As a conservative Republican, I did not vote for Jimmy Carter for president, and I often disagreed with his policies and public statements. But I have far more respect for Carter than I do for most politicians — of either party. Indeed, it is hard to think of another political leader with such an abiding commitment to his Christian faith, integrity, courage, hard work and helping others.
Whether serving in the U.S. Navy, on the Sumter County School Board, in the state Legislature, as governor, president, the head of the Carter Center or Sunday school teacher, Carter has given his entire wonderful life to the service of others. He has conducted himself with grace and honor.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
And there is much to admire about so many Carter policies and pronouncements. As Georgia’s first non-segregationist governor, he declared “the time for racial discrimination is over,” placed a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the state Capitol and named a record number of Black Georgians to public office. He streamlined state government by combining a lot of departments and agencies, improved state prisons and, with the help of his wife, Rosalynn, reformed Georgia’s mental hospitals.
As president, he was a great environmentalist who protected more land from development than any president before him. Over the opposition of many in his own party, he also deregulated banks, railroads, trucks and airlines, which enabled far more Americans to afford to fly.
In foreign policy, he repeatedly tackled seemingly intractable challenges his predecessors avoided. He signed the Panama Canal treaties, which improved U.S. relations with Latin America. Through tireless personal diplomacy, he got the Camp David Accords, which have kept the peace between Israel and Egypt since 1979. He got the United States to live up to its creed of freedom by strongly pushing for more human rights for everyone around the world, including our allies. This gave Latin Americans tremendous hope and helped inspire the region’s dramatic move to democracy in the 1980s. Carter also signed the SALT II nuclear arms control treaty with the Soviet Union to put some brakes on the Cold War arms race.
Daring to pursue yet another major policy initiative he believed would help the entire world, in 1979 Carter became the first U.S. president to normalize relations with communist China and even hosted Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping at the White House. Carter and Deng began supplying the guerrillas fighting the Russian Army’s cruel occupation of Afghanistan. With U.S. and Chinese help, the Russians withdrew from the country in 1989. Carter and Deng also began what became the enormous Sino-American trade, that has benefited both economies tremendously.
Throughout his presidency, from 1977 to 1981, the United States didn’t bomb, fire at or invade anyone anywhere in the world, and Carter led a scrupulously honest administration free of any significant scandal. How many presidents can say anything like that about theirs?
As a former president, Carter traveled the world for decades to push for peace, make sure elections were conducted fairly, promote human rights, assist agricultural and economic development in developing nations, save many lives in Africa through vaccination and build homes for poor people in America — even in his 90s after beating brain cancer.
Carter did so much to help people on the macro and micro levels. Long after retiring from elective politics, he still visited poor families with fruit, hosted disadvantaged children in his home and played tennis with them, and helped get a public pool in 1998 for impoverished children in southwest Georgia. He and his wife were even there when it opened to swim with them.
The three best Sunday school experiences of my life were in Carter’s classes at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. Arriving only with his Bible, he would eagerly ask where everyone was from, commenting on his connection to each location. He then updated us on his and Rosalynn’s latest travels before reading Scripture, giving his lesson for the day and concluding with prayer. After the service, the Carters patiently stood for photographs and shook hands with all of us.
Whatever policy differences we might have had with President Carter — and I had many — could any of us honestly say our politics and government would not be dramatically better if even a fourth of our leaders had the faith, vision, work ethic and decency of Jimmy Carter? He truly is that rare great man of history who is genuinely good.
Douglas Young is a political science professor emeritus who taught government and history for more than 33 years and whose essays, poems and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications in America, Canada and Europe. His first novel, “Deep in the Forest,” was published in 2021 and the second, “Due South,” came out in 2022. His first book of essays, “This Little Opinion Plus $1.50 Will Buy You a Coke: A Collection of Essays,” appeared in 2024.
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