September 15, 2004
The Man from Plains vs. "Give 'em Hell" Zell
A letter from Jimmy Carter to Zell Miller re: Zell's speech at the RNC.
Blatantly stolen from MeFistopheles.
Even though I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Carter's sentiment, as a native Georgian, it hurts me to see this. Apologies to those who see this as USAFilter, NewsFilter, PolitikFilter, etc.
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President Carter is one of two men who I would be honored to shake hands with. Not that that has anything to do with this thread.
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Oops. Sorry. I just realized this was already linked in a comment by pete here. Not an out and out double post, but close enough. Delete at will.
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Note on house rules ... If it's linked in comments, it's not a double. This post is legal, OK?
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jimmy carter has my utmost respect. he's truly a great american, and has done tremendous service to the country since his presidency. it's a tragedy he was such an ineffective president. i always thought he was somehow "too nice" for the office -- too high of morals.
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I think he overplays the loyalty thing a bit too much. I know when I think of ways to describe Lester Maddox, "loyal Democrat" wouldn't be the first one I'd think of ("Well he may be a fool, but he's our fool" perhaps?). I mean disloyalty isn't a good thing, but the main problem with Zell is that he's wrong, not that he's betraying his party.
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Sidedish - I know someone who just wrote a polysci PhD who studies the U.S. presidency, who says that much of the idea that Carter was an ineffective president was created by Reagan's election rhetoric. Some of the myths are outright lies - his so-called "malaise" speech never used the word malaise, and did not place any blame for anything on the American people (as the Reagan camp would later claim), but on Carter and his administration (yes, he was probably much too honest - first rule of politics is to never admit that you may have made mistakes, even if you did. People would rather vote for a confident lier than an honest and good person.) Despite that, people actually liked the speech - Carter's approval rating shot up the next to something 60%. It would only drop under the pressre of Reagan's campaign. It's a classic case of a lie repeated enough that people believe it - even many academics. (The PhD I know wrote his thesis on rhetoric in the American presidency from Washinton to Clinton - I got to hear his job talk which was on misconceptions about FDR and Carter respectively.)