Jimmy Carter, Bob Dylan and Ray Davies: This Is Captain America Calling
Give Jimmy Carter credit. As father to three boys coming of age in the ’60s, he’d hear their favorite recording acts — Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers Band, Simon and Garfunkel, et al, — on the stereo, and instead of screaming for them to “turn that racket down,” he decided to actually listen to the music himself. Carter took a liking to the way the Allman Brothers Band fused rock, blues and jazz. And he regarded Bob Dylan’s lyrics as poetry. Carter talked Dylan up to friends, and to those who might vote for him as he plotted a run for the presidency. He attended a concert by Bob Dylan and The Band in Atlanta’s Omni in the winter of ’74. His presence was announced just before the concert. “Hmm…., this is different,” I thought, as the announcement was made to polite applause. Generally I thought of Carter, then in his last year as Georgia’s governor, as a moderate Democrat who taught Sunday school, but never as a rock and roll fan.
On the next day, there were news accounts of Dylan, The Band, Gregg Allman, and various rock people showing up at the Governor’s Mansion for a post-concert party with Jimmy Carter. Rolling Stone would report on it in the weeks ahead. This had to surprise even the most circumspect of the magazine’s readers. Dylan hosted by a Georgia governor? Times really were a-changin’. Preceding Carter as Governor was, according to gonzo writer Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, “a white trash dingbat named Lester Maddox.” Dr. Thompson had a lot more to learn about Georgia, then in the latest embodiment of the New South, and he’d soon learn a lot more about Jimmy Carter.
Thompson was on the road for Rolling Stone, covering Senator Ted Kennedy, who was making a Law Day appearance at the University of Georgia. Though drenched by Chappaquiddick, Kennedy and his acolytes still clung to the aura of his family name. Getting elected president wasn’t beyond reason. History has a sense of humor, after all. Richard Nixon, defeated in the 1960 presidential election by John F. Kennedy, would be hightailing it out of the White House in a few months. Despite his own chaotic political history, Nixon was elected twice to the presidency. American moods can change, and as Nixon’s story demonstrates, they can change again. So reporting on Ted Kennedy in Georgia, a state his brother John took in ’60, could lead to another Gonzo classic. And Thompson delivered a captivating story. But it was about Jimmy Carter — and it would be two years in the making.
Thompson likely knew little of Carter’s musical tastes, but the Georgia Governor’s Law Day address sounded like a hit. In fact it sounded like nothing the good doctor had ever heard before. Writing in the June 2, 1976 issue of Rolling Stone, Thompson seemed not only impressed, but astounded by Carter’s words from two years back. Carter was expected to deliver a few perfunctory remarks at the Law Day ceremony — how we as free people revere justice and that our nation is a government of laws, not men. The My Country Tis Of Thee routine. But instead, Carter delivered what Thompson called “a king hell bastard of a speech….. the heaviest and most eloquent I have heard from the mouth of a politician.” A man not easily swayed, Thompson understood he was in the presence of an uncommon politician. In his story for Rolling Stone, Thompson, awe-struck, wrote:
“I have never heard a sustained piece of political oratory that impressed me more than the speech Jimmy Carter made on the Saturday afternoon in May 1974. It ran about 45 minutes, climbing through five very distinct gear changes while the audience muttered uneasily and raised their eyebrows at each other…….. A rare piece of oratorical artwork.”
Less than a year after hosting Dylan, and then wowing Thompson, Carter was on his way out of the Governor’s Mansion. Looking for another job, he declared his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Not so popular with those he served as Governor, Georgians rolled their eyes. People elsewhere in the country said, “Jimmy Who?” When he told his mother, the colorful “Miss Lillian,” that he was running for president, she asked, “President of what?” Jimmy Carter was taking a big leap of faith.
