Former President Jimmy Carter died on December 29th 2024. He was a 100 years old.
A long life and, by anyone’s standards, a consequential one. His single term in office (1977-1981), as NPR describes it, was . . .
most memorable for his human rights-centered foreign policy and for establishing the departments of education and energy as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Camp David Accords were the Carter administration’s greatest foreign policy achievement. Carter brought together Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat at the presidential retreat in Maryland. On Sept. 17, 1978, the accords were signed, leading to an official peace treaty between the two countries the following year.
Dan Sewell of Yahoo News writes that Carter’s presidency was “marred by the Iranian hostage crisis, energy crisis and a sluggish economy.” The 1979 Hostage crisis in Iran is widely seen as a major factor in his loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.
But we know that democracy is always an unfinished creation. Each generation must renew its foundations. Each generation must rediscover the meaning of this hallowed vision in the light of its own modern challenges. For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival; liberty is human rights; the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
— Carter’s Farewell Address, The White House January 1981
Reagan had won by a landslide. And although Carter was stunned by it, he accepted the results and got on with his life. He surprised the world with what he did in the years following his stint in Washington.
President Carter helped people.
One of history’s ironies is that Carter’s time as the 39th President of the United States is not what most people will remember. In 2002, Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize 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.” This is a more accurate estimation of the man and his effect on the world than any political office.
As the White House website puts it, Carter received the prize for his attempts “to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” In 1982, he founded the Carter Center, a non-profit committed “to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering.”
He was a dedicated advocate of Habitat for Humanity, an organization that provides affordable housing. Carter and Rosalyn, his wife, tirelessly raised funds for Habitat and they were often seen – wearing construction hats, wielding hammers – helping build houses. A good man has left us. James Earl Carter, Jr.: 1924-2024.
