Past Presidents and Today's Conflicts

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and happy Presidents' Day. We'll do two Presidents' Day segments today, one with presidential historian Julian Zelizer now and two oral history callings later for different generations on the question, "Who's the first presidential candidate you ever voted for and how did that person influence you?" That's coming up next hour. Also today, New Jersey, have you heard this, just passed a law requiring media literacy training in school in grades K through 12.

We'll talk to a New Jersey college professor helping to design the curriculum guidelines and take your calls on this day off from school from teachers and parents and students on how you already do media literacy or think it should be done, both for news media and your kids' social media use, so that's coming up. We'll begin our annual series today on the five documentaries nominated for the Oscar for best feature-length documentary.

Today is maybe appropriate with Joe Biden making his surprise visit to Kyiv on the prominent Soviet dissident, Alexei Navalny. On this Presidents' Day, we acknowledged first that our oldest living president, Jimmy Carter, much beloved by many, especially for his post-presidential work on peace and human rights and with Habitat for Humanity, Jimmy Carter's family announced over the weekend that he has entered hospice care at home at age 98.

Now, I've had the privilege of having President Carter on this show three times. On one of those occasions in 2012, he was on to talk about how his Christian faith informs his politics and I asked him this question. How about the persistent outcast status of gays and lesbians among some of the most observant Christians? Why do you think people are so dug in on that in the name of Jesus, who was supposed to be tolerant?

Former US President Jimmy Carter: Well, Jesus wrote and spoke about a lot of different sins that we have like selfishness and pride and so forth. He never mentioned homosexuality. Of course, we know that even days before Christ in Roman history and so forth, there was a lot of gay practices. I think Jesus didn't condemn gay people. Our church accepts gay members. We don't question people when they come to our church, but I think there's a natural inclination on the part of human beings to put ourselves in a position superior to some kind of other people.

I grew up in the Deep South when white people would consider themselves to be superior to African Americans. It was condoned and approved by the Supreme Court and by the Congress and other people. Now, of course, that's all over, at least legally. We see Americans now turning to despise what they call illegal aliens or people who come here from Mexico or other southern countries. I think in almost any society, there's a tendency to exalt ourselves and our particular character of life above and beyond some other people, but that's what some people do even if they're Christians concerning those who happen to be gay.

Brian Lehrer: Jimmy Carter here in 2012. We'll talk now about Jimmy Carter and other presidents on this Presidents' Day with political historian Julian Zelizer, who wrote a biography of Carter simply called Jimmy Carter. Among other books he has written or edited, including Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past, The Fierce Urgency of Now. I thought that was an Obama line. It's Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society and Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974. Julian Zelizer is also a CNN political analyst and professor of history and public affairs at Princeton. Professor Zelizer, it's always great to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Professor Julian Zelizer: Thank you. It's great to be back with you.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Jimmy Carter, one of the scenes in your biography of him is on his inauguration day, January 20th, 1977, when he orders his Secret Service detail to stop the limo he's in for the inaugural procession and he and his wife Rosalynn and their daughter Amy get out of the car and walk the 16-block route to the White House. How is that emblematic of Jimmy Carter the man and 1977 as a moment in US history?

Professor Julian Zelizer: Well, we're at a moment when many Americans are still reeling from the aftermath of the Vietnam War, of Watergate. Many have lost their confidence in political institutions, including the presidency. One of Carter's central themes in the '76 campaign was that voters would be able to trust him, that he understood that there needed to be limits to presidential power, which had been so abused over the years. By stepping out and walking with the people and getting out of the automobile, which symbolizes the presidency, he wanted to show that he understood. He heard what Americans were feeling. It was a very exciting moment for many who were watching, including those along the parade sidelines.

Brian Lehrer: He famously wore a sweater, a cardigan less formal than presidents usually wear to address the nation on television on at least one occasion. Would it be accurate to say Reagan, who succeeded him, reacted against that and returned to presidential formality as kind of a, "This is how the leader of the free world or maybe how a person in power should dress to project power"?

