Carter was determined to bring a different image to the White House, one of vigor and activity compared with Richard Nixon, famously photographed bowling alone in the basement of the White House or wearing wingtips on a Florida beach while visiting his pal Bebe Rebozo. But Carter took casual too far. Near Camp David, he fainted in a road race. The picture went everywhere. The message was weakness, as Time Magazine noted:
“Seconds later, an ashen-faced Carter felt his legs go rubbery and just as he began to fall a Secret Service agent grabbed him. Some aides feared he had suffered a heart attack; the White House and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski were immediately alerted, and there was talk of evacuating the President to a hospital. But White House Physician Dr. William Lukash diagnosed heat exhaustion. The President was taken back to his bedroom at Camp David, stripped, covered with cold towels, and injected with nearly a quart of salt water through a vein in his left arm.”
With the story in Time coming out on October 1, 1979, it was unwelcome imagery a year from Election Day.
