What can we learn by reflecting on the presidency of Jimmy Carter, and how he continued his charitable and peacemaking efforts through his nonprofit organization, the Carter Center?
Jimmy Carter reflects on how he won his dark-horse Presidential campaign through relentless campaigning and the many challenges he faced during his Presidency, including the Camp Davis Accords, domestic challenges and reforms, and the Iran hostage crisis that lasted over a year.
After his Presidency ended, he had many productive years left, so he founded the Carter Center, enabling him to continue charitable, global health, peacekeeping, and election monitoring activities for many decades.
NOTE: The YouTube video using this script will be released later as an obituary.
JIMMY CARTER, BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN AND HONEST MAN
Jimmy Carter was elected as President when many voters wanted an honest President after the nation witnessed the Watergate scandal and coverup by a criminal president who was facing impeachment. Not only was Jimmy Carter seen as an honest man, but he was also a sincere born-again Christian. But his support for civil rights turned many white Christians against him.
In the introduction, Jimmy Carter proclaims: “Vice President Mondale summarized our administration by saying, ‘We told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace.’ I would add, ‘We championed human rights.’”[1]
In our prior video and blog, Jimmy Carter tells us his story as a youth growing up on a rural Georgia farm, to his years serving on US Navy submarines, first diesel then nuclear submarines, and how he fought for election reform and civil rights serving as first a State Senator then as Governor of Georgia.
JIMMY CARTER RUNS FOR PRESIDENT
Jimmy Carter’s term as governor ended in January 1975, giving him nearly two full years to run for President. There had been many who encouraged him to run, including Dean Rusk, a fellow Georgian who had served as Secretary of State. His campaign resembled his campaign for Governor, they sought delegates from all fifty states during the primary period, between his wife and mother and children there were seven campaigns being run. They stayed in the homes of supporters whenever possible to avoid racking up hotel bills.
To everyone’s surprise, Carter won the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, followed by success after success, giving them a clear majority at the Democratic Convention, though his disastrous Playboy interview was a speedbump that slowed his campaign down. He chose Walter Mondale as Vice-President; he seemed most compatible with him, and his Washington connections would prove useful. He won the general election against Gerald Ford in a relatively close election.[2]
JIMMY CARTER: THE CASUAL AND HUMBLE PRESIDENT
In his campaign, Jimmy Carter declined to personally attack his opponent, Gerald Ford, who had controversially pardoned Richard Nixon to relieve him of criminal liability for the acts he performed while he was President. His justification was that a criminal trial would tear the country apart, and in subsequent years he emphasized that by accepting the pardon Nixon had confessed his guilt.
Jimmy Carter likely felt that unduly criticizing Ford for his pardon would likewise tear the country apart, he remembers: “My inauguration speech was one of the briefest on record for the first inauguration of a president. It began with thanks to Gerald Ford for ‘healing our nation,’ and expressed two of the major themes of my administration: keeping the peace and strengthening human rights.”
Jimmy Carter disliked the pomp of the office, he sought to be more down to earth. His wife Rosalyn decided to wear the same dress she had worn for the gubernatorial inauguration; she was criticized for not selecting a model from a current designer. Likewise, he was pilloried for delivering White House speeches wearing a sweater, he later wore a standard business suit as was expected.
After selling the presidential yacht Sequoia, Jimmy Carter said “I was surprised when some of these changes proved to be quite unpopular, learning how much the public cherished the pomp and ceremony of the presidency.”
Jimmy Carter remembers, “Our first reception was for more than 750 people in whose homes members of our family had spent the night on the campaign trail. These meetings were emotional because some of the families had taken us in when few people knew or cared who I was. We gave each couple a small brass plaque stating that a member of my family had stayed with them.”
Since like Theodore Roosevelt and Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter was elected as President at a relatively young age, his daughter, Amy, was young. Jimmy Carter remembers, “Rosalyn and I wanted Amy to be deeply involved in the Washington community and with children of diverse backgrounds. At Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School she had classmates who were from a wide range of families, including blacks, Hispanics, and children of the servants of foreign embassies.” And they built her a treehouse on the White House grounds, which was likely the only treehouse in America guarded by Secret Service agents.
During the campaign, a reporter asked him if he was a born-again Christian, and Jimmy Carter responded that he was, which led to some reporters wondering if that meant he received regular visions from the Almighty. He discontinued the practice of asking prominent pastors like Billy Graham to hold services in the White House and instead joined the First Baptist Church near the White House. He had some prominent leaders inquire about Christianity, including First Secretary Edward Gierek of Poland and General Park Chung-hee of South Korea.
