Ladies and Gentlemen, Jason Carter:
Five days after Jason Carter jumped into the Georgia governor’s race, his grandfather, former President Jimmy Carter, delivered a speech urging a ban on the death penalty. Within hours, the newly minted candidate felt compelled to issue a retort: while he loves his grandfather, he told a reporter, “I believe in the death penalty for heinous crimes, and that won’t change when I’m governor.”
The episode spoke to the benefit and potential burden of the Carter surname for the upstart Democratic state senator, who is waging a long-shot bid to unseat first-term Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. Practically everyone in the Peach State knows the Carter name, and in state Democratic circles the ex-president remains a revered figure more than three decades after he left the White House.
Revered by who? Most of the developed world, including many on the Left, regard Jimmy Carter as the guy who got beaten by Ronald Reagan in 1980. Having the most disastrous President of the Last Half Century as your grandfather should be a permanent bar on any future political ambitions. But hope springs eternal for those on the Left.
I was a bit unfair to Carter the Younger in the title. He isn't quite like Justin Trudeau. For instance Jason Carter held a private sector job for a few years. By Trudeau standard the grandson of America's 39th President is practically a curriculum vitae fetishist. He was even in the real Peace Corps, as opposed to the knock-off one PET set-up.
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