At the only home he's ever owned, 209 Woodland Drive in Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter goes gentle into that good night. Wise men at their end know dark is right. And at age 99, James Earl Carter, Jr., is wise. God intended him for something. He has served his purpose.
But what if, like the universe, we go backwards when we reach our end? What if when Jimmy Carter breathes his last breath, time does not take him, but rewinds his life instead? His shortened breath grows longer, his eyes drift open. And backward he goes, through the long years, 98, and Israel is bombing Gaza, then Hamas attacks Israel; 97, he's in a wheelchair now, going back through Rosalynn's funeral, to where Rosalynn rises from her bier, alive again and beautiful. He's 96, the US leaves Afghanistan and the Taliban take it back; he's 95, 94, backward he goes, standing up now, hearing that there are fewer than a dozen cases of guinea worm in the world, thanks to the Carter Center's campaign. He grows stronger, takes up his tools, he's building a home for Habitat for Humanity, hammers pounding, saws whining, going backward through the day when he arrived on the work site battered, his eye blackened from a fall, backward through the fourteen stitches, backward through the fall itself, only this time he falls up.
And now it's 2015 and he's learning that the cancers in his liver and his brain have gone; now he's sick with those cancers, and now he's given the diagnosis, but here too he knows that at the end the dark is right; God intended him for something, and perhaps he's now done. And then he's well; his tumors vanish; his palsied limbs ungnarl, his spine dismisses its stoop. It's 2010 and the Affordable Care Act passes, a version of the healthcare plan he proposed more than 30 years earlier: was that what God intended him for? Backward still he goes: Amy remarries; he gives a eulogy at the funeral of Gerald Ford; there's an outcry over the title of his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid; Amy divorces her first husband; Yasir Arafat dies; Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize (God intended him for something); now the U.S. is invading Afghanistan to attack the Taliban, formerly the mujahideen, and now he's watching the planes hit the Twin Towers and he's wondering how this could be what God intended, because he knows, since he's moving backwards, where all this hate will begin.
His mottled hands cease trembling, his eyes uncloud. It's 2000 and he's seeing the second intifada and fearing that God did not intend him, after all, for peace in the Middle East. But what then? Amy marries and he's in Gaza, monitoring the first elections there and in the West Bank; now Yasir Arafat tells Carter the Reagan campaign asked him to convince the Iranians not to release the American hostages until after the election--"I turned them down," Arafat says. Now Jimmy and Rosalynn are in Nigeria and a young boy reaches out to them as guinea worms emerge between his knuckles--horrible sight--now he's in North Korea negotiating a nuclear deal (President Clinton didn't authorize) with Kim Il Sung; now Bill Clinton is elected, the first Democrat in the White House since Jimmy left it; and now Congressional hearings reveal that the Reagan campaign made promises to Tehran in exchange for delaying release of the hostages.
Now the wrinkles are ironed from his face, and from Rosalynn's face, and it's 1991 and he's watching the astounding sight of the flag of the USSR being lowered over the Kremlin, because the Soviet Union has come apart; Gorbachev has resigned but Jimmy doesn't credit the commentators who credit him for luring the Soviets into a quagmire in Afghanistan; God intended him for something but it couldn't have been that. Now he's speaking out against the Gulf War; now Ronald Reagan is saying "Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall!" Now the US is invading Panama; now Carter is in Panama, his first trip as an election observer for the Carter Center, as Noriega's lackeys attempt to steal the election; now he shouts in Spanish to the election commission, "Are you honest men or are you thieves?" God intended him for something; perhaps it was this.
Backwards still he goes, through the convictions, trials, indictments, to the investigations of the Iran-Contra affair, in which Reagan administration officials secretly sold arms to Iran; now he's taking on the fight against river blindness; now Amy is arrested for protesting CIA recruitment at U-Mass; now inflation is finally falling; now he's taking on the fight against guinea worm; now he's co-authoring an essay with Gerald Ford for Reader's Digest denouncing Israel's continued support of settlers moving into the West Bank. Now he's churning out pages every day, earning money as an author since his financial affairs--badly managed in a blind trust during his presidency--have left him facing bankruptcy.
And now backwards into 1981 and his friend Anwar Sadat is assassinated by members of Islamic Jihaad; and now he's standing on the inaugural platform when he's informed that the plane carrying the Tehran hostages to freedom has left Iran and now Ronald Reagan is sworn in as his successor. And now he's spending the last week of his presidency barely sleeping, barely eating, trying to push through a deal to free the hostages, and now it's election day and he returns to the White House and Rosalynn sees his face and says "How bad is it?" Whatever God intended him for, it was not a second term. And now he's reliving the campaign, not understanding why the Moral Majority claims he's no Christian because he allowed the IRS to refuse tax-exempt status to whites-only Christian schools, not understanding why Ronald Reagan would open his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a place known for one thing: the murder of civil rights activists by the Ku Klux Klan. But now it's the convention, and he's standing awkwardly as Ted Kennedy, drunk, snubs him on stage, but that, even that, is not as bad as the worst day of his life, the day he dreads reliving but here it is: he's told that the hostage rescue mission has failed and that nine people are dead. And then he's accepting Cyrus Vance's resignation, and then he's listening to Cyrus Vance make the case against attempting the rescue and damn it, he doesn't take his advice.
