Don’t judge Jimmy Carter’s life by his four years in Washington.
He was our president to be sure, but he was so much more.
It is too often said of a man or woman that he or she changed the world. Carter is among the very few who did, in fact, change the world. And he is even rarer in that he actually left the place better for his goodness and vigor.
In many ways, Jimmy Carter was the Best American.
Consider the traits that describe the best of what it is to be an American: independence, tenacity, generosity, frugality, competence, honesty, fidelity, ambition, courage.
All resided deeply in Carter.
Many of these qualities were on display in the White House, although a few of them — honesty, frugality and tenacity in particular — did him no political favors. Remember the “malaise speech” when Carter chided Americans to rally around the idea of civic duty and sacrifice?
Yet, if you watch that speech from the perspective of the 21st Century it’s impossible to escape the realization that no one knew better than he what was ahead — the decline of civic life, the frailty of the environment, the threats to American democracy that remain no less urgent.
Carter was the president we needed in 1976. He understood us. He knew our pain from suffering years of a calamitous war in Vietnam. He understood what it meant for a family to struggle in a stagnating economy. He knew we no longer trusted Washington. He took our side.
He was a populist to be sure, but his brand of populism was at its core a proclamation of decency. He promised to never lie and to lead a government as good as the American people.
The jeans, big smile and promises now seem so very quaint.
You can debate Carter’s success in the White House, but no one doubts the success of his post presidency. Children in Africa no longer are plagued by rapacious Guinea worms or river blindness. Farmers in poor countries cultivate better, more nourishing and sustainable crops. Democracies around the world are stronger thanks to the scrutiny of the Carter Center.
The only firsthand experience millions of people around the world know of America is the generosity Carter has shown them. For this Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Before we get too far, it’s important to note that it’s difficult to describe Carter’s legacy without making it clear that Rosalynn Carter was his partner — even if the word “partner” seems inadequate. It was hard to know where Jimmy ended and Rosalynn began.
Jimmy Carter was shaped in a rural, mostly Black American community in the racist South. Most of his playmates and role models in the small hamlet of Archery — near Plains — were Black.
Carter dedicated the first poem in his book of poetry, “Always a Reckoning,” to Rachel Clark, a Black woman who descended from slaves owned by his ancestors.
She and her husband, Jack, lived on a small tenant farm near Carter’s childhood home. As a boy, Carter often slept at their house. He and Rachel often walked together, most often to go fishing.
“These journeys gave us ample time to talk —
or rather, I would listen to her words,
as she would think a while, and then hold forth
about God’s holy way: how, when we deal
with Nature, we are stewards of the earth,
she said that blessings bring on debts to pay,
describe the duties of a man and wife,
and say the brave and strongest need not fight.”
His father, James Earl Carter Sr., adhered to the Southern segregationist norm; his mother, Lillian, decidedly did not. She treated Black people with respect and as equals. It is difficult today to fully grasp what it meant in the segregated Georgia of the 1920s and 1930s to offer the front door to Black neighbors.
Carter learned young to judge people by what they did rather than who they were. “In fact, the final judgment of people I knew was based on their own character and achievements, and not on their race,” he wrote in “An Hour Before Daylight,” his autobiographical account of his childhood.
Young Carter’s attitudes about race set him apart, particularly as he served in the desegregated Navy. Back in Plains, he refused to join a White Citizens Council, a decision that produced racist signs in his yard. In 1962, when Carter decided to go into politics, his progressive stance on race raised suspicions among his white neighbors.
Even so, in an election tainted with voter fraud — a few dead folks were among the voters for his opponent in nearby Quitman County — Carter persisted and prevailed. He won his state senate race after taking his case to court and the intervention of the state Democratic Party. (It must be said that great reporting by the brilliant John Pennington of The Atlanta Journal may have salvaged Carter’s fledgling career. The newspaper detailed the shady dealings of elections officials in Carter’s district.)
It is hard to overstate what Carter’s election as governor in 1970 meant for Georgia’s standing among Southern states. He succeeded Lester Maddox, a staunch supporter of states rights and segregation.
Carter made it clear a new day had come in his 1971 inaugural address:
“I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over,” he said. “Our people have already made this major and difficult decision, but we cannot underestimate the challenge of hundreds of minor decisions yet to be made.
“Our inherent human charity and our religious beliefs will be taxed to the limit. No poor, rural, weak, or Black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job or simple justice.”
These words came less than a decade after Alabama Gov. George Wallace offered a different message at his inauguration: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
Carter projected moderation, decency and a relative progressiveness that helped Atlanta flourish as a business and cultural center in the early 1970s.
