By Dr. Mallory Williams, MD
Guest Column
Think back to the 1976 Presidential Election. Jimmy Carter, governor of Georgia, beat President Gerald Ford who would later become a dear friend. America desperately needs that type of story from its highest leaders these days.
Senator Ted Kennedy would go on to unsuccessfully challenge the incumbent president in 1980 appearing to signal the end of Camelot. That is, until Senator Kennedy took the stage of the Democratic Convention in Madison Square Garden and delivered, The Dream Shall Never Die. Some of America’s best rhetoric.
Today we now certainly know that we needed to hear those words that can only be produced by a bitter rivalry and a hard-fought election. Indeed, “…the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives…” both then and most definitely now. America needed to see a family with a daughter attending public school (just like me) while occupying the White House. We desperately need these same sensibilities now.
Thank you, President Carter, for sending your daughter to Stevens Elementary School and thus showing the American people that public school was important to you as president and good enough for the First Family.
I personally needed to know that President Carter was an honorary Morehouse Man receiving his honorary doctorate from the college in 1975 by the late Dr. Hugh M. Gloster. President Carter demonstrated that a Morehouse Man in the White House is a great thing.
The countless hours spent freeing the Iranian hostages that he never got credit for, is more of a failure of the American Press Corps than the president. We now know the truth and how politics moved to thwart his significant achievement.
We also know about the stolen debate books and all of the numerous things his future opponent’s campaign would do simply to win an election. And President Carter to paraphrase the words of Rudyard Kipling, “…never breathed a word about his loss…” America needs to see that type of grace in the Oval Office.
Post presidency, the humanitarian efforts of Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center were phenomenal from eradication of infectious disease to election monitoring, the international impact of someone who was not a head of state was certainly trailblazing. Combine this with the work of Habitat for Humanity in supplying Americans with homes, and we collectively witnessed the phenomenal work of a domestic and international hero.
America needed to see these possibilities in a former U. S. President. Other presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize but none in their post presidency years. He set the standard of a life well lived. And if his third cousin, Berry Gordy, were to write the lyrics of his life, they may read, “Give love everyday…”
Thank God for President Jimmy Carter.
Ed Note: Dr. Mallory Williams, MD, MPH, is chairman of the Department of Trauma and Burn, John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, Chicago, IL