Jimmy Carter: American Moralist

Christian Century, March 19, 1997 by George H. Shriver

By Kenneth E. Morris. University of Georgia Press, 397 pp., $29.95.

This revisionist biography (the first since 1980) of Jimmy Carter was years in the making and is the result of thousands of hours of research in the Carter Center Library and elsewhere, as the 54 pages of notes attest. The author's in-depth portrait of Carter is complimentary, corrective and critical.

Morris is quoted in Contemporary Authors as saying, "Although my craft is biography, loosely understood, my aim is the articulation and interpretation of significant social trends. Biography is merely the vehicle I (sometimes) travel in for this interpretation." The strongest sections of the book are indeed the interpretation of social trends.

Morris set out to paint a portrait of Carter "that attends primarily if not exclusively to his moral outlook and moral influence." After an effective opening chapter on the "malaise" of the '70s in the U.S., involving a tremendous crisis in confidence in government, Morris devotes three chapters to Carter's family and social background prior to his running for a seat in the Georgia State Senate. He skillfully tells the story of a boy living in a racist small southern town where most of his playmates were black. Mixed signals came his way from mother, father, community and religion (Southern Baptist style). Carter's search for true community began early and continued throughout his public career, but he never found it, Morris argues. He states that the early absence of community "prompted the central moral imperative of [Carter's] character and career."

Carter married Rosalynn Smith in 1946 and met Hyman Rickover in 1952, after completing his education at the Naval Academy. These two have been among the most influential people in his life. Upon the death of his father in 1953, Carter moved back to Plains and put down roots.

Moving from farming to the Georgia senate to the governor's mansion, Carter began a political pilgrimage. Morris's judgment that Carter was afflicted by narcissism and "prideful self-righteousness" seems a bit harsh to me, as well as illustrative of the author's sometimes uncritical use of newspaper editorials. Between 1965 and 1971 Carter had a "born again" experience as a result of a serious talk with his minister sister, Ruth. He developed a heightened social conscience and a more sophisticated religious outlook after reading, if not always completely understanding, the Niebuhrs, Tillich, Kierkegaard and Altizer.

Morris's otherwise penetrating account of these experiences is weakened by a sometimes superficial understanding of the complexities of evangelicalism and of the social gospel. When Carter was elected governor of Georgia in 1970, his inaugural address and his strong call for racial justice catapulted him to national attention. Morality and competence in government became Carter's themes.

In his campaign for president, Carter promised "a renewal of faith based on the personal merits of a moral and competent leader." Is Morris correct when he suggests that the country wanted a more subtle and complex moral leadership than what Carter offered? Or, after a closely contested election, was there a whore constellation of reasons why Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan? Carter was an outsider whose closest advisers had little experience in governing and were somewhat provincial and immature. He also listened to too many viewpoints without being able to develop a synthesized ideology of his own. Carter was much more a prophet than a priest. Coupled with events like the hostage crisis in Iran, these factors led to his defeat by an expert rhetorician who illustrated that what matters is not what you say but how you say it. Carter supporters stayed home from the polls, and the fickle electorate believed the actor.

Almost broke and alone, the Carters made their way back to Plains to rediscover themselves. Carter built a small mountain cabin and fashioned with his own hands every single piece of furniture in it, using tools his staff had given him when he left the White House. Carter was shunned in 1980, but by the late '80s his stock was rising fast. The country began to accept him as a moral prophet even in his attacks on CIA activities in Central America and his censure of the pope, academic theologians and fundamentalists of the Southern Baptist Convention for dealing so inadequately with world moral problems. Today he is admired for his activities as a mediator in conflicts all over the world and as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

Perhaps the book's major weakness is that Morris, a professor of sociology at the University of Georgia, tries to wear too many hats: sociologist, historian, psychologist, political scientist and religionist. Interdisciplinary work is commendable and necessary in such a biography but here it results at times in silly and superficial interpretations. One also wonders why Morris did not interview Carter himself. The closest he got was to speak with Carter's associates Bert Lance and Pat Caddell. All of the other interviews seem to have come from the files of Betty Glad and the Carter Center Library.