Editorial: For Jimmy Carter, the presidency was prologue

He left office in a stunning landslide defeat after a single term as the nation’s 39th president. But Jimmy Carter wasn’t done yet.

Instead of withdrawing quietly from public life as most former presidents have, James Earl Carter Jr. went to work. As a champion for democracy, human rights, public health and housing the poor, he has been credited widely, even from critics of his bumpy time in office, for producing the nation’s “best post-presidency.”

It certainly has been the longest. Jimmy Carter died Sunday in his home in Plains, Georgia, The Associated Press reported Sunday. He was 100 years old.

When the Carter Presidential Center at Emory University in Atlanta announced back on Feb. 18, 2023, that he was in home hospice care, the then-98-year-old was the nation’s oldest living, longest-lived and longest-married president — and with the longest post-presidency. His beloved wife, Rosalynn, died on Nov. 19 and, after Carter’s long stay on this earth even after that February announcement, many Americans are hoping that this famously loving couple now will be reunited.

“I am a farmer, an engineer, a businessman, a planner, a scientist, a governor and a Christian,” he said in announcing his candidacy for the presidency in December 1974.

The times were right for Carter. He ran as an outsider, a little-known moderate and former Georgia governor against a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls hoping to take advantage of the public’s desire for change after the Watergate scandal. A fiscally conservative former naval officer who taught Sunday school and was a critic of abortion, Carter seemed to be just what the party needed — and it worked.

Carter’s acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention touched all the right buttons, even quoting Bob Dylan. It was like a revival sermon for a new generation of post-Vietnam voters, offering comfort for the party’s mostly Southern moderates and encouragement for Black voters, encouraged by Carter’s support from the family of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders.

But, after his election, the honeymoon didn’t last long. Carter repeatedly had problems working with Congress, even though his party held control of both houses. He even ran into such a bitter dispute with Sen. Ted Kennedy over the Massachusetts Democrat’s proposed national health insurance plan that it led to Kennedy’s challenging Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries.

Kennedy lost that nomination battle, but the fight left the party more divided and contributed to Carter’s landslide defeat by Ronald Reagan.

What went wrong? Carter’s rejection of business-as-usual politics made Watergate-weary voters roar with approval. But his fierce independence of mind and spirit, despite his calm and thoughtful demeanor, turned into a liability as he tried to work with Congress, even in those days when it was dominated by his fellow partisans.

But that independence of mind and spirit proved to be better suited to his post-presidency. He went to dozens of countries on teams of election monitors. He often wielded a hammer on Habitat for Humanity projects. He wrote a shelf of books, fiction as well as nonfiction. He taught Sunday school. He greeted many surprised Americans on airplanes with a warm smile.

Carter helped negotiate a 1994 agreement that suspended North Korea’s nuclear weapons program (a deal that collapsed in 2002). The Carter Center, which he set up in 1982 in conjunction with Emory University to promote democracy, combat disease and resolve conflicts, helped win him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

He didn’t shy away from taking provocative positions — as in 2006, when he accused Israel of inflicting “a system of apartheid” on Palestinians. Nor was he reluctant to criticize his successors, including Democratic ones: He faulted Barack Obama for failing to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and waiting “too long” to confront the security threat posed by the Islamic State group in 2014.

Carter didn’t mind if he ruffled feathers as long as he was advancing his principles. Historian Lewis Gould quoted “a prominent politician” who said, “Carter reminds me of a South Georgia turtle. He doesn’t go around a log. He just sticks his head in the middle and pushes and pushes until the log gives way.”

Often, the log did.

Elected in 1976 as a refreshing contrast to the ruthless, cynical Richard Nixon and the pleasant but underwhelming career pol Gerald Ford, Carter eventually saw his approval rating plummet and got only 41% of the vote in his reelection campaign against Reagan. Democratic candidates are fond of invoking the achievements of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. They rarely mention Carter.

That’s not surprising, given the turmoil and dysfunction that characterized the late 1970s. The economy was a never-ending nightmare: Carter presided over double-digit inflation, record interest rates, a recession and a gasoline shortage.

While in office, he showed little capacity to inspire most citizens the way he inspired his nominating convention. He had trouble working with Congress despite enjoying Democratic control of both houses.

In 1980, a campaign adviser wrote in a memo, “The public is now convinced that Jimmy Carter is an inept man.” His overt Baptist faith and professions of integrity — “I will never lie to you,” he promised in 1976 — sometimes came across as self-righteous.

On the foreign front, things were no better. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 despite his efforts to improve relations with Moscow, and critics blamed his defense cuts for emboldening the Kremlin. But nothing compared with the humiliation when Iranians invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. When Carter ordered a military rescue, its failure became a symbol of his alleged incompetence.

On the other hand, his presidency hardly was devoid of achievements. His herculean efforts helped bring about a historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt — effectively assuring the survival of the Jewish state by neutralizing its most formidable enemy.

He named Paul Volcker head of the Federal Reserve, and Volcker took the painful steps that vanquished inflation. They are familiar these days.

But Carter was undoubtedly a better ex-president than president. Just one accomplishment would warrant his inclusion in the history books: the near-eradication of the Guinea worm, a nasty parasite that once afflicted millions in Africa and is now almost unknown, thanks to a two-decade-old campaign led by the Carter Center.

Jimmy Carter didn’t always have the right formula for making the world a better place. But to his eternal credit, he never stopped trying.

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