Newsletter: Jimmy Carter’s final act of charity

Good morning. It is Saturday, Jan. 4. I hope you had a restorative New Year’s, Hanukkah, Christmas or any other holiday you observed. Here’s what we’ve been doing in Opinion.

I grew up at a time when “Jimmy Carter” was a slur, often uttered as a dig against any ineffective leader. My father’s side of the family, Christian conservatives to their core, often spoke of him as a gloomy, feckless president whose failures occupied much of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. My mother’s side, post-World War II immigrants from Norway with old-school leftist views on wealth and unions, saw him as unfairly maligned, a victim of politically opportunistic smears.

My mom in particular lionized Carter; as a child I heard her say she’d go to Washington when he died to pay her respects in person. In early 2023, when I heard Carter had entered hospice care, I called her immediately to tell her the news; saddened, she repeated her long-expressed wish. Unfortunately, cancer in her brain unexpectedly took my mom’s life later that year, just as it took Carter’s one week ago.

I mention the family rift over Carter because, at a time when political differences have become deeply personal, we seem to be having a rare moment of unity in grieving the death of a man universally praised for his decency and unshakable Christian faith and service. Writing for the L.A. Times’ Op-Ed page, Randall Balmer notes that in seeking “throughout his life to act on the principles of his faith” — a progressive evangelicalism scarcely found nowadays — Carter had a kind of alternative second term, in which he used his time in the White House as a stepping stone to more than four decades of statesmanship and global charity work.

Deserved as it is, all this Carter hagiography might obscure the simple fact that we’re mourning not a saint, but a man — a man with the same fears and worries as anyone else. Or, as screenwriter Robert J. Binney says in a Times Op-Ed article, a man with a biting sense of humor. Binney recalls speaking with Carter for his college humor magazine in the 1980s and tells of an interview subject whose dry wit might explain why he always seemed to be in good spirits: “If you’ve ever wondered why Carter was always smiling, it may be because he was a pretty funny guy.”

Carter’s humor is a nice thing to know about, but what binds us in our grief is the nearly universal recognition that this nation lost one of its best, most decent citizens. Perhaps this unity is Carter’s final act of charity for the nation he served.

Here are five reasons to keep the federal tax credit for electric vehicles. With the incoming Trump administration expected to eliminate the $7,500 federal tax credit for new EV purchases, The Times’ editorial board makes the case for continuing to incentivize drivers to buy zero-emission cars instead of gas guzzlers: “Even Trump ... should be able to see that the future is electric and that American businesses, consumers and workers can either stake out a place in that future or be left behind.”

And, here’s why those tax credits should be killed.Veronique de Rugy says the credit is a costly subsidy for primarily wealthy car buyers that has outlived its purpose of supporting a fledgling EV market: “The credit is unfair to the vast majority, who — being less well off than EV purchasers — drive relatively affordable gasoline-powered vehicles and do not reap any financial benefit from the credit.”

Think twice before breaking up the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The joint city-county agency was formed in 1993 to “help the two governments stop fighting over who was responsible for which homelessness services,” says the editorial board. LAHSA has grown over the years and has “served as a punching bag for city and county elected officials frustrated by the continual rise in homeless numbers.” But the county may be going too far in calling to break up the agency.

This cancer vaccine should spare future generations from ordeals like my wife’s. Eight years ago, my wife had recently given birth to our third child when we noticed a growth just under her jawline. It turned out to be a form of throat cancer linked to the human papillomavirus, or HPV. With a vaccine skeptic likely to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I wrote about my wife’s life-altering ordeal with a cancer that can now be prevented with vaccination against HPV.

More from opinion

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• Jackie Calmes: Politics past will haunt Washington in 2025. It won’t be pretty
• Jonah Goldberg: The “deep state” and “the swamp” are both favorite Trump targets. Here’s the difference

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• How Mexico can strike back if Trump follows through on his threats
• What’s the truth about sobriety? Here’s my answer

Letters to the editor

• Remember when Trump picked Matt Gaetz to be attorney general?
• Trust survivors: You do not want an HPV-caused cancer. Get vaccinated
• Do the elites decrying California’s economy really know what’s best for us?