Dominic Sandbrook

It's Southern populism.

It both looks back to a tradition of Southern populism, but the way in which he repackages it for the late 20th century is very forward-looking.

And he says, look, I'm the champion of the little guy.

I'm an ordinary person.

I'm not a career politician.

I've got my nice plaid shirt, all of this kind of thing.

He wins the election.

He becomes governor.

He's pretty good at it.

And by late 1972, he is thinking about running for president.

Now, on the face of it, this is a very long shot.

There hasn't been a genuine southern president since Andrew Johnson in the aftermath of the Civil War.

And there has never been a president from the deep south, from the really deep south, from the states that had once held millions of slaves from places like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and so on.

There's never been a president from one of these states.

And the other thing that's against Carter, Carter, and this is the thing that now that everyone thinks that Jimmy Carter is a lovely, kind guy who built houses for poor people and stuff, people forget.

Carter in the 70s was much more conservative than most democratic activists.

So, you know, it's a tough gig for him to try to get the presidential nomination.

But unexpectedly, everything falls into his lap.

So first of all, the Democratic favorite, who is Edward Kennedy, has destroyed himself at Chappaquiddick by driving off the bridge, abandoning Mary Jo Kopechny, and then putting on a blazer and walking around on the balcony of his kind of hotel to try and pretend nothing has happened.

Meanwhile, in Washington...