The Books of Bokonon

  Jimmy Carter passed away today. He was the 39th US President, which places his term in office right around my preteens and early teens. I remember back in 1976, my 5th grade class did mock presidential elections and I think I was one of the few kids in my class who "voted" for Jimmy Carter that year. That should have been a warning to me decades later when I would try to find some of my old school friends on Facebook. But I digress. I often view President Carter as one of the more underrated Presidents we've had. He was in office in the shadow of Nixon's near-impeachment and ultimate resignation, the rather ugly end to our involvement in the Vietnam War, and at least one energy crisis mixed with what at least felt like stagflation. He did not preside over those events, but those were the events that would shape the public zeitgeist for the remainder of the 1970s and into the 1980s. Carter dealt with multiple crises as President, including a Russian (then Soviet Unio...