Counting the hours

Happy New Year.

2025 has arrived, and just like 2024, it will end.

A year.

One year.

What will happen?

365 days. 8,760 hours.

Expand the premise. Jimmy Carter lived for more than 876,000 hours, which is longer than any American president has ever lived. It is also 201,480 more hours than the average American, whose life span is declining, with white and black men leading the way.

Jimmy Carter spent 35,040 hours as president of the United States, but not quite 50 years ago. The country and the world have changed profoundly.

When Jimmy Carter was born in the Jim Crow south of 1924 the country stood 59 years beyond a Civil War that ended slavery, and killed more than 750,000 Americans.

When Jimmy Carter looked around as a child and saw someone Joe Biden’s age, they might well have been a veteran of the Confederate Army, an emancipated slave or a slave owner.

When he saw a young combat veteran it would have been a soldier from the American Expeditionary Force that fought under the command of General Pershing in France during World War I.

The population of the United States was just over 114 million when Jimmy Carter was born.

It was 218 million on the day he became president, and almost 335 million on the day he died.

Jimmy Carter lived a life of 100 years, and it impacted billions around the world. Imagine if Jimmy Carter’s only achievement in life was the eradication of the Guinea worm disease and the suffering it caused. What would be said of that person? Would it not have been a giant life? A worthy one? One that measured up?

What if you found out that the man who did it was also a US Navy nuclear submariner who stopped the world’s first nuclear meltdown at age 27 in a remote corner of Canada?

What if you found out that he was a master carpenter, built houses for the poor, lived modestly, and sought to reconcile enemies all over the world?

The qualities of humility and restraint are as necessary for the nourishment of a great republic as are courage, daring and vision.

Jimmy Carter was an exceptional and inspirational leader throughout his life — enough so to lead a team of people into a nuclear reactor core and be elected president of the United States.

All through my lifetime, Jimmy Carter was disrespected by his own party, his opponents, and the media as a loser because he fell short in a presidential election.

Think about this aspect of American culture.

A man who grew up poor in rural Georgia, graduated from the United States Naval Academy, became a pioneer of the nuclear navy, saved the family farm and made it hugely successful, was elected to the Georgia legislature, governor, and then president was called a loser by age 56. He would be called a loser when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and he was called a loser when he travelled the world doing good works.

He never stopped serving, and he never sold out.

Jimmy Carter is an American winner, and one of the very best of us — and make no mistake, there is an “us.” It is a beautiful mosaic made up of all the peoples of the world who came to America in myriad ways, and found themselves sharing a moment in time on Earth with a most remarkable man.

The country is going to figure some things out the hard way over the next few years.

I want to make a prediction about something that people are going to figure out pretty quickly. In fact, by the end of 2025, it will be understood.

A country that produces one Jimmy Carter every 100 years is much better off than a country that produces 10 Elon Musks per year.

Elon recently let his arrogance off the leash when he insulted the United States, and suggested that the Union is strong because Musk is here, and he gave America SpaceX, Tesla and Starlink.

He is confused. Those companies made him rich, which is different than making America strong. Because America is strong those companies prospered in America. In fact, there is no other country in the world where those companies would thrive as they have in America. None.

Elon Musk owes America, not the other way around.

Donald Trump has assembled a vicious court of narcissists and egotists, and set them against each other. He loves the fighting, the idiocy and drama from watching his version of presidential “The Apprentice” play out.

The American people have picked a low man for a low moment. They have responded to the great gaslighting of the Biden era, the smugness of the media and its sneering dishonesty with a proverbial gasoline can and a match.

Next comes the burning, and then after rejuvenation.

Maybe.

Sitting here at the end of 2024, I’m reflecting on the “flawless” campaign that delivered the country to Trump.

I’m absorbing Joe Biden’s regrets that he should have stayed in the race because I know that sitting around him are a bunch of sycophantic bobble heads nodding up and down sniffing the power in the air like glue addicts down to their last bottle and paper bag.

I was thinking about the first time I was ever called a liar by a reporter in a headline over something that was true, but wasn’t allowed to be talked about.

Looking back, maybe it should have been.

During the first 20 days of January I’m going to write about how it is that we have wound up in the great national hole from which we will need to climb out.

I’m going to be unsparing about the magnitude of the media and political failures that led to this moment.

Jan Crawford of CBS News is a great journalist who told the truth about something of great importance. Here is what she said:

I didn’t get it wrong 16 years ago. Ben Smith and Politico did. The journey to the credibility oblivion of this moment built up over many years, and includes a roster of mega media names like Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman who were part of a DC brat pack of political journalists who practiced journalism by practicing politics. The result is Trump, and the bill for that will come due soon enough.

Jimmy Carter was a man of integrity. It’s going to take a real one — or woman — and one who is very tough to beat JD Vance in four years. The age of the baby boomers and politicians like Joe Biden is over. The next Democrat who raises his or her hand and takes the presidential oath won’t have a family of DC careerists and lobbyists lined up behind him ready to cash in.

Going forward, it is important to appreciate who is bullshitting you, and who isn’t. A Politico special frozen in amber. Enjoy:

Biden aide: 'Schmidt lied, or got it wrong'

By BEN SMITH

09/22/2008 12:33 PM EDT

McCain aide Steve Schmidt told reporters today, amid a barrage of charges against the Obama campaign and the media, that Joe Biden's son, Hunter, had lobbied for the credit card and banking industries.

Those lobbying contracts don't appear in the public records, and Biden spokesman David Wade fired back in an e-mail just now.

"Steve Schmidt lied — or just got it flat wrong," he e-mailed "Hunter Biden has never — never — been a lobbyist for the credit card or banking industry."

UPDATE: The McCain campaign points out that Hunter Biden served as a vice president at the credit card giant MBNA at one time and later as a "consultant" to it.

Biden's camp has always denied that the senator's son was hired to lobby, though it's hard to imagine that the bank wasn't aware of their employee's connection to the senator.

He was never registered to lobby for the company.

Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale summed up their four years in office this way:

We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace.

They did.

Donald Trump will be unable to say those words within 60 seconds of speaking at his inaugural address.

What Jimmy Carter did was linked to who he was, but it isn’t the same.

James Earl Carter of Plains, Georgia, was an American.

He was a man of great integrity, grace and humility, who did not judge others, but rather, met them where they were with kindness and respect.

It took a good long while for the American people to finally see Jimmy Carter, which is surprising because he was very big man indeed — a giant even.