On Monday, Donald Trump’s election was certified by Congress, on the fourth anniversary of the storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters, who were angry about his defeat in the 2020 election. On Tuesday, Trump held forth at a pre-inaugural press conference as if, this time, he had been elected not President but Emperor, talking about how he wanted to annex Canada, take over the Panama Canal, and force the sale of Greenland to the U.S.—and he would not rule out the use of coercion against the U.S.’s allies in order to do so. He ranted against whale-killing windmills. He demanded a name change for the Gulf of Mexico that would turn it into the Gulf of America. On Wednesday, as out-of-control wildfires blazed in Los Angeles, he crudely blamed the inferno on mismanagement by California’s Democratic governor, whom he derided as Gavin “Newscum.”
No wonder, then, that all eyes were on Trump when he entered the Washington National Cathedral on Thursday morning to bid farewell to Jimmy Carter. The presence of the disruptive once and future President alongside all four of his living predecessors was as discordant as any moment at an American state funeral, with its grand rituals meant to unify and salve, could be. Carter’s final public wish, last year, had been to live long enough to vote against Trump. He did so, only to have Trump win in November anyway. When Carter, whom Trump had savaged as the worst President in the history of the U.S., except for the current occupant of the office, died shortly before the New Year, Trump publicly fumed about granting Carter the ritual honor of lowering the U.S. flag to half-staff for thirty days, which Trump complained would ruin his Inauguration and delight his Democratic enemies.
But there he was on Thursday morning, sitting elbow to elbow in the second row with those who had spent the past few months campaigning against him as a would-be dictator. As he smiled and chatted with Barack Obama, was he smug? Triumphant? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sat in front of him, though they did not shake his hand or visibly acknowledge his presence. As Carter’s casket made its way up the center aisle of the cathedral, the cavernous nave was so quiet that I could hear the howling of the frigid January wind outside, fitting background music for a funeral coming amid such a national storm.
For the most part, the occasion transcended the current moment of conflict. Carter, who died at the age of a hundred, had fought his political battles over inflation and the Iran hostage crisis so long ago that they have almost passed from living memory. He outlasted his friends, his Cabinet, his adversaries, and his beloved wife, Rosalynn. Stuart Eizenstat, his domestic-policy adviser and later his biographer, spoke at the service and made an impassioned pitch to “redeem” Carter’s Presidency, stressing his enduring accomplishments, such as the Camp David peace accords that he struck between Israel and Egypt, rather than the economic and international crises that condemned him to a single term in office. “In the end, Jimmy Carter taught all of us how to live a life fulfilled with faith and service,” Eizenstat said. “He may not be a candidate for Mount Rushmore, but he belongs in the foothills, making the U.S. stronger and the world safer.”
Tributes from Carter’s predecessor, Gerald Ford, and his Vice-President, Walter Mondale, both of whom are deceased, were read by their sons. The lessons they spoke of also seemed long out of date in this loud, hyperpoliticized age—lionizing Carter not as a Democrat but as a democrat, a man who spent his decades after returning to Plains, Georgia, helping poor people, because he himself had grown up as one of them. He was praised for honesty and truthtelling; for a visionary commitment to the environment, human rights, and women’s empowerment; for standing up for dissidents and staring down dictators; and for a thriftiness so extreme that, according to his grandson Jason, he recycled ziplock bags by washing them out in the sink. It was a short service, less than two hours long, but there were a few words that kept coming up, again and again: Honesty. Integrity. Faith. Love.
Almost as soon as the bipartisan praise of Carter—the un-Trump in every possible way, aside from their shared election to the nation’s highest office—began, Trump’s trademark glower seemed to swiftly return to his face. The contrast, it should be noted, went unmentioned during the funeral. But it was so explicit as to need no explaining.
In the end, the most overt rebuke came from Biden, whose Presidency ends in just eleven days, with the curse of knowing that the story of his four years in office will appear in the history books not as the decisive defeat of Trumpism but as the failure to contain it. The key moment in Biden’s eulogy came when he hailed Carter’s “enduring attribute—character, character, character.”
For Biden, the word “character” is what the word “strong” is for Trump—the ultimate compliment, the quality that, more than anything, is to be aspired to and that defines a leader. In a passage that seemed redolent with the anguish Biden must feel as he prepares to cede the White House to a man he considers not only unworthy but dangerous, the President asked, “What does it take to build character? Do the ends justify the means?” Biden spoke of Carter’s character as the value of treating everyone with dignity and respect, of rejecting hate, and standing up to “the greatest sin of all—the abuse of power.” He asked, “Are we striving to do things, the right things?” Do we “operate from fear or hope, ego or generosity? Do we show grace? Do we keep the faith when it’s most tested?”
Biden’s remarks were brief, not a farewell address but something of a parting shot at a successor who embraces the politics of discord and division, and who is driven by an abiding belief in his own right to do whatever he wants. In October, little more than a week before the election, Biden also made extensive comments about leadership and character. In scathing remarks, he warned that Trump was a “loser” with “no character” who did not “give a damn” about the voters he courted with false promises. “This is decency versus lack of decency,” Biden said. “This is about character, this election. And folks, you know, I’ve got to choose my words here. The choice couldn’t be clearer.”
As Biden prepares to leave office, Republicans love to compare him to Carter, the previous Democratic President to serve only a single term. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial on Carter’s death dunked on them both as Presidents who failed to deliver peace and prosperity and were punished by the voters accordingly.
Carter’s funeral, and many of the remembrances that have poured forth during this week of national mourning, offered a far more positive narrative—and Biden must surely have taken heart from it. He would not be wrong to hope that the passage of time will be kinder to him than his current abysmal approval ratings and the harsh assessments of so many commentators, who blame him for the hubris of seeking to run for another term at such an advanced age, or for refusing to acknowledge the toll that high inflation inflicted on many Americans early in his tenure. Before Carter’s funeral, I spoke with a Democratic member of Congress, a reliable centrist from a reliably blue state, about Biden’s legacy. “I’ve really soured on this Presidency,” he said. “It’s not really going out on a high note. There’s no doubt about that, or really no attempt to exercise leadership, to embolden people.” In my experience, this is quite a widespread view in Washington.
But it’s also true that Biden, already eighty-two, has neither the time nor the temperament to resurrect his political standing by following Carter’s example. Sadly, the critique of Biden that most resonates in the final days of his Presidency is not about his political errors or policy misses; it is about the personal missteps that speak to the very question Biden himself raised on Thursday, the question of character. What else to call it when Biden seems so stubbornly out of touch that he still claims he could have beaten Trump, while at the same time admitting to USA Today’s Susan Page that he does not even know if he could have made it through a second term? Or when he defends his pardon of his son Hunter, despite having promised that he would not do so?
For now, it is Trump, as much as Biden himself, who will define Biden’s legacy. Trump’s failures in a second term could be both the tragedy that Biden has spent years warning about and the vindication that Biden craves. One thing is certain: from here on in, it will be nothing but the front row for Trump. There will be no more listening silently to uncomfortable rebukes from defeated Democrats, whether explicit or otherwise. Jimmy Carter’s funeral may have been one of the last times that the former and future President will ever be forced to confront an American reality so different from his own. ♦
