January 10: How Presidents Ought to Behave
Watching Jimmy Carter’s state funeral on January 9 was a sad and sometimes inspiring experience. But given what’s about to happen on January 20, it also served as a reminder about presidential conduct, as I explained at New York:
The state funeral of the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, at the National Cathedral in Washington had all the trappings of the traditional suspension of political warfare in the face of death. Every living ex-president (and most of their vice-presidents) was there, which led to hallucinatory moments like Barack Obama amiably chitchatting with Donald Trump as they sat next to each other in the pews. Among the many eulogies to the Georgian, one that definitely stood out was one written before his own death by the 38th president, Gerald Ford, Carter’s Republican opponent in 1976, who wrote movingly of the partnership and friendship the two men formed during their long post–White House years. It was both sad and touching that the current chief executive, Joe Biden, reached back nearly a half-century to his own endorsement of Carter’s presidential candidacy in the year he defeated Ford.
But it was impossible to forget for a moment that the solemn event that brought this disparate audience together was occurring just 11 days before the re-inauguration of Donal Trump. The incoming president differs in so many respects from Jimmy Carter, and his return to power is a living repudiation of so much of what Carter believed in.
In his own view, Carter’s inveterate truthfulness was his most important personal virtue; “I’ll never lie to you,” he often said when running for president in a country anguished by Tricky Dick Nixon’s administration. Whether or not Carter was able to live up to this lofty commitment to honesty, it contrasts dramatically with Trump’s extremely flexible attitude toward facts and refusal to take personal responsibility for the consequences of his sins (on one infamous occasion, he could not come up with a single thing he had ever done that required divine forgiveness).
Carter’s great legacy in international affairs was his effort to anchor U.S. foreign policy in universal human rights. Trump rejects any standard for foreign policy other than the most naked national self-interest and has gone out of his way to dismiss global standards banning the torture of prisoners of war and military strikes on civilian populations.
Carter had a wonk’s passion for tinkering with government operations to make them more efficient and responsive. Trump is indifferent to the minutiae of governing, and his big reform initiative is to give tech bros Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy license to blow up whole agencies and radically reduce spending as ends in themselves.
In the long arc of political history, Carter is renowned for leading his own southern region out of the darkness of Jim Crow and building a mind-blowing coalition of civil-rights activists and ex-segregationists. Even if you believe Trump is without personal prejudice, he has very clearly made politics safe for a resurgence of racism and has made the pursuit of racial justice and equality a target of legal action and mockery.
As every eulogist at Carter’s funeral emphasized, he was a man of deep and abiding Christian faith, teaching Sunday school back in Plains for many decades. He wasn’t transactional in his religiosity; he took positions on social and cultural issues that led his fellow evangelical Protestants to abandon him and his party, and he led his own congregation out of its traditional denomination when that larger church refused to treat women equally. If Trump has any personal religious convictions, they are largely a secret, and he has formed a highly transactional relationship with conservative Christians, who are forever rationalizing his manifest impiety. Until his wife’s death, Jimmy Carter closed every day reading the Bible in Spanish with Rosalynn. Trump’s relationship with Holy Scripture (other than misquoting it) is mostly limited to hustling expensive Bibles to his devoted followers.
The American presidency is a collection of men with all sorts of varying personalities and backgrounds, and it’s entirely possible someone wildly different from Jimmy Carter is what this country needs. But it’s hard to undertake comparisons of the ex-president who just died and the ex-president who is about to re-enter the White House and see anything other than a devolution in integrity, fidelity to civic and religious traditions, and willingness to work with others peacefully. As Biden succinctly said in his eulogy, Carter’s “enduring attribute” was “character. Character. Character.” What sort of character is Donald Trump?
As a religious believer, Jimmy Carter undoubtedly had faith in the power of a beneficent God to regenerate souls and administer justice, so he’d be the first to pray for the success of Trump’s second administration. But the signs aren’t great. Indeed, the soon-to-be 47th president spoiled any grace note he might have struck by attending his predecessor’s funeral when he
openly whined that the half-staff flags honoring Carter would ruin the vibe at his own inauguration. Perhaps he will acquire the decency to think less of himself and more of the people whose lives he is about to change in ways that terrify many of them. Jimmy Carter’s first book was titled
Why Not the Best?, and it treated self-improvement as personal and national goal. The self-styled champion of American greatness could take a page from that book and emulate Carter’s understated (and imperfect) greatness in asking himself and his country to live up to its most enduring values.