Jimmy Carter wanted to pass a national health plan, but he faced unexpected opposition from Senator Ted Kennedy, whose more expensive plan would never be approved by Congress. So, this effort failed, it would be over thirty years later when Obamacare was narrowly passed.[3]
JIMMY CARTER’S PRESIDENCY: ISSUES MOSTLY RESOLVED
Jimmy Carter was a dedicated President, and few give him credit for how solid the foundation was that he laid in his domestic and foreign policies enabled the policy success of his successor, Ronald Reagan. Perhaps his most successful endeavor was inviting the Israeli President Menachem Begin and the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Camp David for Middle East peace talks. This was the first time any Arab leader consented to face-to-face talks with an Israeli President. There was much bitter history between the two nations. After several shouting matches, Jimmy Carter decided to negotiate with each of them separately in turn. At one time Sadat had packed his bags, he forcefully persuaded him not to leave and to persist in the negotiations. His devotions discuss how he was finally able to cajole them to agree to peace, through his faith, sincerity, and persistence.
One of Jimmy Carter’s endeavors was the streamlining of government programs, and the deregulation of “railroads, electric power, oil and gas, bus lines, trucking firms, airlines, banks, insurance companies, and even television, telecommunications, and radio networks.” Travel by air became affordable for Americans for the first time under these reforms. Jimmy Carter also championed consolidating all disaster relief and preparedness efforts, including weather forecasting, in the new FEMA department.
Jimmy Carter chose to cancel the B1 bomber program because it had become too expensive and irrelevant, and because the new stealth technology was being developed that would soon result in the B2 bomber program. Jimmy Carter also decided against developing the neutron bomb, which would have only killed people without destroying their homes and offices. Jimmy Carter also recounts his support of the space program, though he did not believe in expensive manned space missions to Mars or back to the Moon.
Although the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan would increase tensions with the Soviet Union in the closing years of his Presidency, Jimmy Carter sought to ease Cold War tensions generally. He urged the Soviets to increase Jewish emigration to Europe, Israel, and the United States. He signed a treaty with the Soviet Union limiting nuclear arms during his Presidency. Jimmy Carter remembers: “We concluded the SALT II agreement.” “Although not ratified by the US Senate, SALT II remained in effect beyond its expected time.” Soviet premier “Brezhnev said, at the beginning, ‘If we do not succeed, God will not forgive us!’ As leader of an atheistic regime, he was embarrassed by the resulting silence, until the Soviet Ambassador Gromyko said humorously, ‘Yes, God above is looking down at us all.’”
Congress and the Presidency under Jimmy Carter also approved loans to New York City and the major car manufacturer Chrysler to keep them both solvent, which helped keep the US economy prosperous. The Chrysler loan was dependent on strict business practices and labor union concessions, and both loans were repaid with interest.
Historically the United States foreign policy regarding Latin America emphasized protecting American business interests in the region, which was de facto colonialism. Jimmy Carter remembers, “When I became president, military juntas rule in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduran, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. I decide to support peaceful moves toward freedom and democracy throughout the hemisphere.” He continued these efforts after his Presidency through his Carter Center.
A special case was Panama, he inherited the negotiations on the Panama Canal Zone under the Nixon and Ford administrations. They were reluctant to submit a treaty to the Senate for ratification since it was so politically sensitive. Many in the US did not want to relinquish US sovereignty over the Panama Canal.
This was a sensitive issue not only in Panama but also Latin America. The administration of Theodore Roosevelt had bullied and coerced these countries to enable the United States to finish the canal that a Frenchman had started and abandoned. Panama was originally part of Columbia, and when Columbia refused to grant permission for the US to dig the canal, Roosevelt intervened with the US Navy to support Panamanian rebels fighting for independence from Columbia.
Jimmy Carter recounts this history: “The United States unilaterally drafted a favorable treaty with Panama, which was hurriedly signed on the night of November 18, 1903, in Washington, just a few hours before a delegation from Panama could arrive and examine the text. Panamanians were ostensibly represented by a Frenchman who had last visited Panama eighteen years earlier. The huge engineering feat was completed in 1914, and the canal was operated under American supervision, with many Panamanian workers.”
This bullying poisoned US relations with Latin America ever since that time. But, US sovereignty over the Panama Canal was as popular among US Senators as it was unpopular in Panama. He recruited the former Republican Presidents Ford and Nixon to help convince Senators to support this treaty. The treaty was passed with support from 68 senators, one more than needed, though many who supported the treaty were defeated for reelection.
