Presidential historian Jon Meacham claimed Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that former President Jimmy Carter cared about politicians’ character while most voters do not.
Meacham said, “The way I think about President Carter is he’s a complicated man, driven by, like all people in the public arena, driven by different elements of ambition and service. When you look at most American presidents, most of our key leaders in the arena, you have this tension.”
He continued, “You have someone who believed in the capacity of human nature to make our lives, the lives of the less fortunate better, stronger, even nobler, but you also have someone who recognized the limitations of human endeavor.”
Meacham added, “So what I think we are examining, what we’re going to experience this week is something that often happens in American life, which is great public commemorations, great public contemplations often tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the person being contemplated and commemorated. What you’re seeing, I think, with the passing of Jimmy Carter is a sad, but illuminating, sad, but illuminating instance of someone who, while imperfect believed in the centrality of character, the centrality of abiding creed at a moment in American politics where character is not at the forefront of most voters’ minds.”
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