Carter: Still a model for candidates asking 'Why not me?'

|

February 26th, 2023

U.S. President Jimmy Carter, center left, takes the oath of office as the 39th president of the United States, administered by Chief Justice of the United States Warren E. Burger, right, at the east portico of the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 1977. Carter announced his campaign for the presidency in December 1974. At that point he had never met an American president. He later said part of what nudged him into the race was meeting several candidates ahead of the 1972 campaign and concluding that he was talented as they were. (AP Photo, File)

As the 2024 campaign season begins, political players are looking in the mirror and deciding whether they see an American president staring back.

It was no different for Jimmy Carter in the early 1970s. And it took meeting several presidential candidates and then encouragement from an esteemed elder statesman before the young governor of Georgia, who had never met a president himself, saw himself as something bigger.

He announced his White House bid on Dec. 12, 1974, amid fallout from the Vietnam War and President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Then he leveraged his unknown — and politically untainted — status to become the 39th president. That whirlwind path has been a model, explicit and otherwise, for would-be contenders ever since.

Related

Top Stories