Dominic Sandbrook

He probably sank into depression after he lost.

It was the first time he'd lost anything.

And he turned to God and was born again.

And later on, when he ran for president, everybody basically north of the Mason-Dixon line laughed at Carter about this.

And they wrote all these articles.

Time magazine had a huge cover calling him a weirdo and stuff.

But this was because people in New York and Washington didn't understand.

That in Georgia, in the Baptist world of rural Georgia, being born again was nothing outlandish.

It was absolutely, you know, I wouldn't say it was standard, but it was common.

Quite right.

That actually Carter is not a backward looking figure as he was often treated in the 70s.

He is a forward looking one.

So anyway, he runs again for office in 1970.

Again, a very forward-looking thing.

He runs as a populist.

And he ran against a man called Carl Sanders, Democrat, establishment figure.

And Carter painted him as the sort of puppet of the country club bigwigs.

He called him Cufflinks Carl.

So that is quite Trump.

Jimmy Carter's populism is really, really interesting.