Happy Birthday Mr. Carter!
Jimmy and Rosalynn caught me napping that day. The former president and first lady came to Hawk’s Cay Resort, where we kept our sailboat at the time, to shake hands with dolphins and promote an educational program called The Dolphin Connection. As I slept, Mr. and Mrs. Carter stopped to admire our boat and to complement Wendy on the bright work that she was polishing. She tells me that the former first lady bent down to verify that the grass was real. It wasn’t.
I have changed my opinion of our long-lived leader over the years. The 1970s were terrible for people of my generation. The failed attempt to rescue the American hostages at our embassy in Iran added to my sense that the United States had gone very wrong. I do not mean that I had a bad opinion of former president Carter. I appreciated his break with the post-war consensus that top-down government worked better than the free market. Through deregulation he made air travel affordable for me and millions of others. In fact, former senator Phil Gramm posits in The Wall Street Journal that without Mr. Carter’s successful battle against entrenched special interests “America might not have had the ability to diversify its economy and lead the world in high-tech development when our postwar domination of manufacturing ended in the late 1970s.” * That is a pretty big deal. Even bigger was his courage in appointing Paul Volker as Fed chairman, a move that he knew to be bad for his reelection prospects.
I missed my chance to meet the former president and thank him for clearing the economic decks for a decades-long boom. That honor rightfully belonged to my wife though. After all, she did the hard work while I enjoyed an afternoon nap. I shall never have the opportunity to recognize Mr. Carter for all that he did, but it isn’t too late to thank Wendy for keeping the boat presentable for the Carters, and I can still wish the first American president to turn 100 a belated happy birthday.
* Gramm, P. "Jimmy Carter, Champion of Deregulation" The Wall Street Journal. Online, Opinion, September 30, 2024. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/jimmy-carter-champion-of-deregulation-policy-former-president-business-economy-e98c864d?mod=opinion_lead_pos5.Accessed on 10.03.2024.