Gerald Seib: “Carter had been running a Georgia peanut farm just a few years before his improbable victory in 1976. At a time that the presidency had long been passed from one insider to another, he showed that an outsider could break through. In a sense, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump both walked in his footsteps.”
“Though the phenomenon now is associated with Republicans, Carter actually brought evangelical Christians into the political arena as an organized force. By openly presenting himself as a born-again Christian—indeed, one who continued to teach Sunday school while president—he saw a moral calculus in the decisions of governance and brought discussion of religion out of the political shadows. That won him, temporarily, the support of many Americans of similar belief.”
“It is little remembered now, but Carter, a Democrat, improbably introduced an era of deregulation of the U.S. economy. At least to some extent, he deregulated the airline, trucking and railroad industries, and lifted price controls on oil. He never quite got the benefits hoped for, but his actions marked an inflection point for the government’s relationship with the economy.”
Timothy Noah: The late former president wasn’t the liberal most people imagine.
