How The Democrats Gradually Lost Dixie, Part 2: How Jimmy Carter's Successful Run For The White House Seemed Mostly to Annoy So Much Of The Establishment And His Own Party

 

In the opening pages of Jules Witcover's Marathon the first of a series of books he would write about Presidential campaigns starting with the 1976 election, he relates how Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter's executive secretary when he was governor, began the process in 1972 that would lead to a basically unknown candidate capturing first the Democratic nomination and then the White House. Not only does he explain how Carter could get the nomination through the primaries, he seizes on the mood of the nation after the Vietnam War (this was in December of 1972) the desire for moral leadership after Nixon, how the nation was looking for an outsider to win the office and the mood of the country.

Considering how unlikely this strategy for success was, you'd think Witcover would have impress. Yet he seems more interested in how unsmiling Carter was when he talked to him as a reporter about his resume and how he kept repeating his qualifications.

And that sets the tone for how Witcover will deal with Carter throughout the book. Carter's remarkable climb through the primaries for a virtual unknown ("Jimmy Who?" was one headline when he announced for the White House) is if anything the most remarkable accomplishment anyone had achieved obtaining the White House to that point in history. Yet at best Witcover argues that Carter was no different from anyone else he saw on the campaign trail (except for the fact he managed to succeed where his opponents at failed) and at worse can barely hide his contempt for the man because he refuses to go into great detail on his policies whenever he's interviewed. It's this attitude that was reflection in the media at the time and much of the Democratic establishment all the way up to Carter's getting the nomination and eventually the Presidency and that would do much to plague it during his administration.

In the last year's of Carter's life many progressive and left-wing organizations went out to deify the ex-President and as if to apologize for how they'd treated him. It does not change the fact that they treated him horribly before, during and well-after his Presidency. Even though he was the only living Democratic ex-President he wasn't invited back to a Democratic Convention to speak until 2004, well after he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Even in much of the dialogue surrounding Carter, you get the feeling it has more to do with their contempt for the Republicans who came before him and after him in the twentieth century than any genuine admiration for what he accomplished. So its worth going into some detail as to why both the media and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party had so much contempt for him certainly in the leadup to the 1976 election.

Reporters have since admitted that much of their contempt towards Carter was a result of his being the first president to come into power after Watergate and that he took too much misdirected abuse. There is truth to that but it ignores the facts that the political media has, by and large, never shown any real respect for any candidate who has run for President of any party during the 20^th century. From H.L. Mencken and Westbrook Pegler to Murray Kempton and Witcover himself, their writing drips with an almost visceral disregard for all elected officials of either parties. And the few that earned their respect during this period – FDR and the Kennedys – did so mainly because they went out of their way to woo the reporters and make them feel like they were friends and on an equal footing. The fact that in both cases these men were just as devious as so many of the other politicians they tended to vilify and in their private lives were hardly virtuous and moral is something that the press and indeed future generations of writers have been more than willing to overlook. Much of this is due to the fact that both men died in office but even decades after the fact few of their contemporaries were ever willing to acknowledge that they these politicians were anything other than saints.

And the fact is, with the notable exception of Theodore White, the lion's share of political journalists have always felt that there is something undignified about any candidate who runs for elected office.  Reading so much of their work one can't escape the clear idea that they think anyone who runs for office should automatically be disqualified from it for doing so.  It's rare that someone such as Mencken will make his contempt for the average citizen as clear as he did in his writing but the tone is always clear in the bulk of it: the reporters don't have a respect for the average voter and think that those who try to earn it -  a necessity when running for the White House – are idiots themselves. 

That is part of the reason I believe that the media's post-Watergate attitude towards politics was in part a victory tour. For more than twenty years they had made it clear in no uncertain terms that Richard Nixon was everything that they hated in a politician.  His success with the electorate starting in 1968 and again in 1972 proved to them, in no uncertain terms, that the public were full of idiots who couldn't be trusted to see what was obvious. The fact that Nixon was as President everything they suspected him of – and worse – was in many ways incidental to them. As we found out in the Pentagon Papers and in many White House recordings Nixon's predecessors – including the sainted JFK – were guilty of many of abuses of power themselves when they were in the White House, even if they were not as egregious. Richard Nixon was an absolute monster to be sure but it didn't change the fact that many of his enemies were happy when he fell. Two things can be true at the same time.

