Generally, politicians aren't nearly good enough people to represent us. Not Jimmy Carter. We weren't good enough for him.

The death of Jimmy Carter brought back two fond memories of my college days, both of which involved the future president.

The first was in July of 1976, I think, around the time of the Democratic National Convention that nominated Carter and Walter Mondale. Carter was in Chicago for a DNC fundraiser, and I had looked forward to hearing him address an assemblage of academic types in a huge lecture hall in what was then called Chicago Circle Campus.

I remember thinking the big room would be pretty empty because I was one of the few people who would find it interesting. None of my friends liked Carter, calling him goofy and a stinkin’ rebel and such. And the speech was in the middle of the afternoon, when all but the most dedicated political junkies would have something more important to do.

As the lawyers say, this was not a reasonable belief.

The big bowl of a room was jammed, with people pushing and shoving to get in. But I’d applied for a ticket in advance, so I got a seat, about a third of the way up the slope.

I was excited by the crowd. It was a new experience for me. I was never previously interested in seeing famous people in person. But I liked Carter, who seemed like a regular guy, only more religious. And he had been in the Navy, like my mother.

On submarines, which are beyond cool.

Jimmy Carter, fiancée Rosalynn Smith and mother Lillian Carter at his 1946 graduation from Annapolis

I was associating this first opportunity to see a presidential hopeful with the legendary story of my father walking around a barrier and a Chicago cop and into the street to shake hands with John Kennedy. The motorcade had to stop, and everybody involved was pissed off. JFK looked a little shocked. But Dad got his handshake.

I would try to get Carter’s handshake, but I didn’t have my heart set on it. I was never into handshakes or, perish the thought, begging for autographs. But if I shook Carter’s hand, I’d have something to talk to Dad about. That was kind of rare.

I wanted to have a worthwhile experience, because I had skipped work for an afternoon to go back to Circle for this. I never blew off work. I was writing for Lerner Newspapers during the day, then doing odd jobs on overnight shifts at Davidson Typographers. I’d have plenty of time after the speech to ride the L to the typesetting shop.

“That’s him,” I said excitedly to no one in particular. “Yeah. You’re right,” a couple of people replied enthusiastically, but I was unsure if they were also thrilled or just humoring Captain Obvious. One guy to my right sneered.

Carter got about two sentences out, and the sneering guy jumped up and started yelling at him. I don’t remember what his problem was. But I do remember that it didn’t seem like anything that had ever come across the desk of a one-term governor of Georgia.

It started out as a kind of call-and-response screaming thing with a couple of others scattered around the big hall. But it devolved quickly into each one having intermittent screaming fits. My guy was better at shrieking than the other two. He really got into it.

“Be quiet. I can’t hear,” I told the protester. He didn’t become quiet. No one else complained.

No cops came running up to quell the disturbance. Maybe they were still snakebit from the show they gave the world during the DNC eight years before.

I thought about my options. I could try to physically stop him or get him to go to another part of the hall. It wouldn’t be a First Amendment violation because I wasn’t in the government. I knew that because I had aced Constitutional History the previous month when I was a Circle sophomore. That was a graduate-level course, I’ll have you know.

He was a long-haired, tall, skinny ginger, but I was skinny, too, and short, to boot. And I wore glasses.

But then I remembered: my after-school job had been shoveling bricks, so I was probably pretty strong by now.

So I acted before I had a chance to talk myself out of it. Getting in his face, on my tiptoes, I said, “Shut your mouth or I’ll fill it with fist.”

I had never seriously threatened another human being before, at least as an adult. But Mr. Sneer quietly said, “Oh. OK.”

Thirty seconds later, the other two also stopped yelling. I was quietly thrilled.

For the first time, I had been unequivocally scary.

I tried to listen to Carter talking about the politics of kindness and responsibility and forget my newly minted powers of intimidation. But it occurred to me that the protestors may have been prepared to give up easily. They’d disturbed everybody for five minutes and that was plenty.

Carter didn’t acknowledge them at all. Afterward, we shook hands. I was surprised to feel calluses. “I bet Jerry Ford doesn’t have any,” I thought.

A few months later, I was living in the Pennsylvania Avenue Residence halls in Urbana, where I had started attending the U of I. I was listening to the returns of the election on a little TV all by myself, because, once again, I didn’t think anyone else would be interested.

Instead of company, I had a fifth of Piccadilly Bourbon. Despite the first name, Piccadilly was not bottled in England, and despite the second name, it had nothing to do with Kentucky. It came from a rural Illinois distillery that made vodka and gin, too. Also Scotch.

It didn’t taste so good, but it went down easy if you held your breath.

Despite the Piccadilly Effect, it became apparent to me at some point that there would be no Ford in our future. And the Democrats had held onto control of the Senate and House, too. I happily staggered out of the little room to find my dorm neighbor Bill doing the same thing, carrying a long-neck bottle of beer. We both started cheering drunkenly.

“You’re a Democrat?” I asked, surprised that a guy who dressed and acted like a farmer’s least cooperative son would be.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m from Peoria. I hate fucken Republicans.”

We waltzed off down the hallway looking for conservatives to annoy until we came to a rope tied to a doorknob on one side and a doorstop on the other. Bill found this rope an impenetrable barrier.

This became the funniest thing that happened to either of us all year. Maybe we were just flushed with alcohol and victory.

I have never had anywhere near as much fun on an election night, maybe because then, I still believed that politics could make a big difference.

I think Carter did, too. He believed in a country full of good people doing good things if they were just able to be their best selves.

“We have a tendency to exalt ourselves and to dwell on the weaknesses and mistakes of others. I have come to realize that in every person there is something fine and pure and noble, along with a desire for self-fulfillment. Political and religious leaders must attempt to provide a society within which these human attributes can be nurtured and enhanced.”

Jimmy Carter, 1975

“I had a very challenging question at Emory (University) the other night: “How would you describe the United States of America today in one word?” And I didn’t know what to say for a few moments, but I finally said, “Searching.” I think the country in which we live is still searching for what it ought to be, and what it can be, and I’m not sure we’re making much progress right at this moment.”

Jimmy Carter, 2014