PLAINS, Ga. — Jimmy Carter already had drawn months of media scrutiny as a devout Southern Baptist running for president. Then the 1976 Democratic nominee brought up sex and sin as he explained his religious faith to Playboy magazine.
Carter was not misquoted. But he was certainly misunderstood, as his thoughts in the wide-ranging interview were reduced in the popular imagination to utterances about “lust” and “adultery.” Nearly a half-century later, as Carter was receiving hospice care in the same south Georgia home where he once spoke with Playboy journalists, his interviewer Robert Scheer still believed Carter was treated unfairly.
He recalled the former president as a “real” and “serious” figure whose intent was smothered by the intensity of a campaign’s closing stretch. Carter died Sunday at age 100. “Jimmy Carter was a thoughtful guy ,” Scheer told The Associated Press.
“But that got lost here. I’ve never seen a story like it. It was worldwide.
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It just never went away.” Political disaster ensued. Rosalynn Carter was suddenly being asked whether she trusted her husband.
The fallout, in Carter’s words, “nearly cost me the election.” Photos: Former President Jimmy Carter through the years Carter spent five-plus hours with Playboy across several months — “more time with you than with Time, Newsweek and all the others combined,” he told Scheer and Playboy editor Barry Golson. The resulting Q&A spanned 12,000 words, and Scheer add.