Today I quote a President not because it’s President’s Day. I quote a President that went into hospice care over the weekend. The oldest living President, Jimmy Carter.
In 1976 my mom came home with a peanut necklace hanging over her blouse and sweater. I didn’t know that it represented a peanut farmer from Georgia. My mom was one of those, a democrat.
I was ten when President Carter was inaugurated. It was that same week I sat on the couch with my mommy and watched “Roots.” For my mom it was a time of hope and change. The fall of Nixon, Watergate and Vietnam left a mark on the country.
Jimmy Carter was going to bring us out from that dark period and bring us all together. Heal all the wounds still bleeding from the loss of Dr. King and the oil crisis and horrific economy.
He failed…. He was the wrong man at the wrong time. The last year of his Presidency was stained by the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Jeez, I was thirteen years old and I knew Carter was horrible. On the day he left the White House the hostages were released from captivity.
Those four years, those four long years…. We had a President that failed.
I think he failed not because he was the wrong man at the time. He failed because he was a good man. He was a good person and in the last forty two years since he left office he has shown that to the world.
Everything Jimmy Carter has done since January of 1981 has made the world a better place.
Good men don’t make great Presidents, but good men make the world a better place. That will be Jimmy Carter’s true legacy.
A little Latin lesson for the old school Catholics in the classroom.
Beati sunt……blessed are.