Professor Julian Zelizer: No, absolutely. It's one of those moments where something a president does that's initially greeted with a lot of excitement, whether it's wearing the sweater, getting out of the car, or ignoring or eliminating some of the trappings of what happens when a president enters a room, then there's a reaction. Part of what Reagan set himself up to do is restore what he said was the dignity of the presidency to look like what a president should look like. He went back to tradition and reversed himself. Part of that was an attack on Carter's legacy. Part of that was an attack, in Reagan's mind, on what Democrats had done to political institutions.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some calls on what Jimmy Carter's work has meant to you or any questions about the life of our longest-living president. No other president has lived to 98 or have been married for 75 years. We can take your Carter thoughts and prayers and questions for Princeton historian and Carter biographer Julian Zelizer at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer as Jimmy Carter has now entered hospice care.

Professor Zelizer, continuing on this history, the Democratic Party just announced recently that it is abandoning the Iowa caucuses as the first test of presidential hopefuls in primary season and switching to South Carolina. It was Carter, wasn't it, who put Iowa on the map as a place where a little-known candidate could rise suddenly to prominence?

Professor Julian Zelizer: No, absolutely. Carter was writing in these primaries against some pretty big Democratic officials, who were very well-known nationally. Some from the Senate like Birch Bayh. Jimmy Carter was not someone who was well-known nationally. "Jimmy who?" was the joke that was floating after he announced. One of the tactics he and his team thinks of is taking Iowa seriously. Iowa was the first event, but many candidates didn't even go. They fast-forwarded to New Hampshire and the other bigger primaries.

Carter realized that if he went there, the media would be very interested in what he was doing. He could possibly win and then use that to show that he was a formidable candidate. He puts a lot of effort and attention in Iowa and other candidates don't. He does well and it has the exact effect he was hoping. The media picks up on the story and starts to treat him as a front-runner the next day. It was a very savvy move. Ever since, Iowa has been something candidates don't tend to ignore.

Brian Lehrer: Carter was a Democratic Party governor of Georgia. You refer to him as representing, in a certain way, the New South at that time, the post-segregation South. These days as you know, Georgia is the ultimate purple-state battleground, right? What was it like and what was he like that Carter got elected there as a Democrat in the first place 50-plus years ago, or can you draw lines from that to Georgia's hot politics of today?

Professor Julian Zelizer: Well, yes, look in the 1950s, '60s, he's first elected to the state government. He's very much a maverick in some ways. It's not Republican versus Democrat in that period. It's really a battle between Democrats. When he becomes a state senator in 1963, he's running as a new kind of Democrat. One who's more interested in moving away from the old racial prejudices of the state and to attract business and to make the image of Georgia something that would sit well with Northerners and with the rest of the country.

He doesn't have a perfect record. Later, when he's running for governor, he'll play on some of the dog whistles of racial politics. Overall, he's not part of that old world. He becomes very committed to fighting and promoting a different kind of racial order, so to speak, in Georgia. This becomes part of his time as Georgia state senator and then certainly as governor.

Brian Lehrer: How do you get from Jimmy Carter to Brian Kemp?

Professor Julian Zelizer: Well, eventually, a lot of the South went toward the Republicans. His vision of a new Democratic Party actually lost out. You saw the rise of a hard-right Republican Party that did very well in states like Georgia. What we're seeing now is an attempt to crack that by the current generation of Democrats. A lot of this was a backlash to civil rights in the 1960s, and then some of it was an attraction to what the conservative movement was arguing in the late '70s and '80s as well.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Henry in Montclair, you're on WNYC. Hi, Henry.

Henry: Hello, Brian. How are you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Doing all right.

Henry: I have a quick story about Jimmy Carter or maybe it's not that quick. I'm a journalist. Way back at the beginning of my career, I was an investigative reporter at The Bergen Record. I did a four-part series about Jerry Falwell. If you're bridging gaps between Brian Kemp and Jimmy Carter, I'll bridge that gap between Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Carter. This was a pretty deep dive into Jerry Falwell's business dealings and religious contradictions if you will. I opposed him to Jimmy Carter's religious views. They're both self-identified as born-again Christians.