Jimmy Carter dug in. If it took shaking every hand in Iowa over the course of the year, he’d do it. Certainly not the most liberal of the Democratic candidates, he had his work cut out for him in the first post-Vietnam/post-Watergate election. Repudiation of the values and policies that were part and parcel of our nation’s tragedies and scandals was in order. Carter had been a progressive governor, especially by Georgia standards, but he was no McGovern, Humphrey or Kennedy. Still Carter hung in there. There were grounded thoughts behind his ideas and he would explain them thoroughly. One could appreciate the audacity of his running for the nation’s highest office while respecting his intellect. He won the Iowa caucuses. Then he came through in the early primaries that were so pivotal. He built up a nice enough lead so that even late challenges for the nomination by Jerry Brown and Frank Church, though a concern, were not crucial. Being earnest and steady got Jimmy Carter to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Do The Georgia Crawl . . . . As Governor of Georgia, Carter was as liberal as he could afford to be. Georgia — then as now – was a state where simply doing the decent thing was construed as liberal. In his inaugural address on January 12, 1971, he declared the days of segregation in Georgia were over. People who knew Carter closely were not surprised by the statement, but many Georgians who watched his campaign and voted for him were. In his second attempt to be elected governor, Carter had run to the right of Carl Sanders, who served as chief executive of the state for a single four year term beginning in January ’63. Sanders was considered a progressive, but mainly because he wasn’t like George Wallace in Alabama or some of the Georgia governors before him, such as Marvin Griffin and Herman Talmadge. When campaigning in ’62, Sanders noted that he still believed in segregation but wasn’t a fanatic about it. Such fanaticism led to standing in schoolhouse doors — hardly the way to lure Fortune 500 companies to the state. But he wasn’t ready to sing a round of “We Shall Overcome” either. He testified before Congress against the public accommodation section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He thought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was demanding too much too soon and went as far as to link civil rights activist Hosea Williams with Ku Klux Klan leader Calvin Craig as examples of extremism in Georgia. Still, because he didn’t breathe fire as he spoke and because he cut a nice business-like figure in his tailored suits, Carl Sanders came across as a moderate and even a liberal to many in Georgia, depending on how close one’s philosophy hewed to Calvin Craig’s.
Jimmy Carter sought to distance Georgia from its ugly past with discreet moves that resonated, such as hanging a portrait of the late Dr. King at the State Capitol. He secured endorsements from Daddy King and Andrew Young shortly after he began his improbable run for the presidency. Carter could talk a liberal game without frightening conservatives. After all, with his success in the Navy and as a businessman, along with his steadfast dedication to Jesus Christ, Carter had appeal with what passed as rank and file conservatives in the mid 70s. In fact, he had a story or example for everyone. Carter was a great campaigner and had a way of connecting, in some fashion, with most any potential voter. Promises of “a government as good as the American people” and “a new spirit” helped Carter widen his support on the campaign trail. And the ’76 presidential campaign signaled change; every candidate would say as much, although some less than others. But once Carter was, in the words of Paul Simon, “up on the Presidential podium,” he found change — even at its most fulfilling — evasive. Possessing the faith of a mustard seed, Carter may have been able to move Stone Mountain on to I-285, but moving legislation and staying true to his own campaign’s hopes demanded far more dramatic biblical power. Like something from Cecil B. Demille’s playbook.
All The Plans They Do Pursue . . . . Jimmy Carter’s presidency is held in higher esteem today than it was when he left office in ’81 or even a decade later. During the ’84 and ’88 Democratic Party conventions, he was kept at a safe remove so as not to compel unpleasant memories. Losing 44 states in a reelection bid can do that. Democrats recognized Carter’s innate decency and his accomplishments, particularly in foreign policy. (The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaties, the recognition of China and the Panama Canal accords.) But they couldn’t forget the double -digit inflation, the Iranian hostage crisis, and other lapses that caused millions of voters to believe Carter was floundering. In a poll taken past the halfway mark of his administration, Carter’s approval rating was lower (at 25%) than Richard Nixon’s as the Watergate scandal unfolded. Carter’s supporters reflected on how it all went so wrong so quickly. A presidency which began with such promise was rejected after just one term. An article in The New Republic lamented Carter’s election in ’76, suggesting America wouldn’t have elected Ronald Reagan to the Oval Office four years later had President Gerald Ford beaten back the Carter challenge
.The U.S. had plenty to reflect upon — and far more than the results of just one election. There’s the legacy of overreach and blunders in foreign policy which many presidents are left to finesse. Here, we go back to New Year’s Eve, with 1977 giving way to 1978. President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter are in Tehran as guests of that party animal, Mohammad Reva Pahlavi, otherwise known as the Shah of Iran. The president had based much of his foreign policy on the importance of human rights. The Shah, with his secret police squad known as SAVAK, didn’t buy into that part of Carter’s message, but he did appreciate America buying so much Iranian oil, and even more, he appreciated the coup staged in 1953 (by the C.I.A.), which put him in power. However, he could set aside Carter’s purist notions, especially when Carter toasted Iran at the New Year’s bash with words that would later haunt the president, “Iran is an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world.” For Carter and the US, that part of the world became even more troubling. And sooner than even the best of experts thought. As the Carters and Pahlevis were ringing in 1978, they had no idea the Shah’s grip on the Peacock Throne was so tenuous. The new year would bring in strikes, martial law, protests against the monarchy from both the left and right of the Iranian socio-political spectrum. Then the Black Friday massacre, which doomed any chances for moderation in the post-monarchy era. Still, in late September, less than three weeks after Black Friday, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency issued a report declaring that the Shah “is expected to remain actively in power over the next ten years.” Actually, that hold on power was closer to ten weeks. On January 16, 1979, the Shah, hoping things would cool off if he went abroad for awhile, left Iran. He never returned. Within a month of his departure, the monarchy was finished.
