Jimmy Carter: The Way a Nation Has Saved Jimmy, His Children, His Father, and Our Father, for His Love, His Family and His Legacy
There’s no predicting history’s verdict. Up to now, Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at age 100 in Plains, Ga., has been judged to be a middle-of-the-pack president, his one term in office remembered for circumstances and events that simply overwhelmed him: the seizure in Iran of 52 American hostages, the bungled attempt to rescue them, the gasoline lines, inflation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Yet he is also considered one of America’s greatest ex-presidents, for using the residual star power of his office to help his successors and his country as a peacemaker, backstage diplomat, human rights champion, monitor of free elections and advocate for the homeless while finding time to write poetry and, by his own example, providing the best possible case for traditional religious values.
The honor of winning the 1997 Camp David Accords has been said to have prompted Carter to win the 2002 peace prize. He ended his acceptance speech with a plea for peace.
A lifelong Democrat like most Southerners at the time, Carter was a political unknown when he began a national campaign in 1974 and was first referred to as “Jimmy Who?”
He could not have done it at a better time. The United States had seen some rough times in the previous decade. One president, Lyndon Johnson, chose not to seek another term because of rising public anger at an unwinnable war in Vietnam. Nixon resigned in order to avoid impeachment. Assassinations claimed the lives of yet another Kennedy, Bobby, as well as the nation’s premier civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. It was a flop in the war.
The Peanut Brigade: The Early Successes of Jimmy Carter, a Southern Democrat and a Founding Father of the American Civil War
James “Jimmy” Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Ga., on Oct. 1, 1924, and spent his childhood on a farm just outside that tiny southwest Georgia community. His mother was a nurse while his father was a peanut farmer. He was the first president to be born in a hospital.
“Other than Jimmy Carter, no person from the Deep South since the American Civil War had been elected president,” said Steven Hochman, a longtime assistant to the former president who works for the Carter Center.
Growing up on the farm, Carter learned the value of hard work and determination. He qualified for the U.S. Naval Academy and became an engineer, working on submarines. But Carter resigned from the Navy in 1953 after his father died.
But a grassroots effort changed that, Hochman said. He would go to radio stations when he was campaigning. He was a presidential candidate, and nobody knew who he was.
The Peanut brigade, a group of Carter’s friends and family from Georgia, traveled all over the country talking to voters about Carter, the dependable Southerner who wanted to be president.
During the campaign, Carter told audiences, “I’ll never tell a lie. I will not make a misleading statement. I will not compromise the trust of those who have faith in me, and I will never avoid a controversial issue.
“It was mainly an attempt to draw a distinction between what he saw as the people’s presidency and the more imperial presidency of Richard Nixon,” said historian Dan Carter (no relation to Jimmy Carter).
The peace treaty led to a tenuous relationship between the two countries. While in office, Carter also worked on the SALT II nuclear weapons agreement and signed the Panama Canal treaties, giving control of the canal to Panama.
Carter established a federal energy policy. He created the departments of Energy and Education. Still, he lost his bid for reelection by a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan. And it wasn’t until moments after Reagan was sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 1981, that the 52 remaining hostages were released. Carter was allowed to welcome them home.
The administration also battled domestic problems, including an energy crisis and double-digit inflation. The “malaise” speech came about after a series of meetings between Carter and his Cabinet members.
It is clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages. And I realize more than ever that as president, I need your help,” Carter pleaded.
Source: Jimmy Carter, former U.S. president and peace activist, dies at 100
Jimmy Carter: An Empirical Memorandum of 25 Years of Working and Living in the Era of Democracy, Peace, and Democracy
“After hearing for the first time that the aircraft carrying 52 American hostages had cleared Iranian air on the first leg of the journey home, I was relieved to know that all 52 of them were accounted for,” he said as he broke down in tears.
After leaving office, Carter became dedicated to promoting democracy, monitoring elections, building homes with Habitat for Humanity and eradicating disease in some of the world’s poorest countries. The Carter Center was opened by the president and his wife in 1982.
In an interview with NPR in 2007, Carter talked about his experiences. “And for the last 25 years, my life could not have been more expansive and unpredictable and adventurous and gratifying,” he said.
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” Carter said.
The former president met with leaders of countries that US presidents refused to acknowledge during his lifetime, including Cuba, Nicaragua and North Korea. In 2008, he met with the exiled leader of the militant Islamist group Hamas, despite harsh criticism from the U.S. government.
Historian Dan Carter said that Jimmy Carter was less afraid to speak out as he got older, and that he proved to be an honest broker for peace in many cases.
Carter was admitted to hospice care in February. The longest-lived former president had suffered from a series of health challenges in recent years, including surviving cancer, a broken hip and other recent hospitalizations for a fractured pelvis and a urinary tract infection.