Jimmy Carter: This Is My Place

(4 of 5)

It had stopped raining, and the Carters walked outdoors. In the driveway the ex-President bent down and squirted oil along the chains of their bicycles. Then he and Rosalynn wheeled through the gate, past the high black rail fence frugally imported by the Government from Richard Nixon's home at Key Biscayne. They pedaled down deserted country roads, followed by two agents in a car and another on a bike. The fields were green with wheat, and pecan trees were budding. They biked for miles, up sharp hills, past the house where they had first lived and then back into Plains itself. Far fewer tourists migrate here now, and the town has reverted to its backwater state. Billy Carter, the ruinous brother, has auctioned off his famous gas station for $30,000 and moved to Alabama. Real estate speculators from California and Canada who excitedly bought up land in Plains years ago at inflated prices are now stuck with it. Change comes slow. Just the other day someone complained about smelling marijuana in the post office.

The Carters rolled into the driveway of his mother's house, and then remembered that Miss Lillian was out at her weekly poker game. In the back, a pond had turned dark from the heavy rains. It was here, almost six years ago, that Carter had picked his presidential team. He and his wife got off their bikes and stared down at the brown water. Then, leaning against a tree, Carter reminisced about the troops of pinstriped dignitaries, the princes of the party, who had sloshed through the Georgia mud to meet the President-elect.

Now the Democratic leaders want no part of him. Carter recalled that he had tried to take the party in a more centrist direction but failed. He had been unable to root out the more liberal elements. There are sour feelings all around. Candidates never mention his name or seek his help. Carter was invited, almost as an afterthought, to the annual dinner of congressional Democrats; men like Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd and House Speaker Tip O'Neill were privately thankful that he decided not to come.

The party leaders have asked him to next month's midterm conference in Philadelphia, but are fervently hoping he will not ask to speak. "They are treating him like a leper," said one of Carter's aides bitterly. "I know I'm looked on as a symbol of defeat by some," the ex-President admitted. "But I'm confident that most of my policies will be vindicated." Some Democratic leaders, like Party Chairman Chuck Manatt, fear that Carter will become ambitious for the presidency again; the man from Plains curtly dismisses such a notion.