Editor’s note: The Voice has had a very mixed track record with our political endorsements. Among others who never became president of the United States are Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore — whom editorial dissenters in 2000 endorsed in opposition to the top editors’ choice of Ralph Nader, listing their reasons in a sidebar titled “Nader: Unsafe on Any Issue.”
However, in 1976, a VV nod proved pivotal (or not) when Jimmy Carter beat the incumbent, Gerald Ford (the country’s only appointed president, having taken office after Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned amid a bribery scandal in 1973, followed by President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, after the Watergate revelations).
The Voice endorsement presciently summed up the future POTUS’s greatest attribute: “Jimmy Carter might actually be a person who has a gut feeling about life’s victims and casualties.”
After hearing the news yesterday of Carter’s death, at just past the century mark, we observe the occasion by reprinting that endorsement, which was published in the November 1, 1976, issue of the paper.
EDITORIAL
A Vote for Carter
This presidential election offers us a choice between a risky, quirky possibility and an awful, frozen certainty. We prefer the possibilities of Jimmy Carter.
We know Gerald Ford. He pardoned Nixon. For months he denied financial assistance to New York City and finally gave us a loan at twice the interest rate the United States government is charging the dictatorship of Zaire.
We know Ford. He gives Kissinger power. He thinks the Pentagon’s budget should be bigger, not smaller. He is indifferent to the loss of human rights in Chile. He has vetoed 66 bills, most of them incremental remedies creating jobs, helping cities, providing funds for day care. And he has picked Bob Dole — a sleazy reincarnation of Nixon — to be his running mate.
Jimmy Carter is a flawed politician. One day he promises tax reform, and the next day he hints to bankers and businessmen that he didn’t really mean it. During the second debate, his foreign-policy rhetoric was jingoistic and messianic.
But we see flashes of potential, of possibility, in Carter. We see a chance of help for New York City. We see a chance of a healing reconciliation between blacks and whites. We see a chance to control the spread of nuclear weapons. We see a chance to create jobs for eight million unemployed, and a chance to enact national health insurance. We see a chance that Jimmy Carter might actually be a person who has a gut feeling about life’s victims and casualties.
These arguments are problematic, yet we make them not from any blind fealty to the two-party system. Choosing Carter is preferable to the cynicism of those liberals who do not plan to vote, or else are tempted to throw their vote away to the spiteful Gene McCarthy. But such people should remember that Richard Nixon was elected president with a plurality of less than one percent in 1968.
We suggest a vote for Carter, with our eyes open, and no illusions. ♦
∞ ∞ ∞
James Earl Carter Jr.
October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024