Jimmy Carter somehow got a hold of this story that appeared from Bergen Record. It was a four-part series. It was very extensive. He sent me an incredibly nice note as a young journalist. I've always appreciated him for that. Then I've seen how he grew after being president into such a humanitarian. It just always made me proud that he had seen the story and that he had been gratified by someone out there who at least thought consistently with him. He wanted to make the effort to express that to this young kid who was out in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Brian Lehrer: Henry, that's a great story. Thank you very much. I can say also from his three times on the show that for a former president of the United States, he expressed a lot of humility, came into our studio in person, and just talked to me like a regular person. [chuckles] That was part of Jimmy Carter. Julian replayed that clip at the beginning of Carter musing in response to my question on how different branches of Christianity like his versus Jerry Falwell's, who the caller mentions, could have such different positions on the humanity of LGBTQ people and others. It was in the Carter years that Jerry Falwell and that kind of religious right politics really came to prominence too, right?

Professor Julian Zelizer: No, absolutely. He's interesting, Carter as governor, as president, in that respect in that it's a crossroads in some ways in American politics where religion and politics would come to be seen as connected through the moral majority, through the new right, that it was fundamentally conservative to be religious and connect religion to politics, but that was not inevitable.

One of the examples you can always look to is Carter, who never thought that trajectory for his religious beliefs. Instead, those led him to be concerned about issues like human rights overseas or even in his post-presidency for all his work with habitats of humanity. I think as we think about Carter today and in the coming months, it's important to remember that there were other paths through which religion could impact politics that are often forgotten today.

On his humility, let me just throw in another story. It's a remarkable part of him. I was doing research once at the Carter Library, in fact, for this book. I then went to the cafeteria for lunch. I'm standing in line with my tray. I look to my right, and who's there? It's him standing in line with his tray like everyone else. I think he was beyond kind to me, to everyone around. I think that also was very much present when he was president of the United States.

Brian Lehrer: Emily in Nyack, however, is going to remember another part of his Christian politics that doesn't get talked about very much. Emily, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Emily: Hi, thanks so much for taking the call. In 1976, my father was an early Carter supporter. He helped coordinate his campaign here in New York. He got the law changed for how we put candidates on presidential ballots and primaries because the candidate's name was upfront and then the delegates. As a young woman at that time, I was 16. I was furious.

My father was supporting a man who did not support a woman's right to choose. As we tried to reconcile human beings who do good things and also who do bad things and decide how we feel about them. For me, Carter really represents that struggle because he was a wonderful ex-president. He did some great things in the White House. He also did things that disturbed me greatly.

Brian Lehrer: You want to mention one?

Emily: His stance on Afghanistan. When he left the White House, his Habitat for Humanity, you could not be on the board if you were not a Christian. On the other hand, as a Jew, I was pleased that Carter spoke up about Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. I thought it was brave and I respected him for that.

Brian Lehrer: Emily, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your call. Well, Professor Zelizer, a number of things there that we could chew over. First of all, Carter was anti-choice, wasn't he? I think he didn't make a big thing of it.

Professor Julian Zelizer: Yes. In the '76 campaign, it's discussed. He discusses it. He does believe in choice in limited circumstances. Compared to where the Democratic Party generally has moved to date, he's pretty conservative. I think that will always remain a controversial part of how people remember him. For some Democrats, Carter on this issue and some other issues like public spending, even how he ultimately conceived that civil rights was part of a new, more moderate Democratic Party that was aiming to move away from some of the 1960s ideals on issues related to gender and other social issues that was frustrating.

There's many Democrats who remember that. Look, when Ted Kennedy challenges him in the 1980 Democratic primaries and does pretty well and Kennedy makes this historic speech at the Democratic Convention, where he's railing against Carter for abandoning key Democratic principles and moving too far to the center. Those comments, I think, reflect yet another part of his legacy that we will be discussing for years to come.

