Jonathan Capehart:
Well, I was a little kid when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and I actually wrote him a letter during the Iranian hostage crisis, because I couldn’t understand why everyone was so mean to the president. He was doing everything he could to get them out.
I wrote this in the letter, and I got a response, not from the president, but from someone in the White House. I do have it somewhere, in a box somewhere. But I tell that story only to say this is the first time I wrote — I have ever written to a president.
But in looking at his life, he spent, if my math is right, 10 times longer out of the White House than he did inside. And I remember, as a kid, I knew people were yelling at him. People didn’t like him. People hated him when he was in the White House. And yet, 40 years after the fact, the glow around him, because of all the work he did in the post-presidency, is something to see, where you have Democrats and Republicans praising him for what he did, especially outside of the White House.
I can’t imagine we would — we will see that again.
