A Man from Plains

The news that former President Jimmy Carter has begun end-of-life hospice care has prompted a general outpouring of sympathy from all quarters (congressional Repugnicans and Fox Noisemakers excused).

It has been a long time since I have drawn Mr. Carter in a cartoon. He didn't venture into LGBTQ+ topics during his presidency, but has offered support to our community in the years since; I am likely to find something to say about that in next week's syndicated cartoon.

In the meantime, here are some oldies from my vault.

Unpublished, Dec. 1977

This is the earliest Carter cartoon I have in my files. There were earlier ones in a folder I mislaid back in my college days which are now lost to history; I can't remember whether I ever drew Jimmy Carter for my high school newspaper. As a freshman at college in December of 1977, I drew cartoons for the student newspaper; but since we had nationally syndicated cartoons by Mike Peters, I mostly stuck to campus issues.

This old sketchbook cartoon does sum up Carter's presidential legacy, though: changing the focus of foreign policy to human rights rather than supporting any regime that claimed to oppose communism, the Carter administration was able to wrangle some successes on its own terms.

March, 1979

Neither of them came easily, but you can cite the peaceful turn-over of the Panama Canal and a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt as two of those successes. Our dealings with the U.S.S.R., Cuba, and OPEC, not so much.

in Manitou Messenger, Northfield MN, March 8, 1979

Domestically, the 1970's were not a great time to be president of the United States. Rising oil prices fueled inflation faster than wages could catch up with it. Carter named the national mood malaise, and his own popularity was not immune to it.

Carter had never been popular with organized labor, and liberals in the Democratic Party chafed at his centrist policies. Republicans, painting Carter as weak and feckless, promised a brighter future based on the a return to the morals and tax levels of days long past.

April, 1980

And then a bunch of Iranian university students occupied the American embassy in Teheran and held its staff hostage for 444 days, right up to the day Carter turned the Oval Office over to a has-been B-list actor from California.

in Manitou Messenger,  Northfield MN, Nov. 6, 1980

I drew two cartoons for the post-election issue of the campus newspaper in November, 1980: one to run if Carter won, and this one to run when he didn't. (Even as a committed Anderson supporter, I didn't see any need to draw a third cartoon.)

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers WI, March, 1982

I've posted this one often. It is commonplace for presidents these days to blame a poor economy on their predecessor; Reagan did so more than a year after Carter had returned to Plains.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., Oct. 18, 1993

If the historical assessment of Carter's presidency left something to be desired, his post-presidency has been exemplary. Instead of enjoying fame and fortune, he helped Habitat for Humanity build houses well past an age when most people are happy to let more youthful hands lay bricks and pound nails.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Sept. 12, 1997

In addition to his work with Habitat for Humanity, Carter was known for serving as an elections monitor in fledgling democracies worldwide. In 1997, he was asked to bring this work with the Carter Center back home. Courts threw out the Teamsters' reelection of their union president the previous year due to ballot rigging and other irregularities, and challenger Jimmy Hoffa Jr. urged Carter to step in during the court-ordered election redo. 

The Carter Center has monitored 111 elections in 39 countries since the 1980s, and decided after the party conventions in August that the U.S. presidential contest merited something similar, citing a "backsliding" of American democracy that started a decade ago and has accelerated during the Corrupt Trump Administration.

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I couldn't let this week's Graphical History Tour pass without also acknowledging the passing on Thursday of Tony Earl.

As a candidate for Wisconsin's Governor in 1982, he didn't make it in to our office at the Kenosha Tribune before the paper imploded, so I never did produce a caricature of him there. He did make it into a few of my cartoons for the UW-Parkside Ranger and the NorthCountry Journal during his four years in office (and once in the UWM Post as a candidate in the 1988 Senate primary). 

He is fondly remembered as an honest and decent politician from an era before our democracy backslid, before everyone bunkered in our fortified enemy camps, and when a Democrat in Wisconsin's governor's office could still get things done. I seldom had reason to aim a caustic pen at him; but if I have to narrow it down to one cartoon to post in his memory, I'll let it be this one.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Dec. 15, 1983

Rest in peace, Governor Earl.