Carter Never Took to Washington. The Feeling Was Mutual.

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Posted on 01/08/2025 1:15:22 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

Jimmy Carter was a genuine Washington outsider when he won the White House in 1976. And he remained proudly so, for better or worse.

Former President Jimmy Carter is set to arrive in Washington on Tuesday to be honored in death as the city never truly honored him in life. That he will end his long story with a pomp-and-circumstance visit to the nation’s capital is a nod to protocol not partiality, a testament to the rituals of the American presidency rather than a testimonial to the time he presided in the citadel of power.

To put it more bluntly, Mr. Carter and Washington did not exactly get along. More than any president in generations before him, the peanut farmer from Georgia was a genuine outsider when he took occupancy of the white mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — and determinedly, stubbornly, proudly remained so.

He never cared for the culture of the capital, never catered to its mandarins and doyens, never bowed to its conventions. The city, in turn, never cared for him and his “Georgian mafia,” dismissing them as a bunch of cocky rednecks from the hinterlands who did not know what they were doing. Other outsider presidents eventually acclimated to Washington. Not Mr. Carter. And by his own admission, it would cost him.

“I don’t know which was worse — the Carter crowd’s distrust and dislike of unofficial Washington or Washington’s contempt for the new guys in town from Georgia,” recalled Gregory B. Craig, a longtime lawyer and fixture in Washington who served in two other Democratic administrations. “I do know it was there on Day 1.” Between the two camps, the blend of piety, pettiness, jealousy and condescension proved toxic. It was not partisan — Mr. Carter’s most profound differences were with fellow Democrats...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...

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