Rosalynn & Jimmy: Undervalued Visionaries

Now that she’s dead and gone, the requisite tributes are pouring in for former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Now they’re talking about her advocacy for the ERA. Now they’re talking about her advocacy for mental health concerns and reforms. Now they’re finally acknowledging her work as her husband’s most trusted advisor. As this voter and citizen remembers, however, Washington D.C. wasn’t very welcoming to either her or her husband.

In fact, both Rosalynn and President Jimmy Carter were subjected to almost continuous invalidations and incivilities — even before his 1977 inauguration.

But why?

Because they were both down-to-earth people from(gasp!) THE SOUTH, with stereotypical accents and personal histories to boot.

Although you might refuse to admit it, dear readers, you know what that means. It means he was stupid. And, because she was married to him, she had to be stupid, too. Even without the accents, anyone from America’s southern regions is considered braindead — or in more polite terms, clueless and uneducated.

So pervasive was this prejudice against them, that many Americans gradually grew to accept this unfair characterization of the First Couple, even when facts indicated otherwise. Before Jimmy Carter became the Governor of Georgia, and later President, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, then worked in the Navy’s nuclear submarine division. Before Rosalynn Carter became America’s First Lady and social advocate, she worked as bookkeeper for the family’s peanut plantation. You can’t be a pinhead and get assigned to nuclear sub duty. You can’t be a ditz if you’re responsible for the financial records of a major agricultural operation, either. And yet, this regional bias about Southern Stupidity followed them both to the White House and haunted them afterwards.

What kind of “stupidity” does it take to come up with FEMA, and then get involved with Habitat for Humanity and The Carter Center? If you can come up with the answer, let me know. Meanwhile, I’ll be praying for more “stupid” people like them to save the planet.

Unfortunately, this kind of prejudice was thriving in the 20th Century, and is still around in the 21st. When you’re from the South, and you don’t have a lot of old money, you’re fair game. You’re an easy political target for smearing.

Jimmy Carter was a farmer — a PEANUT farmer, of all things — who grew up in a home without any electricity or running water.(And probably with an outhouse in lieu of an actual bathroom.) That was the image the D.C. elite, especially the GOP machine, continued to use in their denigrating PR campaigns, anyway. They had a field day slamming his mother Miss Lillian and brother Billy, too. Then, in case Americans weren’t nurturing enough bias against him, they started ridiculing and weaponizing his teeth against him!

Back in the 70’s, it was remarkable to be in your 50’s like him and still have your own real teeth, bright white AND cavity-free. But these detractors got his smile plastered on all kinds of novelty items. His teeth showed up on everything from peanut salt n’ pepper shakers to cuddly peanut pillows to toothy Halloween masks. And yet, Potus 39 was classy enough to dismiss it as part of the political territory — and not paranoid enough like Trump to declare how everyone “was out to get him” or was plotting some kind of Witch Hunt with complimentary peanuts.

Rosalynn shared a similar kind of dignified acceptance and laser-like focus on her own work as First Lady and unpaid advisor to her husband.

Anecdotal information and other records also suggest she really was a gracious and intelligent woman. But this unkind bias that still surrounds anyone from the South has eclipsed her reality.

She was the first First Lady to have her own office in the East Wing. Thanks in large part to her efforts, Congress officially realized the office of First Lady as a “federal position” so that funds could be available for her own staff.

She was also the second First Lady to testify before Congress. (Eleanor Roosevelt was the first.) People might remember Hillary Clinton testifying about affordable healthcare, but they often forget that Rosalynn Carter testified about the importance of treating and helping people with mental illness. She persevered, despite the lack of interest Congress showed for this issue. Although the The Mental Health Systems Act she advocated eventually did pass, Reagan et.al. killed it. Finally in 2008, her efforts to have health insurance cover the costs of mental illness treatments became law. That she was willing to keep fighting for this one change for so long remains a real testament to her tenacity.

Although her highest level of education achieved came from a junior college, she flourished as a lifelong learner. She performed wifely duties like sewing her own clothes, raising their three sons while her husband was at sea, then giving birth to daughter Amy when she was 40. But she also had an acute political mind that served Jimmy Carter well as adviser, envoy, and fellow humanitarian. In fact, President Carter sent her on an extensive trip to Latin America in 1977 that was part diplomatic, part fact-finding, and all reaffirmation of America’s relations with 7 countries. She not only filed reports after each day’s discussion, she was also able to speak to leaders in Spanish(she learned Spanish after intensive language study). So she wasn’t just a kind ear or sounding board for her husband, she was an equal partner who never considered herself a feminist.

You could even say that without her, there never would have been a President Jimmy Carter.

I’m sorry Jimmy Carter lost his soulmate but even sorrier that so many Americans believed the unfair, unjust images that political propaganda created and provincial bias upheld. Sometimes detractors can create more damage by ignoring the good things people achieve than by publicly deriding their targets with lies. Case in point? Although The Carter Center that Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter created provided millions of water filters and preventative education to Africans and helped reduce Guinea Worm Disease there by more that 99.99 %, their achievement either got ignored or downplayed.

According to The Carter Center’s website:

“The Carter Center leads the international campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease, meaning the disease will no longer exist. Guinea worm disease is poised to become the second human disease in history to be eradicated, following Smallpox.”

Too bad such accomplishments by Rosalynn and her husband have been diminished, then almost forgotten, by so many.