The Iranian hostage crisis consumed the last year of his Presidency. Many of Carter’s military advisors were itching to send in troops to Iran, but Jimmy Carter held firm, not willing to risk an unending conflict. Jimmy Carter remembers, “Since I had refrained from exerting military force to punish the Iranians, the failure to secure the freedom of the hostages made me vulnerable to Reagan’s allegations that I was an ineffective leader.”
Jimmy Carter remembers, “While Iranians were weakened by the international sanctions imposed on them because of their illegal act, they were attacked by forces of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. I condemned the invasion because it interfered with my efforts to free the hostages, but it caused additional problems as the substantial oil exports from both countries were cut off, causing skyrocketing oil prices and global inflation, and high-interest rates resulted.”[4]
In his devotions, Jimmy Carter reflects on how he resolved many important issues he faced during his Presidency. He discusses how Deng Xiaoping, Vice Premier of China, agreed to relax restrictions on Christian Churches in China, his reflections on the Camp David peace accords negotiated between the prime ministers of Egypt and Israel, his conflicts with the evil African dictator, Idi Amin, and the Iran hostage crisis.
Jimmy Carter Daily Devotions: Presidential and Autobiographical Memories, and Humorous Stories
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/jimmy-carter-autobiographical-historical-and-humorous-reflections-from-his-daily-devotions/
https://youtu.be/C2LPpDU7udY
JIMMY CARTER’S PRESIDENCY: PROBLEMS STILL PENDING
Americans always face a choice posed by the drug problem: Do you offer treatment options to addicts, encouraging them to kick the habit, or do you imprison drug addicts? Jimmy Carter was in favor of decriminalizing marijuana use and offering treatment to drug addicts. Subsequent conservative presidents favored punishing addicts, but American public opinion has recently swung back to Carter’s position.
After the disastrous Supreme Court ruling in Citizen’s United in 2010, Republican billionaires seek to influence American politics. Jimmy Carter recalls he spent only $26 million in his two Presidential campaigns, Presidential major candidates now spend a billion dollars in campaigns, with the Republican Koch brothers and their associates alone spending about $900 million.
Jimmy Carter sought to ease tensions with Cuba and felt that the economic embargo was needlessly turning the Cuban population against America. But Castro antagonized America both by sending Cuban advisors to assist hostile military forces in Africa, and by enabling the 1980 Mariel boatlift. In addition to permitting refugees to sail for America, he also emptied his prisons, sending convicts to America among the refugees.
Another issue that Jimmy Carter championed that has gained steam recently was the unnecessary damming of wild rivers and streams, which prevents fish from breeding, harming the environment.
I substantially agree with Jimmy Carter’s comments on abortion. “The Roe v Wade ruling of 1973 was that during the first trimester of pregnancy, the decision to abort must be left to the mother and her physician. As a Christian, I have never believed that Jesus Christ would approve abortions unless the life of the mother was endangered, or the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. As president, I had to uphold the law, but I still did everything possible to minimize the number of abortions.”
Jimmy Carter says that he “encouraged the availability of sex education and contraceptives and initiated special financial and food assistance for indigent women and their babies, which is known as the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program. We tried to make the procedure for adoption as convenient and natural as possible, with minimum embarrassment for the birth and foster mothers.”[5]
A Democrat Christian Ponders Abortion and Morality
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/a-democrat-christian-ponders-abortion-and-morality/
https://youtu.be/C4rH6qhhw70
Supreme Court Dobbs Case Overruling Roe v Wade: Should Christians be Pro-Compassion? Pro-Doctors?
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/supreme-court-dobbs-case-overruling-roe-v-wade-should-christians-be-pro-compassion-pro-doctors/
https://youtu.be/Jb_vUFnAf3g
Regarding Abortion, Should Christians Be Pro-Compassion? Answering Questions, Further Reflections
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/regarding-abortion-should-christians-be-pro-compassion-answering-questions-further-reflections/
https://youtu.be/ll9wOR0t2yQ
JIMMY CARTER: LOSING 1980 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
During his presidency, there was a reaction among white evangelicals against both the abortion issue and civil rights issues, establishing religious colleges that were known as segregation academies. They supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion under any circumstance. This new Moral Majority also opposed normalizing relations with Red China, the Panama Canal treaty, and sought unlimited prayer in schools. They supported Ronal Reagan, a divorcee who was not devoutly religious.
