I really do not know much about any of them but it really scares me that they could find 4 people to the left of Carter to contend for the nomination. Scary stuff!
As I recall, Carter ran as a moderate. He was “a Christian”, from a conservative, bible thumping state. He seemed genuine, sincere, honest and tad naive, as seen in his infamous Playboy interview. The country wanted a fresh, honest face after the trama of Watergate. I didn’t vote for him, but those are my recollections of how the press presented him.
I liked Broder’s comparison at first, but there was no complex excuse for the purely muddled, incompetent leadership of Carter. He was a detail guy in way over his head. We all paid a very steep price for it.
Most people today simply would not believe how bad the economy was then, or the Armed Forces or taxes or foriegn policy or the American Spirit overall. Even liberals dismissed him. It was a depression with no unity and no “new deal”.
I gotta quit writing about this. That’s how bad it was.
Carter pretended to be moderate and rational - compared to a lot of the Demagogue candidates in ‘76 (or any year in recent decades) Carter did not wear his leftism as much on his sleeve in the campaign IIRC. Since I was only in high school I did not pay huge attention to it all but I do remember thinking that Carter was the “centrist” of the Demagogues. That didn’t last too long once he was in office.