Jimmy Carter’s death at 100 in his hometown of Plains, Ga., on Sunday will lead to more tributes of him as a person than a president for a singular reason. He was the nation’s greatest ex-president, and there is no debate.
He built a better world, literally.
Four U.S. presidents have been awarded Nobel Peace Prizes, but only Carter’s honor came after leaving office. In 2002, he was cited “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Over those same decades, he and his wife Rosalynn, who died in November 2023, helped build, renovate and repair thousands of homes, some in San Diego and Tijuana. He hammered nails well into his 90s, including famously in 2019 one day after a fall left him with 14 stitches, a bandage over an eye and a big red welt below it.
When Carter left office in January 1981, the template for how former commanders-in-chief could be expected to act had long been established. They knew they could monetize their fame and influence through speeches, books and sinecures on corporate boards. Some preferred low-profile lives built on golf and recreation — Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford. Others tried to rehab their tattered images — Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. But Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter saw service as central to their lives. They got involved with a then-fledgling nonprofit called Habitat for Humanity and helped inspire it to build more than 100,000 low-cost homes for families not just in the United States but in 60 nations around the world. Using the Carter Center in Atlanta, founded in 1982, as a base of operations, the Carters became known for decades of efforts to improve the world and its people, by fighting disease, striving for peace, and promoting democracy and human rights through efforts such as monitoring elections for fraud.
That’s why news in February 2023 that the 39th U.S. president was entering hospice in declining health fueled an outpouring of respect, love and iration. Of all the words uttered about him, none will approach the epitaph he shared many years ago when describing what brought him joy and fulfillment: “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. … My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.” He succeeded at meeting this goal perhaps as well as any American of modern times.
The goals of his presidency were more elusive.
In 1976, when the once obscure moderate former Democratic governor of Georgia stunned the political establishment by narrowly defeating President Gerald Ford, his repeated promises to bring a moral com to a nation reeling from the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War struck a chord.
Yet four years later, when he was routed by former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in his re-election bid, Carter had become a punch line both inside and outside the Beltway. The Baptist Sunday school teacher was criticized for his inability to control inflation — which took a huge toll on poor and middle-income families alike — and for the perception that the Soviet Union had taken advantage of his moralizing and naivete by invading Afghanistan. In both the House and Senate, the antipathy toward the pious, deeply religious Naval Academy graduate was extensive and bipartisan. This was reflected in Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy’s decision to challenge him for the 1980 Democratic nomination from the left with a campaign that anticipated — and set the stage for — the successful fall GOP strategy depicting him as overmatched for the responsibilities of the Oval Office.
While this critique may endure decades later, the historical record has become far more nuanced — starting with the two issues that arguably most haunted him on Election Day 1980.
The first was inflation. Carter’s decision to name Paul Volcker as chair of the Federal Reserve Board in 1979 came during one of the longest sustained bouts of inflation in U.S. history, with prices going up by nearly 15 percent in 1980. Volcker’s response was to raise interest rates to 20 percent, leading to consecutive recessions in 1980-1982 and pushing unemployment to 10.8 percent. But the ultimate result was one of the great sustained eras of low-inflation economic growth in U.S. history, and nearly 40 years of relative price stability. Carter knew naming Volcker, an inflation hard-liner, to run the Fed would yield short-term pain — and hurt his re-election chances. He did what was best for the nation.
Foreign policy was the second issue plaguing Carter. In real time, he was celebrated in some quarters for placing human rights firmly at the center of U.S. diplomacy — ing to a degree on the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend realpolitik of Nixon and Henry Kissinger. But the more common view was that he encouraged Soviet adventurism before the Reagan military build-up of the 1980s left Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev skeptical Moscow could ever win a Cold War against by far the richest nation in history.
This narrative is no longer so tidy. It’s since emerged that Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski realized within weeks of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that Soviet troops were hopelessly mired and unable to control much of the remote, poor, landlocked Asian nation — the same fate faced by invading British troops three times from 1839 to 1919 and by the U.S. forces who invaded after 9/11. As a result, at Carter’s direction — and with the later of the Reagan White House — the U.S. provided funding to Afghan rebels and turned Afghanistan in what became known as “Moscow’s Vietnam,” another key factor in the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
His foreign policy was also faulted for weakness in the Iran hostage crisis, in which 52 U.S. diplomats and citizens were held throughout 1980 by militants in Tehran. Criticism faded after all survived and were released peacefully shortly after Reagan took office on Jan. 20, 1981.
Meanwhile, history has shown Carter to be prescient on energy issues and deregulation. In 1979, he put forward what was then an unthinkable goal of having 20 percent of U.S. energy from renewable resources by 2000. In an era in which the cult of cars was peaking — from the rise of mass-produced muscle cars in the late 1960s to “American Graffiti,” the hugely popular 1973 homage to small-town cruising culture — Carter said many people drove too much and instead should car-pool and use transit. During his time in the White House, he also became the single U.S. president most associated with growth-inducing, consumer-friendly deregulation, specifically in air travel, interstate trucking and even craft beer production.
Still, these policy successes may never change the dominant historical perception of Carter. Few presidents have lost in similar landslides when seeking re-election. And in 2021, when C-SPAN released its fourth survey of prominent historians asking them to rank presidents on their overall leadership, Carter fell to 26th from the 22nd spot he held in the first survey in 2000. Each of the three presidents elected after him — Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton — fared significantly better.
In 1981, Jimmy Carter left the White House as a constant target of late-night comics. Nearly 44 years later, that fact seems startling, for few now doubt his commitment to humanity. Rest in peace, Mr. President. Even in death, you will remain an inspiration.