Sure enough, Rasmussen’s noon update today has W’s lead back down to 0.6, the lowest it’s been since the RNC.
I think the Rasmussen 3-day tracking poll will show Kerry making a big gain tonight. The reason is that Bush probably had an especially big day of pollinig on the 8th that took his rating from 48.4 to 49.6. This day’s polling is due to drop off tonight. The other reason could be that a good day for Kerry dropped off the 3-day track, but actually, looking at the figures it doesn’t seem like that.
It’s possible, that the Rasmussen poll shows Bush running stronger, but even if this is so, tonight’s figure for Bush will be below 49% and Kerry’s will be stronger than 45%.
Rasmussen article:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=20112
Scott wrote it just before the 2000 election. He seemed sooo sure of himself …… only to have history make him look like complete failure.
A bit off subject but–does anyone know how the Senate races are likey to come out? Is there a good site with summaries from all states? We’re going to send a Democrat from Washington. The Repubs have pulled their money our of their candidate’s Senatorial race.
Any chance of a Democrat or Democrat/independent majority?
pollchaser-
More info would be great. Thanks. I’m seeing what Dan Andrews is seeing.
dan andrews — what u saw is what i saw at realclear politics (a good source for a wide range of news, altho the people who run it are hopelessly conservative).
But even those gallup poll figures are significant. Note especially the two-point gain in RVs–closing a gap into a tie. That’s crucial momentum in a close race if it’s accurate, and suggests that 2d prez debate helped. I thought Kerry came off definitely stronger, but still failed on some key points where he could have scored a knockout. With the Republicans insisting on a win and the Democrats equivocal and the polls close, it looked like it might be a wash, which worried me. If that didn’t help Kerry, that’s a bad sign. But indications are that his support continues to solidify.
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I still think the machine agenda is the best predictor, but the polls and the campaign suggest that Bush is really struggling. Not only Noam Chomsky and Julianne Malveaux but TH Kerry have apparently suggested the possibility of an Osama surprise. Why can’t she be MORE CAREFUL for goodness sakes? No one defends me if I “speak my mind” and I’m not the wife of a major party
candidate in a closely contested election. Maybe there’s some strategic notion of bringing out the hostility to focus on her rather than the candidate, a function many felt Hillary performed for Bill (until Monicagate).
Get a load of this – today’s WaPost tracking poll has Bush up by six among LVs (51-45), but RACE IS TIED 47-47 among RVs (Kerry gaining). A LV-RV gap that large this close to the election just doesn’t seem right, esp. with interest and intensity running so high.
Jody,
I have immediate family members in Florida doing same, and they report similarly. They have been canvassing nonstop for a month.
The polls are simply missing a lot of voters.
Pollchaser, I hope that I am wrong and not you.
I thought the lastest Gallup showed Kerry 49 and Bush 48 among LVs and the race 48 to 48 among RVs?
I haven’t seen that Gallup poll, but Zogby (at the RealClearPolitics website) shows Kerry pulling into a slight edge lead. Given Zogby’s reliability I was wondering about comments.
I suspect that, now that Kerry won’t have a chance to talk more about Iraq and correct the nonsense about N Korea, Kerry will need to make VERY CLEAR what has happened in the economy. It was very dismaying that he — despite a still-better-than-Bush on substance AND style performance in the second debate — didn’t take more care with the job stats. He doesn’t need to exaggerate them at all, only ELABORATE them a little:
With nearly 1.6 million private sector jobs lost, all job growth has been in the public sector under Bush; and this is a Republican. I suspect most job growth in public sector related to Iraq war.
1.9 million jobs in ONLY year of job growth, after a loss of 3 million jobs, may sound like a large number, but AVERAGE job growth over 8 years of Clinton was higher. Clinton averaged nearly 3 million growth per year, while this past year doesn’t even keep pace with growth of working age population. Percentage of working age population has declined by 2% under Bush, equal to 4.5 million jobs short of keeping up with society’s requirements. This has eaten up almost all the job growth OVER the expansion of the labor market during the Clinton years. Bush has done with jobs as he has with the deficit, eviscerating Clinton’s surplus. IS THAT WHAT WE WANT FOUR MORE YEARS OF?
Then there’s the issue of the Bush blame game. First he blames a recession as held over from Clinton years. Under Clinton, economy was slowing down a number of times, and big crisis was suspected with SE Asia and Russia crises in 1998. These didn’t happen. After mild recession, Bush blames 9-11. Then the press for printing ‘march to war’ from fall 2002 to March 2003, as well as corporate sleaze scandals. His record after three years of recovery is terrible, but all the public gets is excuses as rosy scenarios.
