Jimmy Carter is known across the world, but that wasn’t the case when the former Georgia governor began his improbable campaign for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination.
Little known outside his native state, he caught the attention of editorial cartoonists who drew him as the grinning “born-again peanut farmer,” in a phrase used by Time magazine. They sometimes dressed him in blue jeans or had him standing near a battered pickup truck or a rustic country store.
But the most common feature in the caricatures was Carter’s big toothy smile.
Jeff MacNelly, the editorial cartoonist for the Richmond News Leader, offered this explanation for Carter’s perpetual grin: It was stuck that way.
This cartoon in March of 1976 summed it up:
Credit: Jeff MacNelly, Richmond News Leader
Credit: Jeff MacNelly, Richmond News Leader
Tap here to see a larger image of the cartoon.
Rising like a cartoon rocket
Cartoonists for the Chicago Tribune and Time magazine depicted Carter as Planters snack company’s dapper advertising character, Mr. Peanut. Others depicted Carter himself as a smiling peanut, along the lines of the Smiling Peanut statue that now stands on the highway to Carter’s hometown of Plains.
Don Wright of the Miami News, used a an exploding peanut with Carter rising rocket-like from it after his showing in the January 1976 Iowa caucus to suggest his rapid rise in the battle for the Democratic nomination.
Gerald Rafshoon, a former Atlanta ad executive who became Carter’s communications director in the the White House, took what the cartoonists were offering and ran with it. He used an animated version of the exploding peanut in a Carter campaign video.
“Jimmy’s smile, country farmer, the longshot — all made for good cartoons,” Rafshoon said in an interview. “It was a cartoonist’s feast.”
Credit: Don Wright / Miami News
Credit: Don Wright / Miami News
Were the cartoonists making fun of Carter?
“I found cartoons were fair,” Rafshoon said. “You can be fair easier with a cartoon than when you have a whole column to write.”
But Carter was far more than a simple Georgia peanut farmer. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, he was chosen for the nuclear submarine program, studying nuclear physics and serving as senior officer of a nuclear submarine. When his father died, Carter resigned from the Navy to take over the family farm and Carter’s peanut warehouse in Plains.
The focus on Carter as a farmer cut both ways, Rafshoon said, both emphasizing that he was a longshot while also boosting support for him in the South — which Carter had to carry to win.
“Anytime somebody … took a shot at him for being a peanut farmer, it helped us in the South,” Rafshoon said.
Credit: Doug Marlette / Charlotte Observer
Credit: Doug Marlette / Charlotte Observer
Rex Granum, who was Carter’s press director during the campaign, said the focus on Carter as a peanut farmer lasted throughout the campaign. It faded as a topic of interest after Carter won the White House, Granum said, but “the teeth lived on forever.”
Lou Erickson, a cartoonist who also wrote opinion articles for The Atlanta Journal, wrote in 1976 that the drawings of Carter were “artistic excess, that’s all, resulting from the release from frustration” over trying to caricature then-President Gerald Ford, who he said was difficult to draw.
“Cartoonists thrive on exaggerated facial characteristics,” Erickson said. “Consider the jutting jaw and cigarette holder that was Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the cucumber nose and road-map visage of wrinkled LBJ (Lyndon Johnson); the lowering eyebrows and ski-slope nose of Richard Nixon. Then, suddenly, there was Jerry Ford.”
Jimmy Carter is running for WHAT?
When Carter announced he was running for president in late 1974, there were doubters.
The phrase “Jimmy Who?” is sometimes attributed to an Atlanta Constitution opinion column in 1974 by then-editor Reg Murphy. But, Murphy’s column, written after Carter announced he would seek the presidency, was headlined “Jimmy Carter is running for WHAT?”
Herbert Block, also known as Herblock, was one of the nation’s most famous political cartoonists.
Said Rafshoon, the former Carter ad manager: “When Herblock started doing stuff on us, I knew we had arrived.”
MacNelly’s cartoon, below, of a zoo vendor selling tiny elephants to “feed the peanut,” in front of the “Carterus Gooberus,” was published in July 1976, just before the Democratic Convention.
Credit: Jeff MacNelly, Richmond News Leader
Credit: Jeff MacNelly, Richmond News Leader
The Charlotte Observer’s Doug Marlette said in 1976, “No matter what the pundits and power-brokers think, the best thing about Jimmy Carter as far as the editorial cartoonist are concerned is his teeth.”
Credit: Doug Marlette / Charlotte Observer
Credit: Doug Marlette / Charlotte Observer
Some compared Carter, favorably and unfavorably, to President John Kennedy. This cartoon was published in March 1977. Tap for a larger version of this cartoon.
Credit: Doug Marlette / Charlotte Observer
Credit: Doug Marlette / Charlotte Observer
And still, there were always those teeth. Jeff MacNelly, the editorial cartoonist for the Richmond News Leader, turned Carter’s grin into a victory smile depicting states he had won in Democratic primaries. The cartoon was published after the Illinois primary.
Credit: Jeff MacNelly, Richmond News Leader
Credit: Jeff MacNelly, Richmond News Leader
Sam C. Rawls, the cartoonist known as Scrawls, drew this cartoon above for the Palm Beach Post. It was also published in The Atlanta Constitution in May 1976, ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
Credit: Scrawls, Palm Beach Post
Credit: Scrawls, Palm Beach Post
His smile migrated to other symbols, including the Democratic donkey above.
Credit: Don Wright / Miami News
Credit: Don Wright / Miami News
Long before today’s emoticons, the 1970s had the smiley face. Below, Mike Peters, editorial cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News, turned Carter’s caricature smile into a campaign button, worn on the lapel of a smiley-faced voter.
Credit: Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News
Credit: Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News
Carter, the unlikely candidate, won and was depicted by Don Wright as the peanut that swallowed the Republican elephant.
Credit: Don Wright
Credit: Don Wright
Mike Peters, editorial cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News, put Carter’s big grin as a major addition to the White House after Carter’s narrow election victory over Ford. Peters said this was one of his most-reprinted cartoons.
Credit: Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News
Credit: Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News
Near Inauguration Day in 1977, Mike Peters depicted Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter outside the White House in a spoof of the “American Gothic” painting by Grant Wood.
Credit: Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News
Credit: Mike Peters, Dayton Daily News
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