Steve Green has quite a furious rant about Jimmy Carter’s race-baiting campaigning in the 1970s on this week’s PJM Political, but it goes deeper than that, as John Hinderaker of Power Line writes today:
At The Corner yesterday, Hans von Spakovsky offered a compelling explanation: Carter himself has a history of virulent racism. The facts, drawn from A Voting Rights Odyssey by Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Project, are astonishing:
When Carter returned to Plains, Georgia, to become a peanut farmer after serving in the Navy, he became a member of the Sumter County School Board, which did not implement the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision handed down by the Supreme Court. Instead, the board continued to segregate school children on the streets of Carter’s hometown. …Carter’s board tried to stop the construction of a new “Elementary Negro School” in 1956. Local white citizens had complained that the school would be “too close” to a white school. As a result, “the children, both colored and white, would have to travel the same streets and roads in order to reach their respective schools.” The prospect of black and white children commingling on the streets on their way to school was apparently so horrible to Carter that he requested that the state school board stop construction of the black school until a new site could be found. The state board turned down Carter’s request because of “the staggering cost.” Carter and the rest of the Sumter County School Board then reassured parents at a meeting on October 5, 1956, that the board “would do everything in its power to minimize simultaneous traffic between white and colored students in route to and from school.”
AdvertisementYou can see how such episodes could leave Carter with a guilty conscience.
What seems most extraordinary about that story, however, is that I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before. It seems impossible that a candidate with such a racist past could be elected President. It seems equally impossible that a history so repellent could be kept quiet in today’s media and political world. After all, we’re not talking about Carter’s personal life here, but rather about his service on the local school board.
1956 may seem like ancient history now, but it wasn’t in 1976. Reporters could have delved into Carter’s record if they had wanted to. Yet, to the best of my recollection, these facts never came out in either of Carter’s two presidential races. One wonders whether this is one of many sleeping dogs that, over the years, the liberal media have been happy to let lie.
The MSM? Willing to obfuscate away the seamier aspects of a liberal presidential candidate? Sure, that could happen in the bad old days of the 1970s, but not today!
Err, wait a second…
Update: And speaking of MSM obfuscation, “State-Run Media Shocker… John Edwards Fathered Mistress’ Child While Wife Was On Chemo.”
Carter is a repellent little man. Not so much in physical but in emotional stature. He must have been a joy in a submarine’s wardroom. It surprises me that Admiral Rickover let him into the nuclear service. It surprises me even more that he passed the psych-eval.
By some accounts his wife is worse. I once did my reserve drills with a Naval Intelligence unit at NAS Glenview Il. That is one of many bases that no longer exist. About 22 years ago it was so hot that Vice President, George H.W. Bush flew in to give a check to the Governor, a yet to be indicted Big Jim Thompson. Note that almost all Illinois politicians had names like Big Jim or Fast Eddie in those days. The C.O. said “Now if all you junior officers want to go see the Vice President …” So we stampeded out of the door before he could finish. Almost everyone in our unit were some kind of Federal Law Enforcement so the Secret Service guys were unusually chatty while we were waiting for the VP. They told us that if they had a guy who needed an attitude adjustment they would send him down to Plains Georgia to wash Rosalynn’s car for two weeks and he would come back a happy camper.
They also told us that they adored Bush Sr. who was a real gentleman. He was always the Boss but one who knew how to treat the staff. That was confirmed when the plane landed and after Barbara ran into the waiting air conditioned limo the Vice President came over in the 104° heat to talk with us for a few minutes. It turns out that Glenview Illinois was one of the many places that he had been briefly stationed at after getting shot down.
Since then I have had occasion to talk with many USSS agents and they have confirmed these impressions of both the Carter and the Bush families. Rosalynn may have slowed down since then but Hillary more then fills the role of punishment detail. I have no information on what it is like working with Michelle Obama.
As an addendum. On four occasions I have met Hillary Clinton and I share the low opinion of her that I have heard from USSS agents.
This essay, http://preview.tinyurl.com/m9gzq4
http://tinyurl.com/m9gzq4
…takes a look back at Carter’s past, especially how he positioned himself politically, in Georgia’s state elections back in 1970, and reveals strategy opportunistically employed by Carter to fit Georgia’s standards (as he, Carter perceived them) for governance then. Compare him to Lester Maddox and see how Carter bested Maddox in gubernatorial election.
One thing Carter didn’t, or couldn’t do was to have opponents disqualified by suing in court and having the court eject petitioners from the petition, and thereby disqualifying the candidate by establishing that the candidate did not meet the legal required numbers for qualification as candidate, after the fact, as 0bama did in Illinois.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/mwzxrs
http://tinyurl.com/mwzxrs
Instead Carter established himself a bigger redneck than Maddox in Georgia, to pander to the democrat electorate there.