Plains talk: what Jimmy Carter's first bid for public office tells us about politics today

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1992 by James Fallows

Here's a surprise. Of course a book by Jimmy Carter* would be serious and high-minded, But this book is also well-written, sometimes funny, intelligent without being preachy, and canny about practical politics in a way that Carter himself, as president, rarely seemed to be. Turning Point is a short book compared to the tomes Carter has produced about his years in office, but it is the best thing he has ever written. I can imagine it being read years from now for what it shows about American life at a certain place and time. It is a shame that Carter could not have written such a book 20 years ago, when it could have affected our view of him as a politician. But it probably would have been impossible for him to do so even if he had tried, since the success of this book depends on a sense of historic and personal distance that Carter could not have developed until now.

The idea behind Turning Point may not sound promising. It concerns a several-month period in the fall of 1962, in which Carter decided to run for the Georgia State Senate. He encountered unusual obstacles (which make up most of the book's narrative), squeaked by them, and eventually won. Carter uses this race mainly as a vehicle for discussing two much larger historical trends. One was the transformation of state politi'cs, especially Southern politics, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its famous "one man, one vote" ruling, in the Baker v. Carr case in 1962. The other was the challenge to localized political tyranny and oppression--again, especially in the South--that began in the sixties. This challenge involved the "one man" ruling but included many other forces, most notably the civil rights movement later in the decade. In discussing these subjects, Carter has not produced a "policy" book in the conventional sense. He does not offer six-point action plans or detailed proposals for reform. But simply by describing vividly how things were in America's recent past, the book alters our sense of today's politics. Some achievements that we now take for granted--that American citizens are allowed to vote if they register and show up on election day--seem more impressive in light of Carter's tale. Other problems seem more intractable and depressing, since the book shows how long we have tried to cope with them.

Farewell to farms

In the first few chapters, Carter carefully and effectively explains how the pre-Baker v. Carr political universe worked. Starting in the late 19th century, as the Reconstruction era came to an end, the states of the old Confederacy developed various schemes to wrest power from freed blacks and return it to a conservative, white, rurally-based elite. Jim Crow laws, which denied blacks social and legal fights, were a major part of this process. A gerrymandered political system, which minimized the power of all urban voters, was also crucial.

In Georgia, this approach took the form of the "county unit" system. From the late 1800s until 1962, Georgia legislators and executive officials were elected under a system that gave each of the state's counties roughly equal voting power, with little regard to population size. (Technically, the largest handful of counties had six "unit votes" each; a group of middle-sized counties had four unit votes each; and more than a hundred tiny counties could cast two unit votes each.) A vote in populous Fulton County--of which Atlanta is a part--had about onefourth as much weight as an average vote in the state as a whole. It was as if the U.S. electoral college gave California six votes--and Wyoming, Delaware, Alaska, and Idaho two votes each, so that together they could outweigh California.

This system was skewed against the working class in general--rural politics was usually dominated by local business interests--and against blacks in particular, since it was impossible for them to vote in much of the hinterland. The natural result was to push Southern politics in a more racist and conservative direction than would otherwise have been the case. As late as 1958, a candidate could run successfully for governor of Georgia on the slogan, "No, Not One!" This referred to the number of black children who would be allowed into public schools or universities alongside whites. (As Carter points out, however, this same governor, Ernest Vandiver, complied when federal courts finally ordered the University of Georgia to admit two black students. Governors George Wallace in Alabama and Ross Barnett in Mississippi met similar orders with calls for "massive resistance.")

It now seems obvious and commonplace that governments should run on the "one man, one vote" principle, but Carter shows how revolutionary the concept was for the Georgia of 30 years ago. The Baker v. Carr ruling came down in March of 1962. It ordered states to reapportion their legislatures and revise their voting systems before the elections that same fall that is, with lightning speed, by normal political standards. (Reapportioning the U.S. Congress, after each decennial census, takes more than a year.)