Jimmy Carter: Many evolutions for a centenarian ‘citizen of the world’

PLAINS, Georgia (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world.

The untimely death of his father, a farmer who went by “Mr. Earl,” brought the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, back to a rural life they thought they’d escaped.

The lieutenant would never be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. And, years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

The life of James Earl Carter Jr. ended Sunday at 100 where it began. Plains fueled the rise of the 39th U.S. president, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service as a global humanitarian.

With an optimism rooted in Baptist faith and an engineer’s stubborn confidence, Carter showed a missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives.

“We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told The Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.”

Many Americans judged his presidency ineffective for failing to end an energy crisis, turn around the economy or quickly bring American hostages home from Tehran.

He won widespread admiration instead for The Carter Center — which has advocated for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the many years he and Rosalynn swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity.

Carter’s allies relished that he and Rosalynn, who died Nov. 19, 2023, lived to see historians reassess his presidency.

“He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a repeat visitor during his own White House bid.

Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative.” Republicans cast him as a left-wing cartoon. He could be classified a centrist, Buttigieg told the AP, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.”

Carter’s vow to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate with a transparent, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who cast government as the problem. His efficiency mandate could put him at odds with Democrats.

Still, he scored wins on the environment, education and mental health care; expanded federally protected lands; began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking; emphasized human rights in foreign policy; and unlike later presidents, added a relative pittance to the national debt.

Carter had charmed voters in 1976, grinning enthusiastically and promising he would “never lie” to them. Once in Washington, he could seem like a joyless engineer, insisting that political rewards would follow facts and logic.

Such tenacity worked well at Camp David as Carter brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, but it failed him as the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to get past a “crisis of confidence.”

Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone, saying “there you go again” in response to a wonky debate answer. “The Great Communicator” won all but six states.

Carter later acknowledged an incompatibility with Washington insiders who looked down on his team as “country come to town.”

His closest adviser was Rosalynn Carter, who joined his Cabinet meetings. When she urged him to postpone relinquishing the Panama Canal, Carter said he was “going to do what’s right” even if meant he wouldn’t get re-elected, recalled her aide, Kathy Cade.

“She’d remind him you have to win to govern,” Cade said.

Carter won by navigating divides on race, class and ideology. He offered himself as an outsider to Atlanta and Washington, a peanut farmer with a nickname who carried his own luggage.

Born on Oct. 1, 1924 in a home without running water or electricity, he was raised by a progressive mother and racist father. He and Rosalynn privately supported integration in the 1950s, but he didn’t push to desegregate schools, and there’s no record of him supporting the 1965 Voting Rights Act as a state senator.

Carter ran to the right of his rival to win the 1970 governor’s race, then landed on the cover of Time magazine by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” He didn’t befriend civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s family until he ran for president.

“He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southernness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor who wrote a book on Carter’s campaign.

Carter was the last Democratic nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, as he did in Georgia, he used his power as president to appoint more nonwhites than all his predecessors had, combined.

Many years later, Carter called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t consult Rosalynn before moving their family back to Plains or launching his state Senate bid. He called the mother of their four children “a full partner” in government and at The Carter Center as well as at home.

“I just loved it,” she said of campaigning, despite the bitterness of defeat.

True or not, the label of a failed presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance for many years. Carter remained relevant as a freelance diplomat, writing more than 30 books and weighing in on societal challenges.

Carter declared after Donald Trump’s presidential victory that America was no longer a fully functioning democracy. But he also warned Democrats against moving too far left, lest they help re-elect him, and said many failed to understand Trump’s populist appeal.

Pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again for would-be presidents in recent years, and well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where his last funeral will be held.

In his farewell presidential address, Carter urged citizens who had embraced or rejected him to do their part as Americans.

“The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.”

Carter pledged to remain engaged as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” to where he had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.”

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