The last quarter century of American leadership gathers at the Carter funeral.
The last quarter century of American leadership gathers at the Carter funeral.
F ormer president Jimmy Carter was laid to rest yesterday in an official state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. We at National Review have already expended countless pixels discussing his legacy, both the good — industry deregulation, the Camp David Accords — and the bad (quite literally everything else, up to and including his brother’s vanity beer). In fact, given that Carter had been at death’s door since the month I joined NR full-time — that would be two full years ago, mind you — it’s safe to say we were more rhetorically prepared for the moment than we were for, say, Joe Biden’s spontaneous combustion during the June debate.
I will therefore spare you an essay that would merely repeat what others have already said. My short take: In the modern era, only Biden now eclipses Carter — both of them, amusingly, lap Johnson and Nixon — as far as “failed presidencies” go, regardless of what the ideologically hopeless doyens of the “presidential rankings” world assert. I am vastly less charitable toward Carter’s post-presidency than are most of his obituarists, with the exception perhaps of my editor Phil Klein. I will add only this: Carter’s requesting that John Lennon’s “Imagine” be sung at his national (and private) funeral services was a shudderingly ghastly touch and makes me wonder, among other things, how seriously he had scanned those lyrics.
Instead, I took note of the remarkable gathering (once in a generation, really) of former presidents, vice presidents, and their spouses. There they all sat together in the front pews of the cathedral, as America made great sport out of interpreting their body language: Trump leaned over to crack Barack Obama up in laughter with some remark or another, and instantly cries of “He’s laughing with Literal Hitler!” rang out online (mostly from the snarking right, tellingly enough, twisting the screws into the online Left). George W. Bush arrived with a fratty chest tap for Obama (’sup, bro?) and playfully swatted Dan Quayle with a funeral program, reminding us all of how hard it is to personally dislike the man despite his profoundly checkered presidency. Dick Cheney and Michelle Obama declined to attend — the former likely because of ill health, the latter likely because of the prospect of having to sit next to Donald Trump. Jill Biden arrived with America’s current (technically) president and sat down next to Kamala Harris without so much as a glance, offering only an icy straight glare toward the altar — ah, yes, now this was the quietly tense soap opera I tuned in to see.
Watching a gathering of so many of the leaders America has had during this uncertain last quarter century fascinated me: Some of the most consequential people of our era came together for an apolitical ritual, in either real or feigned comity (and, again, in Jill Biden’s case, none whatsoever). But what also stood out to me was the presence of former vice president Mike Pence. There Pence sat with his wife and smoothly reached out to shake President-elect Trump’s hand with all of the implacable élan of a man who can keep a straight face in any situation because he is comfortable with who he is.
Everybody in the room — everyone watching in America — understood how much water has irrevocably passed under the bridge between the two men. Just as it was mildly stirring to see America’s living leaders gathered to pay tribute to Carter, so too was it heartening to be reminded of Pence’s importance in holding the line during a period of unique strain in 2021 — created, rather unfortunately but also undeniably, by Trump. Pence has made himself permanently unpopular with MAGA’s rabid partisans, and it never could have ended any other way: After Pence’s courageous acts on January 6 and his subsequent refusal to endorse Trump, the average hard-core Trumper’s opinion of the former vice president ranges from the incomprehensible to the unprintable.
I can only hope that any man or woman who should find himself or herself in the vice presidency, with those powers and responsibilities, should take the oath to uphold the Constitution just as seriously as Pence did. I am in fact happy to end here in the exact same way I ended a piece about him in March 2024 — a piece from a different political era, I realize in retrospect, but based on basic civic verities: Pence will never be president, but his reward for the choices he made while vice president is that history will judge him well, as the man he claimed to be. Few win a better posterity in politics these days.