This article explores the stark contrast between the legacies of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, highlighting their differing moral compasses, approaches to faith and politics, and personal traits.
The spectacle in Washington this past week was extraordinary: a deceased president and a revived president at opposite ends of the moral scale. Here was Carter , the righteous, ascending to heaven, as Donald Trump , the felonious, ascended again to the Oval Office. Carter ’s passion for honesty was as ingrained as Trump ’s addiction to lying.
Even as Carter was being praised at his state funeral at the National Cathedral for working tirelessly to eradicate diseases around the globe, Trump was hunting for a disease to pin on immigrants to justify sealing the border. While the centenarian was heralded for his virtue and monogamous 77-year marriage with Rosalynn, Trump was bracing to be sentenced on his vice — falsifying records to cover up an infidelity with a porn actor while Melania was home taking care of her newborn son. As Carter was praised for being prescient on climate change, Donald “Drill, Baby, Drill!” Trump maintains his archaic views even as neighbourhoods across Los Angeles are being incinerated. Carter was a genuinely pious man. I saw his joy teaching Sunday school in Plains, Georgia. “Two Corinthians” Trump treats faith, as he does everything, as a transaction, a ploy to get him where he wants to be. President Joe Biden shaded Trump by talking in his eulogy about the homespun Carter’s “character, character, character”. But after hiding his own ageing difficulties, Biden is an imperfect messenger on that subject. The tableau in the first three rows of the nave was mesmerising, a sweet and sulfurous brew of historic grudges, grievances and battle scars, along with some flashes of the unique kinship that comes from being in the most powerful club in the world. Trump may be buoyed by his win, but in this exclusive club, he was largely narcissist non grata. Karen Pence, not over the little matter of Trump shrugging off acolytes’ threats to hang her husband at the Capitol, iced Trump in the pews. Others appeared to as well. Hillary, Bill, Kamala, Doug, Joe. And Jill (who was also in Tension City with her seatmate Kamala). Mike Pence turned the other cheek and shook Trump’s hand. George W. has clearly not changed his opinion of Trump since he famously said, after watching his “American Carnage” inaugural speech, “That was some weird shit.” He ignored Trump, who has blamed the younger Bush president for not stopping 9/11 and for the invasion of Iraq, which Trump said “may have been the worst decision” in White House history. But W. shook hands with Al Gore, probably still grateful that, unlike Trump with Biden, Gore conceded their whisker-thin election. And W. briskly tapped Obama’s stomach, as if they were old DKE brothers meeting again. Michelle Obama, sick of the whole political scene, didn’t show. Trump, eager to hang with the cool kids, cosied up to Barack. The president-elect regards W., Gore, Hillary, Kamala, Pence, Biden and Carter as losers, but Obama won twice and transcended his party with a personality cult, as Trump did. For her part, Melania, looking like a Valentino pilgrim, seemed immersed in a world of her own, probably trying to figure out the fastest route out of DC.as too pompous and washed Ziploc bags to reuse could not have much in common with the flashy King of Gilt. But Carter and Trump both tended toward the excessive, vain in their own ways; Carter was excessively virtuous, irritating Americans when he was in office with his parsimonious, micromanaging ways and blunt, demoralising truth-telling. Who wants to be ushered into a miasma of malaise? Trump wallows in the artifice Carter disdained, hawking Bibles and perfume. He goes over the top demeaning people, often veering into searing cruelty. They both prided themselves on being outsiders and breaking norms, and they both were suffused with grievances.When I went to Plains to interview Carter in 2017, on the occasion of his 93rd birthday, his resentments were on display. He felt ignored and mistreated by his Democratic successors (just as they got annoyed when he did foreign-policy freelancing and tossed virtue-signalling darts at them). Carter confessed that he didn’t even have Obama’s email. He said his best relationship with a successor was with George H.W. Bush. He was most bitter that his wife had been left out of a mental health forum for first ladies held by Michelle Obama, though that had been Rosalynn’s special project. Even though he was renowned for not playing the game of politics, Carter expertly played the game when I interviewed him at his modest home, as he wore a big “JC” belt buckle and showed off the furniture he had buil
CARTER TRUMP POLITICS VALUES LEGACY
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