JImmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and a Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian, died Sunday in Plains, Georgia. This small town is where he and his formidable wife and life partner Rosalyn were born.
President Carter, America’s longest-living and longest-married president, is unlikely to be ranked first in the nation’s leadership, but his four years in office served him best today, when he was best known. is seen in a much better light than it is. the seizure of American hostages in Iran and the crushing defeat against Ronald Reagan in 1980;
To simply abbreviate Carter as “an incompetent president but a good former president” is a gross oversimplification. During his time in office, Mr. Carter was a political failure but a policy success, achieving a series of unprecedented accomplishments and a partially realized vision for a future of peace and clean energy. He was a strict, non-ideological and moral leader who did not like to think of himself as a politician and acted as one only during election periods.
With an odd combination of Zen-like calm and steely stubbornness, Carter lived virtually three centuries. He was born in 1924, which could have been the 19th century. Although his family was wealthy because of the area, the farm had no electricity, running water, or mechanical equipment. He was involved in nearly every important event of the 20th century. The issues that he tackled after assuming office, namely global health, democracy promotion, and conflict resolution, are cutting-edge issues of the 21st century.
Carter was the first president since Thomas Jefferson, who is rightly considered a Renaissance figure.
As a child, Carter dreamed of attending the Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1946. When his father died in 1953, he left the Navy to take over the family peanut warehouse business and assume many of his father’s social responsibilities. . Eschewing the civil rights movement, Carter was elected to the Georgia State Senate in 1962 and, after a dog-whistle appeal to racists, became governor in 1970. He immediately turned on his racist supporters and mounted a brilliant campaign before consolidating state government. His Watergate support and support from “gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson helped him rise from 0% in the polls to become the Democratic presidential nominee. 1976. Although the Southern Baptist was briefly derailed when he confessed in an interview with Playboy magazine that he had “committed adultery many times in my heart,” he narrowly defeated Gerald Ford, who took over as president after Richard Nixon resigned. did.
With skills ranging from agronomist, nuclear engineer, and sonar engineer to poet, painter, and woodworker, Carter became the first president since Thomas Jefferson, who is rightly considered a Renaissance man.
He was also the first man since Jefferson to not have blood shed in war. And his track record of integrity and decency, once considered minimal qualifications, has gained in importance over time. At his farewell dinner just before leaving office, Vice President Walter F. Mondale toasted the Carter administration: We followed the law. We kept the peace. ” Carter later added a fourth major accomplishment. “And we defended human rights.”
Carter did that by taking America’s civil rights movement internationally and setting new standards for how governments should treat their own citizens. Although his human rights policies may be hypocritical, as the United States continued to support the Shah of Iran and a handful of other dictators who served U.S. interests, Carter’s new approach is contributed to the end of more than a dozen dictatorships. Two future heads of state, Václav Havel of the Czech Republic and Kim Dae-jong of South Korea, credited Carter in part for his release from prison. Carter’s words gave hope to thousands of dissidents and helped undermine communism even with conservative views.
Mr. Carter may be best known for the 1978 Camp David Accords, the most enduring major peace treaty after World War II. Israel and Egypt have fought four wars in 30 years, and President Carter brings Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat together at a rustic retreat in the Maryland mountains. At different times, Begin and Sadat (Carter’s best friend) packed their bags and prepared to leave without an agreement. The meeting was saved by Carter’s mettle. Averell Harriman, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s special war envoy, called Camp David “one of the most extraordinary things ever accomplished by a president in history.”
Israel and Egypt have maintained a frosty détente for four decades, but the second part of the deal, a path to a Palestinian state, has not materialized. Mr. Carter praised Mr. Begin for handing over the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, but claimed that Mr. Begin had reneged on his promise to freeze Israeli settlements in the West Bank until Palestinian autonomy was completed. He believed that had he been re-elected, he could have achieved a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
Mr. Carter’s most far-reaching accomplishment may have been normalizing relations between the United States and China. Within days of Deng Xiaoping’s historic visit to Washington in 1979, he legalized private property and took a major step toward a capitalist economy. Carter abandoned Nixon and Ford’s clumsy “two China policy” (in favor of Taiwan) and established bilateral relations as the foundation of the world economy.
Another foreign policy victory was when Mr. Carter overcame overwhelming odds to win the 67 votes in the Senate needed to ratify the Panama Canal Treaty, which handed the canal over to the Panamanians. The treaty sharply improved the U.S. position across Latin America and avoided the permanent deployment of more than 100,000 U.S. troops to protect the canal from guerrilla attacks. However, several Democratic senators lost their seats in the vote, and Mr. Carter received no credit for preventing a Vietnam-style conflict in Central America from escalating.
Anticipating a moderate “New Democratic Party” presidency between Clinton and Obama, Carter cut the budget deficit.
Although Carter significantly increased defense spending, developed the B2 stealth bomber and other high-tech weapons, and years later helped win the Cold War, he somehow contradicted the right-wing canard that he was “weak” when it came to national defense. are. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, he was forced to withdraw the Salt II Treaty from the Senate (although its terms were respected by both countries). President Carter’s decision to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics and impose a grain embargo on the Soviet Union was ineffective and ultimately extremely unpopular.
Domestically, Mr. Carter unsuccessfully enacted welfare, tax, and health care reform. However, he still signed more domestic legislation than any postwar president other than Lyndon Johnson, many of which were visionary. He founded the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Replaced tokenism with true racial and gender diversity in the civil service and the federal judiciary. It curbed banks’ ability to “redline” (withdraw investment from) black neighborhoods. It provided the first whistleblower protection and the first bureaucratic oversight body, the Inspector General.
President Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House (removed by Reagan). It represents an excellent environmental record, including the first funding for green energy, the first fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, and the first federal requirements to clean up toxic waste. Extensive laws such as -up. Carter protected Alaska from depredation with the Alaska Land Act and doubled the size of the National Park System. If re-elected, he planned to begin tackling global warming, which at the time was an ambiguous issue even in the scientific community.
Anticipating a moderate New Democratic Party presidency between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Mr. Carter reduced the budget deficit and reluctantly approved business tax cuts. The appointment of Paul A. Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve System caused interest rates to rise, which helped paralyze his presidency. But Volcker’s harsh financial medicine ultimately ended double-digit inflation, a victory that provided Reagan with political benefits.
During the second half of his term, Carter was beset by external problems, many of which were beyond his control. Gasoline shortages caused a national “malaise,” but Carter did not use that word in his famous speech. Sen. Edward Kennedy, a darling of liberals, launched a virulent campaign against him for the 1980 Democratic nomination. After the hostages were taken in Tehran, the American public rallied around Mr. Carter for a time, which helped him fend off Mr. Kennedy. However, Carter’s popularity waned again when a helicopter mission to free the hostages was aborted in the Iranian desert. Although he was unable to free the hostages before the election (probably because of the “October Surprise” agreement between the Reagan campaign and the Iranian government), he did release them afterward — although the Americans who were freed were It did not pass through Iranian airspace until shortly after it was sworn in.
For 40 years after leaving office, Carter continued to work as a peacebuilder and champion of human rights and democratic accountability. He helped eradicate disease, built homes for the poor, and taught Sunday school until his mid-90s.
