On Joe Biden’s kickoff tour for his first run for president in 1987, he visited the usual places: his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware; Washington, D.C.; Iowa; New Hampshire; and Atlanta.
Atlanta?
Atlanta is not in one of the first political contest states, and it wasn’t a key location in Biden’s biography. The motivation for traveling to Atlanta then has lasted almost 40 years: his respect, admiration and friendship with former President Jimmy Carter.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
As the nation prepares to celebrate Carter’s 100th birthday on Tuesday and his lifetime of public service, it’s good to remember that he once almost disappeared. But Biden’s grace started Carter’s journey out of political exile.
In 1987, almost no one in the Democratic Party publicly acknowledged Carter, let alone on a splashy presidential campaign kickoff tour. Carter was seen as an embarrassment — a failed one-term president who was beaten soundly by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980 and blamed for the botched Iran hostage rescue attempt. In January 1981, Carter retreated to Georgia. He worked on his presidential library in Atlanta. He built houses for Habitat for Humanity.
Democratic politicians came around but quietly. No photographs please.
Until Biden in 1987.
It was the first public appearance with Carter by any Democratic candidate in the race. Carter and Biden met, shook hands, talked for a bit and then emerged from the library to speak to reporters — publicly.
The Atlanta Constitution said: “Surrounded by reporters and cameramen, Biden openly sought Carter’s endorsement.”
I was one of those reporters, at the time for the Chicago Tribune. I didn’t really get the significance then. But after dutifully reporting the event, something triggered a memory.
Even longer ago, when Biden was first running for the U.S. Senate from Delaware, he was the young upstart trying to unseat an aging senator, Caleb Boggs. A reporter asked Boggs to explain something in the latest international genocide treaty. Boggs fumbled, saying he didn’t know. Biden, quite familiar with the treaty, could have pounced. But he didn’t, not wanting to embarrass the older man. As Biden began his presidential run, I asked him “Why?” His answer: “It would have been graceless.”
Grace might seem a quaint and cluelessly out-of-date behavior, but at the time it was that trait that brought him to Atlanta. For Biden, grace was a principle, one of many to which he held himself.
You have to remember — Biden dropped out of the 1988 race because of allegations of plagiarism in his campaign speeches. How quaint.
Today, that mistake would barely register as a transgression (except for journalists). Today, not even lies register. Borrowing from another’s speech? Pffft.
But for Biden, it was enough. And to visit Carter and glean some insights — especially about foreign affairs, with which Biden had a superficial knowledge but not a deep one — and then to acknowledge the former president’s endorsement was graceful and kind.
Biden’s gesture began Carter’s public metamorphosis, turning him from a forsaken president to a revered figure. Grace resonated with Carter, for he had been graceful before.
He attended Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, exhausted and haggard, with the hostages still held in Iran despite his round-the-clock negotiations. The captives were released just as Reagan took the oath of office. It was a comeuppance for Carter, but he took it with grace.
It was grace that brought Biden to Carter in 1987, a gesture Carter apparently never forgot. Carter selected Biden to speak at his funeral, whenever that may be.
Elaine S. Povich, a longtime Washington correspondent, is a senior staff writer for Stateline.org, part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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