Features
Biden the Gracious pays respects to cast-aside Carter
I was most taken up by hearing on BBC World News that President Biden and his wife had visited the Carters in the southern State of Georgia at the end of the first-hundred-days in the presidency. Having a son in Atlanta, I asked him whether their Georgia visit was to Atlanta. He said yes and added they visited Plains where the Carters live. He did more – sending press clippings and pictures.
Knowing I admired Jimmy Carter very much for the person he is and his hands-on service to Habitat for Humanity and I had spent hours in the Carter Centre, Atlanta, this young man took me several years ago to Plains and we attended Sunday School conducted by the ex-President.
The Bidens’ selection of Georgia to mark the end of the presidency’s first 100 days may have been prompted by the gesture of remembering and gratitude; thus admirable. Within this short period of days, Presidency Biden has almost turned the US around, arresting its Trumpist decline. Reasons: he is a Good Man, dedicated to the people of his country, humane, and he selected the most competent to head various government agencies, many from different ethnicities ranging from Black to Asian Americans and the indigenous American.
The Carters
Jimmy Carter is 96 and Rosalyn 93, and he has undergone brain surgery. They now live permanently in the house they built for themselves in Plains, close to his family home which is preserved and open to sightseerers. They used to divide the time left from going around the globe helping to build houses for the poor, between their home in the Carter Center, Atlanta, and the simple house they built in Plains, the furniture of which was made mostly by Jimmy Carter. He came from peanut farming and was dubbed a dark horse in his presidential bid, since many did not know him though he had served as Senator and Gov of Georgia.
I intend quoting from an article by Opinion Columnist Maureen Dowd, a firm favourite writer of mine.
Facts plus bits of gossip as Dowd states them
Maureen Dowd starts her piece thus: “Joe Biden has respect for his elders. And there aren’t that many of them. Before the president’s rally near Atlanta on Thursday, he and Jill went out of their way to pay respects to the 96-year-old Jimmy Carter. This made Biden the first president to make a pilgrimage to Plains since Carter left office, unless you count Yasir Arafat. If there’s a pol who knows what it feels like to be underappreciated by his own party, it’s Biden. And he wasn’t going to continue to let Carter, at the end of his life, be treated like a pariah in peanutville.” That says so much
Carter has long nursed hurt feelings about how he was slighted by his Democratic successors. Commentator Jonathan Alter in his book ‘His very best: Jimmy Carter, a life’ says those who came after him made the mistake of not using Carter’s “immense intelligence and experience of the world.” One example of disrespect and near insult was Bill Clinton on losing re-election as Gov of Arkansas blaming it on President Carter for sending thousands of Cuban refugees to Arkansas.
“When Clinton became president, he treated Carter like the plague, not wanting to be tarred with the failures of another Southern Democratic governor.” Carter did not take the insult lying down. He publicly faulted the Clintons for sending their daughter Chelsea to a fancy private school while his daughter Amy attended a public school. Pettiness existed: in their 1993 inaugural ball, the Clintons gave them bad seats. Dowd adds: “When I interviewed Carter, he told me that he and Rosalyn voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary.”
Surprisingly, a First Couple we admire – the Obamas – had not much rapport with Jimmy Carter. In fact a legitimate grouse was that when Michele Obama had a First Ladies’ lunch to discuss mental health, which had been a major concern of Rosalyn’s, she was not invited. Obama resented parallels being drawn between him and Carter. “It was important to Obama to be seen as cool, and he was unhappy when the press began comparing him to Carter three years into the Obama presidency, echoing the words ineffectual and self-righteous.”
In contrast Biden
“Biden was the first senator to endorse Carter’s presidential bid in 1976 when he was a long shot. A former Biden aide says, ‘Those guys love each other.’ ‘Some of my colleagues in the Senate thought it was youthful exuberance,’ Biden recalled in a new documentary, Carterland. ‘Well, I was exuberant. But as I said then, Jimmy’s not just a bright smile. He can win, and he can appeal to more segments of the population than any other person.” He also was keen to have the Carters at his convention, but they could not travel, instead sent a recording.
Jonathan Alter writes: “Any president who puts solar panels on the White House — taken down by Reagan — is going to be seen in a better light now.”
Maureen Dowd ends her article thus: “Reports of the Plains summit were positive. Biden, naturally, did most of the talking. And Carter did most of the basking. ‘He gained five years of life,’ enthused a Carter friend.’”
The Guardian reports that a new film rejects the popular narrative that Prez Carter was ineffectual and recasts him as a very prescient thinker who was concerned about climate change and what needs to be done, long before others thought of it.
On home turf
How has it been in Sri Lanka? Our past Prime Ministers and Presidents, if they lived in retirement, got the same off hand treatment of not being remembered, leave aside being revered. And why? For fear those who acknowledged them and hobnobbed with them would be marked adversely. When a VVIP loses an election all those who flocked around the person singing
hosannas and licking boots and slippers, slip away and avoid the fallen politico. Hasn’t Chandrika suffered thus, even her presidency of the party her father created and mother nurtured being grabbed off her hands? Just as we as a nation are notorious for our short memories, our leaders (present and past) are time servers, and VVIPs who fade into the sunset due to age, retirement or losing elections, are just thrust aside and not only forgotten but avoided.
One stark example. How many political VIPs visited JRJ when he retired? Maybe his nephew Ranil W did but… A niece of mine took her 11-year old son to the Jayewardene Centre down Dharmapala Mavata to reinforce his recent history know-how. The young chappie said: “How I would like to meet this President.” My niece brushed this aside as impossible but the curator heard him and said that JRJ would appreciate a visit. JRJ was telephoned and was delighted to invite mother and son to Braemar that afternoon. He spoke to the young boy at length with Mrs JRJ graciously serving cucumber sandwiches and a fruit drink. The all powerful ex Prez was sure lonely.
How many big wigs visited D B Wijetunge, Prez for a short while who graciously left the presidential abode no sooner CBK won the election? He, simple sincere man that he was, would surely have preferred being left alone, inviting his old cronies to his home in Pilimitalawa.
Another example of dinun paththeta hoiya and neglect of those out of power was witnessed by me. A near family funeral in the outskirts of Galle had my sister and brother–in-law taking me along. While there with several others present, W Dahanayake walked in. He paid his respects to the dead and sat down in the verandah – alone – after the mourners spoke to him. There were several administrative types and ‘gentlemen’ present but no one dared go speak with him. Why? He was out of power and the government was SLFP. My b-i-l who was still in government service and had served under Dahanayake when he was Home Minister, sat beside him. My sister, sensitive to political winds, later surmised it may have negative results. Back came her husband’s reply. What nonsense! I do not care if I am blacklisted. Dahanayake was an excellent Minister; he helped our poor upcountry provinces with his Kandyan Peasantry Commission and I appreciated his honesty and commitment. He was a just PM though maligned and now forgotten.
The Buddha laid great stress on gratitude, equating it to the four Brahma viharas of metta, karuna, muditha and upekka. I strongly feel we in Sri Lanka, us Sinhalese, lack this quality and is thrown overboard by the powerful as not conducive to their power; no gain in taking time to visit a past leader.
A 10-year old monk teaching younger monks is reported to have taught them to concentrate on breathing. The monk said: “Inhale the beauty, exhale with gratitude.”