In today’s newsletter, a look at Jimmy Carter’s life, and then:
Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, near their home in Plains, in 2018.Photograph by Matt McClain / The Washington Post / Getty
Remembering a Visit to Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia
The late President’s priorities were remarkably prescient, and his personal qualities offered a dismaying contrast to so much of the present state of American politics.
Jimmy Carter died yesterday at age one hundred. In 2011, Lawrence Wright spent time with the Carters at their home in Georgia while researching his play “Camp David,” which follows Carter’s dream of bringing peace to the Middle East. As President, “Carter promoted an overtly Christian agenda,” Wright writes, “working to overcome poverty and disease, make the tax code fairer, reduce the prison population, and promote human rights around the world.” His political and personal priorities seemed, to Wright, to offer a stark contrast to modern American politics. Wright’s play, which premièred in 2014, also tells another story: that of the relationship between Carter and his wife, Rosalynn. “They never paused in their service,” Wright observed. “Their entire life together was marked by high aspiration and noble effort.” Read the story »
Further Reading: “Jimmy Carter, Green-Energy Visionary,” by Bill McKibben
The Lede
The grand opening of the Green County Democratic headquarters, in Monroe, Wisconsin, in April of 2024.Photograph by Joshua Lott / The Washington Post / Getty
How Much Do Democrats Need to Change?
Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in all seven swing states, but in Wisconsin and North Carolina Democrats outperformed Republicans in down-ballot races—and the maps in other battleground states suggest that the Presidential loss was not all it seemed. “Looked at another way,” Peter Slevin writes, “If one hundred and fifteen thousand of the eight million Trump voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had voted instead for Harris, she would be headed to the White House.” Read the story »
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Cartoon by Colin Tom
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P.S. Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, making him the third President to receive the award. The Nobel Committee foregrounded the Camp David Accords in its announcement, but Hendrik Hertzberg thought that Carter’s achievement with the Panama Canal treaties, his house-building for Habitat for Humanity, his rebuke of George W. Bush’s Iraq policies, and his years of military service earned him the honor, too. “Carter has often erred; anyway, no one could be right as consistently as he has sometimes seemed to think himself,” Hertzberg writes. “But Jimmy Carter honors the Nobel Peace Prize as surely as it honors him.” ☮️