New York Times:
From Scorn to Respect, Carter’s Legacy Evolved After His Presidency
The 39th president left the White House with his popularity in tatters. But four decades later, he is judged more kindly, in part for what he did after leaving office.
“Most citizens will concede that he had an admirable post-presidential life filled with good works, but they quickly add that his presidency was a failure,” said Kai Bird, author of “The Outlier,” a fresh look at Mr. Carter’s presidency published in 2021. “Historians in recent years would disagree. His presidency was in fact quite consequential.”
Seth Masket/TUSK:
Carter's presidency is a failed party story
His presidency was a disappointment, largely because of how he got the job in the first place
Carter was nominated for the presidency in the middle of, and because of, an unusual period in the Democratic Party’s history. Just generally, the 1970s was an era of very low party polarization in US history, which enabled unusual combinations of voters to come together. Look at the map of the 1976 presidential election below. It’s unlike any that came before or after. The Democrat won all of the South (except for Virginia), along with the labor strongholds of Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He lost California, New Jersey, Illinois, and Michigan, and won the presidency anyway. That’s just a weird map.
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
Amid a fog of MAGA lies, the Trump-Musk tag team escalates its war on facts, from Wikipedia to the State Department.
Musk — who basically set more than $30 billion on fire by deliberately destroying Twitter’s once-high valuation — has also offered $1 billion for Wikipedia, although it’s unclear whether he actually wants to own it or just change its name to a second-grade-level penis joke. The world dictator of disinformation wants to devalue reality-based information any way he can, because, as Wikipedia-beat journalist Stephen Harrison wrote in 2022, the site “occupies what appears to be an increasingly rare internet niche: a place where billionaires cannot purchase their preferred version of events, nor own the means of conversation.”
The good news is that Wikipedia is not for sale. But that’s cold comfort in a multiple-front battle for truth that Musk and Trump — tag-team Legion of Doom on their kayfabe-laced information wrestling mat — are body-slamming everywhere else.
Scott Goodstein/Common Dreams:
Democrats Need to Grow Up and Move Beyond the Myth of the 'Ground Game'
Believing the current style of door-knocking wins campaigns is the same as believing in Santa Claus.
As Democrats, we should know that a last-minute paid "ground game" that gets dropped into the battleground days before an election hasn't worked in years.
Year-round precinct work with "local captains" who knew their "turf" and how each neighbor would vote disappeared as the campaign industry grew and political parties stopped building traditional ward systems. Instead, they were replaced with volunteers and paid voices that only knocked on doors during major elections. This transition from a known, trusted neighbor to an unknown door knocker has made modern campaigning a data-driven competition that ignores effectiveness as it optimizes toward knocking on the most doors.
Nonetheless, message and messenger still matter in all aspects of campaigns, especially in the field. Door-to-door salesmen are a relic of history (Even the legendary Fuller Brush company started transitioning out of door-to-door sales in 1985).
Washington Post (Feb 2023):
A nuclear reactor was melting down. Jimmy Carter came to the rescue.
As a 28-year-old Navy lieutenant, Carter was one of the few people on the planet authorized to go inside a damaged nuclear reactor
The world was in the grip of the Cold War in 1952 when a nuclear reactor began melting down.
That reactor, located at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, had suffered an explosion on Dec. 12. Radioactive material had escaped into the atmosphere, and millions of gallons of radioactive water flooded into the reactor’s basement. Thankfully, no one was injured, but the Canadians needed help to disassemble the reactor’s damaged core.
The United States sent 28-year-old Jimmy Carter.
Carter, who entered home hospice care this weekend at 98, is best known for being the nation’s 39th commander in chief and oldest living president. But his service to the country began when he was a teenage plebe at the U.S. Naval Academy and continued for four decades after his presidency.
Healthline:
Jimmy Carter Dies at Age 100, Leaving Long Legacy in Public Health
The former President’s charitable work since his defeat by Reagan in 1980 was legendary. He worked with organizations, including Habitat for Humanity and his namesake, the Carter Center.
Throughout the past decades, Carter has also worked diligently in global health to work toward the eradication of devastating diseases around the world. He has become a patron in the world of neglected tropical diseases, a group of conditions with far-reaching health and economic outcomes. However, because they are found predominantly in impoverished areas, these diseases, which include Chagas, dengue, guinea-worm disease, and river blindness (onchocerciasis), were often not well studied.
Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, Co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, has worked with Carter over the years. In 2006, the two worked on a panel that helped to introduce the term “neglected tropical diseases” into the global health lexicon.
“To have him be out in front, talking about the importance of diseases that previously most people didn’t care about was a tremendous boost to our whole field of neglected tropical diseases,” he told Healthline.
William Schaffner, MD, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical School, echoed those sentiments, saying that Carter Center cast a light on “the forgotten problems of forgotten people.”
