Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 18
It is time to recognize Jimmy Carter for what he was – a better president than the caricatures of time gave him credit for, and perhaps the best former president ever.
Jimmy Carter didn’t just lose his bid for reelection in 1980. He was trounced. His 9.7 point loss in the popular vote to Ronald Reagan was the second worst defeat suffered by an incumbent president in the past century, behind Herbert Hoover who was running during the Great Depression.
For years afterward, Carter was regarded as a bland and ineffectual president. The Democrat was elected in 1976 as the reformist outsider the nation wanted after the Watergate scandals, but he soon found that he lacked sway in Congress and was largely powerless over the stagflation of the time. His effort at a rescue of U.S. hostages in Iran ended in the failure of America’s four military services. His admonitions about the energy crisis of the 1970s had a lecturing tone to them. In an overinterpreted yet somehow oddly symbolic moment, he was once attacked by a rabbit.
But for Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, recent years have been kinder, with a Nobel Peace Prize and many other accolades as part of his legacy. It is time to recognize him for what he was – a better president than the caricatures of time gave him credit for, and perhaps the best former president ever.
Jimmy Carter began much of US deregulation
Like George H.W. Bush and even Herbert Hoover, Carter can blame bad timing for his reelection loss. He had the misfortune of governing at a time of rampant inflation driven by surging oil prices. Then, just as he was running for a second term, the Federal Reserve decided it was time to crush inflation – with punitively high interest rates that sank the economy. Unemployment, 6.3% at the beginning of the 1980 election year, had risen to 7.5% by election eve.
Like many other presidents who were fighting against the tide, Carter’s accomplishments were not always recognized. It was Carter, for instance, who began much of the deregulation – of airlines, oil prices, etc. – that Reagan would later be credited with.
Overall, Carter’s greatly enhanced reputation is largely the result of what he did after his presidency. Rather than cash in, he tirelessly served the causes of peace, human rights, disease eradication and affordable housing. He worked to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula, in the Middle East, in South America and elsewhere.
For his work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002. He will perhaps be most remembered for the many times he strapped on a tool belt, even as his health failed, and helped build or restore housing for low-income families through the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity.
A president returns to Plains, Georgia, and his church
There is something vaguely George Washington-like in the way Carter nobly returned to everyday life after attaining great power.
Washington famously resigned his military commission after winning the war against the British and then stepped down from the presidency after two terms to return to his farm in Northern Virginia.
Carter went back to his old hometown in Plains, Georgia, and his old church. When not working on his many projects for the betterment of humanity, he might be found on a modest fishing boat.
He was perhaps the most unimperial of all U.S. presidents when in power, starting the tradition of walking part of the inaugural parade route and favoring the fireside chat over the Oval Office address. As an ex-president, he lived the life of an unassuming man whom you might bump into waiting to board a flight.
But Jimmy Carter lived a life that was nothing short of extraordinary, one that deserves its due in an era of self-aggrandizement.
Courtesy by USA TODAY
