Invitation? What Invitation?
Howard Dean says Jimmy Carter asked him to church in Georgia. Carter doesn't think so
By
KAREN TUMULTY
Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004
Back in the distant past of, say, five days ago, when it looked
like Howard Dean was the man to beat in Iowa, it seemed as though he had pulled off yet another master stroke in snagging an invitation to appear in public with Jimmy Carter on the eve of the caucuses. Carter, after all, was the man who had put Iowa on the political map in 1976, when a surprise victory there launched him to the White House. While the former President wouldn’t endorse Dean
explicitly — such a move would be unseemly in the midst of a hard-fought
primary — campaign aides put out the word that he would do everything but. The trip
to Plains, Georgia, would take Dean out of Iowa for 22 precious hours on the
weekend before the caucuses, but the campaign deemed it well worth it. Not only
would it boost them in Iowa, it was an investment down the road: The South
Carolina primary is only two weeks after Iowa, and an appearance with Carter — at a church, no less — would be an important signal that Dean could have some
appeal in the Bible Belt.
The decision to go to Plains wasn’t even a close call, Dean later
suggested. “When the former President of the United States asks you to go to church with him on a Sunday before the caucuses, I think you probably take that up.”
But that was before a series of polls started showing he was in a much tougher
fight in Iowa than previously thought. He now might wish he had spent that
time talking to Iowans. The latest Des Moines Register poll has him running third in a four-way race, although all four — Dean,
John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards
— are so closely bunched that the polling margin is statistically
insignificant.
The summons from Plains? Carter doesn’t remember it quite that
way. “I didn’t invite him, but I’m glad he came,” the former President told
reporters shortly before he conducted one of his frequent Sunday School classes
at Maranatha Baptist Church. “He called me on the phone and said he’d like
to come worship with me. … He called and asked me if it would be all right.”
As for the timing, Carter’s son Chip later told reporters that the former
President had also offered Dean dates in February and March. It was Dean — not
Carter — who picked the day before the caucuses.
Dean may not even be the only Democratic candidate who gets to boast a church
date with the former President. Carter said retired General Wesley Clark has
also asked for an opportunity to visit him in Plains and worship with him, and
that he expects to be able to arrange one.
Though the event’s main value was as a media spectacle, reporters were
kept out of the church, except for a brief photo opportunity, and could hear
most of the service only from an overflow room. (As a result, none of them
actually got to hear Carter’s brief introduction of Dean in the church; the former
President was not wearing a microphone at the time.) And the subsequent public
appearance by the two on the Main Street of Plains — all eight minutes and 25 seconds of it — fell well short of even a hint at an endorsement by Carter. He
praised Dean for his outspokenness against the Iraq War, which Carter also
opposed, and the two of them noted that Dean had gotten his start in politics by working in Carter’s 1980 campaign in Vermont. What neither one noted,
however, was that this was the race that Carter lost.
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