TV REVIEW : An Adoring Look at Carter

First, there was the rehabilitation of Richard Nixon.

Now, for your entertainment pleasure, the rehabilitation of Jimmy Carter.

Writer-director-producer Christopher Koch’s unabashedly adoring film portrait, “Citizen Carter” (tonight at 9 p.m. on The Discovery Channel; repeats March 8, 9, 17, 19 and 23), depicts the ex-President as a man misunderstood while in power and now unappreciated in private life. With rare exceptions, Koch’s Carter can simply do no wrong.

It’s the exceptions, of course, that are the only interesting dimensions of what amounts to an hourlong ad. First come the Capra-esque accounts of Jimmy growing up, Jimmy courting future First Lady Rosalynn, Jimmy joining the Navy, Jimmy running the family peanut farm and--with unexplained suddenness--Jimmy winning a Georgia state Senate seat, then the Georgia governorship, then the presidency.

Is this the life of a politically ambitious man? Perish the thought. According to Koch (as narrated by Richard Crenna), Carter “was propelled into the White House by moral values and inner drive developed in boyhood.” Even if one accepts this, it’s clear in critical sound bites with journalist Hedrick Smith and former House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill that Carter’s moralism plus his lack of Beltway savvy produced a ham-fisted Administration. Carter himself admits that he was “politically naive.”

Out of power, Carter’s best instincts can be effectively played out. We see him, for instance, helping build homes for Tijuana’s homeless, and supervising--and perhaps saving--the election that Nicaragua’s Sandinistas lost. Long sequences with Jimmy and Rosalynn on wild rivers and in Alaska’s northern wilderness feel like inserts to make the film suitable for the eco-concerned Discovery Channel. Despite these idyllic forays, Carter won’t be remembered as “the environmental President”: Like so much else, whatever gains Carter made in office were soon stripped away by Ronald Reagan.

Koch, naturally, avoids these issues. But when it comes to televised rehabilitations of fallen leaders, such complicated truths only get in the way.