Jimmy Carter: A mixed presidential legacy, a complicated man, but on balance a good one
Source: The Nation As a dumb kid, I didn’t vote for Carter. I thought the idea of continuity was somehow important to maintaining stability in the U.S., despite how much I disliked Ford and his pardoning of one of the greatest crooks to hold office. I didn’t have much to on regarding Carter; he was presented as the nice guy peanut farmer governor of Georgia and of whom I’d read nothing that mattered. However, if I had, I might have been blown away. He was an anti-segregationist, he provided equal state aid to schools regardless of rich or poor or rural or urban; he set up community centers for mentally disabled children, and increased educational opportunities for convicts. He had little time for the “professional politicians” and made appointments based on merit. He was, I think, the first Georgia governor to add Black state employees and apparently, really pissed off the KKK by installing portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., Lucy Craft Laney, and Henry McNeal Turner....