Rosalynn Carter in hospice

[Crumpets]

AP News: Rosalynn Carter, 96-year-old former first lady, is in hospice care at home, Carter Center says

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter is in hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia, the Carter Center announced Friday.

The center said the 96-year-old is at home with former President Jimmy Carter, now 99. The Carter family said through the statement that they are “grateful for the outpouring of love and support.”

The family announced earlier this year that the former first lady is suffering from dementia. The former president entered hospice care at home in February.

[President Johnson]

Damn. Get well soon, Ma'am. The Carters are just awesome people and I hope they will be around for a while.

[jojoju1998]

The Carters are good people, and I'll pray for them.

One wonders if the reason why Jimmy Carter failed, was because he was too " nice " to be President.

[President Johnson]

The Carters are good people, and I'll pray for them.

One wonders if the reason why Jimmy Carter failed, was because he was too " nice " to be President.

It was more of an issue that he lacked experience and was - despite some success - the wrong guy for that particular time. Gerald Ford was an equally nice guy (his nickname literally was "Mr. Nice Guy") though I believe he would been better equipped to deal with the many challenges of the late 1970s.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Terrible news, but not unexpected, frankly. Also, if Jimmy's (and my own grandfather's) examples are any indication, she might be around for several good and happy months before she or her husband passes, so no reason to start writing the obituaries yet.

[Pres Mike]

The Carters are good people, and I'll pray for them.

One wonders if the reason why Jimmy Carter failed, was because he was too " nice " to be President.

He needed more time. The hostages were saved and inflation were tamed because of Carter, but Reagan got the credit

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

Like I said to my friend when we heard about this earlier, I genuinely can't think of a better way to leave this earth than side-by-side with my partner and surrounded by family. Wishing both Mr. and Mrs. Carter a peaceful transition into whatever the next stage of this existence is like and I'm confident that they're both at peace with the amazing life they're leaving behind.

[Alben Barkley]

When they go, I hope they go together, more or less.

[TDAS04]

Sad to hear. Roselyn and Jimmy are both great people, and the family is in my prayers.

[Mr. Smith]

Given what Rosalynn was known for, this is ironic and a bit of an ignoble way to go.

[politicallefty]

When they go, I hope they go together, more or less.

Yeah, it's been my expectation that they won't be far apart in death. I hope it isn't soon though.

[Fuzzy Bear]

The Carters are good people, and I'll pray for them.

One wonders if the reason why Jimmy Carter failed, was because he was too " nice " to be President.

It was more of an issue that he lacked experience and was - despite some success - the wrong guy for that particular time. Gerald Ford was an equally nice guy (his nickname literally was "Mr. Nice Guy") though I believe he would been better equipped to deal with the many challenges of the late 1970s.

Carter was not too "nice" to be President.  He had his nasty side.  George McGovern called him "the biggest p---k in politics" in 1972, and Carter was, in truth, rather nasty in his efforts to stop McGovern from being nominated.  After being nasty to McGovern, only to see McGovern nominated anyway, Carter called Scoop Jackson at 4 am to ask if Scoop would call McGovern and plug him for McGovern's VP.  Robert Kaufman, Jackson's biographer, stated that Jackson could never think of Carter again without a certain revulsion, and McGovern was put off by the attempt as well.

Niceness and Nastiness was not the reason for Carter's troubles as President.  The problem was that Carter was the only true "centrist" to be elected, other than Eisenhower, since WWI.  Carter, on issues, was, on the whole, positioned almost dead center between the bases of each party.  He was not an ideologue, and his liberal positions and postures came in conservative wrappers.

Such a posture was needed for a Democrat to be elected President in 1976.  Carter was looking to run for President in 1976 long before the 1972 convention, and he (correctly) recognized that a Democratic victory in the 1976 Presidential race would require a different kind of Democrat, one that could manage to gain the support of the more conservative elements of the Democratic Party (who were actual conservatives, and not just to the right of the left wing base) while being acceptable to liberals (who received a dose of reality when Nixon won 49 states in 1972).  And Carter was a stunning success here; he won the support of Southern blacks AND Southern conservatives (Eastland, Stennis, Wallace, and every Southern Democrat of consequence openly endorsed Carter).  He won the support of the anti-war Left and the AFL-CIO (no mean feat in 1976).  He did this because after 1972, no one wanted to be responsible for blowing a Presidential election they ought to have won post-Watergate.  This worked out well, in that Carter won the Northeast, the industrial Midwest (save for Illinois, which had problems, locally, with their Democratic Party in 1976), and 10 of 11 Southern states.  It was the last hurrah for the FDR coalition.

But what worked in winning an election did not work in governing.  Because Carter was a "Moderate Hero" as President, he pleased no one.  Liberals were unhappy from Day One, viewing Carter as a placeholder until their God-Prince Ted Kennedy could come on horseback and restore Camelot.  (Ted Kennedy's speech line "The Dream will never die" was as much about that as it was about "progressive ideals".)   Southern conservatives supported him to the extent that they would rather Carter be on the top of the ticket in 1980 than someone else, but he was not warm to them, and he could not count on their votes for some of Carter's liberal initiatives.  Carter had more legislative successes than he gets credit for, but his wins were compromises that pleased nobody.  But what really undid Carter (at least in the South) was his abandonment of a "neocon" position on foreign policy in favor of what Elliott Abrams once called "his own brand of McGovernism".  This is where the image of Carter as "weak" came in.  Carter, after all, was a Jackson supporter, and Jackson was the candidate of the traditional anti-Communist liberals in the Democratic Party (e. g. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Zbignew Brzenski).  Carter's nomination represented a repudiation of the anti-war Left to some, but his governing represented the locking in of a number of anti-war Left positions as part and parcel of the Democratic Party.

Not that Carter was always wrong here.  Carter attempted to strike a balance.  He did attempt to interject Human Rights into the foreign policy discussions, and that was good.  But he allowed himself to be manipulated by some Leftists to do things like push for the ouster of Somoza in Nicaragua, or (even worse) the Shah of Iran.  These sort of leaders were not good people, but their replacements were (A) far worse and (B) more entrenched.  Richard Nixon, for all his faults, was rightly critical of Foreign Policy that "greased the skids for our allies", and Carter's foreign policy included some of that.

This does not change the assessment of Carter as a fundamentally good man.  I do not view Carter as the "failed President" so many do.  I regret my support of Kennedy in 1980 and my abstaining in the Presidential race in 1980.  I believe that had Carter been re-elected, his second term would have been much better than his first.  What I am writing here is an explanation of why things went for Carter as they did (at least in part).  God Bless Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter in their final days. 

[President Johnson]

When they go, I hope they go together, more or less.

That's what I'm hoping as well for them. I guess that neither of them will outlive the other by much though, similar to George and Barbara Bush.

[Crumpets]

When they go, I hope they go together, more or less.

Yeah, it's been my expectation that they won't be far apart in death. I hope it isn't soon though.

They may actually live to experience the famous Winnie the Pooh quote "If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."

[Ragnaroni]

prayers for her recovery and prayers for jimmy too!

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

We all gonna die but terminal illness are getting rare unless you have underline medical conditions, I will live longer than my ancestors because I don't have terminal illnesses

[Ferguson97]

She has died, per NBC.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

RIP Mrs. Carter

[Mr. Smith]

Though I'm glad her suffering ends, RIP.

[Atlas Force]

RIP