The media from this point forward would take the attitude that every single politician running for office, whether Republican or Democrat, was Richard Nixon until proven otherwise. Combined with their general distrust of politicians before no one running for office was ever going to get a fair shake. And Carter violated so many other unwritten rules.

For starters because he was running in the primaries and was running from the center rather than the left he knew the only way to build a coalition was to go the voters directly. That meant working at a grass roots level that involved an effort no politician had before, particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire. Carter was running a campaign for the primary voter which is a different beast then the press.

Considering that in the previous campaign George McGovern had been lambasted for his policy ideas when they came out to the tune of a 49 state landslide and that Goldwater's campaign for the White House was basically finished when so many Americans heard what he said on the campaign trail in the primaries, Carter had clearly learned what not to do if you wanted to win the White House. Considering that in most of the previous campaigns the press had managed to excoriate candidates when they made gaffes on the campaign trail, this was also an intelligent approach. But it didn't help Carter with them as the media represented by Witcover was frustrated that Carter was being too fuzzy on the issues rather than clear. More than anything else this demonstrated how there is no way a candidate can truly win with the press.

We also see the contempt they have for how he acting on the campaign trail, particularly his decision to say: "I'll never tell a lie." In hindsight this demonstrates perhaps the biggest problem the press would have with the electorate though they never seem to show it: they think what appeals to the voter is proof there's something wrong with the people.  Considering everything Nixon had put the country through over his Presidency its understandable the average citizen wanted honesty and openness from its next president. Reading these books you get the clear sense Witcover thinks this just demonstrates that the voter is a sucker.

Another problem, particularly with the media and a wing of the party, was his evangelicalism. Even by this point both the media and the progressive wing of the party held organized religion in contempt. This didn't start with the 1980s, they'd felt this way for most of their history particularly during the Scopes Trial.  Faith was something reporters scoffed at and the intellectual wing of the party laughed at and his genuine belief contrasted with their cynicism.

But all of this may have been a cover for the real reason that certain parts of the Democratic establishment really disliked Carter. He was the governor of Georgia. And that was something that the Democrats themselves have always had an issue with.

One of the contradictions of the Democratic Party in the 20^th century was that while the bulk of its power in Congress was from the South it had not nominated Southern Democrat for President from below the Mason-Dixon line ever since James Polk was nominated in 1844. And much of this can't be blamed on Jim Crow or racism as it was not until the Passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that African-Americans finally embraced the Democrats in the massive numbers they would do to this day.

Part of it might be explained as a redundancy. Ever since Reconstruction the Republican Party had no real presence in the South, so there was no real need to nominate a Southern Democrat on either place on the ticket as would be the case from after the Civil War until 1924. As its coalition became more reliant on urban votes as it would first when Al Smith was nominated in 1928 and then increasingly after FDR's watershed victory the idea of 'balancing the ticket' became common by nominating a Southerner for Vice President. With the exception of 1940 when FDR more or less forced Henry Wallace of Iowa on the Democrats the party would nominate a Southerner as Vice President every election cycle between 1928 and 1960.

As African-Americans in the North became more important in the Democratic coalition the party bosses would be concerned as to how deep in the south to go. Jim Byrnes was passed over in 1944 in large part because his segregationist beliefs made the bosses skittish that he would lose 'the Negro vote'. That Harry Truman was from Missouri seemed less dangerous.  And there were some indications this balance did hurt the party. When Adlai Stevenson chose Alabama's John Sparkman as Vice President, his presence may very well have been responsible for Republicans making gains in the black vote that they hadn't had since Reconstruction. It's worth noting that both Truman and LBJ were judged as much for being Southern Democrats as how the ascended to power.

