FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER, 100, DIES: THE BEST POST PRESIDENCY EVER
Former President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100, making him the President who lived the longest. He was a controversial president but one thing appears to be universally agreed: he had the greatest post-presidency of any President in American history.
Carter and his era will be remembered for many things. He was ahead of his times on many issues, particularly on environmental issues. There are many facts about Carter that are surprising. He took a position on the Middle East that was controversial.
He was the opposite of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump: there wasn’t a hint of scandal around him and he promised never to lie to the American public — during an era when politicians caught in big lies could actually suffer consequences. And when he ran for re-election, a new era of opposition party manipulating foreign actors was ushered in when Ronald Reagan’s campaign successfully got Iran to release the hostages right after the election and not on Carter’s watch as an “October surprise” — which some have called treason.
But historians will also likely remember Carter’s unusual post-Presidency where he literally worked until he could physically work no more building homes for the poor for Habitat for Humanity.
When Jimmy Carter was hospitalized after he fell and hit his forehead on a sharp edge at his Georgia home in 2019, there was immediate concern for the health of the longest-living former president. But as Carter emphasized the next day in Nashville, he had homes to build.
More than a dozen stitches, a black eye and a large bandage on the 95-year-old’s head did not stop him or his wife, Rosalynn, from building new porches for 21 homes in the city as part of their volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization focused on affordable housing. Video of Habitat for Humanity’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project that week showed the former president focused as he drilled nails into boards and helped build one of the thousands of homes worldwide that he and his wife had worked on for more than 35 years.
“They took 14 stitches in my forehead and my eye is black, as you’ve noticed,” he told reporters in October 2019. “But I had a No. 1 priority and that was to come to Nashville and build houses.”
In the decades since he left the White House, Carter used his own hammer and tool belt to help build, renovate or repair 4,390 homes in 14 countries for Habitat for Humanity, the organization said. In the process, Carter, who died on Sunday at the age of 100, made his volunteer work building affordable and decent housing a significant part of his legacy.
“When we left the White House, we could have done anything,” Carter once said, according to Habitat for Humanity. “But our choice was to volunteer as Habitat workers, and that’s been a life-changing experience for us.”
Habitat for Humanity CEO Jonathan T.M. Reckford told The Washington Post that while Carter did not found or run the organization, “in many ways he put us on the map.” Reckford said it’s hard to separate the former president from the growth of Habitat for Humanity, which went from helping a few thousand people a year when Carter started working with the group to helping 7.1 million people in 2022.
“All around the world, people heard about Habitat and leaders got involved because of his example,” Reckford said. “That model of serving done in the image of a former president of the United States grabbed people in a powerful way that they hadn’t seen before.”
It’s notable that Carter outlived the reporter who wrote his obituary for the New York Times. Famous peoples’ obituaries are routinely written in advance. The Times’ obituary was by Peter Baker and Roy Reid. Baker died in 2017.
Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga. He was 100.
The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but endured longer than even his family expected.
Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and many everyday people from around the world who admired not only Mr. Carter’s service during four years in the White House but his four decades of efforts since leaving office to fight disease, broker peace and provide for the poor. President Biden ordered a state funeral to be held and was expected to deliver a eulogy.
“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden, the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot 1976 bid for the presidency, said in a statement. “He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who often denigrated Mr. Carter and in recent days spoke of unraveling one of his signature accomplishments, the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama, issued a gracious statement. “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans,” Mr. Trump said. “For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Mr. Carter was no fan of Mr. Trump and family members said he was holding on in part to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president cast his absentee ballot for her in mid-October after making his final public appearance on his birthday when he was rolled out to his yard in a wheelchair to watch a flyover of military jets in his honor.
On Foreign Policy, Ray Takeyh and Gideon Weiss of the Council on Foreign relations write “Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who passed away this week at the age of one-hundred, leaves behind a rich and at times confounding foreign policy legacy that eludes any simplistic narrative.” Here’s a bit of their article:
Jimmy Carter, who won the U.S. presidency in 1976 after serving one term as the governor of Georgia, brought an eclectic mix of experiences to office. They informed a foreign policy that fit no easy categorization.
Carter was a foreign policy neophyte, idealistic about efforts to achieve Middle East peace and driven by a Christian faith that informed his vocal but inconsistent focus on human rights. Yet, he was also a traditional Cold Warrior and pushed back on the Soviet Union’s influence. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a U.S. national security advisor and Sovietologist, was his foreign affairs mentor and closest White House confidant. And after leaving office, Carter redefined the post-presidency through his considerable efforts as a diplomat and humanitarian.
They look at the following features of Carter’s foreign policy: elevating the Vice Presidency so that his foreign policy savvy Vice President Walter Mondale was given a larger role than past Vice Presidents, the Panama Canal treaties of 1977, the 1978 Middle East Camp David accords, restoring ties with China in 1979, the 1979 revolution and the hostage crisis, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and his extensive post-presidency marked by his diplomatic efforts and charity work. On that they write:
Jimmy Carter had perhaps the most prolific post-presidency of any former president. In 1983, he founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization that aimed to tackle diplomatic and humanitarian issues. One of Carter’s priorities was the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), and the center is credited with helping to essentially eradicate human cases of Guinea worm disease. The Carter Center is now considered one of the premiere organizations dedicated to disease eradication.
Between the center’s inception and 2015, Carter led more than one hundred trips to dozens of countries across the world to monitor elections, take part in negotiations, broker peace agreements, and observe the organization’s health and humanitarian projects. Carter’s diplomatic efforts were not always well received, however. Particularly controversial was his staunch criticism of Israel, including his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and also followed his meetings with Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and senior Hamas leadership.
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