The Iran hostage crisis both distracted him from campaigning, and it also damaged his reputation as a firm leader, as he was helpless to influence the radical students holding the Americans working in the embassy in Tehran, Iran hostage. He organized a commando raid to rescue them, but a collision of helicopters in a sandstorm doomed the mission, and they had to turn back. Meanwhile, in America, Ted Kennedy was challenging him in the Democratic primaries, which divided the party.
Jimmy Carter remembers, “I gave my kickoff speech at Warm Springs in Georgia, where Franklin Roosevelt had been treated for polio and died in 1945. I was somewhat disconcerted when Ragan made his introductory speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was well known as the place where three civil rights workers were murdered by Ku Klux Klan members and buried in a dam. His key statement, at least to Southerners, was ‘I believe in states rights.’ Although I had swept the South in 1976, Georgia was the only Southern state I won in 1980, along with just five other states.”[6]
JIMMY CARTER: LIFE AFTER THE PRESIDENCY
Jimmy Carter’s business was placed in a true blind trust while he was President, and when he returned to private life, he learned it had been mismanaged. Fortunately, the Archer Daniels Midland Company bought his warehouse since they wanted to enter the peanut business, which paid off the debts of the business. He decided to rent his fields to mechanized farmers, and low-maintenance timber was now the only crop he raised. Writing his memoirs and many books was a major source of income.
Jimmy Carter was in his late fifties when he left the presidency, he had many productive years remaining. He had offers to become a University President, he decided to take a lecture position with Emory University. He realized that many of the projects he was working on when he was President he could continue under a non-profit organization. In conjunction with raising funds for a presidential library, he also founded the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
He was encouraged by his successful diplomacy between the presidents of Israel and Egypt in the Camp David talks. Jimmy Carter explains his intent: “I could offer my services as a mediator to help prevent or resolve conflicts,” and they would also monitor elections around the globe. The Carter Center could sponsor conferences on “peace in the Middle East, international security and arms control, business and the environment, education, and global health.” The Carter Center would be non-partisan and would not duplicate successful efforts by other organizations. They hired several hundred staff, plus several hundred trained experts, assisted by thousands of volunteers, many volunteers were needed in their global health campaigns.
PROMOTING PEACE AND MONITORING ELECTIONS
Jimmy Carter respected the accomplishments in foreign affairs of the two Republican Presidents who preceded him, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and he offered to give them briefings during his Presidency. Ford met with Carter in the Oval Office whenever he was in Washington, and they and their families formed an intimate friendship, Ford asked Carter if he could deliver his eulogy at his funeral.
Jimmy Carter sought to cooperate with the current administration in his peacekeeping efforts. Carter’s relationship with Reagan was strained, his request for briefings were ignored, and US ambassadors were instructed not to assist him in his endeavors or even acknowledge his presence. However, he got along well with his Secretary of State George Schultz and Reagan’s national security advisors. President Clinton did work with Carter and welcomed his mediation. Carter was one of the few Democrats to attend George W Bush’s inauguration, and he asked Carter what he could do for him. Carter asked if the White House could assist the Carter Center in completing a peace agreement between North and South Sudan that previous White House administrations had blocked, and he agreed. When Obama became President, it had been three decades since Carter had been President, so the primary focus of the Carter Center had shifted from peace negotiations to global health initiatives and monitoring troubled elections.
Although he was reluctant to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, a reluctance shared by President Clinton, he was persuaded to hold talks with him, a meeting that Clinton eventually approved. Agreements reached did ease tensions with North Korea and recovered the remains of veteran Americans from the Korean War. Tensions escalated when President George W Bush branded North Korea as an evil empire.
Peace initiatives could be hazardous. After the elected Haitian leader Aristide was forced into exile in 1994, both he and the current lead Cedras asked that Jimmy Carter mediate their dispute. Jimmy Carter asked former Senator Sam Nunn and General Colin Powell to join him on his trip to Haiti for negotiations before President Clinton sent in American troops. After Cedras refused to relinquish power, Clinton decided to send in troops. A more acceptable agreement was then signed, and Clinton ordered the planes flying in the troops to return to their American base. What would have happened to this high-level legation had that agreement not been signed?
The Carter Center remained involved in the Middle East peace efforts and also in monitoring Palestinian and Egyptian elections. In 2015 when this book was written, the Carter Center maintained full-time offices in Jerusalem, Ramallah in the West Bank, and in Gaza. With the rise of Hamas and the reactive stiffening of the Israeli position, the two-state solution has proved elusive, and Jimmy Carter was criticized for maintaining a balanced stance on the Palestinian issue.
