Jimmy Carter could have taught Donald Trump something about being president, or rather, about the kind of man a president should be — a president who tried to represent America at its best and tried to be everyone's president even while pushing a political program roughly half the country opposed, who did his job in such a way that most people trusted him to be at least moderately honest and not too self-interested, and believed he had the nation's best interests at heart, even if he sometimes confused them with his own.

It's not a high standard, but it's an important standard for judging people who want that much power. It upholds the idea that having a public office means public service exercised fairly disinterestedly. It says that political life is about the nation more than the politician, and that even the politician knows it.

It's the only standard that justifies our trust in the system.

Politicians we can trust

Which, understandably, a lot of people don't trust.

We've just seen a political and media establishment cover up the mental decline of the most powerful man in the world. The man who, as pundits used to warn, has his finger on the button. (That is, for those who don't remember the days when nuclear war was a possibility, can start one on his own.) And this is only one example.

That's why we have to be able to believe, with reason, that the president and most of the politicians below him are the kind of leaders I describe. We need to believe that they're the kind of people who can run the country without screwing up, or screwing us.

Otherwise, if the people in political office don't meet that minimal standard, why get involved yourself? Why vote if voting doesn't really do anything, if it's to meet the new boss, same as the old boss? Why not just serve yourself the way the politicians do? Why not play the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" on repeat?

As the nation's founders understood, when creating a national government that tried to anticipate mankind's worst impulses — ours is a conservative system, designed to inhibit more than encourage action — no system can stop bad people from wrecking it. We all know that, I think. We need our politicians to be at least good-ish if not good.

Carter tried

I think Jimmy Carter tried to be that kind of president, because he tried to be that kind of person. Not perfect, of course. He was apparently a difficult man, too convinced of his own ideas and too confident in himself, the kind of politician who listens to others when he was consciously listening, but not always when he wasn't. He had his failures as president.

I wrote about him and his once infamous 1976 Playboy interview when he first entered hospice 20 months ago and was thought to be near death. He "was (for a politician) an unusually complex and thoughtful man," I wrote, especially in his wrestling with the questions of life in such a diverse society, in which people lived by conflicting absolutes.

He held positions he believed consistent with each other, even though they didn't fall into the dominant political binary of conservative and liberal. He knew that was a political problem, because people like settled binaries, but couldn't do anything else but believe what he believed. He felt himself bound by an understanding of the world and of principles he could articulate and explain.

You knew where he stood and that he tried to remain standing in the same place despite all the pressure on him to move, and even when it harmed him politically. He did that against considerable opposition, even from his own party, whose establishment didn't like outsiders and dissenters (as Bernie Sanders found out). He would have given America a version of national health care, for example, had he not been sabotaged by the ambitious Sen. Ted Kennedy, who wanted his job.

Of course, he didn't always stay still. He was a very ambitious man with the tendency to believe in his own self-image such men tend to have (even more than the rest of us), which included believing he'd remained in the same spot when he'd moved away from it. But that's a normal failing.

Flawed as he was, Carter more than met the minimal standard we need our presidents and everyone else in public office to meet. Including, and this is important, trying to be everyone's president even while pushing a political program he believed in, knowing that roughly half the country opposed, and trying to tell the truth.

In contrast, Donald Trump

Trump has, to be fair, tried, sort of, in his way, within limits, to meet the standard. He's a more complicated man than his inveterate critics see. But he isn't the man he should be. He should be more like Carter.

His problem is partly that he's not that kind of person. He does not care for the truth, for one thing, which by itself means he'll never reach even the minimal standard. But it's also partly that his idea of America at its best is himself, and the nation's best interests are his, and that the people who oppose him are the enemy, not citizens he represents.

Jimmy Carter could have taught him something about being the president, had they met way back then. But then Donald Trump wouldn't have listened to a man like Jimmy Carter.

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