Remembering a president who believed in accountability

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will be buried today. Our correspondent remembers meeting the man who put personal integrity over politics and profits.

It was a freezing winter day as several hundred journalists huddled outside a U.S. Army base in Germany on 21 January 1981.

We were waiting for a man who had been the U.S. president just one day earlier. Now he was about to arrive at the Wiesbaden Military Hospital as the special emissary of the newly sworn-in President Ronald Reagan.

Former President Jimmy Carter had travelled from Washington, D.C. to meet 52 Americans released from captivity in Iran just hours earlier, now recuperating in Germany. They were U.S. diplomats and soldiers who had been captured in Tehran and held for 444 days.  

Carter had tied his political legitimacy to the release of the hostages. He had worked tirelessly to free the hostages by diplomacy, negotiation and a rescue attempt by special forces. 

All avenues had failed and the American people had voted Carter out of office after one term. The hostages were released minutes after Ronald Reagan became president.

An event that toppled a presidency

According to Moorhead Kennedy, one of the diplomats held captive, the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was “the diplomatic equivalent of Pearl Harbor.”

Jimmy Carter was in Germany as a special emissary of President Reagan, but his visit was in the nature of a personal pilgrimage. 

Carter was aware that many of the hostages felt he was personally responsible for their long imprisonment. We later learned that some of the young Marines, who had experienced sometimes brutal treatment by their captors, were taken aside by their commanding officer and told to control their temper when meeting the man who had been their commander-in-chief.  

But when Carter arrived his demeanor disarmed them. Freed hostage Barry Rosen, the former U.S. press attaché in Iran, had deep reservations about Carter. That changed. 

“The initial polite awkward moments changed as Carter embraced each of the former hostages in turn, his eyes were wet,” Rosen said. “His last words about being overwhelmed with happiness and gratitude for our safety almost choked him … It was as a person, not an official that he appeared before us.”

After the 90-minute meeting with the freed hostages, Carter told us journalists that it had been “one of the acts in my life which has been the most moving and gratifying.” 

With that Carter boarded the presidential jet to start his life as a private citizen, a journey that was to last 44 years, the rest of his life.

Integrity personified

Journalists have the privilege, and the responsibility, of reporting on and sometimes meeting the decision makers who affect our lives. Which is why the best journalism must be objective, balanced and fair. Learning how to put aside one’s own views when covering a story is essential. 

Journalists are often portrayed in dramas as famously cynical, yet we recognise when we come across people who are motivated by public service. That devotion to public good rather personal gain is a quality which can be rare in people who have held great power. 

But Jimmy Carter was driven by the belief that he could improve the world by making himself accountable for his actions. A year after Carter left the White House, he published “Keeping Faith, Memoirs of a President”. The book was drawn from his diaries and included a frank self-examination.

After covering the release of the U.S. hostages, my journalism took me repeatedly to Iran working for several international broadcasters. The Islamic Republic of Iran didn’t exactly welcome journalists and dealing with idiosyncratic officials who could grant or deny visas and permissions seemingly on impulse could be maddening.  

But walking past the former U.S. Embassy in the centre of town, renamed as the “Den of Spies” by the regime, always gave me pause and made me think of standing in those winter winds of Wiesbaden as Jimmy Carter climbed the steps of the military hospital to face traumatised and angry men and women. 

It was an act of moral bravery and humility.

A post-presidency demonstration of what is possible

When Carter left office, he and his wife Rosalyn returned to their modest home in Plains, Georgia. From there he travelled the world working as a carpenter with the nonprofit group Habitat for Humanity, to bring home ownership to low-income people, or creating The Elders — retired leaders who could mediate disputes — and founding the Carter Center dedicated to enabling free and fair elections worldwide. 

And Carter was always available to speak to journalists who he regarded as vital for a strong civil society.

A few years after he left the presidency, I wrote a letter to my mother detailing my admiration for Carter, a leader who accepted that with power came accountability, not unlike a previous president, Harry S. Truman, who placed a sign on his desk in the Oval Office which read “The Buck Stops Here”.  

Without telling me my mother sent my letter to Carter in Georgia and asked if she could send him a copy of his presidential memoirs for him to sign.

Jimmy Carter found the time to write back to her, by hand, on cream-colored stationery adorned with an embossed presidential seal.

A letter from Jimmy Carter to the author’s mother. Courtesy of Tira Shubart

To Margarita Shubart

Thanks for your note. When you get the book, just insert the label for Tira & give her my best wishes.

Jimmy

Enclosed was a sticky label which is now pasted on the dedication page of my copy of “Keeping Faith”.

To Tira, with best wishes,

Jimmy Carter

Three questions to consider:

1. What do you think the author means by “accountability”?
2. Why was it significant that Jimmy Carter went to meet the hostages in Germany after he lost his reelection?
3. Can you think of an action you have done that other people might describe as selfless?

Learn more about Tira Shubart here: