Why Jimmy Carter's Centennial is Appropriate

IIn the days leading up to Jimmy Carter's centennial, Atlanta is rolling out the red carpet to honor the country's oldest living president.

The Fox Theater offers an eclectic musical tribute, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus, Bebe Winans, Carlene Carter, Chuck Leavall and the Drive-By Truckers for “Rock & Roll President.” And the Carter Center is planning a daylong film festival featuring films Carter screened at the White House and another birthday mosaic featuring Hollywood stars and everyday Americans.

Such glamor seems at odds with a former president who endeared himself to so many with his humble work for Habitat for Humanity. In reality, however, such events reflect the growing connection between popular entertainment and politics that occurred over the course of his life and that brought him to the White House in 1976.

Jimmy Carter was born in a hospital in Plains, Georgia, in 1924, the same year that presidential candidate Calvin Coolidge listened to the advice of his public relations advisor Edward Bernays and invited a group of famous Hollywood and vaudeville actors and musicians, including: Al Jolson, John Drew, the Dolly Sisters, Charlotte Greenwood and Ray Miller's Jazz Band, for a campaign breakfast. Before a crowd of reporters and cameras gathered on the White House lawn, Hollywood celebrities entertained guests and sang the campaign song “Keep Coolidge,” and news of the high-profile endorsement appeared in the country's premier newspaper. Although we most often associate Coolidge with the president's first State of the Union broadcast, he also appeared on film in his short campaign biography “Visitin' Around in Coolidge Corner,” which, as historian Kathryn Brownell noted, celebrated his small-town roots as an average, hard-working and thrifty New Englander.

Over the next 50 years, these ties between show business and Washington only deepened. In 1952, for example, Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized the importance of listening to Madison Avenue executives and Hollywood stars such as Bruce Barton and Robert Montgomery, who recommended that Eisenhower use new media (television) to appeal to mass audiences, and helped him He popularized his memorable campaign slogan “I like Ike.”

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By the end of the decade, the use of Madison Avenue techniques and Hollywood's star system in political campaigns had become the winning logic of presidential politics – a lesson that Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon emphasized as his party's nominee and counterpart to America's rising star The Democratic Party had to learn the hard way on the presidential debate stage. Following the advice of his father and former Hollywood mogul Joseph, John F. Kennedy sold himself to the American public like a box of laundry detergent and asked his friend Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack to offer him the star power he needed to win votes. Nixon abandoned these strategies in 1960, but in 1968 he knew better – he presented himself to the press and the American public in carefully staged appearances as the “new Nixon”.

Looking to win the Democratic nomination in 1976, Carter sought to present himself as an honest, authentic everyman – an antidote to the sophisticated showbiz campaigns of recent past that obscured the political corruption surrounding Vietnam and Watergate. Carter's campaign staff, particularly advertising guru Gerald Rafshoon, discouraged glib jingles and instead called for a change in show business policy, including the use of modern cinema vérité techniques in political advertising.

Although Carter's show business tactics were certainly not new, they were notable as a realistic Hollywood adaptation – recruiting regional, national celebrities in addition to Hollywood, including the Allman Brothers, Willie Nelson and Atlanta Braves house king Hank Aaron and rock 'n' roll -Legends like Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman and Bob Dylan in Carter's showbiz presidential campaign. Many of these A-list celebrities were part of the accompanying “Cecil B. DeMille mob scene.” Rolling Stonewas a celebratory party honoring Carter's party nomination, with even famed gonzo reporter Hunter S. Thompson momentarily left out and later appearing or appearing in his inaugural special.

Although Carter was now long overshadowed by the fame of his successor Ronald Reagan, by the fall of 1976 he possessed something of a political mystique that perhaps only the likes of the new journalist Noman Mailer or the pop artist Andy Warhol could adequately document.

TIME's 1976 “Miracle Man (of the Year)” struggled to use show business politics as a tool of government, although he tried through frequent White House lawn concerts and his largely failed “People's Program.” One of his biggest early showbiz flops may have been his appearance on the March 1977 CBS special “Ask President Carter,” hosted by veteran host Walter Cronkite. The noble attempt to give Americans direct access to the president has been widely spoofed, most notably by SNL boss Dan Aykroyd.

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Amid images of cardigan-clad fireside chats or references to his “failed” one-term presidency, Carter's celebrity side – largely overshadowed by Reagan's more memorable showbiz performances – faded from memory until recently recovered from the recesses of our National Archives and elsewhere in popular celebrated documentaries.

And that's fitting for a president who wanted to be remembered not for the stars with whom he broke bread, but for the lives he saved through his global initiatives to promote freedom, prevent disease and alleviate human suffering with the Carter Center and his personal outreach efforts through his church and nonprofit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity.

Now, at age 100, Carter will spend his birthday not socializing with the stars, but enjoying the company of his family and counting down the days until he can further serve his country and vote in the upcoming presidential election can.

Future presidential candidates, however, will continue to follow Carter's lead and infuse their campaigns with their own authentic brands of showbiz politics.

Amber Roessner is a professor at the University of Tennessee School of Journalism & Media and author of “Jimmy Carter and the Birth of the Marathon Media Campaign,” published in 2020 by LSU Press.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.