Donald Trump’s second inauguration coincides with the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr., which can either bode well or badly. On the side of hope, I was struck by the tableau of presidents past, president and future at the funeral of the thirty-ninth president, Jimmy Carter. 

Apparently, George W. Bush snubbed Trump, but Barack Obama and Trump appeared to share a cordial moment or two. Additionally, I sincerely hope Trump was listening when Joseph Biden repeatedly extolled Carter’s character in his eulogy.

Character.

Carter’s political career is instructive. It’s impossible to imagine his dramatic ascendance to the presidency had it not been for Richard Nixon. 

Ever since John F. Kennedy’s address to Protestant ministers in Houston on September 12, 1960, where he urged voters to bracket a candidate’s faith when they entered the voting booth, Americans had become less interested in the religion of presidential candidates. If you doubt that, here’s a test. Quick, what was Lyndon Johnson’s religious affiliation?

When I ask that question to audiences, I typically hear Johnson, a Texan, was Baptist. That’s incorrect. He was affiliated with the Disciples of Christ. 

Regardless, that misses the point. The point is that during what I call the “Kennedy paradigm” of voters’ disregard for a candidate’s faith, Americans were indifferent to such questions through the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies.

Nixon’s mendacity changed that, however briefly. Following Watergate, voters suddenly wanted evidence of a candidate’s moral compass, so we turned to a Washington outsider, a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher. 

Johnson, after all, had lied to us about Vietnam. Nixon had lied about, well, almost everything.

Over the course of his improbable run for the White House, Carter repeatedly promised he would “never knowingly lie” to the American people. That was something of a revelation. 

Imagine that! A president who refused to lie.

And what is even more remarkable is that he kept that promise. No one has credibly accused Carter of lying during his four years as president.

Since then, the Washington Post and other media sources have begun tracking the truth-telling of various presidents. The Post’s fact-checkers determined that Obama, for example, made 28 false or misleading statements during his eight years in the White House.

Trump’s tally during his initial four-year term: 30,573 false or misleading statements. Character.

And how do we determine character? Unfortunately, we tend to regard religious affiliation as a proxy for morality. 

At best, that’s an imperfect approach. It assumes that someone with no religious affiliation cannot be moral or ethical, which is demonstrably false. 

We all know people who are not avowedly religious but who, nevertheless, are exemplary individuals with a strong moral compass. Religion is not the only indicator of morality.

If my theory about the Kennedy paradigm is correct, then Nixon’s prevarications focused voters’ attention on morality, leading to the election of Carter in 1976. A similar conclusion might be drawn regarding Biden’s election in 2020. Weary of Trump’s endless stream of false and misleading statements, voters chose Biden, a devout Roman Catholic, albeit one who is given to overstatements and exaggerations.

But now, we face another four years of Trump. I’ll leave explanations for Trump’s second election to another time–perhaps it was indifference, economic anxiety or misogyny, pure and simple. 

Regardless, if Trump remains true to form and ignores the lessons of Jimmy Carter’s life and funeral, I expect voters to again look for presidential aspirants with a moral compass in 2028. The Democratic Party should consider this as it vets a new round of candidates for the White House.

Share This