Today, as the elder statesman of the Democratic party, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has devoted his retirement to negotiating peace, building houses for the poor, and observing elections that are in danger of being corrupted, Jimmy Carter stands head and shoulders over every other politician in recent memory. At 80, he is all that he ever was, but more: he is the embodiment of commitment, dedication, and focus. Thus his pointed and withering criticism of the Bush administration must have chilled even the blood of the most ardent Bush supporter.

But there are still many, particularly Republicans, who loathe him and remember only his “weakness” in failing to extricate the American diplomats held hostage by the Ayatollah Khomeni and the Iranian Islamic revolution. When he sent special troops into Iran to rescue them in Operation Eagle Claw, they were thwarted by dust storms leading to one of our helicopters crashing into one on the ground. Eight Americans and 25 were injured. Carter was blamed.

When Carter “should” have been campaigning for his second term as president, he stayed in the White House Rose Garden alert for any opportunity to free the hostages. America was horrified to see, on the evening news, the U.S. Marines who were part of the security detail at the embassy bound and gagged. And when, according to the critics, Carter should have been making America feel good about itself, he was the prophet crying in the desert with a message of energy conservation: America should think of the energy crisis, he said, “as the moral equivalent of war.”

America was not listening to Jimmy Carter. More than anything, Americans wanted swift retribution. Forget moral equivalents; bomb the bastards!

Like George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter is, a devout Christian but he has a measure of humility that Bush lacks. With his frat-boy bravado, W. cannot think of a single mistake he has made as president. President Carter, in an oft-quoted remark about having lusted after women (other than his wife) in his heart, was willing to admit mistakes, even those he merely imagined. Carter promised that he would never lie to the American people. Cynically, I think that, perhaps, that was his biggest mistake. His commitment to putting human rights at the top of the America’s foreign policy was interpreted by his critics as weakness. In the wake of a major energy crisis, he urged Americans to face ourselves, reform our public culture, and conserve oil. On the other hand, W. offers nostrums and smiling lies.

What accounts for Bush’s popularity? Why was his elaborate flyboy dress-up event on the USS Abraham Lincoln cheered and featured by the mainstream media? It’s a mystery. Can you imagine what would have happened if former President Bill Clinton had arranged for a flyboy event, landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a S-3B Viking? Can you imagine the screaming over the stunt at the taxpayers expense? Can you imagine the fun at Clinton’s expense? They still make fun of Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’s ride in a tank; why don’t conservative talk show hosts make fun of Bush-the-flyboy?

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that “the rich are different from you and me.” If our national political offices were not populated by millionaires, that would be a fair assessment but the members of the Senate and most of our presidential candidates are quite flush. No matter who we choose on November 2, our president will be a millionaire.

Is there a difference among the rich men who have become our presidents? After all, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, both Bush 41 and Bush 43all are or were millionaires. As Bill Clinton lightheartedly noted in his speech before the Democratic National Convention, even he is now a millionaire.

Perhaps it would be instructive to consider what these moneybags do with their funds. Roosevelt was elected to the first of four terms in the midst of the Great Depression. When he came to power, there were 13,000,000 unemployed Americans. His response was to author the New Deal which created the social safety nets for our people. He was elected for four terms, though he did not survive the last one and died before the end of World War II so we are deprived of knowing what he would have done in his retirement. Pity.

Kennedy, of course, barely had a thousand days in office but his family has a strong record of public service, a record that is replenished by every Kennedy that enters the political arena or the many cousins who are scattered in the environmental movement and charitable organizations.

Bill Clinton located his office in Harlem and has been involved in many charitable concerns. In lieu of fees, he has often asked for contributions to his Foundation which funds many causes including (according to USA Today) “AIDS treatment in poor countries, economic empowerment of the poor, public service and religious tolerance in Ireland and India, among other places.” He has used his famous negotiating skills to broker deals to reduce the cost of AIDS drugs for countries in Africa and the Caribbean.

Despite Ronald Reagan’s verbal support of the charitable tradition of tithing, I.E., donating a tenth of one’s income to charity, his 1982 tax returns showed he contributed only 1.4 % of his income to charity. Perhaps his Alzheimer’s took hold too soon after his departure from office for him to become active in charitable work but it is unlikely that he would have since he had shown little inclination in that direction during his career preceding his ascension to the presidency.

President Gerald Ford? Hawked Pepsi after his retirement. Nixon? Wrote dense volumes on foreign policy. George H.W. Bush? Jumps out of airplanes and continues to be involved with rich Saudi oilmen. George W. Bush? Well, time will tell.

In fairness, most of these former presidents have charitable foundations of one sort or another. My point, however, has to do with their actual involvement with charitable work; the heart connection, if you will.

We live in an era of ostentatious religiosity. Most presidents after Gerald Ford have been openly devout Christians, thus America, as a society, expects that the charity that Christ emphasized and upon which the Gospels themselves are built will be reflected in their words and deeds. Christianity, as I understand it, is not just faith but good works, charity, and kindness. The proof of the man, however, is not in his conspicuous Sunday churchgoing but in the policies they have enacted that affect the poorest, the weakest, the oldest of us, and in the genuine devotion to good works that only a few practice.

It is often noted that we live in the most powerful country in the history of the world. What good is our power if we do not feed our hungry, reduce infant mortality, teach our illiterate to read, shelter our homeless? If there is a single reason aside from Bush’s war-mongering to change administrations, then the welfare of our people is it. To me, the commitment to helping those in need is what distinguishes the Democratic party. Military power is not the only kind of power. Our country and the world need true peace and the prosperity that it will bring.

Rosa Maria Pegueros is an associate professor of Latin American history and women's studies at the University of Rhode Island. To reach her, write to pegueros@uri.edu

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