Former President
Jimmy Carter,
honored more widely for his humanitarian work around the globe after
his presidency than for his White House tenure during a tumultuous time,
has died,
according to multiple reports. He was
100.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winner
died at his home in Plains, Georgia, the Carter Center announced. In November 2023, his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn,
also passed away
in the modest house they built together in 1961, when he had taken over
his father's peanut warehouse business and was only beginning to
consider a political career.
Jason Carter had
visited his grandparents at
the time of the announcement and said "They are at peace and – as
always – their home is full of love," he posted on Twitter.
At peace, perhaps, but still political: The former president vowed he
wanted to cast a ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
After
serving a single term in the White House, Jimmy Carter became one of
the most durable figures in modern American politics. Evicted from the
White House at age 56, he would hold the status of former president
longer than anyone in U.S. history, and in 2019 he surpassed George H.
W. Bush as the nation's
oldest living ex-president.
Carter
remained remarkably active in charitable causes through a series of
health challenges during his final years, including a
bout with brain cancer in 2015. He was admitted to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta in November 2019 for a procedure to
relieve pressure on his brain,
a consequence of bleeding that followed a series of falls. A few months
earlier, in May, he had undergone surgery after breaking his hip.
In the White House from 1977 to 1981, Carter negotiated the landmark
Camp David peace accords
between Israel and Egypt, transferred the Panama Canal to Panamanian
ownership, dramatically expanded public lands in Alaska and established
formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
But the 39th president governed at a time of
soaring inflation
and gasoline shortages, and his failure to secure the release of
Americans held hostage by Iran helped cost him the second term he
sought.
“He’s
never going to be ranked as a great president; he’s middling as a
president,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, author of a 1998 book on
Carter, "The Unfinished Presidency." “But as an American figure, he’s a
giant.”
After
losing his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, and until well into his
90s, Carter continued working as an observer of elections in developing
countries, building houses through the nonprofit
Habitat for Humanity and
teaching Sunday school at the tiny Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, his hometown.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, 22 years after he left the White House.
"I
can't deny that I was a better ex-president than I was a president," he
said with a wry laugh at a breakfast with reporters in Washington in
2005.
"My
former boss was humiliated when he lost in 1980; he felt he let himself
and the American people down," David Rubenstein, a young White House
staffer for Carter who became founder of the Carlyle Group and a
billionaire philanthropist, told USA TODAY in an interview in 2019.
"For
a long time, he was basically the symbol of a weak president and a
terrible person. And today, 40-some years later, he's seen as a very
incredible person who has had many good things he did, though he didn't
get reelected," Rubenstein said.
Peanut farms and nuclear subs
James
Earl Carter Jr. was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains to Earl Carter, a
peanut warehouser who had served in the Georgia Legislature, and “Miss
Lillian” Carter, a registered nurse and formidable figure who joined the
Peace Corps when she was in her 60s.
He
grew up on a peanut farm in Plains, then graduated from the U.S. Naval
Academy. In the years after World War II, he served in the Navy's
submarine service in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. After doing
graduate work in nuclear physics, he became a pioneer in the
introduction of nuclear power in submarines.
When his father died in 1953, Carter resigned his naval commission and took over operation of the family peanut farms with
Rosalynn, his hometown sweetheart. After a rough early patch, the business flourished, and Carter became increasingly active in community affairs and politics.
During
two terms in the Georgia state Senate, he gained a reputation as an
independent voice who attacked wasteful government practices and helped
repeal laws designed to discourage Black Americans from voting.
But
in 1966, he lost a race for governor to segregationist Lester Maddox in
an election that analysts said reflected a Southern backlash against
national civil rights legislation enacted in 1964 and 1965. In a second
bid for governor in 1970, Carter minimized his appearances before Black
audiences and won endorsements from some segregationists.
After
he was elected, though, Carter declared that the era of segregation in
Georgia was over, and he was hailed as a symbol of a new, more inclusive
South.
