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And tomorrow we dance on the grave

I always had him pegged as a petty and spiteful man. Not sure why, but some news must have trickled out to youthful me to create that impression.

While he publicly denied it, Carter would personally schedule the times when aides could play on the White House tennis courts. “Carter said, ‘I’m in charge,’ ” a former Secret Service agent says. “ ‘Everything is my way.’ He tried to micromanage everything. You had to go to him about playing on the tennis court. It was ridiculous.”

Agents were convinced that Carter as president was in over his head and that Rosalynn was the smarter one. She had a loving relationship with her husband and acted as an advisor, sometimes firmly correcting what he said. Unlike her husband, she treated agents with respect.

“Rosalynn really was the brains of the outfit,” says former agent Repasky. “She kept him in line and constantly advised him. She was very pragmatic and organized. He would make an ultra-liberal comment, and she would ground him and tell him he had to be more centrist. If he didn’t listen, she could get cold and steely.”

“I think the presidency was too big for Carter to comprehend,” says former agent Ramon Dunlap.

Oh, and stupid. I forgot stupid.

After he left the presidency, Jimmy Carter often went skiing and fishing with Rosalynn in Colorado. “He’d go skiing, and he’d take lessons, and his wife would take lessons, too,” a former agent says. “But he wouldn’t listen to his instructor. He thought he was an expert. He’d go skiing, and she’d go skiing, and he’d keep falling down or not doing things right, and she would do everything right the way the instructors taught her. He’d get pissed off because she was a better skier than he was.”

The same pattern played out when the couple went fishing. “She’d go out there in the middle of the stream and go fishing, and he’d be out there thinking he was the best fisherman in the world,” the former agent says. “He’d be tossing that line out there, and she’d be catching fish, and he’d get just furious because he couldn’t catch a fish and she could.”

Picture is the Jimmy Carter rabbit incident, if you don’t recall. Dead Pool tomorrow!

January 9, 2025 — 5:22 pm
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