Rogue Rabbit

 By Randy Dotinga

On a spring day in 1979, a waterborne rabbit approached the leader of the free world as he fished near his home in Georgia. President Jimmy Carter splashed it with an oar, seeing the creature was “clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk … making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth,” his press secretary Jody Powell later wrote. The rabbit swam away, its pair of bunny ears visible above the water line.

Four months later, news of the peculiar incident transformed it into an irresistible metaphor for a sinking presidency: How could Carter be trusted to vanquish inflation and gas lines when he couldn’t manage to keep the peace on a pond?

“I didn’t think Carter had a paddle,” jibed humorist Mark Russell. Both The Washington Post and the New York Times published cartoons depicting giant “Jaws”-like rabbits attacking Carter’s boat from below. There was even a novelty song by folk singer Tom Paxton called “I Don’t Want a Bunny Wunny,” with the lyrics “Think about the country, think about sin/Along swum a rabbit, and he tried to climb in.”

It was a “nightmare,” Powell recalled in his 1984 book “The Other Side of the Story.” And he blamed himself. 

According to Powell, Carter mentioned the rabbit encounter after he returned from an April trip home to Plains, Georgia, the same home where Carter died Sunday, at 100. “Faced with a mortal threat to the Carter presidency, I laughed,” Powell wrote. “Nor, as painful as it is to admit, was that the full extent of my culpability in this matter.”

Powell, who died in 2009, took responsibility for leaking the story to an Associated Press reporter in the summer doldrums of August 1979. In his 2020 book “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life,” biographer Jonathan Alter wrote that the information actually came from White House secretary Susan Clough. Whatever the case, the resulting lighthearted AP story landed on the front page of The Post (“Bunny Goes Bugs/Rabbit Attacks President”) and Page A-16 of the Times.

The Washington Post front page from Aug. 30, 1979, featuring an AP story on President Jimmy Carter’s unfortunate rabbit run-in. (The Washington Post)

“It was a killer rabbit,” an unnamed Carter staffer was quoted as saying, having a bit of fun. “The President was swinging for his life.” The AP reported that a White House photographer had captured a photo of president and rabbit but that the administration declined to release it.

Then the wisecracks started. It didn’t help that a bloodthirsty “Killer Rabbit” had appeared in 1975’s “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” To make things worse, “the president was repeatedly asked to explain his behavior at town hall meetings, press conferences, and meetings with editors,” Powell wrote.

For Carter, the timing of the goofy story gone viral could hardly have been worse. The nation was grappling with high inflation and long gas lines, and the Iranian Revolution had begun.

Carter did manage to get praise for a summer 1979 speech calling for the nation to buck up and regain confidence, said Kai Bird, author of the 2021 biography “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.” But that was followed by the shock of Carter’s entire Cabinet and senior staff offering to resign in an effort to revive his presidency.

The rabbit incident played into a perception that the members of the Carter administration were “over their heads,” “inept” and didn’t “know how to run Washington,” Bird said.

The story also, according to Alter, gave fresh ammunition to critics who mocked the Carters as uncouth Southern hicks. Never mind the fact that Carter was an expert outdoorsman, nor that swamp rabbits — familiar to native Southerners like Powell but a bizarre concept to others — are a real, distinct species from the smaller, better-known eastern cottontail. They’re found in much of the South and parts of the Midwest, and are about as long as a beagle and as heavy as a Chihuahua, according to biologist Hayley C. Lanier, of the University of Oklahoma.

This was “not one of your cutesy, Easter Bunny-type rabbits,” Powell wrote.

Was something wrong with the rabbit that met Carter? Maybe not. Swamp rabbits are unlikely to get rabies, Lanier said, so that seems an unlikely explanation. Instead, it may simply have been trying to get away from trouble, she said, since the rabbits typically aren’t aggressive.

The Carter presidency ended in 1981 with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, whose administration later released the White House photograph showing Carter in his boat, a large splash from his oar, and a rabbit fleeing in the water. Even today, the story is “certainly something that people of a certain age all remember,” Bird said.

For his part, Alter laments that the rabbit tale has staying power while Carter’s accomplishments in areas like environmental protection are largely forgotten. “People in our business just have to do better than turning this kind of thing into a defining moment of somebody’s presidency,” he said in an interview.

But Carter didn’t seem bitter when his biographer asked him about the rabbit hoopla decades later.

“He smiled ruefully,” Alter said.

Column by Barry Svrluga

Hey, Jayden Daniels. You don’t have to stand on the goal line, exhorting the Northwest Stadium crowd to get to its feet. The fans are there with you. You’ve got them wrapped around your finger. You earned it. Fire them up by thrusting your arms in the air? They’re fired up already, brother. For Sunday. And for the future.

The holidays feel different in Washington, now and next year and a decade hence, because Daniels plays for the hometown football team. That was true before Sunday afternoon. But after the final seconds of Sunday’s absolutely improbable, he-didn’t-just-do-that-did-he 36-33 victory over the hated Philadelphia Eagles, what’s clear is this: With Daniels, the Commanders always have a chance. With Daniels, everything is possible.

