Posted on 08/21/2015 5:13:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
With Jimmy Carter's brave and touching announcement that he has cancer lesions on his brain, it's a good opportunity to reflect on his unexpected rise from small-town peanut farmer to president of the United States.
How, to put it bluntly, did a little-known, two-term state senator and one-term governor from Georgia defeat better-known members of his own party and then an incumbent president to win the White House, seemingly overnight?
If anyone's taking a page from Carter's playbook, it might just be Donald Trump.
Let's set the table: Eight years with the same party in the White House, two terms marked by considerable scandals, a flagging economy, the defeated drawdown of an ill-begotten war, "one of the worst periods in American-Israeli relations," as one world leader put it, and a growing dissatisfaction with Washington.
That sounds like today, but it was also 1976. During two Republican terms, one abruptly interrupted by the Watergate scandal, the country experienced the gloomy abandonment of the Vietnam War, the shaky instability of a bad economy -- which President Gerald Ford tried to fix by taxing corporations and the wealthy (sound familiar?) -- and Ford's significant misstep in "reassessing" aid to Israel, giving way to the quote above by Israel's Prime Minister Yithzak Rabin.
There was immense distrust and frustration, with the opportunity for Democrats to offer something new. But instead, they offered more of the same. Giving today's crowded GOP primary field a run for its money, 14 other Democrats vied for the nomination, including Arizona Rep. Morris Udall, Alabama Gov. George Wallace, Washington Sen. Henry Jackson, West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, Sargent Shriver, Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Indiana Sen. Birch Bayh.
Before the Iowa caucuses in January 1976, only 4 percent of Democrats said they'd support Jimmy Carter, and his name recognition was at 2 percent. After announcing his candidacy, the Atlanta Constitution -- his home state paper -- ran the headline, "Jimmy Who is Running For What!?"
A favorite oft-told story is of the game show episode when no one could guess the occupation of the "mystery guest," Gov. Carter.
And yet, early investments in a nascent Iowa caucus, running as an outsider and a Southern, conservative Democratic centrist, and capitalizing on voters' mistrust of Congress, made Carter an early frontrunner. He won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and began picking off his Democratic opponents one by one.
He also made his fair share of mistakes, any one of which could have tanked his campaign.
There was the ill-advised Playboy magazine interview, which came out weeks before the election, in which the married Baptist admitted to having "looked on a lot of women with lust."
And, two days before the election, an African-American minister was denied entry to Carter's church, which he accused Ford of orchestrating as a publicity stunt.
One of the bests boosts his candidacy got, though -- and this is an important warning to Trump's GOP rivals -- was when liberal Democrats formed the ABC movement -- "Anybody But Carter" -- in response to his beating establishment-friendly candidates Scoop Jackson in Pennsylvania and Udall in Wisconsin. With Idaho Sen. Frank Church and California Gov. Jerry Brown leading the charge, ABC defeated Carter in a couple late primaries, but his road to the nomination had already been cemented.
Carter, like Trump, used the media to his advantage, garnering a tremendous amount of coverage. Carter biographer Laurence Shoup writes that it was the media's "favorable coverage of Carter and his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls ... enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to president-elect in the short space of 9 months."
While Trump's coverage by the media could hardly be called "favorable," he certainly is getting a ton of it, arguably to his advantage in the polls.
Of course, where Trump and Carter differ is in recognition and resources. Trump is already a national figure, and has said he may spend a billion dollars to win, unlike Carter who, according to the New Yorker's Jeffrey Frank, had to sleep in his supporters' homes during the campaign.
Carter was also far more polished and politically experienced than Trump. He was an outsider who still sounded reasonable, compassionate and prepared for the job. Trump sounds, well, like Trump.
Nonetheless, those who are hoping for the brash mogul's collapse should remember Carter's unlikely domination. Whether it's a peanut farmer or a billionaire, stranger things have happened.
Ms. Cupp is wizened? Look up the word, then look at a picture of her. Whatever else you might say of her, wizened she is not.
I don’t have to look up the word - I used it. I didn’t believe that. Facetious sarcasm. She’s a pup and not even a thoroughbred one at that.
You can’t fix stupid.
S.E. Cupp’s viewpoint here, is stupid.
I could see some Perot comparison, but not Carter.
I hope Trump isn’t a fraud at the end of this, and if so, I hope Cruz can take it and run with it to the finish line.
“this abortion of words”..... I’m using that!!! Love your post, BTW!
Trump takes a better crap every morning than Jimmy Carter.
Brain cancer. He’s 90 years old
She attended Cornell. That should say it all. She is stupid.
Sarah Elizabeth
Most replies from the readers are negative and rightly so
Well, they both identify more as Democrats.
Terrible writing.
Rather the Reagan of 2016?
One Cupp. No brains.
It still is, or are you calling Katie Pavlich, Professor Mike Adams, Dinesh D’Souza, David Limbaugh, Larry Elder, Mike Gallagher, Doug Giles, Dr Thomas Sowell or Dr Walter E. Williams just to name a few liberals? Actually you can count the liberals whose articles appear in Townhall.com on your fingers
You got that right.
Of all of the Presidents of my lifetime, I thought Gerry Ford was the most likable. He seemed to be a genuinely nice guy. His girls were hot too (to a 15 year old boy.)
And I don’t think he would have EVER run for President in his life. He wanted to be Speaker of the House.
And he went gently into the good night.
S.E. Cupp, George Will’s twin sister. LOL!
And if Trump had wheels, he’d be a bicycle. This article seems like a weird reach.
Notice that the only part of the article which makes sense is quoted from another author.
And i remember some of that media coverage. Time magazine articles on the Carter campaign would have four-color spread illustrations, while two pages over Ford's appearances were depicted in B&W. Didn't take much headscratching to puzzle out which candidate was the Establishment's favorite.
The phrase “desperately reaching” comes to my mind...
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