By Rebecca Schoenkopf

So Jimmy Carter, appearing at UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center this morning, wasn’t so much a Fighting Dem as he was a swords-into-plowsharing Dem, but we don’t have a category for that on this here blog. What we do have–what I have, and what our editor Will Swaim has, and what I’ll assume all the other godless communists at this rag have, and what you should have too–is a deep and abiding love for Carter that can’t be tarnished by any of the Right’s sneers or cynicisms.

He looked great; he stood tall; he spoke slowly. In response to a question about the recent Jewish/Muslim unpleasantnesses on UCI’s campus, he called not for “civility” as so many pundits do but for “altercation” and “uncomfortable confrontation” on campuses and elsewhere, saying there has been no debate in Congress or elsewhere about our recent reflexive backing of Israel instead of, as we had historically done since 1948, acting as an “honest broker” in the Middle East.

Carter’s burning passion, he said, is peace in the Middle East, and he has been working toward it for 30 years. He’s also been getting a ration of shit in the media since his latest book, Palestine, hit the presses–he is, the American Jewish lobby says, anti-Semitic for calling out the hawks in Israel.

It was a long question and answer session devoted to the “avenue to peace.” Afterwards, walking to the car, I asked my dad (who’d come down from Malibu to join me in seeing the president) what he’d thought.

“What is there to think?” he asked, like I was an idiot.

“Well, for instance, what do you think of the two-state solution?” I asked him, as quite a bit of the talk had focused on the huge majorities of Palestinians and Israelis who poll in favor of it. My dad likes to wave around his “maverick” votes for Schwarzenegger, Perot, and possibly George Bush fils (he teases us with it but never quite cops to it–secret ballot and all) to show my mother and me he isn’t bound by lefty strictures. Also, my dad is a Jew.

“Of course I’m for it, as any thinking person would be!” He tut-tutted Alan Dershowitz calling out Carter–going “on and on,” my dad said–and sounded aghast when I mentioned all my Young Republican friends beating the drums for Israel. They don’t reflexively back Israel in Israel–everybody right now is calling for Olmert’s resignation for bombing the shit out of Lebanon last year, which my same YR friends found not just wholly justifiable–I think it gave them woodies too.

I’m ill-informed on the Middle East–as an American, it’s my right to not worry my beautiful mind–so is it wrong to just do whatever Jimmy Carter says?

“That’s leadership,” my dad said, comfortingly. “We find a person we trust, with a long history of goodness and humaneness, and we follow.” My dad paused. “I wish I could vote for Jimmy Carter again.”

Tags: Fighting Dems