1976 Campaign Ad: Southerner Jimmy Carter

They don't make campaign ads with this kind of honesty and authenticity anymore. What a shame. Much more pure and heartfelt than a certain movie actor's phony "Mornning in America" ad four years later. I think my heart and intellect is as etched in the 1960s and '70s as the Bob Dylan lyrics Jimmy Carter used to quote from the campaign stump.

The first Presidential election I remember was the 1976 election between Carter and Gerald Ford, the last moderate (with the exception of Kansan Bob Dole in '96) to ever run for President on the Republican ticket, the last Republican to run for president and not sell out to the Religious Right. I remember being in second grade, after he was elected President and hearing my Grandma Mac and her sister, my aunt Velma talk about how Jimmy Carter was a Christian, well versed in scripture. But even at 8-years-old, I knew that was separate from his job as president. I had learned in school during the Bicentennial year how the Pilgrims came to this country to worship as they pleased. In America government didn't tell you what church to attend.

Grandpa Guy sold handcrafted Jimmy Carter donkeys made from the shop that housed his woodworking business. He used to tell me how Carter was a peacemaker.

"Be a Democrat all your life," the old man told me -- this man who told me about the Great Depression before I ever heard about it in school.

We'll fight the good fight, Grandpa.