My So-Called Friends . . . . So the United States had lost a buffer against the Soviets in the Cold War that was either heating up or, if you like, getting frostier. Whichever way one looked at it, the situation was bad. The United States, always principled in its words but not so in its deeds, has too often counted among its friends some really bad guys, like the Shah, to strengthen itself against even worse guys, like a Brezhnev. An atrocities scorecard could’ve been used to tally, equate and reconcile the actions of adversaries and so-called friends.
Creating foreign policy dependent on dubious friendships is an American tradition. When asked how he could support a tyrant like (Nicaraguan President) Somoza, President Franklin Roosevelt replied, “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Eventually the sons of bitches extract a high price for loyalty. The United States, already in a rough patch in ’79, kept paying for the Shah’s perceived loyalty even after he left Iran. He would live only 18 months after going abroad, but he required the assistance of the White House in finding a country willing to host such a notorious exile.
“Fuck the Shah,” said an exasperated Jimmy Carter. “He’s just as well off playing tennis in Acapulco as he is in California.” The president had gone along with The Shah is a friend to America mind-set too long already. He knew that, and it was easy to empathize with Carter, saddled with the living embodiment of the most consequential foreign policy error made by the United States since the end of World War II. Guided by the approval of the Eisenhower administration, America overthrew the democratically elected President of Iran. The Peacock Throne was dusted off and the young Mohammad Reza Pahlavi brought in to fill it. Now there’d be no socialist Iranian government threatening Western oil companies with interests in Iran. America’s new “friend,” the Shah, kept the party going for a quarter century. Ever since, the civilized world has dealt with the ongoing morning-after.
The revolution toppling the Shah disrupted oil supplies en route to America from Iran. There were long lines at the gas pumps throughout the country; some regions were hit harder than others. And the gas prices went up – way up. In play was the old supply and demand game that made Americans feel even worse over spending so much time to fill up. Some Americans acknowledged America’s “friend,” the Shah, was a bad guy but at least with his iron hand, he kept the oil flowing — very much like America kept the cash flowing. The Shah well understood the rewards of a special friendship. He didn’t participate in the 1973 oil embargo, the western world’s first energy calamity. In fact, he exploited it by increasing his country’s oil production. In just 12 months, Iran’s GDP grew by 50%. That’s what friends are for.
Running for his life and testing the patience of his friends in host countries, the Shah began a never-ending tour. Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico, The United States, Panama and back to Egypt, where he died on July 27, 1980. The new Iranian government had wanted the Shah back in Iran. The revolutionaries there were unhappy with the US for helping the Shah find asylum, especially when he arrived in New York and then Texas for medical treatment. The US was already held in contempt by the Iranian government for its role in the ’53 overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh. (It was just a quarter-century before — recent history as far as the revolutionaries were concerned. And in our frame of time, roughly the same amount of years between now and the beginning of Bill Clinton’s second presidential term. (Not that long ago, if you’re paying attention.) Carter had already expressed his disdain over playing travel agent for the Shah. He knew enough about justice to realize he was on the wrong side of a growing foreign crisis. Things could only get worse. They always do. Besides, there were other flashpoints troubling his administration and putting his presidency at risk. Americans saw on TV how angry the Iranians were at the US. Fists raised in the air, shaking vigorously. The most popular chants: “Death to Carter” and “Death to America.” And millions of Americans soon learned that because of the anger and upheaval, they couldn’t even, as Ray Davies put it, “get a gallon of gas.”
Davies, co-founder, lead singer and primary songwriter for the Kinks, often used his talents to express accord with the English working class. The stress and upheaval of modern life is especially conveyed in Muswell Hillbillies, the 1971 album that ranks among the Kinks’ best efforts — perhaps it’s their most fully realized album in 30 years of recording, despite poor sales in both the United Kingdom and America.
Davies and his band-mates wanted success in America. They’d work hard for it and by the end of the decade it was theirs. Having signed in ’76 to Arista Records, the Kinks added rougher edges to the accessible material Davies was then turning out. Their performing venues in the US were no longer medium-sized halls but the hockey arenas seating between 10,000 and 20,000 fans, a great portion of which had recently embraced the Kinks. That was especially true in ’79 with the release of Low Budget, the band’s new album, which gave attention to the current stress and upheaval in America, much of it due to the latest gas shortage and the nation’s diminishing prestige. On “A Gallon of Gas,” Davies laments that he can score some “high grade hash” and red hot speed” but he can’t “get a gallon of gas.” It was a mostly humorous take on a global problem, giving rock and roll fans a chance to laugh at the news of the day just as Will Rogers used to poke at political leaders who gave us Prohibition and the Great Depression.
