Ace History Desk – Biden and Trump lead tributes to ‘extraordinary’ Jimmy Carter after death
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Joe Biden and Donald Trump have led tributes to former US president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, who has died aged 100.
Carter, who lived longer than any president in history, died on Sunday afternoon at his home in Plains, Georgia.
Biden described his fellow Democrat as “a man of principle, faith and humility,” while Trump said all Americans owe Carter a “debt of gratitude”.
Carter rose from a peanut farmer to become president in 1977, before being forced out of the White House after just one four-year term when Ronald Reagan stormed to victory in the next election.
After leaving the White House with low approval ratings, his reputation was restored through humanitarian work which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Today, America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian,” President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden said in a statement.
“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility,” they added.
“He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people – decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong.”
As US president Jimmy Carter sat fishing on a Georgia pond in 1979, a ‘killer rabbit’ approached — and brought a media storm with it according to ABC News report
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The Bee Gees are playing on the radio, Deer Hunter has just swept the Oscars — and, for one afternoon in Georgia, the biggest threat to US president Jimmy Carter is a “killer rabbit”.
Or at least this was the story that captivated news outlets, politicians, religious leaders and the American public during the last year of the 39th president’s one and only term.
Here’s how it unfolded.
The attack of the ‘hissing’, ‘enraged’ rabbit
“There are fish stories, and then there are rabbit stories,” began the article by the Associated Press.
“This is a rabbit story.”
The August 30, 1979 story was one of the first signs of the storm of coverage, controversy and media parody that was to come.
The story, as leaked to the AP, was this: The president, fishing on a pond near his Georgia home some months earlier, had spotted a large animal swimming towards his canoe.
The creature was “berserk”, “enraged”, “making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth”.
In short it was, according to then-press secretary Jody Powell, “intent upon climbing into the presidential boat”.
Instead of hitting it directly or — as some would later suggest — having Secret Service agents shoot the creature, Mr Carter shooed it away by splashing the water with his paddle.
“Carter was unharmed. There was no word on the fate of the rabbit,” said the AP.
Jimmy Carter, pictured at the White House in 1977. (Reuters: Library of Congress/Marion S Trikosko)normal
The story had been told by Mr Carter himself to staffers one afternoon after he returned to the White House.
“The president was sitting with a few of us on the Truman Balcony,” said Mr Powell later.
“He had recently … and we were talking about home folks and how the quail were nesting and similar matters of international import.
“Suddenly, for no apparent reason — he was drinking lemonade as I remember — the president volunteered the information.
“Had I been doing my job, I would have stopped the president at that moment, pointed out the dangers to him and his administration if such a story ever got out, and sworn him and all within reach of his voice to secrecy.”
Nobody interrupted the story.
A few months later, the “mortal threat” of the president’s clash with the rabbit was leaked to the media.
‘What was to be done’ about Carter and the killer rabbit?
“Cotton Tale: Carter Paddles ‘Killer Rabbit’,” went a Missouri headline.
In Pennsylvania, the Indiana Gazette went with: “Killer Rabbit attacks President”.
On the front page of New York’s Democrat and Chronicle: “Banzai bunny bugs Carter, really”, along with an illustration of the offending animal.
Mr Carter was asked about the story “at town hall meetings, press conferences, and meetings with editors”, according to Mr Powell.
The White House was forced to turn down requests to release the photo taken by White House photographers showing the president and the rabbit together.
“At Georgetown dinner parties the conversation focused on little else, and it was rushed, concerned, almost fearful,” Mr Powell wrote later.
“Bright young congressional aides could be seen scurrying through the halls of the Capitol, their earnest little brows deeply furrowed. Columnists and editorial writers waxed indignant.
“What was to be done about a president with whom a rabbit would try to get into a boat? What did this startling, not to say worrisome, incident say about his fitness for office?
“What would the Russians think, not to mention the Cubans, the Ethiopians, and the [South West Africa People’s Organisation]?”
The story wasn’t being so widely talked about just because it was strange, or funny, or because it just happened to be a slow news day.
In 1979 the US was facing an energy crisis in the wake of the Iranian Revolution.
Just over a month prior to the “killer rabbit”, Mr Carter had delivered his “Crisis of Confidence” speech, telling Americans how to reduce their use of energy.
At the same time the Carter administration was facing unrest in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union was preparing to invade.
Political biographer Kenneth E Morris said the story “seemed to symbolise public attitudes towards Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy”.
“While apparently innocuous … [it] seemed to harness many of the more formless feelings that Americans harboured toward their president as he entered the final year of his administration,” he wrote in his book Jimmy Carter, American Moralist.
“Perhaps more important, it expressed these feelings in an acceptable allegorical way.”
Even in the months following the incident the rabbit would be blamed by columnists, wrote Mr Powell, for “the assault on our embassy in Tehran” and “the invasion of Afghanistan”.
“The Reverend Jerry Falwell is said to have pointed out to associates that swamp rabbits were never mentioned in Revelation except in connection with Satan,” Mr Powell said.
“And [he] suggested that any true, heterosexual, right-thinking Christian would have seized upon this God-given opportunity to ruthlessly destroy this symbol of the Beast.”
An election loss and a ‘great burden of guilt’ for one man
What had appeared at first to be “little more than comic relief”, according to historian Kevin Mattson, proved to have “enormous ramifications”.
“The president was now stereotyped as a weakling, incapable of handling a crisis, let alone a small animal,” Mr Mattson wrote in a 2009 Carter biography.
“The president who once spoke openly of whipping Kennedy’s ass now looked like a loser and a sissy.
“The swimming rabbit and frightened president became an image that would stick forever and speak volumes.”
Low economic growth, soaring inflation. The Iran hostage crisis saw eight servicemen killed during a failed rescue attempt in 1980.
In late 1979 the Soviets finally invaded Afghanistan and Mr Carter rallied opposition, a move which ultimately reopened the Cold War.
Ultimately, he would lose the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory.
And while the rabbit story can’t be blamed for the loss, it meant a heavy burden for one man.
Six years after the story first broke, Mr Powell would confess to being the one who initially leaked the “killer rabbit” incident.
“Almost four years later, I sat down for a chat with the political editor of a major regional newspaper and the first question he asked was about the killer rabbit story,” Mr Powell wrote in his 1985 memoir.
“He said he considered it to be the beginning of the end of the Carter administration.
“Looking back on it now, I still have trouble understanding exactly what happened.
“Indeed, this confession (I have never before been able to tell the whole sad story) has been a cleansing and uplifting experience. I feel now, as I write this, that a great burden of guilt and self-recrimination has been lifted.”
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