington Post ^ | December 20, 2024 | Randy Dotinga

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Jimmy Carter’s run-in with a swamp rabbit on a Georgia pond became a metaphor for a sinking White House term.

On a spring day in 1979, a waterborne rabbit approached the leader of the free world as he fished near his home in Georgia. President Jimmy Carter splashed it with an oar, seeing the creature was “clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk … making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth,” his press secretary Jody Powell later wrote. The rabbit swam away, its pair of bunny ears visible above the water line.

Four months later, news of the peculiar incident transformed it into an irresistible metaphor for a sinking presidency: How could Carter be trusted to vanquish inflation and gas lines when he couldn’t manage to keep the peace on a pond?

“I didn’t think Carter had a paddle,” jibed humorist Mark Russell. Both The Washington Post and the New York Times published cartoons depicting giant “Jaws”-like rabbits attacking Carter’s boat from below. There was even a novelty song by folk singer Tom Paxton called “I Don’t Want a Bunny Wunny,” with the lyrics “Think about the country, think about sin/Along swum a rabbit, and he tried to climb in.”

It was a “nightmare,” Powell recalled in his 1984 book “The Other Side of the Story.” And he blamed himself.

[wardaddy]

Sadly he’s right