Reflecting on Jimmy Carter's Legacy

In a Sunday, Aug. 23, 2015 file photo, former President Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School class at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown, in Plains, Ga.

Jimmy Carter entered hospice care over a year ago, and just recently his grandson said he thinks the former president is "coming to the end." Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, CNN political analyst and contributor to NPR’s Here and Now, reflects on the 39th president's legacy in this presidential election year, plus shares more political analysis on the presidential election.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, Julian Zelizer, Princeton History professor, CNN political analyst, and as some of you know, a regular contributor to NPR's Here & Now. We'll talk to Professor Zelizer about a few things. His recent commentaries on why Biden is eager to debate Trump, Biden's challenge with younger voters, and why RFK Jr.'s Brain Worm actually suggests a broader, serious issue for campaigns in general, and we'll talk some about a hundred years of Jimmy Carter. Carter would turn 100 years old this October, but his grandson, Jason Carter, who runs The Carter Center there in Georgia, said last week that the former president is, "Coming to the end." Julian Zelizer wrote a biography a few years ago called Jimmy Carter. Zelizer is also the author of other books, including his most recent Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About America and earlier Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement among other books. Professor Zelizer, always good to have you on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

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

Brian Lehrer: Let me start with a little news. You wrote that Biden is eager to debate Trump, but the speculation until last week was that it might be in Biden's interest not to debate him at all. Why do you think he's eager?

Julian Zelizer: Well, I think he wants to try to reverse where a lot of the polls keep landing. If he's more present on a visible stage that debates provide, he'll be able to do that. I think the campaign is thinking about early voting. Forming impressions really matters, and that's obviously difficult with an incumbent to change how people see you, but a debate is still the best opportunity to do that. Finally, he's an incumbent facing a kind of incumbent. He doesn't control the national conversation the way incumbents often do. I think all of this has led him toward debating rather than not.

Brian Lehrer: You as a historian know that debates aren't always a given. We mentioned in our previous segment, the Kennedy-Nixon debate began the televised debate era in 1960, but then there were no televised debates again until Carter versus Ford in 1976. Do you think that helped Carter get elected? That election was very close.

Julian Zelizer: It was very close. Those were famous debates. There was one moment where President Ford has an infamous gaff where it sounded like he didn't think the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe. Look, I think the debates helped. I think Carter did relatively well, or more importantly, he stumbled President Ford at that moment. Certainly, for a candidate like Carter, who is not well known, who is trying to make himself a national figure as opposed to a Georgia politician, those debates on many levels were important.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote that Biden debated Trump in 2020 and won. I couldn't tell if you just meant he won the election of course. Although not everybody seems to, what's the word, not agree with that because It's not really an opinion, but not except reality. Did you also mean he won the debates?

Julian Zelizer: Yes, I think he did well. I think he beat expectations and he came away. If you combine it with the outcome of the election looking like a stronger politician than many people thought. I don't think that debate against someone who's very difficult to debate did him a disservice.

Brian Lehrer: Your article about Biden's challenge with young voters, conventional wisdom, is that the key to young voters is student loan forgiveness, Gaza, and climate policy. A new survey reported on by Axios and NPR did a segment yesterday on All Things Considered indicates young voters are actually more concerned about prices going up and wages being too low, and they give Trump better grades on average, on inflation accurately or not. What's your big take on young voters?

Julian Zelizer: I think all those issues are going to matter, and I see how polls rank them, but it's an emotional period for people in their early 20s and he needs their votes and they're not registering the way they want. I do think inflation matters. I think a lot of young people are generally just scared about what comes in the years that follow high school and college and prices of food, prices of rent, all of those are front and center combined with student debt. I also think all the turmoil on the campuses will also feed into the emotion. I think Biden has to figure out a way to reverse what we're seeing, a dissatisfaction with him. Even in this latest poll an excitement about the former president.

Brian Lehrer: Excitement based on what, what did you see there?

Julian Zelizer: Change, I think change. I think a lot of young voters when things are going poorly they want something different. Right now, Biden is no longer the candidate of change, and that is how Trump is at least presenting himself. Many young voters weren't voting last time around or just voted. I don't think they have a full grasp of the balance sheet in terms of the decision they're going to make.

Brian Lehrer: Implications for democracy and all of that to abstract for a lot of people.