Brian Lehrer: It was in your book as well, your biography of Carter, that as an outsider to Washington, he had no obligations to interest groups of either party. He rubbed Democratic constituencies the wrong way in some cases such as those that Emily from Nyack and you just highlighted. Remind everybody, why did he get primary? That's certainly one of the reasons that he lost to Reagan in 1980 even though Reagan, of course, ran to his right. Ted Kennedy primaried him from his left, right?

Professor Julian Zelizer: Yes, some of it was just the sense he was a vulnerable incumbent. By 1980, he was wrestling with the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a bad economy that was certainly not getting better. I think part of it was just pure political calculation that he was a leader who looked weak and there was room for a different kind of Democrat.

Part of it though was a bigger ideological battle taking place within the Democratic Party where you had someone like Jimmy Carter, who was very much arguing that the party had to move away from some of its traditional positions. It had to be less adherent to certain party orthodoxies if the party was going to thrive in the modern age. Some of this, I think, was genuinely felt.

It wasn't simply political calculation. For Ted Kennedy, this was a big mistake. He was prouder in many ways of that New Deal-Great Society legacy. He was fearful that Carter was going to jeopardize those. Part of his primary run was an appeal to stick to Democratic principles and to respect what they added. That too, it's a debate Democrats are having right through this day.

Brian Lehrer: On the Iran hostage crisis, which a lot of people will say was the central reason for his downfall after Carter allowed the Shah of Iran following the Islamic revolution there in 1979 to come to the United States to get out of dodge in Iran and come here for medical treatment, a group of, they say, students, but maybe it was just various radicals of various ages, took over the US Embassy in Tehran and held dozens of Americans hostage for the rest of Carter's presidency.

Perceiving him as weak on Iran was one of the reasons that he lost to Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, but he came on the show and talked about that in 2014. I'm going to play a clip in which Carter emphasizes that the way he ran diplomacy with Iran at that time helped preserve the lives of the hostages. None of whom were killed or harmed by the Iranians. He puts this in the context of two things that might have saved the hostages' lives.

Former US President Jimmy Carter: When Ayatollah Khomeini approved the action of the militants, I never thought that he knew ahead of time that they were going to invade our embassy and take our hostages as they did. I think he was caught by surprise, but then later, he found it politically expedient to go along with what they were doing. There's no doubt in my mind that their religion and also their fear of American retribution prevented their actually hurting a hostage. Later, one of the hostages developed a numb right arm, a young man from Maine. Immediately, they released him or freed him. He came by and I met with him. They were very careful not to hurt a hostage and they never put one on trial.

Brian Lehrer: Jimmy Carter on the show in 2014 talking about how fear of US retribution and also Islam as a moderating influence helped preserve the safety of the hostages even in captivity. Really interesting. I think Matthew in Great Neck wants to follow up on that. Matthew, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Matthew: Yes, hi, good morning. I wanted to just say that as someone who grew up in the '70s and '80s, I grew up with this mythos of Reagan coming in and saving the day and Carter was such a failure. It's really proven over time so untrue. More importantly, there was a recent PBS documentary about the hostage crisis.

It's something I'd never known before, how much time Carter spent with the former hostages, not just on the phone and making sure but actually flew to Germany and spent time with them even despite their obvious anger at him for allowing it to happen or whatever and that there was quite a bit bitterness. Again, it just shows an incredible-- and this was after he had already lost to Reagan. It's just so incredible to show his empathy and sympathy to these fellow Americans, and also the humility in showing that he had tried and perhaps he felt he had failed. It just shines an even greater light on President Carter.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Matthew. Professor Zelizer, anything on that?

Professor Julian Zelizer: Yes, there's lots to it. I think one of the more controversial elements of everything we just discussed is allowing the Shah into the United States, which really precipitates the crisis and also remains a very controversial moment. Another part of it is, how did he handle it? For many generations, the assumption was he handled it poorly. He didn't get the hostages out. The hostages would ultimately be released when Ronald Reagan was elected president literally around the inauguration.

Brian Lehrer: Can I linger on that for just a second?

