Thank God for Jimmy Carter, us Democrats' projection of self that we can like, love, be proud of, like ourselves for.
Or as:
I am Jimmy Carter, I am the good Democrat. Martyr and Saint. We sacrificed ourselves, his presidency, for a diplomatic resolution to the hostage situation. We rose again as a saint of habitats for humanity, free elections, world peace. His Nobel Prize was ours. I love Jimmy for dying for my sins of powerlessness, apathy and petty partisanship. I didn't love him for it in 1980 but I did by 1990.
Now the good President lay dying. At peace. Heroic in infirmity, I see the accepting smile on his serene face as he receives the bad news of cancer. Equanimity Jim, he doesn't grieve his coming loss, he skips the Kubler-Ross stages and goes from Doctor's office to acceptance. Why, he accepted it years ago, he didn't wait for the last minute to grieve his own passing: forward thinking, untouched by cigarettes, balanced by Armed Service, a sinner in his heart only, prepared by youthful error that yields wisdom in his middle age and perfection in elder-hood.
His political enemies, the Reagan voters, the young Republicans, their Likud counterparts, US pro-Israel partisans and all the Obama discontents will restrain for a moment when his end comes. Not all but most of the rabble commenters and tweeters will wait two or three days before resuming. Then they will attack me when they attack Jimmy's inflation and gas prices and helicopters crashing in the dessert.
The Great Carter is great to the end, not a Bush who is immediately rendered pointless after the fall, or a Ford so rendered before it, or Reagan who goes, wracked and blinded, into that gray fog. The good Democrat dies at the height of his greatness, not diminished by loss or disrepute, not put on this earth to merely have power, to perch on a pinnacle that cannot be toppled, because he knows that all must fall. This is the Democrat's way: to never lose his feet of clay and stand in spite of them, and be ready to fall when the time comes, as it must. Democrats weren't put on earth to merely rule, but to fix a broken world and then create a great one.
Jimmy Carter of the mind, the Great Carter, selfless in life, heroic in infirmity, beatific in death he will cross the Pantheonic threshold.
Good luck Clinton, and Obama.
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