Just a year ago, he was walking up to men and women who did not know he existed, shaking their hands and drawling, "I'm Jimmy Carter, and I'm going to be your next President." The notion seemed preposterous, and most political professionals were dead sure he did not have a chance—but none of the voters laughed in his face. He was such an engaging man—a trifle shy, for all his gall, and there was that sunburst of a smile that people would always remember. Right from the start, he was perceived as being a rather different kind of politician compared with the rest of the field—as different in philosophy and tactics, it was to turn out, as in personal style. He not only knew what he wanted; he also sensed, at least in the primary elections, what the American people wanted.
The result was something of a political miracle.
On Jan. 20 he will place his left palm on the Bible and raise his right hand. Then, in the now familiar soft and even tones of south Georgia, Jimmy Carter, 52, will take the oath that will make him—just as he was saying all along—the 39th President of the U.S.
After all that has been said and written about him during a long campaign, he is still an enigma to millions of Americans, including many who voted for him. He is complex and sometimes contradictory. His creed combines traditionally antithetical elements of help-the-deprived populism and deny-thyself fiscal conservatism. A Harris poll last month reported that 61% of those surveyed expect Carter to be a good or excellent President. Despite that hope, the people are waiting to be shown by Jimmy Carter, to see if he really has the wisdom and judgment and balance needed to succeed in the job that he so eagerly sought for two exhausting years.
There are many reasons why Carter's rise stands as such a remarkable political feat. When he was walking the icy streets of New Hampshire last January, as many as 40% of the local people did not even know who he was. He occupied no political office; his one term as Georgia's Governor had ended in January 1975, and state law kept him from running again. He was the typical outsider, and it was an axiom of politics that outsiders—particularly those from the South—went nowhere nationally.
All the axioms were demolished by Carter's flinty will power, his almost arrogant self-confidence, his instinct to ask his listeners to "trust me" and his fetching promise to give them "a Government as good and as competent and as compassionate as are the American people." The talk about trust and love sounded too vague to many. But he was a candidate of the 1970s, and he knew that the voters were more concerned about the overriding issue of moral leadership than about the big-spending liberal programs of the 1960s. He did more than just defeat a dozen other Democrats, most of them Senators and Governors who were better known and had bigger power bases. He also destroyed forever the hopes of Alabama's George Wallace of rising to national power—a possibility already dimmed by the bullet of a would-be assassin. By showing that a nonracist Southerner could win a major party nomination, Carter gave new pride to his region and went far to heal ancient wounds.
The triumphs of spring nearly turned into defeat in the fall. Matched against