Professor Julian Zelizer: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: One of the early maybe, if we can say cable TV moments are just dramatic, what might be seen as a modern media moment where the Iranians had held the hostages until Reagan's inauguration day. There were literally split screens on that January 20th, 1981 of Reagan being inaugurated and Iran releasing the hostages as if to rub it in Jimmy Carter's nose, right?

Professor Julian Zelizer: It was to rub it in Jimmy Carter's nose. What we've learned since is Carter had really orchestrated the release through a number of things, including threats and pressure, including sanctions, including ongoing negotiations that the country didn't know about that had been taking place. The deal was reached and so Reagan got the credit, but only because Iran didn't want to release the hostages and let Carter get the credit for what he had done. I think in his post-presidency, Carter was bitter about that.

He understood very well. He talked about it that had this all not unfolded this way, he could very well have been president for a second term, that this really damaged him. The other media story in addition to the split screen is this is when you have nightly coverage of the event with the show that becomes Nightline doing this every day and hammering away at Carter's inability to secure the release even though he actually does secure the release. He does it without military action, except for one failed moment when there's an attempted rescue that goes poorly.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Ted Koppel, America Held Hostage every night on ABC at 11:30. The first of its kind focusing so heavily on one story that was a sensational story, important obviously, but also sensational and had the built-in conflict and everything. It got such good ratings that they then made it a permanent fixture as Nightline tackling a different topic every day. [chuckles] Media history of the 1980s. All right, we'll continue in a minute on this Presidents' Day with another Carter clip from our show and your calls and tweets for Carter biographer and Princeton historian Julian Zelizer. 212-433-WNYC or tweet @BrianLehrer. Oh yes, we'll talk about other presidents too. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Jimmy Carter biographer and Princeton historian Julian Zelizer and you at 212-433-WNYC. Wendy in Springfield, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Wendy.

Wendy: Hi, people know that President Carter enjoys soul music. Well, on his mother's side, he is related to Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown.

Brian Lehrer: I did not know.

Wendy: I'm sure the historian knows about that.

Brian Lehrer: Wendy, thank you very much.

Wendy: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Did you know about that, Julian Zelizer? Did we lose Professor Zelizer? I'm not hearing him. Did we lose me? No? Okay. We lost Professor Zelizer for the moment. We'll get him back. Tom in Erie, Pennsylvania, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tom.

Tom: Hello, thank you for taking my call. Going back a couple of years, back in 1976 when Jimmy Carter was running for president, I was still in high school. 16 years old, so I was influenced by his pursuit for public office, what I call "a calling" and his humility. In 1978, I was 18. I ran for my first public office. I was elected to a school board position. From there on out, I served in public office for 25 years. He was very inspirational for me to see how he went about his business and, as I said, his humility in serving.

Brian Lehrer: Tom, thank you very much for that story. We have Professor Zelizer back and we'll get him to react. Here's a clip of President Carter on the show in 2014. The context was a book he wrote about the rights of women and girls. You'll hear him refer in this clip to the horror he saw at the time of parents in China and some other places killing baby girls or aborting female fetuses because they prefer to have boys. The question I ask here is broader about the history of the world. As you'll hear, this begins with my question, then President Carter's response.

October 1st this year will be your 90th birthday. Considering the seriousness of the problems you document in your new book, do you think humanity has made real progress during your lifetime toward becoming a race of just and merciful beings or are we simply who we are, no more compassionate, no less warlike because that's human nature?

Former US President Jimmy Carter: I think there are more wars going on now, either bilateral wars or ones quite often initiated from America than they were before the United Nations was formed. I also think that the selective abortion of girls has resulted in a much more wide death rate among little girls than it was, say, 50 years ago. In some areas, we're making progress. Obviously, more equality of treatment, but I don't think that the world in general has improved itself on the treatment of girls and women.

Brian Lehrer: Former President Jimmy Carter, his new book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power. That was a clip from our 2014 interview with Jimmy Carter. Professor Zelizer, any thoughts on that clip or do you have any thoughts about progress or entrenchment, having written not only a Carter biography but also your book that's a history of the US, 1974 to the present?

