Remembering Rosalynn Carter

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Today in Atlanta, political dignitaries from both parties will be paying tribute to former First Lady Rosalynn Carter before she is laid to rest tomorrow. Her husband, Jimmy Carter, aged 99 and in hospice care, is making the trip from their home in Plains, Georgia, more than 100 miles away. Also, current first lady, Jill Biden and all the living past first ladies, even Melania Trump, reportedly are gathering.

We'll get a few thoughts now from Jonathan Alter who has written books on presidents, including Obama and FDR, and his biography of Jimmy Carter, which came out two years ago, called His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life. Jonathan Alter is also an MSNBC political analyst and author of a Substack newsletter called Old Goats. He has a New York Times op-ed called The Formidable Rosalynn Carter. Jonathan, always good to have you on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jonathan Alter: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote that perhaps in death Mrs. Carter will finally be properly appreciated for her role as this country's premier champion of mental health. What did she do in that area?

Jonathan Alter: Well, starting when she was first lady of Georgia, she tried to end the stigma that attached to mental illness for most of American history. The mentally ill were shunted into institutions where they were treated horribly. After touring some of those in Georgia, she committed to this as a major initiative, both as first lady of Georgia and then as first lady of the United States.

The difference between this and other causes that first ladies adopt is that Rosalynn Carter, in tandem with Senator Ted Kennedy, who was her husband's arch-rival and had just challenged him for the nomination in 1980, Rosalynn Carter was the driving force behind the first major mental health legislation this country has ever seen, which her husband signed. Then, unfortunately, Ronald Reagan defunded most of it, and many of its provisions weren't resurrected until Obamacare. But this is a major accomplishment by a first lady that I think is unmatched, really, in the history of first ladies.

Brian Lehrer: You write that another area of focus for her with contemporary residents had to do with childhood vaccination laws. Don't tell RFK Jr., but what did he do, Jimmy Carter, in that area with Rosalynn's encouragement?

Jonathan Alter: Well, again, starting when she was first lady of Georgia, she and Betty Bumpers, whose husband Dale had been governor and then senator from Arkansas, they began championing this idea that children should not be allowed to enroll in school without a certificate of vaccination. This was a new idea basically in the 1970s. Rosalynn Carter was successful in getting 33 states to say that you had to get measles, mumps, rubella vaccinations, chickenpox.

This had a profound impact on the public health of the United States. Nowadays, with COVID vaccinations, these ideas are much more controversial. She actually had her initial success with Southern States, but eventually, all 50 states require these vaccinations to enter a public school and this is due to Rosalynn Carter.

Brian Lehrer: You remind us that she also pushed her husband when he was president to appoint more women and to record-breaking effect at the time. That was with respect to federal judges?

Jonathan Alter: Well, actually, all women. Jimmy Carter's presidency took the federal government from tokenism to genuine diversity. We toss that term around a lot now, but in the 1970s, there wasn't much of it and particularly in the judiciary. Initially, Carter wasn't appointing that many women and Rosalynn got involved. She pushed him very hard, and he ended up appointing five times as many women to the federal bench as all of his predecessors combined, including-

Brian Lehrer: Wow, that's a stat, five times more women to the federal bench than all other presidents in US history combined.

Jonathan Alter: Predecessors combined, and that included a woman named Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was initially appointed to the bench-

Brian Lehrer: I’ve heard of her.

Jonathan Alter: -by Jimmy Carter. He had no Supreme Court nominations. He had the bad luck of that, but he remade the federal courts when he was president.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, I have a listener who texted, "Why is everyone now saying Roslyn Carter. I thought we said, Rosalynn,” which is right, you would know.

Jonathan Alter: Rosalynn is right. She's never been called Roslyn. The only person who called her Rosie was her husband.

Brian Lehrer: Rosie, but that's still not Roslyn. Roslyn is a town in Nassau County. Rosalynn is the former first lady.

Jonathan Alter: Right, and it’s their relationship, which was one of the great partnerships in American history, and their love affair, which is one for the ages, is really quite extraordinary. A couple of years ago, my wife and I went down for their 75th wedding anniversary. At that time, I looked up and learned that there were only a thousand couples in the United States who had been married for 75 years or more.

They are in a tiny minority. They actually met 96 years ago because Rosalynn Smith was delivered in 1927 by Lillian Carter, a nurse who was Jimmy Carter's mother. She brought her, her two-and-a-half-year-old toddler around to see the new baby after she was born. They didn't start going out until he was at the Naval Academy in the 1940s, but the partnership that they forged was just extraordinarily formidable, and he relied on her as a top advisor.

Interestingly, with other administrations, when a first lady would get involved in policy, usually the cabinet and White House staff would be resentful. Rosalynn Carter was so well respected that her advice was always welcomed, especially because she had a better political head than Jimmy Carter did. She would often urge him to be more politically shrewd. Often, he took her advice and on other occasions, I think, to his later regret, he did not.

Brian Lehrer: On the politics, you recall in your op-ed, one of Rosalynn's contributions to Jimmy winning the Democratic nomination for president in 1976 when he was elected, she spent an astonishing 75 days in Florida, you say, before the Democratic primary that year. Why Florida, and what was her role?

Jonathan Alter: Well, Florida in 1976 turned out to be a pivotal primary because George Wallace, the old segregationist, was a candidate for president again in '76, even though he had been wounded in an assassination attempt four years earlier. There was still a pretty big racist wing of the Democratic Party, a segregationist wing.

Carter understood that winning Iowa and New Hampshire, even though he was coming from 0% in the polls in one of the great out-of-nowhere campaigns in US history, that that wouldn't be enough, that he would need to knock Wallace out in order to remake the Democratic Party and have a new South represented in politics.

Rosalynn would go from Plains, which is not too far from the Florida border, starting a year and a half before the primary, and just going there over and over again. She was a charming campaigner. Initially, she was shy and couldn't campaign without vomiting when he was first running for office in the 1960s but she turned into a first-rate campaigner who impressed everybody and by all accounts made a major contribution to his victory in that primary.

That was historic not just because it set him on the path to be the nominee and eventually the president. It ended the racist wing of the Democratic Party. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, we only have one political party that sends coded messages, dog whistles, to racists in an effort to achieve their support.

Brian Lehrer: Rosalynn Carter's tribute service is being held in Atlanta today. She'll be buried tomorrow. Jonathan Alter is the author of presidential biographies, including the one called His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life. Jonathan is an MSNBC contributor and author of the Substack newsletter, Old Goats. Jonathan, you are the perfect person to have today. Thank you very much.

Jonathan Alter: Thanks, Brian.

 

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