But as race increasingly became an issue for the Democrats the 'electability' factor very well may have hurt some very skilled senators and legislators a chance at higher office. Senators like Georgia's Richard Russell a were non-starters with party leadership and Tennessee's Estes Kefauver's appeal with primary voters in 1952 and 1956 was not enough to win him the nomination either year (despite his relatively moderate stance on the issue). It didn't help that the Civil Rights movement coincided with televisions entering every living room in America and Americans had every reason (in most cases, accurately) that the average Southern leader was Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Jim Byrnes (when he became governor of South Carolina) and of course George Wallace. Indeed it was Wallace's very presence in the Democratic field that terrified the party at large – and led to two young Democrats from Florida making a decision that may have changed the narrative of 1976 completely.

In the summer of 1975 Mike Abrams and Sergio Bendixen, two young Floridians in their twenties who were veterans of McGovern's campaign paid visits to prominent liberals who had already announced for the Democratic nomination. Mo Udall of Arizona, Birch Bayh of Indiana, Fred Harris and Henry Jackson of Washington. All of them were drawn to the liberal wing of the party and they made a request to all of these Democrats not to participate in the Florida Democratic primary. Stay out of Florida and leave it to a one-on-one showdown between Wallace and Carter.

It was built on two requests. First Wallace had to be stopped for the future of the Democratic party because of his reputation. And second Carter was harmless. He had no shot at the president as one of Udall's aides put it: "We saw him as some obscure governor from an obscure state, not to be taken seriously."

Carter, it's worth noting, had a far greater realization that after the attempt on Wallace's life he was no longer the force he had been four years ago. He was the first candidate of either party to compete in every primary or caucus with the solid realization that by doing well in all of them, he would get delegate even if he performed poorly. This was thought of as crazy by the establishment (it seems to have annoyed Witcover that it worked)

By the spring of 1976 Carter had done well in the early caucus states and won the New Hampshire primary and had been so busy at the grass roots level that none of the liberal candidates had a chance to catch him. However one week before the Florida primary he finished a very weak fourth with 13 percent to Henry Jackson in Massachusetts. Had Carter lost in Florida his campaign almost certainly would have been crushed. In that decision of Udall (Jackson had decided to run in Florida) changed the game as Carter beat Wallace with 34 percent of the vote to Wallace's 30 percent. Wallace had been defanged but Carter was now the frontrunner.

Carter would run one of the most effective grass roots campaigns in Iowa where he modeled his basic strategy. One of the main parts of his stump speech was to argue the nation's decency had been only 'temporarily obscured by the debasing's perpetuated by Nixon. I want a government that is as good, and honest, and decent, and truthful, and fair, and competent, and idealistic, and compassionate, and as filled with love as the American people." The press looked down on the simplicity he projected or suspected it was a fraud. The fact that Carter was willing to spend time and energy talking in depth with real life voters was a contrast to his predecessors Nixon and LBJ. But none of this resonated with the media who as always thought Carter should have spent his time talking to them,

What annoyed the left was that unlike McGovern and the majority of primary voters Carter spent more time "being all things to all people," as his aide Bert Lance would say.

He covered the whole spectrum of political philosophy and feeling and emotion. And he covered it well because he fragmented himself. Fiscally he was conservative. On people issues he was liberal. He was liberal in terms of the needs of the needy who are dependent on the government. On social issues, the broad spectrum, he was probably moderate.

What the liberal wing of the party was unwilling to accept was that the last decade had changed how Americans viewed Washington. Carter was successful because he campaign as an outsider and this was true of the overwhelming number of candidates who performed well in both parties primaries. Wallace did well in some Southern states while Jerry Brown, referred to as 'Moonbeam' did well in the late ones. Reagan campaigned not so much against Ford as 'the Washington buddy system' in the Republican primaries. Overall the majority of the winners in both parties were members of the center or right of the party as Henry Jackson, more of a centrist would win Massachusetts and New York. Only Frank Church, a Democratic senator from Idaho was the only outright liberal to do well in the late primaries.