On “Catch Me Now I’m Falling,” Davies has Captain America calling on the world to give the United States a hand. Wasn’t it the U.S. who had bailed out other nations of their depressions and difficulties? Had the world forgotten? Captain Renault in Casablanca hadn’t. He remembered being with the Americans when “they stumbled into Berlin in 1918.” Winston Churchill remembered US Army General George Marshall as the “true architect of victory” in World War II, saving England and the world from Hitler. So Davies’ Captain America shames those turning their backs on an old and reliable friend. But the imploring words rang hollow. If America was in trouble, so was the rest of the world and much of America’s trouble was due to its own shortsightedness, as in embracing the Shah, or adopting Somoza as “our bastard.” Or, perhaps it was being so caught up in materialism, as Jimmy Carter lamented on July 15, 1979, in what was called his “malaise” speech.
The nation had slipped its moorings, caught up in the instant gratification of the me decade. Carter rendered the same observant skills that informed his Law Day speech of five years earlier, when he was devising a path to the presidency; giving thought to not only balancing the nation’s budget but also its social consciousness. That would be tough, given the mindless consumption taking hold, even in a tough economy. But Carter tried:
“In a nation that was 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. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns.”
Carter’s speech was both political address and sermon. That was no surprise given that Carter had been the most forthcoming President about his Christian faith since James Garfield. Carter had long been inspired by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who stated that “The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.” As it was, and would continue to be, there was even less justice in a far more sinful world. But maybe Carter took comfort in the news that year regarding Bob Dylan’s conversion to Christianity. Carter knew there was no one in music better at spreading a message than Dylan. He may have wondered if Dylan would put his faith front and center in his new songs. The world would soon know — just 36 days after the “malaise” speech.
Carter’s speech was well received by the American people. The White House switchboard lit up with 84% of the callers supporting the president’s. Considering that throughout his address, Carter consistently alternated between lauding the goodness of the American people while admonishing their self-centered attitudes, the praise for Carter was most exceptional. Two and a half years into his presidency, Carter provided himself with a fresh start. Sadly, the renewed spirits fell flat within two days when Carter asked for resignation letters from each member of his cabinet. Carter’s chief adviser, Hamilton Jordan, had noted disloyalty among some cabinet members. Now seemed as good a time as any to clean house, but, no. The approval ratings went down. Some questioned whether the president was in his right mind. The president-as-minister who filled his bully pulpit with such eloquence had an unhappy nation restless in the pews, looking for an exit.
August began as badly as July ended. Carter’s energy proposals were met with resistance. The likelihood of his being re-nominated by the Democrats the next summer was threatened by the possible campaign of Senator Ted Kennedy. Then Hamilton Jordan, adept at sniffing out disloyal cabinet members, was questioned by the FBI about reports he had used cocaine at the disco pleasure palace, Studio 54. The accusers were the club’s oweners, then fighting off the IRS over tax evasion charges. The cocaine allegations were a crock, but it was disturbing that Carter’s right-hand man had been anywhere near Studio 54, that temple of decay and self-indulgence. Many of us in the country, taking in the news, needed a cleansing bath or a homily to revive our spirits. Enter Bob Dylan and his new album, Slow Train Coming. The album’s songs, to put it mildly, proclaimed his newly-found Christian faith. Dylan’s homilies touched on “spiritual welfare and flesh and blood breaking down.” Less than one year after his conversion, he exhorted like an Old Testament prophet about the new covenant. The love of Christ imparted with the fury of Cecil B. Demille.
Bob Dylan accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior in January of 1979, and as with the Apostle Paul, he was confident in the gospel. Dylan took what Christians called personal evangelism or witnessing to a new level. His new songs laid out the straight and narrow path. In “Precious Angel,” he exhorts, “Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground.” In concert, between his new brand of gospel songs, he delivered mini-sermons to his fans, most of whom were indifferent regarding Dylan’s faith, but seriously steamed he was no longer performing the songs he recorded in the 17 years before his conversion. It was fine to sing of the one who rolled away the stone, but to not sing “Like A Rolling Stone” was unforgiveable.
So Dylan’s career had entered another compelling phase. Churchgoers who had long ignored or dismissed Dylan embraced Slow Train Coming. “Gotta Serve Somebody,” the first of four singles from the album, won Dylan his first Grammy. The unambiguous choice between the devil and the Lord in “Gotta Serve Somebody” especially resonated with the more conservative Christians, who too often reveled in their us-against-the-world corners. And what they found in the world that reviled them more than ever before. Even with the devoted Christian Jimmy Carter as president, they felt the nation was leaning too closely to the devil and too far from the Lord. In fact, many of them found Jimmy Carter to be the problem.