Today, Jimmy Carter, who served a single term as the nation’s 39th president from 1977-81, turned 100 years old.
It has been said of President Carter that he was the best ex-president in U.S. history, and that is probably quite true. He is the first president of whom I have any memories, and I am sad to say that my impressions of him as a young child were the negative impressions that were passed on to me by my mother and stepfather and many of the people in our neighborhood.
By the time I was in first and second grade, Carter had become an object of national derision and ridicule, such that schoolkids were singing mocking jingles about him on the playground. (They sang, to the tune of the “Oscar Mayer” wiener song: “‘Cause Jimmy Carter has a way of screwing up the U.S.A.”) It should be noted that I grew up in a solidly Democratic, labor-union dominated corner of Indiana bordering on Chicago, and that Carter narrowly missed losing Lake County, Indiana in his 1980 reelection campaign. Only two Democrats–Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and George McGovern in 1972–have lost Lake County since 1928.
It would be fair to say that Carter’s presidency was largely unsuccessful, although it would also be fair to note that he had some key successes. The Camp David Accords, resulting in peace between Egypt and Israel, represented one of the finest diplomatic accomplishments of any president in U.S. history–right up there with Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972 and Theodore Roosevelt’s mediation of the Portsmouth, N.H. peace settlement between Japan and Russia in 1905. He also successfully negotiated the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union and made the courageous, and morally correct, move of pardoning all Vietnam War draft evaders on his second day in office.
Sadly, Carter’s successes were few, and he fell victim to a number of events which he either mishandled or could not control. The Iran Hostage Crisis, in which 53 American citizens were held in captivity for more than 14 months, and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, both coming in 1979, reinforced the popular impression that Carter was weak. His tireless work to solve the crisis was undermined by the Ronald Reagan campaign’s secret promises to Iran that if the Iranians kept the crisis going through the 1980 election, ensuring Carter’s defeat, the Iranian theocratic regime would get a better deal from Reagan than it would from Carter. Although Carter ultimately secured the hostages’ freedom on his last day in office, he never really got the credit for it from the public. I remember Reagan supporters claiming that Iran freed the hostages on the day Reagan was inaugurated because they were afraid Reagan would “get tough” with them.
Carter was also beset by an energy crisis that he did not cause but was unable to solve. His appearance on television wearing a sweater and urging Americans to conserve energy was at odds with the national mood; he was seen as weak and pessimistic, and the country went through a period of psychological “malaise.” The sunny, optimistic pronouncements of Reagan captured the nation’s imagination, and Carter lost all but six states when he failed to win a second term.
The night he conceded the 1980 election, Carter reminded Americans that he had promised, in his successful 1976 campaign, that he would never lie to them. In that spirit, he admitted he could not say that his landslide defeat that day didn’t hurt.
But Carter bounced back from the agony of his defeat and took on the rest of his life with gusto, earning well-deserved plaudits and praise from even his biggest political detractors for the work he did after leaving the White House. He established the Carter Center to fight for human rights around the globe and worked tirelessly around the world, conducting peace negotiations, monitoring elections, helping to fight devastating diseases. He also worked nonstop with Habitat For Humanity, helping build countless homes for the needy with his own hands. He refused to lay down and die after losing the presidency and spent more than 40 years simply doing good for his fellow human beings–all while living humbly in his tiny hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he taught Sunday School at his church until his health made it impossible for him to continue.
Perhaps Carter was not the most effective president, but we would be so much better off if all of our leaders cared about people as much as he does. And even if his message on energy conservation was not one that Americans wanted to hear, it was the truth. He was right.
Carter’s grandson said a few weeks ago that the former president said he is trying to hold on and live long enough to cast an absentee ballot for Kamala Harris for president. It is typical of Jimmy Carter that even as the end of his life draws near, he continues to live for his country and his fellow human beings.
We may have better presidents in the years to come, but we will never have a better human being as our president than Jimmy Carter.
Happy birthday, Mr. President.