{"id":39072,"date":"2019-10-01T21:39:44","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T21:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=39072"},"modified":"2019-10-01T21:39:44","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T21:39:44","slug":"happy-birthday-mr-president-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=39072","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday, Mr. President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=MAGA%20%23POTUS%20%23JimmyCarter%20%23HabitatforHumanity&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/carter.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-39073\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/carter-300x156.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"156\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/carter-300x156.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/carter.jpg 540w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>James Earl Carter is a force of nature.<\/p>\n<p>He builds houses for poor people; he writes books; he lectures Americans on the value of ethics in politics; he teaches Sunday school at his rural Georgia church; he has monitored elections around the world; he lives modestly with his wife of more than seven decades.<\/p>\n<p>Today he becomes the oldest former president of the United States. He already holds the record for living the longest past the time he left office; he exited the White House in 1981, which means he has lived 38 years past his presidency.<\/p>\n<p>President Carter turns 95.<\/p>\n<p>He has beaten cancer. He ran for president more than four decades ago, defeating a crowded field of Democratic Party primary foes. He ran a tough and bitter race against an embattled incumbent, Gerald R. Ford, and won with 297 electoral votes, which reflected his narrow popular vote majority; he and President Ford would then forge a friendship that lasted until Ford&#8217;s death in 2006.<\/p>\n<p>President Carter lost his bid for re-election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980, but he didn&#8217;t skulk off to pout over his loss. Instead he poured his energy into building the Carter Center in Atlanta and then building houses for Habitat for Humanity, a faith-based organization that does the Lord&#8217;s work around the world.<\/p>\n<p>I will not engage in a debate over whether he was a successful president. I <em>will<\/em> say that he has been the most consequential <em>former<\/em> president in the past century, or maybe even longer than that.<\/p>\n<p>President Carter is getting lots of good wishes from around the country and the world today. This good and godly man deserves all of them.<\/p>\n<p>Happy birthday, Mr. President.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=MAGA%20%23POTUS%20%23JimmyCarter%20%23HabitatforHumanity&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Earl Carter is a force of nature. He builds houses for poor people; he writes books; he lectures Americans on the value of ethics in politics; he teaches Sunday school at his rural Georgia church; he has monitored elections around the world; he lives modestly with his wife of more than seven decades. Today &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=39072\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Happy birthday, Mr. President<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1908,7182,2491,4017],"class_list":["post-39072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-gerald-ford","tag-habitat-for-humanity","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-ronald-reagan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39074,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39072\/revisions\/39074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}