Jimmy Carter wasn’t expected to be president. When he failed to get reelected, most people expected to forget him. He ended up setting a model few could follow.
Jimmy Carter (center) talking outside the White House to reporters, including the author, Gene Gibbons (far right). (Credit: Diana Walker)
On 1 October 2024, the world celebrates the 100th birthday of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. To help our readers around the world appreciate the significance of this celebration, we publish this article by correspondent Gene Gibbons, who had the privilege of covering Carter’s presidential campaign and who has followed the famed humanitarian ever since.
Happy Birthday Jimmy Carter!
Jimmy Carter deserved better from the American people than he got.
The 39th U.S. president was a farsighted leader whose policies on the Middle East, energy conservation and a host of other domestic and foreign policy matters arguably would have made the United States far stronger today had the voters listened.
But because he lacked the charisma that often seems more important than honesty and integrity in today’s politics, he’s chiefly remembered for a presidential speech misrepresented by the news media and the humanitarian character of his post-presidency.
I first met Carter in 1974 at a Democratic Party conclave in Kansas City, in the U.S. state of Missouri. Formerly the governor of the southern U.S. state Georgia, he was seen as a moderate, and the least prominent Democrat hoping to win the party’s 1976 presidential nomination. What I still recall about that encounter was how accessible he was. It was easy to get time to speak with him because he was the longest of long shots.
His pitch was that he was a Washington outsider — a small town peanut farmer — who would never lie to the people of the United States.
A plain speaker from Plains, Georgia
What political observers like me failed to realize was how Carter’s message resonated with an electorate weary of politics as usual in the wake of the unpopular Vietnam War and the deeply disturbing Watergate scandal, which ended in the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Carter ended up with one primary election victory after another, besting better known Democrats.
Then-presidential candidate Jimmy Carter at a softball game in Plains, Georgia. Gene Gibbons is seated in the second row, wearing glasses. (Photo courtesy of Gene Gibbons)
Fast forward to New York City in mid-July 1976 where Carter prevailed on the first ballot at the Democratic Convention to become his party’s candidate in that November’s presidential election.
“There is a new mood in America,” he said in his acceptance speech. “We have been shaken by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken promises at home. Our people are searching for new voices and new ideas and new leaders. Although government has its limits and cannot solve all our problems, we Americans reject the view that we must be reconciled to failures and mediocrity, or to an inferior quality of life. For I believe that we can come through this time of trouble stronger than ever.”
A few days later I was in Carter’s hometown of Plains, Georgia. It had a population of 776 people at the time and a few dozen news people were covering the Carter campaign.
It was an altogether different era. There was no round-the-clock news cycle, no cable television, no social media. The pace in this flyspeck corner of the rural Deep South was unhurried. So was the flow of news.
Carter’s 76-year old mother “Miss Lillian” was always good for a story. One could usually find her sitting in a rocking chair at an old train station in the center of town that had been transformed into campaign offices.
A politician who played ball
Nearly every night there was a softball game at Plains High School. Carter and some of his Secret Service bodyguards always took on his brother Billy and members of the news media. Carter pitched and his team always won. He was a fierce competitor, contesting close calls even when his team had a 12-run lead.
The election was closer than the polls predicted. Carter narrowly edged the incumbent president Gerald Ford, who had gained office because as vice president he took over after Nixon’s resigned.
Carter set about preparing to lead the country. For a couple of months his tiny hometown seemed the center of the universe as national figures offering advice and looking for jobs came and went.
I was on Carter’s chartered jetliner flying to Washington, D.C. on the eve of his January 20, 1977 inauguration. Everyone on the plane was giddy with excitement. Carter’s family was aboard, including his mother “Miss Lillian” and the.family cat, “Misty Malarkey.”
The normally reserved president-elect was more gregarious than usual, walking up and down the aisle of the cabin in shirtsleeves talking about his plans and expectations.
