Agency.
One of the fundamental questions about democracy that we at Citizen Joy! ask is: “What choices are you able to make that are dear to your heart?”
Everything we enjoy in our lives flows from one simple precept: America is a country where the people are sovereign, where the leaders serve at the pleasure of the governed. The greatest right we have is to vote and have that vote counted. Every other right is secondary. I value voting above all other choices.
I will always remember voting in my first presidential election. The candidates were Jimmy Carter versus Gerald Ford. The year was 1976 and I was 21.
As a teen, I had lived through the “long national nightmare” of Richard Nixon’s administration. On the night that he resigned and Gerald Ford, then vice president, became president, I danced a jig in front of the TV.
In this day and age, Nixon would be considered too liberal to even run for president. He established the EPA and supported Affirmative Action hiring on a federal level. He submitted and signed into law the Supplemental Social Security Act that enables seniors and the disabled to receive financial assistance.
But narcissism, hubris and the hunger for power led him to seek out and implement the radical actions of those operatives who would become known as the White House Plumbers-so called, because they knew how to plug leaks of information to the press and their Democratic opponents. These operatives eventually provided the launch ramp for the investigation into Nixon’s corrupt practices which ultimately brought him down.
In 1974, Democrat James Earl “Jimmy” Carter announced that he would run against President Gerald Ford in the upcoming election. Ford had pardoned Nixon for any and all crimes that he committed or may have committed. The controversial pardon was fully in keeping with Ford’s status within the Republican Party to do the bidding, or as it was then called, be a “bag-man”, for the right wing donor class.
That action alone made him the focus of national ire from both liberals, independents and some moderate Republicans who blamed Nixon for the sudden unpopularity of the Republican Party.
Jimmy Carter was then the governor of the state of Georgia, where he owned a peanut farm. As a California liberal, I was not thrilled at his resume. He was from the south, he was a nuclear engineer, a retired Naval commander and a devout Christian. He grew peanuts for chrissakes!
But I overcame my reticence and voted for him and Walter Mondale, who was his running mate.
As it turns out, Carter was a truly great president. He was (and is) a principled, ideological person who walks-the-walk and always has. I’m very glad I had a chance to help him become president.
Carter just had his 100th birthday. He’s been in hospice care for many months now and has vowed to stay alive long enough to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz.
Viva Jimmy Carter. Viva democracy!
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