Julian Zelizer: Some level. I do think young people care about those issues. Often they care more than old people. They see the stakes as very high. Right now, I do think still, if you're in your 20s and you have student debt and you're worried about how you're going to pay for stuff that is going to be more important than some of the concerns stemming from the Trump presidency, rightly or wrongly.

Brian Lehrer: Jimmy Carter, as he nears 100 years old and nears the end, according to his grandson the other day, he was a guest on this show several times, including in 2014 when he had written a book called A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power. I want to play one minute from that appearance. This begins with one of my questions.

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Brian Lehrer: Am I right that you and Mrs. Carter left your Christian denomination of 70 years over women's issues?

Jimmy Carter: Yes. In the year 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention deviated from its previous policy and ordained that women being inferior could not occupy the positions of pastor or deacon, or chaplain. They also even ordained it in some of the seminaries, which is the higher education level of a Southern Baptist church. That women couldn't even teach boys in a classroom.

Brian Lehrer: It's not even just that they're not coming along as fast as some other denominations, it's that even in the post-feminist era, if you will, they went the other way.

Jimmy Carter: They went the other way in the year 2000. My wife and I left the Southern Baptist Convention. We now belong to a Baptist church where I teach Bible lessons every Sunday, as a matter of fact. We've had women pastors, and my wife is a deacon. The chairman of our board of deacons the last time was a woman. We have a majority of deacons who's women. We treat men and women equally, which I believe that Jesus Christ always exemplified and promulgated as his policy.

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Brian Lehrer: Jimmy Carter here in 2014. Professor Zelizer, was that consistent with Carter as a lifelong learner, someone who is still expanding his take on human rights, even that late in his life, even after being president of the United States? Does this come up in your biography of him?

Julian Zelizer: Absolutely. In some ways it's Carter the engineer, he's thinking of problems. He's trying to understand how to solve them, and he's willing to adjust. His entire presidency in many ways was about a Democrat questioning some of the assumptions that Democrats had made for many years and himself evolving as crises happened and different challenges happened. He put human rights as a major part of his agenda, even though it really wasn't a key part of his 1976 campaign. Here the candidate, the Democrat, who in '76 ran really highlighting his religion and connecting his religion to what he wanted to do here is willing to break when the forces of religion have moved in ways that are antithetical to some of what he believes. It's very Carter that little clip.

Brian Lehrer: Carter often gets tagged as a failed president for being a one-term president and losing to Reagan in 1980, even after he started out with such goodwill because his election was the backlash to Watergate and Nixon. If that's the main media narrative when he passes, failed president, what do you think that will miss about Carter's life and presidency, in particular, having written a biography of him as you have?

Julian Zelizer: It misses how he put many issues on the table that remain central today. On domestic policy, energy conservation, and the need to deal with the way we consume things was something he fought for all four years. Even if it's a one-term presidency, his making that a serious issue, elevating it on the national stage is extraordinarily important. Then on foreign policy, the Camp David Accords still remain the most enduring agreement in this incredibly turbulent region of the Middle East. If the only metric is reelection, then just on those two issues, and there's more, you miss a lot of what he was able to do, and in some ways did, burning capital that cost him that re-election.

Brian Lehrer: Your article about the worm in RFK Jr.'s brain, to close this out. That's more than a derision or a laugh line, although I think you just chuckled when I brought it up. You see a serious issue for all candidates there. What's that?

Julian Zelizer: I do. Look, I'm a believer in transparency, including health issues, health issues that relate to how someone will govern. This has been a struggle for many, many years to try to get candidates to be more transparent about issues. It's been hard. We're doing better than we used to, but I think there's a strong argument that voters should have a full array of knowledge. Some of this is a post-Watergate way of thinking about politics, but I think here, with this revelation, it brought up that issue again. Candidates have to be more forthcoming. It's important to the electorate. Overall, I think it's better if we talk about our health, something that is a regular issue as opposed to something that has to be hit.

Brian Lehrer: Julian Zelizer wrote a biography of Jimmy Carter. Just call Jimmy Carter. He's a CNN political commentator and a professor of history at Princeton. Thanks for joining us. Always good to talk to you.

Julian Zelizer: Thanks for having me. Bye-bye.

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