“If you give him moments, he really lights up in those spots,” Commanders Coach Dan Quinn said. “Today, he became a heavy hitter. He really did.”

(Artur Galocha/The Washington Post)

It was just the latest data point. It is now the most important. With his team down by five points and 1:52 remaining — and only a single timeout to spare — Daniels and the Commanders took over at their 43-yard line. Nine plays later, they were in the end zone, where Daniels found wide receiver Jamison Crowder for his fifth touchdown pass of the day. With six seconds showing on the clock, Daniels gave Washington its most significant regular season win since … when?

That’s a great bar stool debate. What’s important is that there could be more to come, because Daniels leads the way. He’s only a rookie, just 15 games into his career. Already, it’s his team. It’s damn near his town.

“He’s so poised,” star wide receiver Terry McLaurin said. “No matter if we’re making plays or we’re missing plays, he just has a way to stay even-keeled. And I’ve never seen that from a rookie at any position, let alone quarterback. ...

“He has a way of just making the right plays when it’s time. You can’t teach that. And I feel like his ability to continue to get better each and every week and learn from his mistakes is why I feel like he has a chance to be one of the great ones.”

That’s not hyperbole. It’s only a chance. But it’s a real one.

This victory — which gives the Commanders 10 wins in a season for the first time since 2012 and allows them to clinch a playoff spot next Sunday at home against Atlanta — was far from clean. But the fact that Daniels pulled this out is an extension of the complete flip-flop of reality for this franchise.

Think about it a few different ways for this game specifically. The Commanders committed five turnovers — and won. They were down 14-0 less than eight minutes in — and won. They allowed Eagles running back Saquon Barkley to gain 109 yards and two touchdowns on his first seven carries — and won.

That’s in part because Daniels overcame two interceptions — just his second two-pick game of the year — and accounted for 339 yards of offense (258 through the air, 81 on the ground). Daniels’s speed is blazing, his arm strong and accurate, his shiftiness more like a salsa dancer’s than a quarterback’s. But his greatest strength is actually to take one play and — regardless of its result — think about the next one, not the previous one. Quinn said he’s “able to clear.” His teammates all notice that trait is hardwired.

“I think the biggest thing people don’t really see: It’s like, hey, if he throws an interception or something like that, it doesn’t faze him,” offensive lineman Sam Cosmi said. “And a lot of QBs, that can really get into their heads. He doesn’t allow it. He just keeps going.

“So that’s a really hard characteristic to have. And him being so young and being able to do that, with the experience that he has, it’s pretty impressive.”

Daniels is at the center of this entire transformation, and it’s clear the Commanders wouldn’t have come back Sunday, wouldn’t have overcome all the turnovers, if not for him. (It’s also fair to point out the Eagles lost quarterback Jalen Hurts to a concussion in the first quarter, and while Kenny Pickett was fine as a backup, he’s not Hurts.)

But Daniels aside, the Commanders could overcome all they faced because this team, in its first year with a roster built by grown-up general manager Adam Peters and coached by the we-play-as-one Quinn, has shifted in attitude and ability. It’s palpable. Early on in this overhaul of an organization, the Commanders have won games they should have lost and lost games they should have won. Those experiences are invaluable as the calendar marches on.

“It builds a little callus, you know what I mean?” McLaurin said. “They get you ready for the next moment. … You look at everybody on that sideline today — they were square-jawed, looking you dead in the eye, ready to make the play to try to win the game.”

Whatever the play necessary, it’s almost certain to involve Daniels. He kept alive one second-half drive by turning a this-play-is-dead fourth and 11 into a squiggling, dizzying 29-yard conversion, leading to the touchdown that pulled Washington back from 13 down to within 27-21. He put them ahead by recognizing the Eagles had 12 men on the field, understanding he had a free play and patiently waiting for wide receiver Olamide Zaccheaus to break wide open before flicking him a 49-yard scoring pass.

And when he arrived in the huddle for that final possession, trailing 33-28 because the Eagles had kicked two field goals, the interception he threw to end the Commanders’ previous possession might as well have come in his junior year of high school. It seemed that far in the past. Pick? What pick?

“There’s no, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” Cosmi said. “There’s just no panic. And that keeps the rest of the offense calm.”

One timeout, 112 seconds and 57 yards to victory. Got Jayden? No problem.

“I love those type of situations when it’s on thin ice and plays need to be made,” Daniels said. “That’s what you live for if you really love this sport — for those big-time moments where it comes down to the end.”

It’s not yet Christmas. The Commanders are closing in on the playoffs.

Keep reading those sentences over and over. Then thank Jayden Daniels.

“When you’re moving at a pace the way we are, the past you can leave in the past,” McLaurin said. “We’re taking the necessary steps to continue to move forward. I don’t even think about the past anymore, to be honest. I’m living in the present — and looking forward to the future.”

That’s simply not what it has been like to be a Washington NFL player — a Washington NFL fan — for a decade or more. What will Daniels do next? There are so many possibilities. What we know: The next game is on “Sunday Night Football,” in the lights of prime time. A win clinches a postseason berth. 

Thank Jayden Daniels for it all

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