Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, was remembered for his honesty and devotion to humanity
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the country, died at the age of 100. He was president for a short time, but he will be remembered for decades. humanitarian work.
Those who knew him – opponents and supporters alike – described him as a man of integrity, despite his flaws as a president.
“When we look at the entire trajectory of Jimmy Carter’s life, it’s an amazing American story,” said Douglas Brinkley, author of The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond. The White HouseThis was reported to Fox News Digital.
“He grew up without electricity, went to work in the Navy. He was at the top of the U.S Cold war and won the Nobel Prize for his post-presidency,” Brinkley said.
FILE: Former President Jimmy Carter before the game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Cincinnati Bengals at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on September 30, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)
A peanut farmer and one-term former governor of Georgia, Carter defied the odds and was elected president in 1977.
“Nobody thought Carter could win the Democratic nomination. But Carter had that bulldog tenacity (and) bubblegum tenacity,” Brinkley said.
American politician Jimmy Carter smiles and waves to the audience at the end of the 1976 Democratic Party Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City on July 15, 1976, where he was endorsed as the 1976 Democratic presidential nominee. year, the former governor of Georgia won the US presidential election in 1976. (Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
His campaign confused Democrats because Carter was deeply religious and ran to the right of his Republican rival, Gerald Ford, on some social issues. As a Washington outsider, Carter’s agricultural background and emphasis endeared him to the Deep South.
He took office at a time when Watergate, the Vietnam War, and stagflation had left the country in a bad mood. In Washington, his populist campaign inevitably clashed with the Democratic Party, which never fully embraced Carter.
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“He was never able to fully dominate his own Democratic Party. Ted Kennedy’s liberals disliked Carter and Scoop Jackson’s Cold War hawks disliked him,” Brinkley said. “So he was kind of an island unto himself as president.”
Carter’s foreign policy successes included brokering peace in the Middle East in 1978 by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the negotiating table for nearly two weeks. Carter partially regulated and created agencies in his country’s airline, railroad, and trucking industries. Education and Energy and Federal Emergency Manager Agency.
In 1977, Jimmy Carter signed the Federal Mine Safety and Health Amendments Act. November 9, 1977. (Hum Images/Universal Images Group)
Carter designated millions of acres in Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges and appointed a then-record number of women and non-whites to federal positions. He also built on Nixon’s opening with China and pushed Latin America from dictatorship to democracy.
However, his presidency was marked by double-digit inflation, long gas lines and a 444-day hostage crisis. Crisis in Iran. His darkest hour came in April 1980, when a botched hostage rescue killed eight Americans and helped ensure his landslide defeat.
FILE: Former President Jimmy Carter addresses the crowd at the 28th annual town hall meeting at Emory University on September 16, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Carter was also crippled by his – as Brinkley put it – “lack of communication.” Public speaking, Brinkley said, was not his strong suit.
In 1979, Carter lamented the fall of the United States, a nation once “proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God,” in his famous “Crisis of Trust” speech. – indulgence and consumption.”
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“Human identity is no longer defined by what we do, but by what we have. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things doesn’t satisfy our longing for meaning,” Carter said. “We’ve learned that the accumulation of material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives without hope or purpose.”
Reagan biographer and historian Craig Shirley recalled watching the speech while working for the senator on Capitol Hill.
“I remember watching Sunday night and feeling scared as an American for the first time in my life. The speech was so humiliating. It was so sad,” Shirley said. “The president must tell the truth to the American people, and at the same time appeal to the hopes and aspirations of the American people, not their worst feelings and desires.”
President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger Ronald Reagan shake hands as they greet each other before a debate on stage at Music Hall in Cleveland, Ohio. (Getty Images)
Carter ultimately served a single, tumultuous term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
But whatever the shortcomings of his presidency, Carter will perhaps be best remembered for his decades of advocacy for democracy, public health, and human rights through the Carter Center in the decades since his presidency.
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The Center, which Carter opened with his wife Rosalyn in 1982, is one of the pioneers of election observation, having monitored at least 113 elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia since 1989. the organization recently announced that only 14 cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in 2021, the result of years of public health campaigns to improve access. To safe drinking water in Africa. Carter’s work with the Center won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
Haitian President Michel Martelly (2L) and former US President Jimmy Carter (C) visit a housing project built by the Carter Foundation for 500 families in Leogane (33 km south of Port-au-Prince) on November 8, 2011. Victims of the recent earthquake in Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. (THONY BELIZAIRE/AFP via Getty Images)
Shirley said that because of his humanitarian activities, Carter will be remembered as “one of the best ex-presidents of the 20th century.”
“Carter wasn’t really into PR stunts. He really threw himself into charity work and did it for many years,” Shirley said.
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“We will remember him fondly. He was a great former president with what he did with the Carter Center and his various initiatives around the country. His book writing is distinguished by his charitable work. So he goes down as an extraordinarily good, former president in his history.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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