Professor Julian Zelizer: Yes. Look, during his presidency, Carter elevated the question of human rights and made it a central part of foreign policy. During his post-presidency, both human rights, diplomacy, the avoidance of abuses of these rights remained central to what he was doing overseas as well as the promotion of democracy, but it's hard not to look back and do it from the perspective of our current times and see that we've made some progress. In other areas, we seem to be backsliding.

In some areas, we seem to be exactly where we were in 1977 and 1978. I think, look, for some, it leads them to be disillusioned with the potential for progress, but what is inspiring to many about Jimmy Carter was that that was not his response. He kept fighting. He has kept fighting to this day for those principles that he became animated about while he was serving in the Oval Office. I don't think anyone's going to conclude we've solved the problems that he and others have raised, but the question is, what do we take from him and his efforts in the post-presidency?

Brian Lehrer: Steve in West Orange, you're on WNYC. Hi, Steve.

Steve: Good morning. Thanks for taking the call, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Steve: In about 1979, I was producing jazz for NPR and we got invited to cover the White House jazz festival. We had one big remote truck, too big to get through the White House gates. We cleaned all the stems and seeds out of my Volkswagen van one weekend. We loaded all the gear in and set up a table about 20 yards away from the stage. First, they set out the first blanket. It was an ivory blanket that the President and Mrs. Carter could sit on. Then the President came out after greeting everyone and the concert began. It was an amazing concert. Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie-- Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I'm listening.

Steve: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Steve: Okay, yes. Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie and Marian McPartland and Charlie Mingus. In fact, they played Salt Peanuts when they got on stage, and then they brought the microphone over to the president's blanket and he said, "Salt peanuts, salt peanuts," which is the response to that song. It was an amazing thing to watch.

Brian Lehrer: He knew that Dizzy Gillespie song?

Steve: Yes, he knew that Dizzy Gillespie-- he was a real jazz fan. I think that was why they had the White House festival. George Wein brought out the cream of the living jazz artist to create this event for sure. Rosalynn and Jimmy were just digging it completely. When Cecil Taylor got up and played this furious modern piano solo at the end, he just got off stage really quickly and went around back behind the stage. Jimmy Carter got up from the first blanket and sprinted backstage to hug him and let him know how much he appreciated that performance. It was just a remarkable thing to see.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, so he sang Salt Peanuts and he appreciated the more avant-garde playing of Cecil Taylor. That's a photo I would love to have a copy of, right? Jimmy Carter hugging Cecil Taylor, if anybody snapped that. Thank you, Steve. Professor Zelizer, when you were disconnected for a minute a little bit ago, another caller mentioned that Carter was actually related to the Motown producer, Berry Gordy. Do you know that to be true?

Professor Julian Zelizer: I didn't know that story. I heard it right before I was cut off. That's interesting, but the other part of these stories from the last two callers is he was also very connected to rock and roll. In his campaigns in '76, he was often bringing in rock and roll stars, who were very countercultural at the time. The Allman Brothers played a fundraiser for him.

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Professor Julian Zelizer: Yes. Chuck Leavell, who was one of the members, really thought that Carter, he said, would bring integrity and dignity to the office. Carter would spend time with Willie Nelson in the Oval Office. It was aligned with what we discussed earlier, the way he wore a cardigan sweater or he did away with Hail to the Chief for a while.

It was part of his effort to show that the presidency could look different. It could be cooler, that he could connect with the kind of cultural symbols of the era who were arguing that America had to move in a better and different direction than it had been. This whole world of him and musicians is absolutely fascinating and there's great images also with Johnny Cash and others that you could find online.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes left with Julian Zelizer, Princeton historian, biographer of Jimmy Carter, among other books that he's written on this Presidents' Day, and with the news that Jimmy Carter at age 98 has entered hospice care. Let me pull out the lens a little bit to an even longer view because your book about Lyndon Johnson and the battle for the Great Society social programs, one thing about the arc from LBJ to Carter, four presidents in a row, and really going back to Kennedy, did not complete two terms in office. Kennedy was assassinated, LBJ was too unpopular to run for reelection, Nixon had to resign, and Carter lost his bid for a second term. Does anything tie all that together or is it a series of coincidences?