The Carter Center also monitors many elections in Latin America. They send long-term observers into the country many months before the election, monitoring efforts to register voters, encouraging the hiring of competent election staff, and improving voting standards. Their staff and volunteers monitor many individual polling stations while the top Carter Center staff remain in the capital city.
GLOBAL AND DOMESTIC PUBLIC HEALTH INITIATIVES
The Carter Center initially concentrated its efforts on preventing malaria and five neglected tropical diseases that had been eradicated in the moderately developed world but remained endemic among the poor in Africa and Latin America. In the early years, these campaigns would begin with meetings with the Presidents and other government officials in the local counties, in particular the health ministries, to formulate a plan of action and the role the Carter Center would play.
Much of their efforts were low-tech, heaving dependent on local volunteers. Jimmy Carter remembers, “We give the local people as much credit for accomplishments as possible.” “Our Carter Center staff plus those we train go into the most remote villages in jungle and desert areas to explain our goals, recruit volunteers, and train them and a few paid supervisors. Then we deliver donated medicines, water filtration clothes, and insecticide bed nets” to fight malaria, “and make sure that people know how these materials are to be properly used.”
Significant progress has been achieved in battling these illnesses. Through their initiatives, river blindness has been eliminated in many Latin American countries and curbed in Africa. Remarkable progress was achieved in fighting the horrible guinea worm parasite: in 1986 there were 3.5 million cases in twenty countries and 26,000 villages, they are hopeful that this scourge will be completely eliminated before 2024. This was accomplished simply by teaching local people how to filter their drinking water. They sponsor surgeries to correct trachoma, which causes blindness, and build latrines to reduce the flies that transmit this disease.
Another Carter Center initiative is to teach “eight million African families how to double or triple their production of maize, or corn, wheat, rice, sorghum, and millet.”
First Lady Rosalyn Carter showed a commitment to mental health during her husband’s Presidency and continued this commitment both in the United States and abroad through the Carter Center. They also continued their efforts with Habitat for Humanity both at home and abroad, building homes that low-income families purchase with a twenty-year interest-free mortgage, basically at cost, with the family assisting in the construction of their or their neighbor’s homes.[7]
DISCUSSING THE SOURCES
We enjoyed reading Jimmy Carter’s autobiography, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety. He wrote many books post-presidency, including his 1982 biography, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President, and other books including White House Diary, An Outdoor Journal, Turning Point, and Christmas in Plains. He and his wife wrote several books on mental health topics, and less serious books. We plan to review his book on the Virtues of Aging, which he wrote when he was seventy-five years young. Jimmy Carter wrote several books on his experiences with leaders in the Middle East and the regional peace efforts, beginning with the Blood of Abraham in 1985, the controversially titled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid in 2006, and We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land in 2009.
Jimmy Carter has written several books on his Christian faith. We have reflected on his book on 365 Daily Devotions, which includes reflections on his personal interactions with many foreign leaders.[8]
Jimmy Carter Daily Devotions: Presidential and Autobiographical Memories, and Humorous Stories
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/jimmy-carter-autobiographical-historical-and-humorous-reflections-from-his-daily-devotions/
https://youtu.be/C2LPpDU7udY
Jimmy Carter Inspirational Daily Devotions: Bible Stories, Reflections on Historical Events
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/jimmy-carter-inspirational-daily-devotions-bible-stories-reflections-on-historical-events/
https://youtu.be/b24kTvwmuU0
We also have photographs and inspiration from visiting his boyhood home in Archer, Georgia, his high school in Plains, Georgia, and his Presidential Library, next to the offices of the Carter Center, in Atlanta, Georgia.
[1] Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), Introduction, p. 2.
[2] Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety, Chapter 4, Atlanta to Washington, pp. 107-117.
[3] Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety, Chapter 5, Life in the White House, pp. 118-125, 132-137.
[4] Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety, Chapter 6, Issues Mostly Resolved, pp. 140-176.
[5] Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety, Chapter 7, Problems Still Pending, pp. 177-201.
[6] Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety, Chapter 7, Problems Still Pending, pp. 201-203.
[7] Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety, Chapter 8, Back Home, pp. 204-225, 230-238.
[8] Jimmy Carter, A Full Life, Reflections at Ninety, Chapter 8, Back Home, pp. 225-230.
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