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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.
In 2002, after being nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter nevertheless won it for his “vital contribution” to the Camp David Accords, which paved the way for peace between Israel and Israel. . Egypt, as well as for his commitment to peace between Israel and Egypt. human rights, its actions in the fight against tropical diseases and for the promotion of democracy in the world.
His life offers countless lessons for leaders everywhere.
Mr. Carter came to the presidency owing little to anyone, including his own party. Assembling a formidable coalition of small-town and rural voters, white blue-collar voters and African Americans, he surprised everyone in America — except perhaps himself and his wife, Rosalynn — when he beat Gerald Ford in the 1976 election.
In retrospect, it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. The last decade had been brutal for the United States. One president, Lyndon Johnson, decided not to seek another term because of growing public anger over an unwinnable war in Vietnam. Another, Richard Nixon, resigned from impeachment. The assassinations claimed the lives of a few other Kennedys, Bobby, and the country’s first civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. The war ended in humiliating failure.
Then came this reborn Georgia farmer-businessman with a history of Navy service. It is a type of discipline, integrity and strong values, whose vision is to repair the honor of the government and, thus, replace the environment of the capital and the country.
“Believe me,” Carter said continually during the election campaign. “I will never lie to you. ” His opponent, incumbent President Gerald Ford, was an honorable man, but he had few defenses. The burden of the multiple duplicities and corruptions of Ford’s predecessors was simply too great.
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