President Jimmy Carter passed on December 29, 2024. File Photo.
Jimmy Carter, the former President of the United States of America, who has died aged 100, was a reminder that politics should be a call to service.
Where other former US presidents, went on to amass stupendous wealth when they left office, Jimmy Carter, continued to live in his modest two bedroomed house, in Plains Georgia, where he had lived before successfully running for the Presidency, from where he continued to live a life of service, until his very last breath.
It is a measure of the richness of the span of his life that it is possible to say he made as big an impact after he left office, as he did as President of the most powerful nation on earth. It has often been suggested that as a one term President, he was a better former President, than he was President. This would be to overlook his immense accomplishments in office, some of which have transformed the Presidency itself.
In 1977, when James Earl Carter Jr, entered the White House, America’s state house, there was an unspoken general understanding that among his many tasks, was to restore a sense of decency and morality, after the scandals of the Nixon era. It would not be too big an expectation of a man, whose entire life was the very definition of integrity. “I will never lie to you” he promised the electorate, and none can say he did not live up to that promise.
But he did much more than that. A man who had served in the military, one of his first actions as President, was to issue a blanket amnesty to anyone who had broken the law, protesting against the war in Vietnam. It was a hugely symbolic gesture that contributed to national healing, from a bitter period in America’s life.
He embarked on a drive to improve the management and efficiency of the federal government, getting a larger legislative programme through Congress in one term, than many of his predecessors and successors, managed in two.
His Vice-President, Walter Mondale, was elevated to the House, and included in all policy decisions, a transformation that has been continued by subsequent presidents. It was under Carter that departments of energy and education were created, the absence of which would now be unthinkable.
He understood the importance of environmental protection at a time when it was considered by many to be a peripheral obsession for cranks and activists. He installed solar panels on the roof of the White House, only to be removed by his Republican successor, Ronald Reagan, who considered the whole idea eccentric.
President Jimmy Carter lived a life of service.
He always marched to the beat of a different drum. Where Christian churches in Southern states are characterised by their political conservatism, Carter was a devout progressive Christian. As Georgia’s governor, he quietly fought against the South’s rabid racism and segregation, and took on the fight for women’s equality. He would take that fight to the White House, where he oversaw the appointment of more black people and women.
This would be a factor in his unsuccessful bid for a second term in office. Many in the South were unhappy with the appointment of black people, beyond the hitherto token gestures. He could have reminded women and the black community of what he was doing on their behalf to earn their votes, but that was not his way. He did what was right, expecting no reward.
In his foreign policy too, Carter leaves a legacy of what ought to have been lasting achievements, had they been continued by successors. He ended tensions between South America and the US with the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, a decision that also cost him electoral support, among his more conservative voters. He continued negotiations with China, which had begun under the Nixon presidency, and although they were never ratified by the US senate, he advanced the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) agreement on nuclear weapons, with what was then the Soviet Union.
President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
Carter was unfortunate because a series of events coincided with his campaign for his second term. Runaway inflation, with an oil crisis, and perhaps above all, a conflict with Iran that ended with the Islamic Republic taking American hostages, all contributed to a crushing loss to his Republican rival.
One of the youngest Presidents to have ever occupied the White House, Carter was fifty-Six when he left office. Together with his wife of Seventy-seven years, Rosalynn, who died last year, he set up the Carter Centre, to “wage peace” as war is waged, and “fight disease” and “build hope.”
Through the Carter centre, the former president worked on conflict resolution, championing, peace, human rights and democracy around the world. The Carter Centre became the gold standard for election monitoring. In 2002, his work to promote peace, earned him the Nobel peace prize. “We take peace not as a dormant situation, but as one to be fought for – like winning an armed conflict,” he said.
But it was in fighting disease and advocacy for the poor and vulnerable, that he will perhaps be best remembered. From agricultural projects in Africa, to partnering with Habitat for Humanity, building affordable homes for the poorest of the world to campaigning for eradication of diseases, it is easy to see how some may argue that he achieved more as a former President than he did in office.
Naval Lieutenant Carter, with wife of 77 years, Rosalynn
He dies having seen his hope of eradicating Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) all but realised. Last year, there were only around thirteen cases of a disease that had blighted millions of people in Africa and Asia. The Centre’s fight against River blindness and trachoma, will continue without him. Its management has asked that rather than buy flowers, well wishers might consider making a contribution to the centre’s work instead.
A decent man of great integrity, who went into politics to serve, a man of high intelligence, with a prodigious capacity for work, it says a lot about the world that there was often a hint of a suspicion, that because of these qualities, he was perhaps unsuited for the White House.
Amidst the travelling, the campaigning for global peace, building houses for the poor, often with his own hands, Carter managed to find time to write thirty-books, including a novel, and an anthology of his own poetry. Most of them however, were factual books, autobiographical, his view on life and how best to live it.
As might be expected, they are honest books, fearless. One of those books, on the Middle East conflict, Palestine: Peace And Not Apartheid, challenged what he knew were formidable forces in his country. In interviews to promote the book, he was at his most forthright. “Americans don’t want to know, and many Israelis don’t want to know what is going on inside Palestine…It’s a terrible human rights persecution that transcends what any outsider would imagine. And there are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective analysis of the problem in the holy land.”
President Carter in the Oval Office.
As he no doubt expected, the book was met with a deluge of condemnation and invective, from those “powerful political forces” and their adherents. There were resignations from the Carter centre from long term collaborators. His response revealed more about the man. He would listen calmly, to the visceral anger, the vicious name calling, then patiently explain that the facts outlined in the book, simply followed the conclusions dictated by the facts on the ground.
One of the most high profile of those resignations, Steve Berman, would later write to the former President, to apologise, and to say that the book had been right. In a handwritten letter, Carter replied that no apology was needed, and that he understood the sensitivities the book had aroused, and Berman would be most welcome back to the Centre.
It was one of those moments that demonstrated that behind the ever-ready, all embracing warm smile, was a steely resolve that would stand fast by what he knew to be true and right, whatever the forces ranged against him. He may have been deemed unsuited for the White House by some, but he was what the White House sorely needed, even in his absence from there. Perhaps especially then.
Working to his last breath. Carter in Hospice Care at home in Plains Georgia.
