These mixed messages about racial difference rippled unevenly through Carter’s early career. At the Naval Academy, cadets mocked the earnest, toothy lad for sticking up for Wesley Brown, their one Black classmate; later, Carter faced down the local White Citizens’ Council in his hometown of Plains, Ga. But he pretty much sat out the civil rights movement, and managed never to meet his contemporary and fellow Georgian, Martin Luther King Jr. Worse, in 1970 Carter ran what Alter calls a “code word campaign” for governor, courting admirers of Alabama’s George Wallace — only to pivot after winning and announce at his inauguration that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” The ensuing encomiums, as much as anything, draped Carter in the credibility he needed to become a presidential contender in 1976.
When Alter reaches Carter’s presidency, the theme of race drops away; economic and foreign issues dominated the agenda and the president’s attention. In these chapters, the imperatives of analytic and narrative history come into conflict. To mount the revisionist argument that he hints at in his preface, Alter would have needed to rely on a more analytical mode. But when it comes to Carter’s unsung policy achievements, he cites or recounts them straightforwardly — the major exception being a riveting chapter on the landmark 1978-79 Israeli-Egyptian peace accords. Alter quotes the Carter aide Frank Moore boasting of some 26 legislative victories on the Hill, including on the environment, Civil Service reform, airline deregulation and more, but those battles receive nothing like the ticktock treatment that Alter gives the Camp David negotiations.
Ironically, when the book hits its narrative stride, it is largely a chronicle of defeat and drift. Alter’s most gripping sections detail such unhappy stories as the hostage saga, the 1979 “malaise” speech (Carter’s awkward rhetorical bid to confront the economic and energy crises), and the primary challenge he faced in 1980 from Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts — a challenge Carter repelled, but which dissolved the (provisional) loyalty of many liberal Democrats. In recounting these episodes, Alter digs up forgotten details that make Carter’s travails even more excruciating than we might recall. Who remembers that, amid the Iranian crisis, Islamist radicals also torched the United States Embassies in Islamabad and Tripoli? Carter simply couldn’t catch a break.
Throughout these later chapters, a weary, battered Carter struggles to summon his best self to face historic challenges, but continually runs into the limits of his own experience and character. His impulse to master the details of policy, so often an asset, kept him from trusting others. His fierce moralism, a welcome corrective to past administrations’ realpolitik, prevented him from developing into a geopolitical strategist. Thoughtfulness in making decisions degenerated into dithering. Carter’s approval rating sank as low as 28 percent — Nixon levels — and on Election Day in 1980, he was routed by the former B-movie actor and California governor Ronald Reagan. Twelve years of conservative governance followed, which may stand as Carter’s ultimate legacy.
On Carter’s post-presidency, Alter is also provocatively revisionist. He notes that besides building homes for Habitat for Humanity and monitoring foreign elections, Carter infuriated his White House successors by meddling in their foreign affairs. His exaggerated, one-sided criticisms of Israel tarnished his image as an honest broker in the Middle East.
Yet today at 96, Carter still teaches Sunday school in Plains, drawing hundreds of tourists who sleep in the church parking lot to snare a seat. Few of these pilgrims, surely, consider Carter a Rushmore-worthy president, but they admire what Alter calls his “core decency.” In the lives of even those presidents who falter, after all there is drama and significance, pathos and inspiration — and a welter of experiences that are worth understanding if for no other reason than that they altered the course of our nation.