Seeking the people’s trust in an age of mistrust
In his inaugural address the next day Carter began with a grace note, thanking his predecessor “for all he has done to heal our land.” That was a reference to Ford’s steady hand in the White House after President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace because of the Watergate scandal.
“You have given me a great responsibility — to stay close to you, to be worthy of you and to exemplify what you are,” Carter told his countrymen. “Let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust. Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes.”
Carter’s political honeymoon didn’t last long. Within days of the inauguration, he was embroiled in the kind of smashmouth politics that sometimes bedeviled Washington then and has exponentially worsened since. He was forced to shelve the appointment of one of President John F. Kennedy’s top advisors, speechwriter Theodore Sorensen, to be CIA Director when it became known that Sorensen was a conscientious objector during World War Two.
Trouble followed Carter throughout his presidency. His friend Bert Lance had to resign as the administration’s budget director for giving friends special treatment when he was a small town banker. His brother Billy was called before Congress to explain his apparent influence peddling with dictator Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
Some troubles were of Carter’s own making. He let his competitive instincts get the better of him during a public 10K race and pushed himself to the brink of exhaustion, and an unflattering picture of him slumped in the arms of a Secret Service agent made the front pages of America’s newspapers.
When he confirmed he’d fended off an aggressive rabbit while fishing alone during a visit home he sparked a barrage of sarcastic “killer rabbit” stories. This made him look weak.
Troubles dogged the presidency.
All this was background music to public dissatisfaction with long gasoline lines and surging inflation.
Carter tried to dampen political restiveness with an address appealing to the American people to keep things in perspective. He said there was no need for a national crisis of confidence, that difficulties were relatively minor and eventually would go away. The news media characterized Carter’s remarks as The Malaise Speech although he never used the word “malaise,” adding to his difficulties.
The penultimate hammer-blow was Iran’s seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and the holding of 66 American diplomats and citizens as hostages. An ill-fated rescue mission not only failed but caused the accidental deaths of eight servicemen. The hostages would not be released until after Carter left office.
Meantime the left wing of the Democratic Party, which never fully trusted Carter because of his Southern heritage, was in open revolt against his reelection. The result was that Carter was buried in a landslide loss in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, the former actor and governor of California, that made him a one-term president.
Carter was not without several major accomplishments as president. He brokered of a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel that endures to this day. He set in motion a process that led to the U.S. turnover of the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. The latter enormously boosted the U.S. image in South America.
He also established the U.S. Department of Education and appointed a record number of women, African Americans and Latinos to high-level government positions.
A life of humanitarian work
Nearly four years to the day after accompanying Carter on his triumphal journey to Washington, I was with him again on his flight home. As you’d expect, the atmosphere was decidedly different. Carter and his wife Rosalynn remained in their cabin throughout the flight.
Friends and aides along for the ride were in tears as the presidential aircraft dipped a wing as it overflew the White House, then turned south toward home.
Carter has devoted the rest of his life to humanitarian work, an effort that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He led campaigns to eradicate guinea worm and river blindness diseases that were endemic in parts of Africa, served on international election monitoring teams and helped build houses for underprivileged people.
He also found time to become an accomplished fly fisherman, write nearly three dozen books and teach Sunday School at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church nearly every weekend he was home.
Carter’s diplomacy was not always appreciated. When he visited North Korea to try to ease tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, it was believed that then President Bill Clinton saw it as meddling.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Carter summarized his philosophy. “God gives us the capacity for choice,” he said. “We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can choose to make these changes — and we must.”
Three questions to consider:
- What is one important thing Jimmy Carter did as president?
- What post-presidency achievements is Carter known for?
- If you were president of the United States, what is the one thing you would want to accomplish?
Gene Gibbons covered U.S. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton during his career with Reuters and UPI. He was past president of the Radio-Television Correspondents Association and served as a Presidential Debate panelist in 1992 and as a Joan M. Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2010. An ex-U.S. Army officer, he once served as press aide to U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He is the author of the book "Breaking News: A Life in Journalism."