I thought it was abrupt and reaching. It felt like the author has this tidbit about Carter laying around that he'd been holding on to, but wasn't sure where to use it. He thought it could maybe fit here, but it just was jarring. Not to mention that Carter isn't quite recent enough for me to really have any context about the comparison (what policy decisions set Carter apart?). Finally, the injection of race and religion in this otherwise unrelated article was just out of the blue.