PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — President Joe Biden was a first-term Delaware senator in 1976 when he endorsed an upstart former Southern governor for the presidency over the party’s Northern establishment players.
Biden came full circle Thursday, visiting Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, in tiny Plains, Georgia, where the 96-year-old former president and 93-year-old former first lady have lived for most of their lives.
“He showed us throughout his entire life what it means to be a public servant,” Biden, 78, said of Carter for a new documentary, “CARTERLAND,” set to debut this weekend as part of the Atlanta Film Festival.
The private meeting on Thursday brought together the oldest sitting president and the longest-lived former president in history. It was their first in-person encounter since Biden took office. The two presidents didn’t appear together outside the Carters’ home. Biden was seen with Rosalynn Carter at the door as he departed. The former first lady stood alongside him supported by her walker.
Many of the 650 residents of Plains turned out to see Biden’s motorcade.
The Carters were unable to attend the Jan. 20 inauguration, the first they’d missed since Jimmy Carter was sworn in as the 39th president in 1977. The Carters have retreated from public life for most of the coronavirus pandemic, but they now are vaccinated and recently began attending church services again at Maranatha Baptist Church, where the former president taught Sunday school for decades.
Biden’s visit comes after Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, died April 19 at the age of 93. Carter and Biden both spoke to Mondale by phone in the days before his death.
In his “CARTERLAND” remarks, recorded last week and made available to The Associated Press by producers Will and Jim Pattitz, Biden credits Mondale and Carter as formative figures in his political career.
Biden noted Mondale changed the vice presidency into the kind of active role Biden would go on to play during his two terms in the post. “When President (Barack) Obama asked me to consider being his vice president, I said I had to go home and talk about it,” Biden said. “Fritz was my first call outside of my family.”
Recalling the seeds of his friendship with Carter, Biden named the date — March 25, 1976 — he traveled to Wisconsin to make the case that the devout Baptist then from the party’s moderate wing was the right candidate to defeat President Gerald Ford.
“Some of my colleagues in the Senate thought it was youthful exuberance,” Biden said with a laugh. “I was exuberant, but as I said then, ’Jimmy’s not just a bright smile. He can win and he can appeal to more segments of the population than any other person. … Gov. Carter proved me right.”
Carter didn’t endorse anyone in the 2020 primary that included Biden. But the former president warned Democrats not to veer too far left and risk alienating moderate voters needed to defeat President Donald Trump.
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