Still,
he was an unlikely presidential contender. When he launched his bid for
the 1976 Democratic nomination, the former one-term governor was so
obscure outside the Peach State that “Jimmy who?” became a campaign
trope. He perfected the meticulous cultivation of voters in Iowa, and
his unexpected victory in the opening presidential caucuses there
provided a launching pad that long-shot contenders tried to emulate for
decades.
The
Watergate scandal
boosted Carter's prospects. In the aftermath of President Richard
Nixon’s decision to resign in 1974 rather than be impeached, Carter
pitched himself to voters as an outsider who would reject Washington’s
unsavory ways. “I’ll never lie to you,” he told them.
In
1976, he narrowly defeated President Gerald Ford, whose campaign was
damaged by verbal missteps and by controversy over his decision to
pardon Nixon.
Four
years later, Carter would be ousted himself. He faced a damaging
challenge for the Democratic nomination from the left by Massachusetts
Sen. Edward Kennedy and then a landslide defeat in the general election
from the right by Reagan.
The
former California governor tapped into discontent with Carter’s
leadership. “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Reagan
asked voters in the iconic closing of their only campaign debate.
Presidential achievements eclipsed?
Carter’s defenders argue that he was a better president than generally recognized.
"I
think that he is the most underappreciated modern president that we've
had," said Stuart Eizenstat, a veteran Washington official and
ambassador who was Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser in the White
House.
"The
reason for that is the lingering memories of his presidency are
negative ones – gasoline lines, high interest rates and inflation, the
Iran hostage crisis, the Desert One failed rescue effort – and those
totally obscure a really remarkable set of accomplishments both at home
and abroad, which in many ways didn't materialize until after he left
office."
Eizenstat,
author of "President Carter: The White House Years," published in 2018,
said Carter's policies and appointments laid the groundwork for a
stronger economy, energy independence, environmental protection,
business innovation in transportation and more.
On
foreign policy, Carter painstakingly negotiated the 1978 Camp David
Accords, a historic agreement between Israel's Menachem Begin and
Egypt's Anwar Sadat that led to a formal peace treaty between the two
countries the next year.
But he stumbled when he came to the politics of the job.
Despite
having the advantage of a solidly Democratic Congress, many of his
legislative proposals, including a consumer protection bill, stalled.
The no-backroom-deals approach that helped him win the White House
contributed to his difficulties in actually governing once he got there.
He was mocked for charging members of Congress for their breakfast when
invited to meet with him at the White House and for eliminating alcohol
from most evening events.
He was seen by some, then and later, as prickly and sanctimonious.
Meanwhile,
unemployment rose, interest rates for home mortgages climbed into
double digits and Americans found themselves waiting in lines to buy gas
in an oil crisis created by OPEC, the powerful international energy
cartel. In a speech to the nation in July 1979, Carter described a
“crisis of confidence" among the American people. Although he never said
the word, it became short-handed as his “malaise” speech.
"He
lacked the political and managerial skills needed to make best use of
the office he held," said Robert McClure, a political scientist at
Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
Damaged by the hostage crisis
Most damaging of all was the Iranian hostage crisis.
Carter
had agreed to allow Iran's deposed shah, a former U.S. ally who was
living in exile, to receive cancer treatment in the United States. In
protest, Iranian Islamist radicals overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran
and took 52 Americans captive. The confrontation, which began on Nov. 4,
1979, would end only as Reagan was being inaugurated 444 days later.
Carter
chose diplomacy and economic sanctions over military action. He halted
oil imports from Iran and froze Iranian assets in the U.S. He severed
diplomatic relations with Iran and imposed a full economic embargo on
the country.
Finally,
he approved a top-secret military mission to free the hostages, but it
ended in catastrophe. Three helicopters developed engine trouble in a
remote staging area in the Iranian desert, forcing the mission to be
aborted. Eight U.S. troops were killed when a helicopter and a plane
collided while forces were being withdrawn.
It all added to the impression that Carter was out of his depth.
"The
hostage crisis left a bitter taste in voters' mouths, which Carter was
never able to overcome," said Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution
scholar who worked on Carter's transition team when he was
president-elect.