He expanded the number of Black and female state employees, judges and board members. He placed portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. and two other prominent black Georgians in the capitol building, even as the Ku Klux Klan simmered outside the Gold Dome.
Carter was perhaps Georgia’s most consequential governor. He dramatically reshaped and simplified state government — an accomplishment he later replicated in the White House.
Yet, Carter also practiced a form of Southern realpolitik that comforted conservatives and sometimes alienated liberals. He supported a constitutional amendment to ban busing. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Georgia’s death penalty law in 1972, Carter approved measures to overcome the court’s ruling to reinstitute executions.
Later, Carter regretted his support of the death penalty. “If I had to do that over again I would certainly be much more forceful in taking actions what would have prohibited the death penalty,” he said in a 2013 interview. “In complete honesty, when I was governor I was not nearly as concerned about the unfairness of the application of the death penalty as I am now.
“I know much more now,” he reflected. “I didn’t see the injustice of it as I do now.”
Carter’s view of the world expanded in his post presidency.
A year after his defeat, he founded the Carter Presidential Center, which included an apartment with a Murphy bed for the former First Couple. His causes and energy seemed endless. Until late in life, he picked up a hammer for Habitat for Humanity International.
He taught at Emory University and freelanced as diplomat — often to the great irritation of his successors in the Oval Office.
He caused considerable heartburn when he very publicly condemned the plans of both President Bushes to invade Iraq. He went further than merely advocating against military action: he used his status to engage in foreign policy, enraging many who believe he had overstepped.
Yet, he seemed immune to criticism, and stood his ground in the firestorm prompted by his book that compared Israel to racist South Africa.
His post presidency eclipsed his days in the White House, which often has been dismissed as mediocre at best. This assessment seemed validated by his ugly loss to Ronald Reagan after just one term.
Yet, given the level of difficulty that confronted Carter, this assessment seems unfair. “People wondered if he was cursed, by a dismal economy, poor relationship with Congress and a nightmarish standoff over 52 Americans held hostage by Iran,” said Lesley Stahl, the “60 Minutes” correspondent as she introduced a Carter interview in recent years.
Without doubt he was a busy president: He pardoned Vietnam draft dodgers, made peace between Israel and Egypt and ratified the Panama Canal treaty. He countered Soviet aggression with a military buildup and, despite a bad case of stagflation, presided over respectable economic growth.
Despite his being depicted as a raging liberal, he was fiscally tight and added less to the national debt than the Republicans who succeeded him.
Nevertheless, his civil image led detractors to label him a wimp.
Really? He was a brick wall when it came to policies he opposed or the good old boy tactics that still rule Washington. When a bunch of Democratic Pennsylvania congressmen threatened to block Carter’s agenda if he didn’t appoint their pick for U.S. attorney, he shut them down. “I told them, in a nice way, to go to hell,” he wrote in his diary.
When he was asked what he thought about Sen. Edward Kennedy’s threat to run against him, Carter didn’t mince words. “Kennedy runs, I’ll whip his ass,” Carter said.
Years later, he relished in noting that he did indeed whip his ass.
Despite the successes, Carter-era images generally include long lines at the gas stations, high interest rates and American hostages.
These things and more led Americans to reject Carter. Maybe he expected too much of us. Asking us to live happily with 55 mph speed limits to conserve fuel may have been a bridge too far.
Even so, Americans never came to really dislike Carter. Early in Reagan’s administration, a White House aide suggested that the new president invite Carter for a meal. “Ultimately, while the American people overwhelmingly rejected President Carter,” the aide wrote, “they continue to like Jimmy Carter personally.”
We liked him, even though he never seemed fully satisfied with us. Maybe Carter expected too much of us because he expected so much of himself.
Late in life, he reflected on what should be expected of us all. “Each of us has a responsibility to take our own talent and ability and our own life and use it in order to exemplify the finest elements of morality and ethical standards,” he told a Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains in his last years.
Not long after Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946, he interviewed with Admiral Hyman Rickover, a famous and fierce figure whom Carter admired.
“Where did you come in your class in the Naval Academy?” the admiral demanded.
“Sir, I came 59th in a class of 840,” Carter answered with pride.
“Did you do your best?” the admiral asked sternly.
“No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.”
“Why not?!”
Carter had no answer.
The question haunted him. He spent the rest of his life searching for an answer.
In that search, he defined for us all what it means to do your best.
Bert L. Roughton, for the Editorial Board.
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