When I was a kid and used to go down town with my folks to shop, one of the treats was catching a glimpse of Mr Peanut, the permanent fixture at the Planter's store during the Christmas season. Clad in his distinctive peanut suit, sporting his signature monocle and top hat, Mr Peanut would offer the customers and passers-by a meet and greet and a jolly ho-ho-ho. at no time, however, was Mr Peanut expected to expound on critical world events, render a long discourse on political trends or offer a snappy explanation on the perils of nuclear proliferation.
For some reason, perhaps malaise, maybe fatigue with Watergate, probably enervation from the mainstream media's years of constant and habitual banging on about the Nixon years, the weariness of the Vietnam experience continually thrust in our faces, ennui, and a sense of clumsiness in Gerald Ford, most likely all of it, we elected a toothy, smiling Mr Peanut to the White House in 1976.
Jimmy Carter was said to be whip smart, a Christian gentleman, a nuclear engineer, a humble man of the people, a working man, a farmer who could a tell a land's value by crumbling its soil between his fingers and smelling its richness, a man dedicated to absolute fairness, a committed family man, a Baptist, a Naval veteran and a submariner – in short, everything america needed to heal itself after years of self abnegation and violent purging.
But sadly, the proof was in the pudding. President Carter was hobbled by many of the foibles which continue to strike mere mortals today. He suffered from a lame selection of staffers, a problematic brother with an inveterate propensity for the cheap sauce and a favoritism for Libya, a truculent and nearly blind CIa, difficulties with the flow of foreign oil, a heart full of lust, wild fluctuations in the derivatives markets and finally, a nearly fatal outbreak of those festering boils of the Shah, the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran and those doggone hostages.
Unfortunately, all the problems, incredible pressures and bureaucratic bungling came to roost in the aborted hostage rescue attempt at Desert One. Three helicopters malfunctioned due to problems caused by a lack of proper dust filters - which should've been packed for the trip but were forgotten in all the excitement - while one helo was able to crash into the C-130 transport at the desert staging area, killing a number of US servicemen. Scenes of the wreckage were broadcast worldwide by the gleeful government of the ayatollah Khomeini. a chastened Carter and the US never fully recovered. and the whole sad, sorry episode was wrapped up by the immediate release of the hostages three minutes after the film of Ronald Reagan's inauguration was in the can.
Carter withdrew into the fields of Georgia and later began his Habitats for Humanity, a grand gesture which would have stood him in good stead had he continued with this lofty enterprise of providing homes for the downcast and impoverished through the upwardly mobile idea of sweat equity. But somewhere out there in the dust and the peanut rows, Mr Peanut envisaged a greater role, a bigger stake in things, a more lofty and higher profile pursuit for himself. He was, after all, a former President of the United States of america.
Mr Peanut would right the wrongs of the tin horns, who had stiffed him so badly as President and start the world famous Carter Center. He would, by sheer dint of will and publicity, and by hanging around in a bullet proof vest if necessary, with a staff of young eager beavers and plenty of cameras and hidden armed escorts, insure that what passes as "voting" throughout much of this superstitious and backward planet - out in the notoriously rotten boroughs, where the ballot boxes are stuffed by the smiling Policia in the dead of night, where the dead - as routinely as the living - regularly vote, where entire villages vote over and over again until they obtain the proper results, where ballots are cast centrally after a specific number needed to win is determined - are eminently fair and honest.
Mr Peanut would also make sure that he was oblivious to the threats which are implied with winks and nods, to the freshly dug graves of those who had the temerity to speak up prior to his arrival, and to the lack of eye contact which greeted his team as they made their way through the villages and towns on their way to do good deeds. and Mr Peanut began to believe, with all his heart, that the outcome mattered and that the elections he oversaw, like the open and honest election "held" for that nice friendly socialist chap, Mr Hugo Chavez, actually had determined who had been "elected".
But recently, as Mr Peanut looked around, he also saw that countries like Israel and america, with axes to grind about terrorism and the murder of the innocent and such, weren't treating his old pals at Hamas properly. Mr Peanut had hung around the entire Palestinian election, such as it was, and knew, just knew, that it was eminently fair, unbiased and without a shred of an inkling of a thought of fraud, especially in the land inherited from his loving, and tender friend, and fellow man of the people, Yassir arafat.
Sure Mr Peanut had garnered a bit of opprobrium for asking that money be laundered through the people's palace of honesty, the UN, to circumvent the overly stringent legalities that exist in the US about shipping the dough straight to terror organizations, which hindered the free flow of lucre to the stellar patriots in Hamas following their election.
and now Mr Peanut was taking heat for his Washington Post editorial where he decried the failure to pass on monies from Israel, and because the US was asking for monies back, simply because of that old canard about Hamas' avowed and chartered hope and raison d'etre for existing – that of destroying Israel. Mr Peanut also accused the US and Israel of not playing positive roles as Hamas gets it house in order, forgetting that this money will be used by Hamas to buy the weapons to kill the folks sending in the money. Sadly, Mr Peanut believes that collusion exists between the US and Israel to disrupt the process of getting Hamas on its feet and is curious why.
It seems sad, now, that Mr Peanut finds it surprising, dreadful and shocking that Israel should shy away from paying people on the other side of a relatively well working fence to kill its own citizens and that the US government, and that terrifying President Bush - the enemy of dictators, terrorists and simple farmers, alike - would agree. and Mr Peanut is ashamed of his country and embarrassed at his government for failing to recognize those glaring facts he holds to be true - that the killers in the bright green kepis of Hamas are just honest and simple tillers of the soil.
Out there, along a dusty highway which stretches endlessly through deep South peanut country, an aged man in bib overalls and a t-shirt, under a straw hat is standing by the road watching the cars and world passing him by. He fondly remembers his best friends and pictures of Hugo Chavez, Bill Clinton, Mahmoud abbas, Fidel Castro and Yassir arafat drift in his head. and he remembers that he is looking for something – something he can't quite put his finger on.
a car passes and a burly teenager hollers out an open car window, "Hey, Mr Peanut!"
Then he recollects what he was trying to remember. He was once President of the United States and people used to listen to him and do what he said. But the dictators just shined him on and took him for all he was worth, his party forgot him when the money dried up and the crowds stopped applauding his apt funereal castigations, his brother left him holding the bag, his White House staff cast him in a bad light, there was talk that he, too, had acquired the Stockholm Syndrome and the people, well, you know the people, they never really understood him and what he was trying to do for them.
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