On
the day of Reagan's inauguration, Jan. 20, 1981, Iran agreed to accept
$8 billion in frozen assets and a promise by the U.S. to lift trade
sanctions in exchange for the release of the hostages. Minutes after
Carter's successor took the oath of office, the hostages were freed.
Finally, a Nobel Peace Prize
Carter left the White House, but he didn’t retire.
Jimmy
and Rosalynn Carter established the Carter Center in Atlanta, their
home base for decades as they worked on global health and democracy. He
helped negotiate an end to the long civil war in Nicaragua between the
Contra rebels and the Sandinistas. He met with North Korean leaders to
try to end its nuclear weapons program. He mediated conflicts in
Ethiopia, Liberia, Haiti, Bosnia, Sudan, Uganda and Venezuela. He led
dozens of delegations of international observers to various countries to
help assure elections were free and fair.
For
decades, the Carter Center also led an international campaign to
eradicate Guinea worm disease, a devastating tropical ailment that in
1986 afflicted an estimated 3.5 million people in Africa and Asia. In
2020, it was on the verge of eradication; just 27 cases were reported in
six African countries.
For
a week each year, the Carters volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, a
charitable group that renovates and builds homes for poor people around
the world.
He
also wrote more than 30 books – controversial ones on the Palestinian
territories and the Middle East and less controversial ones on Christmas
memories and fly-fishing. He published a collection of his poems and a
collection of his paintings. Again and again, he returned to writing
about the lessons and demands of his Christian faith.
Carter,
who attended Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017, at times criticized
the 45th president. In June 2019, at a Carter Center conference in
suburban Virginia, he questioned the legitimacy of Trump's election,
citing allegations of Russian interference that were later called into
question.
Trump responded at a news conference by calling Carter a "nice man, terrible president."
But
there were also times when Carter reached out to Trump. On the 40th
anniversary of the normalization of U.S.-China relations, in 2019, he
sent Trump a letter offering advice on managing that relationship.
Carter said the phone conversation that followed was the first time the
two men had spoken.
In
2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that supporters thought
he had deserved years earlier, when it had been presented to Begin and
Sadat. The Nobel committee honored Carter "for his decades of untiring
effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance
democracy and human rights and to promote economic and social
development."
"The
bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our
fears and prejudices," Carter said in accepting the prestigious award.
"God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate
suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these
changes – and we must."
When
he left the White House, Carter moved back home to Plains. Unlike most
other modern presidents, he didn't choose to make money by delivering
high-priced speeches or serving on corporate boards. But he did
regularly speak to hundreds of visitors who would gather for his Sunday
school class at Maranatha Baptist Church.
In November 2019, he told those gathered that he didn't fear death.
"It's
incompatible for any Christian not to believe in life after death,"
Carter, then 95, told them, although he acknowledged he had wrestled
with doubts throughout his life. In his prayers, he said, "I didn't ask
God to let me live, but I just asked God to give me a proper attitude
toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease
with death."
In July 2021, he and his wife hosted a
75th anniversary party in Plains
attended by about 300 friends, family members and fellow pols, among
them Bill and Hillary Clinton. Carter, his fragility apparent, made a
point of greeting the guests at each table for what many of them assumed
would be the last time they saw him.
"He
was not a self-promoter in the White House or afterwards, and I think
that hurt, because it leaves all the sour tastes from the failures and
didn't allow the positives to shine through," Eizenstat said. When
Eizenstat visited Carter in Plains in 2018, Carter told his former aide
he was comfortable with letting history judge.
As he approached his 90th birthday, Carter mused about his legacy in an interview with USA TODAY.
"One
is peace," he said. "I kept peace when I was president and I try to
promote peace between other people and us, and between countries that
were potentially at war, between Israel and Egypt for instance. And
human rights. ... I think human rights and peace are the two things I'd
like to be remembered for – as well as being a good grandfather."
Contributing: Richard Benedetto
