Nation: Assessing a Presidency

Carter remains what he always was: an outsider and an enigma

TIME Washington Contributing Editor Hugh Sidey has been reporting on the White House ever since Dwight Eisenhower's second term 23 years ago. Here, on the eve of the Democratic Convention, he reviews the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

The stately old East Room of the White House, which has managed to maintain its dignity through the drying laundry of the John Adams family, the gallons of lemonade poured by the abstemious Lucy Hayes and the baleful exit of Richard...