Perhaps Carter’s most revealing poem, “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World,” concerns the man who never got to see his namesake son’s achievements. He wrote that he despised Earl’s discipline, and swallowed hunger for “just a word of praise.”

HAIL AND FAREWELL — For a fleeting moment today, official Washington’s muscle memory will override its fast-twitch, knee-jerk partisanship as a distinctly American tableau plays out for former President JIMMY CARTER’s funeral.

Roosevelt had possessed the same gift for longevity as Jimmy Carter and lived until he was 100. He would have died in1982, in Ronald Reagan’s second year in office. Most likely FDR would then reside in my consciousness in roughly same way Carter does for my children,