James Fallows was 27 when he went to work in Jimmy Carter’s White House and 29 when he left, but the Redlands, California, native is still thinking about Carter. Even more so since the former president, now in hospice care, seems to be in his final days.
Carter was 56 when he left the presidency after a single term. At 98, he has been a former president for an astonishing 42 years.
“He’s been a former president 10 times longer than he was president,” Fallows told me by phone Thursday from his home in Washington, D.C.
“Most of today’s Americans,” Fallows said, “were born after Carter left office.”
(That’s sobering