Among my earliest political memories are Nixon’s demise, Ford’s succession, and Carter’s victory. Though my parents did not vote for the Georgia governor in 1976, they made it clear that we were to show him our highest respect as the leader of our nation. It didn’t hurt that we were riding high from the bicentennial celebrations that instilled great pride in our American citizenship. I was glued to the television as the newly inaugurated president, his lovely wife, and a giddy daughter walked down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House on Jan. 20, 1977. Our candidate from California didn’t even make it past the Republican primary, though it was a thrill to cast my vote for him in the 1980 mock election at Elmwood Elementary School.
What transpired during the four intervening years was highly unnerving, even for a boy of less than ten: unwieldy inflation, crippling energy supply, and an interminable hostage crisis left scars on a Chicago kid deeply interested in politics. But through it all, I felt sympathy for President Carter, a man of faith and integrity whose character I admired and whose desire to serve the country I could only take as genuine. Young and naïve, I was unaware of the bullying and backbiting going on in the nation’s capital, but in the public eye a sense of respect and decorum reigned, the likes of which we may never see again. We may also never see a campaign quite like that launched at the National Press Club on Dec. 12, 1974. Carter did it the old-fashioned way, pounding the pavement and handing out fliers personally to gain name recognition.
I recently moved my family to the Peach State, and I can already see that some things haven’t changed. People still gather in bars to discuss politics, and the issues that concern them are more concrete than the heady ideas floating around in the New York cafés I fled. Folks there seemed entirely unconcerned about taxes, regulations, and the endless COVID briefings by Governor Cuomo that finally drove me and my family south.
At the same time, I can’t help but wonder what the former president thought of the political zaniness that has characterized his home state over the last four years. Just this past Dec. 19, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was wholly dismissed from her prosecution of Donald Trump for election interference. Although her office intends to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court, the case thankfully appears to have lost all steam. Willis’s indictment of Trump on racketeering charges was only one of several led by local district attorneys eager to neutralize the ex-president’s presidential candidacy.
Though the Georgia case was praised by the left as the strongest, it ended up the weakest. The charge primarily rested on a Jan. 2, 2021 phone call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger during which the then-president asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The word obviously referred to ballots that were allegedly missing rather than an invitation to pull new ballots out of thin air.
No matter though, because the district attorney’s already tenuous case took a turn for the worse when it was revealed that she was amorously involved with her lead prosecutor, Nathan Wade. The latter was handsomely paid $650,000 by the district attorney’s office to lead the prosecution, which left plenty of money to cover the costs of their romantic escapades. Because Willis evidently repaid Wade from a stash of cash she kept in her home, she was unable to produce a single receipt to show that a conflict of interest wasn’t created by flipping Wade’s salary to pay for their Florida cruises. (RELATED: Why GA Judge Won’t Disqualify Fani Willis)
Yet the zaniness of Georgia goes back even further. On Jan. 5, 2021, the day before the Capitol Hill demonstrations, the state concurrently held both a runoff election and a special election for its Senate seats, the outcome of which would determine the chamber’s majority party. It is highly unlikely we shall ever see such an event again.
Trump, still sore over his razor-thin defeat, showed little interest in supporting either Republican candidate. As a result, 752,000 Republican voters — whether turned off by the former president’s rhetoric or convinced the election was rigged — failed to turn out for the Jan. 5 election. Georgia thus awarded seats to two Democrats who have proven to be among the most radical in the Senate. Pundits continue to argue over what the better strategy would have been for Donald Trump, David Purdue, and Kelly Loeffler.
In any case, conservatives who skipped the early 2021 election were quick to regroup. In Georgian fashion, they gathered in pubs to discuss what had gone wrong in 2020 and to strategize their 2022 mid-term campaign. Georgians do not shy away from level-headed arguments over specific issues and candidates, regardless of how tenaciously they cling to their opinions. But the entire Congressional record of the last four years would have been entirely different had 752,000 right-learning voters gone to the polls on Jan. 5, 2021. This realization indeed brought them back to the polls in 2022, this time to force yet another run-off for a senate seat, though their candidate Herschel Walker fell short of unseating Democrat Raphael Warnock.
If there is one simple lesson emerging from both 1976 and 2021, it is that every single vote does indeed count. But the last four years have also raised a less straightforward question: Can Trump’s semi-independence from the Republican party — the very thing that got him elected in 2016 and the very thing that may prove to be most effective over the next four years — do any more damage than it already did in the 2021 special runoff election in Georgia? Probably not. Indeed, if you take the long view, you could also argue that the last four years were necessary to wake the nation up to the radical left’s agenda and usher in Trump-2.
God rest the soul of President Jimmy Carter. He was an extraordinary man. Should his mortal remains return to Plains, my family and I will be among the first to pay our respects. But, just as the nation was desperate for change in 1980, it is no less desperate for change now. Though I hope the first senator to endorse Carter in 1976 — a man who happens to occupy the White House now — also lives to be one hundred, I will be no less relieved when he exits it than I was on Jan. 20, 1981.
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