Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter takes questions from the media during a news conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta on Aug. 20, 2015.John Amis/Reuters
The news came a few days ago that Jimmy Carter, 98, has left hospital care to spend his remaining days in hospice at his modest home in Plains, Ga.
The update on the former U.S. president touched off a great outpouring of tributes and admiration – pre-obits, you might say – which are a good thing. Better that praise comes before the bell tolls than when you can’t hear it.
In the 42 years since he left office, Mr. Carter has pursued so many humanitarian causes with such humility, dedication and inspiration that he is worthy of the adulation. He became, you might say, the male version of Mother Teresa.
Remarkably, he’s attained the stature of a great man, a humanitarian giant, despite being a failed president.
It wasn’t just any failure. Mr. Carter’s unravelling marked a political watershed. It was a crushing defeat for liberalism. It opened the gates to a conservative renaissance, kicked off by Ronald Reagan, which saw Republicans rule for the next 12 years.
As the former Georgia governor, Mr. Carter was elected to the White House in 1976 as a counter to the dark spirit of the Richard Nixon years. He was right for the task in that his motivations were more moral than political. He went so far in his infamous crisis-of-confidence speech in 1979 to denigrate the American way of life. His citizens were hurting because of the energy crisis, but rather than sympathize, Mr. Carter condemned their self-interest and materialism.
“Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption,” he said.
Rather than an imperial president, he was the commoner-in-chief. Don Jamieson, Canada’s external affairs minister at the time, recalled attending an economic conference in London in 1977. He got into his car to head off to 10 Downing Street, whereupon he heard a tap at the window: “Jesus, it’s Carter,” Mr. Jamieson told his driver. Whereupon the president asked, “Can I hitch a ride?” In he jumped and off they went.
Mr. Carter had been to Canada as a naval officer in 1952 to help clean up a nuclear accident at Chalk River, Ont. The experience helped turn him into an environmentalist in the Oval Office.
Canada had some relevance in Washington in these times – just as the peanut farmer from the Peach State was elected, so was the separatist government of René Lévesque in Quebec. Mr. Carter, who I covered as a Washington correspondent in those years, made his position clear: “A stability in Canada is of crucial importance to us.”
He formed a strong friendship with Pierre Trudeau, whose funeral he attended as an honorary pallbearer. Mr. Carter invited Mr. Trudeau for a high-powered visit in his first month in office, and Mr. Trudeau was given the honour of being the first prime minister to address a joint session of Congress. Relations, which had been distant in the Nixon years, were set right.
But our high expectations for this president were dashed, just as were those of Americans. After a major triumph in negotiating an Israel-Egypt peace accord, everything for Mr. Carter went sour.
Unemployment soared, as did interest rates, as did inflation. The president made the mistake of surrounding himself with cronies from Georgia who were naive to the ways of Washington and how to work with Congress. Mr. Carter was a micromanager. As momentous issues weighed on the nation, he spent time correcting grammar mistakes on staff memos and overseeing scheduling for the use of the White House tennis court.
When his approval ratings tumbled, owing in no small part to the misfortune of the woeful economic cycle he was in, Ted Kennedy challenged him for the 1980 nomination, badly dividing the Democrats in doing so. Then came the Iranian hostage crisis: Mr. Carter’s failed rescue mission of American captives was the final straw for him. Mr. Reagan overpowered him in the 1980 election, winning 44 states.
But he is unique in presidential annals in that his post-presidency made Americans forget about his real presidency. The good works – his campaigns for human rights, global health programs, for peace, for fair elections, for low-income people whose homes he helped renovate – continued into his 90s.
Inspiring, too, was his reputation as a fearless truth-teller, a man who never lied, a straight shooter who outdid even Harry Truman in that regard.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, at a time when George W. Bush was finding ways to rationalize an invasion of Iraq that Mr. Carter opposed.
Other presidents have strong political legacies. Jimmy Carter won’t have that. But he will leave behind something few others have: a moral compass. One that glows.