Sure to be lost in the clamor of Ronald Reagan's death are two different stories which highlight the legacy of the man who preceded him, Jimmy Carter.
Shortly before Ronald Reagan died today, Jimmy Carter joined him as being one of the few living Americans to have a naval vessel named after him with the christening, at the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, of SSN-23, the Seawolf-class nuclear submarine Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan, of course, has an aircraft carrier named after him, the Nimitz-class CVN-76 Ronald Reagan.
It is one of the quirky little ironies of life that the only non-documentary movie Admiral Chester W. Nimitz ever appeared in was none other than 1957's Hellcats of the Navy, a Ronald Reagan film which was also the only movie in which he appeared with his wife, Nancy. In that movie, Reagan portrayed the skipper of a submarine, the USS Starfish.
In real life, of course, it was Jimmy Carter who served onboard submarines — including, after a fasion, SSN-575, the
Seawolf before the boat whose class the
Jimmy Carter will be the final member of.
After starting his career on board two WWI-era battleships which had been converted to test-beds, the Wyoming (originally BB-32) and Mississippi (BB-41), Carter transferred to the submarine service, serving first on board the USS Pomfret (SS-391) before serving as XO on the K-1, the first US submarine built and commissioned after WWII. When Hyman Rickover was starting the nuclear submarine program, he selected then-Lieutennant Carter to serve as the Engineering officer on the Seawolf, the only USN submarine to ever use a liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactor. Carter worked with the reactor design teams, and helped with the training program for the enlisted men who would be serving aboard the boat. Before the Seawolf was commissioned, however, Carter's father died, and he retired from the Navy to run the family farm in Plains.
Although Carter is rarely thought of as a military man, his seven years of active duty constitute a longer term of service than any 20th Century president besides Eisenhower (and more than all others but Washington, Grant, Zachary Taylor, and W. H. Harrison). Had Carter not left the service when he did, he might well have been on board the Seawolf when Eisenhower took a short cruise on it in 1957, which probably would have set some weird kind of trivia record.
The Jimmy Carter that most people think of these days is not the one best symbolized by a deadly instrument of nuclear destruction; rather, it's the Jimmy Carter who is a globetrotting messenger of peace.
That Jimmy Carter is also in the news today, as the St. Pete Times reports on his latest triumph of quiet diplomacy down in Venezuela.
Venezuela and its president Hugo Chavez have been awash in controversy and political chaos for years now. In addition to the briefly successful coup attempt, and a lingering cold (and sometimes not so cold) war with the nation's petroleum industry, there have now been three different recall petition efforts launched against Chavez.
Despite seeming to have enough signatures, both of the first two petitions were thrown out by government officials. Amidst ongoing negotiations mediated by Carter and other international diplomats, a third recall petition drive was launched late last year. After election officials provisionally threw out more than a million signatures from that petition, a follow-up "signature repair" session was held across Venezuela, with backers estimating a final tally on Sunday of over 100,000 more signatures than required by law. By the end of Monday, however, election officials had not yet certified the results, and administration sources were floating trial balloon rumours of election fraud.
That's when Jimmy Carter took matters into his own hands.
On Monday night, he strode into the vote counting room in the offices of the National Election Council, and demanded to know why the votes had not been processed.
"It was a master stroke," said Venezuelan political analyst Alberto Garrido. "He took everyone by surprise. It was very bold."
Despite widespread anti-American sentiment among supporters of President Chavez, the international reputation of Jimmy Carter was so secure that Chavez reacted by backing down and accepting the results of the recall petition.
It is still not all smooth sailing for Venezuela yet — the Election Commission still hasn't announced a date for the recall election, and tensions will no doubt increase as the day of the referendum draws near. Chavez still blames America — or, more to the point, George W. Bush — for the efforts to oust him; and anti-American rhetoric will no doubt shape the upcoming campaign, and increase in volume and stridency over the next few months.
But still, with all of that, it's nice to see that there is still at least one American who retains respect and moral authority in the eyes of the world.
And if you don't respect him, well, he's got this kick-ass submarine now, doesn't he?