If Kerry lays this out in the domestic debate, and avoids wordiness like in the abortion funding answer, and keeps up carefulness in substance and style, he should be able gain further.
But I still feel that the weathervane of the machine (as in my comments about press and Kerry campaign silence on the flipflop spin, until the issue forced in the 2d debate — too little too late, as with Dukakis) is the most reliable predictor of the next president. Note also the NY Times column — pooh poohed by Garry Trudeau — by a graphic designer about the Kerry/Edwards logo conveying weakness and confusion predictably. You mean the Democrats, with their millions, don’t have a sophisticated graphic designer? It fits in with the flipflop pattern, together with press derriere couvrance for the cognoscenti
Hey All,
In the good old days it was “It is the economy, stupid.” Now I think we need to remember “It is Zogby, stupid.” I do not mean that as an insult.
Similar to many of you I am an information freak. It is best to select a poll or three and stay with those and not try to reconcile all the contradictions.
As I mentioned yesterday I am working on GOTV. I did door-to-door yesterday in an upscale area. Here are the unscientific results:
Lean Kerry 7
Strong Kerry 16
Lean Bush 5
Strong Bush 11
Undecideds 13
Of particular note – I interviewed a fellow (young with a young family) recently returned from a fourteen month tour in Iraq. He was quiet, respectful and determined in his support for Kerry.
And for what it is worth I do not believe all the undecideds are really undecided. One of the folks I was with for GOTV suggested that Kerry supporters many hold their vote close for fear of neighborly reprisals.
Jody
While I agree with most of pdb’s comments about Rasmussen, he IS a Republican pollster, and he knows which side his bread is buttered on.
While he has consistently overrated Bush’s position, he has tended further that direction since the Republican convention, after which he caught hell from Republicans for NOT getting on board with the post convention juggernaut to name Bush emperor and the election over.
As for his current numbers, on holiday weekends phone polls get more conservative respondents than usual because liberals and moderates have more fun and don’t answer the phone as much.
It’s official:
kerry 52
bush 46
Bush JA 47
Gallup poll at 6 P.M.
More on Rasmussen.
Charlie Cook was on the Washington Post’s “Live chat today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15752-2004Oct7.html?nav=headlines
He said don’t take stock in any poll, incl Rasmussen (he called it out by name) that uses automated questioning and not real people.
There was an article that someone linked to over the weekend, it was Scott Rasmussen, writing on Worldnet Daily, on the eve of the 2000 election.
The whole article centered on Rasmussen’s frustration that the media was saying the race was still close. Rasmussen wrote that the sum of the evidence …incl. his tracking poll over time (Bush by 4%!) … clearly demonstrated that Bush was well up on Gore and that Bush was going to win easily.
Don’t put too much stock in Rasmussen.
I’ll post the link when I get home tonight.
Let me bring together some observations I’ve posted on a couple of other threads.
1 Rasmussen came to my attention in the Spring when Kerry first became the probable nominee, and Rasmussen was the only pollster who didn’t show a sudden major surge of support to Kerry over Bush; most other polls gave him a big lead, Ras still gave Bush a small one.
2) In the months since, Ras has generally had the smallest leads for either side, and the smallest movements in either direction. Which is why some of us were _attracted_ to Rasmussen when other polls were showing Bush up >10%. The relative stability of Ras’ results is more consistent than his favoring Bush.
3) At one point I did a google and dug up a column or interview that said that in 2000 Ras consistently showed enormous Bush leads, and that he subsequently revised his party-weighting methodology because his results had been so wrong. (Some republicans do admit error!)
This is all I know. Someone please tell me more.
Can you offer a comment on the Rasmussen daily tracking poll? Does it have a credible track record? It seems to be in line with the Wash Post tracking poll in that it shows Bush gaining strength and Kerry losing support, just as most other polls show the opposite. I’m just wondering about whether Rasmussen has a solid reputation. Thanks.
OT: Does anyone have any idea about the effectiveness of events such as this being prepared by the Republicans?
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As a Volunteer, you probably have plans to go door-to-door in the final days, and make sure your neighbors vote. We’re asking you to start a little earlier.
http://www.GeorgeWBush.com/Walk
On October 16 and 17, tens of thousands of Volunteers will gather in thousands of homes all across America and carry out the largest door-to-door contact program ever assembled – the Walk the Vote Weekend. Will your house be one of them?
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