Jimmy Carter
Our greatest former president has entered hospice care. Let's take a moment to celebrate his lasting legacy.
Well, it was either write about Jimmy Carter, a magnificent human being with a generous spirit, or write about the craven and greedy characters at Fox News who chose to lie about the 2020 election results in order to hold viewers and keep ratings and revenue from their smaller competitors, NewsMax and OAN. They like to brag about how much they “respect” their audience, so to reduce their confusion about what that word means, I sent a dictionary to their headquarters in New York. There will be plenty of time to flesh that out going forward.
Since the announcement that he’s no longer seeking interventional medical treatment, and has instead decided to enter hospice care, let’s focus on Jimmy Carter, and hope he remains comfortable in his waning days. Everyone is writing about former president Carter. I feel a little like then-presidential candidate John Kerry, who drew the short straw in Wisconsin in 2004, where he wound up speaking last—at one in the morning—at the state Democratic convention. He went on after every candidate from dogcatcher to senator, and remarked, “By now, everything has been said, but not everyone has said it.”
It's in that spirit that I want to talk a little about James Earl Carter, our 39th president.
In a still-underrated presidency, Jimmy Carter, in the wake of Watergate, restored dignity to the Oval Office, and managed, among other things, to bring the Egyptians and Israelis together to hammer out the Camp David Accords that heralded the first peace agreement between Arabs and Jews, and importantly, showed that peace in the Middle East was possible. Diplomatic and economic relations flourished thereafter, and Mr. Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s a pretty big deal, but he wasn’t finished. In his third act—in Act I he graduated from the Naval Academy and worked as a nuclear engineer, and in Act II was a politician—anyway, in Act III, he created The Carter Center.
When the Carters left the White House, they didn’t return to DC for big bucks at a think tank or lobbying firm, they didn’t go to New York City and get into venture capital, and they didn’t move to Hollywood and shop self-aggrandizing book and movie proposals. They didn’t leverage fame into fortune, but instead returned to their simple ranch house in Plains, Georgia, where for the last 40 years, the former president has taught Sunday school.
Plenty of people will argue that he was an ineffective president, chosen to help the country heal from the Nixon era. Space won’t allow me to argue about the effectiveness of his presidency because I want to focus on the uniquely service-oriented nature of his post-presidency. It made him the greatest ex-president in our history, and one unlikely to have a lot of competition for that title.
From the home building charity, Habitat For Humanity, which he put on the map, and where he and Rosalyn pounded more nails than that other Carter has little liver pills, to the Carter Center, which, unlike most moribund presidential libraries that are more about their greatest hits than their current releases, the Carter Center is always engaged in new civic projects. Its core missions are ensuring the security and fairness of democratic elections around the world, and advancing public health—they’ve nearly single-handedly cured Guinea worm, a longtime scourge in Asia and Africa.
He is rightfully beloved worldwide. If The Carter Center was on the ground monitoring elections, you knew—the world knew—that fairness and honesty would prevail. In Africa, those two missions granted him legendary, almost saintly status. Innumerable elections were overseen, and the known cases of Guinea worm went from three-million in the mid-Eighties, to just 13 last year. It is thought that the Carter Center’s work prevented up to 90 million cases.
If, after his presidency, you ever flew on Delta out of Atlanta, you may have met Jimmy Carter. On a few flights that I recall, the former president delighted in working the room. Mr. Carter invariably got up when the seatbelt sign went off, and worked his way through the airplane, shaking every hand, and stopping to hear every story. That act alone is remarkable insight into his charitable nature, and his humanity.
Should you travel in an emerging country, be sure to ask the locals about Jimmy Carter. They may pause, look heavenward, and launch into these emotional speeches about what he and The Carter Center mean to their country. Any of that would be enough to make the former president a great man in the world‘s eyes, but for me, it is his humility. That trait is a family legacy now, with Jason Carter, the Center’s chair, and Jimmy and Rosalynn‘s grandson, carrying on their work.
In his third act, The Man From Plains was the best ambassador our country has ever sent abroad. Thanks, Jimmy.
©2023 Jon Sinton