And now he rewinds to Camp David at Christmas, when he's told the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan, to the previous month, when he receives a call telling him that Iranian students have stormed the American embassy in Tehran and taken more than 50 hostages; then to authorizing a covert CIA program to support the Islamic dissidents, the mujahideen, in Afghanistan, and if only he could reject it this time around, because he knows who the mujahideen will become, but he can't, it doesn't work that way; he just has to believe that this too, was part of God's plan. And then he goes backward to the day when Iran's former ruler the Shah arrives in the US; and backward again to the day when his aides are urging him, as hawks are urging them, to allow the Shah into the States, and annoyed, he snaps "What are you guys going to advise me to do if they overrun our embassy and take our people hostage?"
And then still traveling backward through his administration, he's letting his new Fed chairman Paul Volcker raise interest rates to fight inflation, an unpopular move that won't pay off until the Reagan administration; now he's making his famous "malaise" speech in which he doesn't use the word "malaise" but he does describe America's problems as spiritual: "In a nation that was once proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption . . . But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose." God intends him for something; perhaps it is this.
And now he's sitting on the floor at Camp David, listening to economists, energy experts, governors, civil rights activists, and religious leaders trying to diagnose America's problem. And now he's popular, installing solar-water-heating panels on the White House roof; and now he and Rosalynn are visiting the partially melted down reactor at Three Mile Island to avert a panic; and now he's at the signing of the Camp David peace accords on the White House lawn; and now he's at Camp David with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin when the breakthrough comes, writing in his notes "no new Israeli settlements would be established."
And backwards still, to clashing with Ted Kennedy over the feasibility of single-payer health insurance; now he's appointing Ruth Bader-Ginsberg to the federal bench, along with 37 other women and 57 people of color. And now he's meeting with labor leaders who want a single-payer health-care system to try to find a compromise on health care; now he's addressing a press corps that resents his discipline, belittles his religion, and mocks his Southern drawl but no matter, the people love him. And then he is meeting Anwar Sadat for the first time and feeling a light come on, a hope of peace dawn. God intends him for something; perhaps it is this.
Then he travels back through his first-year: negotiating treaties to return the Panama Canal to the people of Panama--bad politics but the right thing to do; his aides trying to get him to be more political but God intends him for something and it isn't just winning. And on energy, even then he knew he was right and now he knows it for sure because he's going backwards, supporting nuclear, building capacity in renewables, decontrolling natural gas and beginning to deregulate electricity, creating the conditions for the rise of the American energy sector. Now he's vetoing water projects that damage the environment and waste taxpayer dollars; now he's deregulating airlines and trucking companies, forcing them to compete (and angering liberals); now he's appointing an activist to the NTSB who will make seatbelts and airbags mandatory (angering conservatives); now he's proposing the elimination of the Electoral College; now he's addressing the nation in a cardigan (angering Rosalynn) to emphasize the need to conserve energy.
Now he's traveling back through those first heady days, looking at stars through the telescope on the White House roof, oh God, how beautiful is your creation; now he's walking down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, Rosalynn's and Amy's hands in his, smiling, waving, some people weep as they pass, others shout "Hi Jimmy!" And now they're getting their first tour of the White House and Rosalynn asks the kitchen staff if they can make Southern food, and the chef replies, "Yes, ma'am, we've been fixing that kind of food for the servants for a long time."
And now he's exhausted, awaiting the returns; now he's campaigning, sleeping in his shorts on the couches of supporters, eating fast food, now he's baffling the pundits and establishment elites by winning the primary. And now he's governor of Georgia, reforming the government bureaucracy, and now he's making his inauguration speech, telling Georgians "the time for racial discrimination is over," and now he's campaigning for governor as a populist, calling himself a "conservative progressive," labeling his opponent "Cuff Links Carl."
Time takes him faster now, because the years speed up as they go by, even backwards. His son Jack goes to Vietnam; Rosalynn gives birth to their daughter Amy at age 40; then he's weeping and wondering if God intends him for anything because he lost his first gubernatorial run to an open racist. Then backwards to being a state senator, then a farmer; to shoveling peanuts; to discovering poet Dylan Thomas; to the birth of his son, Jeff, Chip, his first son, Jack. Now Rosalynn is crying, threatening to leave him, but he insists on quitting the Navy because God intended him for something and it isn't for war. And backwards to his father dying (after the first death, there is no other); to learning nuclear engineering, to being swept off the deck of his submarine by a giant wave and then, improbably, swept back on (God intended him for something); to marrying beautiful Rosalynn; to the Naval Academy, where's he called "Cracker."
And now he awakes to the farm forever fled, to high school and girls and cars and shoveling peanuts, to the "greatest day of his life," when, at 14, his family home is wired for electricity, to mopping cotton with molasses and arsenic, swatting flies, shoveling peanuts, hog brains and eggs for breakfast; now he sells Rosalynn an ice cream; now his feet are run over by a school bus; now Santa Claus brings him a Tarzan book; now he's sweeping the yard; mother's not home; now he's fishing for catfish and pickerel with Rachael; now he rides his pony, Lady, walking warm on the fields of praise; now his dog Bozo, alive again, catches squirrels; now red clay dust between his toes; now he's baptized in the name of the Lord, the round Zion of the water bead rolling down his neck, cool, so cool, blood throbbing, heart pounding, gasping to catch his breath, oh the joy of it, the sheer joy, knowing God intends him for something and not even needing to know what.
39: Jimmy Carter