The liberal wing didn't trust Carter because he was a southerner and because he had been vague on issues important to them. That this was by design because it was the only way he could win the nomination never did anything to satisfy them. That he had managed to win the nomination without the help of the major powers in the Democratic party bothered them even more.

And the press seemed determined to prove that Carter was deceptive. One of his speechwriters said an average day with the traveling press corps as a 'movable madhouse. After every stop, the reporters played their tapes over and over, furiously seeking some inconsistency. Carter could have delivered the Sermon on the Mount and no one would have cared unless it contradicted what he said the day before." Carter himself would bring some of this himself as he held the media in contempt for seeking to nail him down on answers to complicated questions he thought he should have time to think through.

To be sure there was a mean streak to Carter that was apparent throughout the primary campaign that was a contrast to the humble persona he showed on the stump. He could be self-righteous, and unpleasant to both the press and the liberal establishment, opening saying he was glad he didn't have to depend on Kennedy or Humphrey or 'people like that to put me in office'. And he could be just as personal in the fall campaign against Ford, particularly his Rose Garden approach to campaign (ironic considering future events) and associating him in the same breath as Richard Nixon, which was truly unfair.

It's important to consider Carter's victory in 1976 in a certain context. Four years earlier Richard Nixon had won 60 percent of the popular vote and 520 electoral votes to McGovern's 17. Just four years later Carter would win the Presidency with 297 electoral votes and 50.1 percent of the popular vote.  This was nearly as staggering a reversal of fortunes for the incumbent party as had happened in 1968 after LBJ's landslide over Goldwater in 1964.

The victory was significant in many other ways. With the sole exception of Virginia Carter was the first Democrat to carry the entire South since FDR in 1944. He had carried Georgia, Louisiana and Arkansas, states that had not gone Democratic since 1960 and Alabama and Mississippi, which had not gone Democrat since 1956 (Harry Byrd's segregation campaign had taken both states for his coalition) These were significant achievements which should have proven that the South could become safely Democratic as Well as the fact it didn't effect northern votes. (He was also the last Democrat to date to carry Texas.)

But the media and the Democratic party seemed more concerned with what Carter hadn't accomplished. For one thing this was the smallest margin of victory any winning candidate had in the electoral college since 1916. It also had the lowest voter turnout in 28 years with 54 percent of the vote. More to the point when the official campaign season began Carter had led by fifteen points over Ford and at one point as much 18. In the minds of many political journalists Carter hadn't so much won the Presidential election as that he had made fewer prominent blunders than Ford, most significantly Ford's statement in the second Presidential debate that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration."

More troublingly Carter had no real coattails. That was hard to blame considering the massive numbers Democrats had in both Houses of Congress. They already had 291 seats in the House and its hard to imagine them winning even more. (They only gained 1.) Furthermore the GOP managed to win a seat in the Senate, despite the Democrats still having an overwhelming majority of 61 seats.

In large part this was because many incumbents in both parties lost though again this didn't happen in the South. Harry Byrd switched his leanings to Independent to win reelection (there were still no Republicans running against him) and Robert Byrd and John Stennis  ran unopposed. Paul Sarbanes would defeat the incumbent Republican Glenn Beall in Maryland. Lawton Chiles won reelection in Florida. Democrat Jim Sasser defeated Republican Bill Brock in Tennessee. However Stuart Symington retired and Republican John Danforth won in Missouri.

As a result of that, even though Carter had the kinds of majorities in both houses of Congress that today's Democrats would kill for, the establishment still thought he had squandered his potential for something bigger and chose to ignore what he had accomplished in his win. Most of the Democratic establishment seemed to less interested in what his agenda was then waiting for him to fail when he did take office. It was not an auspicious beginning.

In the next article I will deal with the realities of 1970s America, how they conflicted with what was becoming liberal doctrine and how Carter's administration disappointed them even as he achieved a remarkable amount of success.