Professor Julian Zelizer: Obviously, some of it is coincidence. Obviously, President Kennedy was assassinated, but it is an era, I think, where we talk about growing distrust in government, some of the instability and questions that arose about the nature and future of American democracy and what it was about. Here you have this period where you don't have this long-term, two-term presidential stability. You could throw in Gerald Ford, who also is a Band-Aid president in some ways replacing Nixon, but then losing to Carter in 1976.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I didn't even include Ford on that list and he never got elected.

Professor Julian Zelizer: No, right. It's not all planned out, but I do think it is very much part of this era in the 1970s where we started to look again and to question how we relate to power and how we relate to those who had power. Nothing is more important to that than where the presidency stands. Carter tried to offer a new model in the end. There'll be debates for a long time of how much he succeeded and how much he failed.

Brian Lehrer: LBJ won almost every state in '64. Major landslide. Nixon won almost every state in '72. That's the era just before your book on our growing tribalism called Fault Lines. How is it even possible for the electorate to swing so heavily so fast? I don't know that that could happen today.

Professor Julian Zelizer: I don't want to say it can't happen, but it's very unlikely it will happen. Really, since 1984, we haven't had elections like that. It was a much more dynamic electorate. Both political parties were deeply split in the time that Carter and LBJ were in the White House. It was still possible to move people using our current color code from red to blue and vice versa. You don't see that. It's changed the nature of elections.

Presidents and opponents don't go for landslides anymore. They're really focused on narrow slivers of the electorate. Can you move them over and add them to the parts of the country you already have almost regardless of what you do? It's changed the dynamics of politics. It's also made it harder for presidents to be loved by a large part of the populace. I think they're settling in to just having some part of the population enjoy what they're doing in the Oval Office.

Brian Lehrer: Sure enough, with our amazing listeners, two people have already tweeted a picture of Jimmy Carter and Cecil Taylor. One of them says, "Not hugging, but here they are together," possibly at that event that the earlier caller was referring to. Another listener tweets, "Carter's Berry Gordy cousinhood is covered in Jonathan Alter's book, His Very Best. Before you go, Professor Zelizer, one current presidential race question if I can. Here's a clip of Nikki Haley from her first campaign speech last week, making what, to my ear, I watched that whole speech, I think, were her only two specific policy proposals.

Nikki Haley: In the America I see, the permanent politician will finally retire. We'll have term limits for Congress and mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.

Brian Lehrer: Mandatory mental competency test for politicians over 75 years old. Professor Zelizer, in a country where senior citizens vote at higher rates-- and maybe you heard the Eric Adams clip when he was running for mayor of New York and a lot of young progressives were against him and tweeted a lot against him. He said, "You don't get elected by people on social media. You get elected by people on social security." Considering that reality, how do you think that's going to go over, what Nikki Haley just said there, the potential backlash against it as ageist?

Professor Julian Zelizer: It's probably not good to start your campaign by taking a swipe at big parts of the electorate. The older electorate is important to both parties. It's a little surprising. It obviously comes from a line of attack from the Republicans that we've heard really since President Trump at the time in 2020 used it to attack his ability, his capacity.

I'm not sure it's a politically smart move. I think many would argue if we're going to start doing that kind of test, there's no reason 75 should be the age. Many younger people, we have questions about where they are. I think it's not the best look. I think she has a million other issues she can focus on than this line of attack, which comes directly out of Trump's playbook.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe for a future segment, a couple of listeners mentioning the solar panels that he installed on the White House roof that Ronald Reagan ripped out. Maybe a future climate segment of the week here on The Brian Lehrer Show that we'll address Jimmy Carter again, but we end this conversation here. Political historian Julian Zelizer, who wrote a biography of Carter simply called Jimmy Carter.

Among other books he has written or edited, including Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, and Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974. He's a CNN political analyst and a Princeton professor. We always appreciate when you come on and we always learn so much when you come on, Professor Zelizer. Thanks again.

Professor Julian Zelizer: Thanks for having me.

 

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