By any standard, the late James Earl Carter led a remarkable life. If nothing else, the act of living to 100 makes him demographically interesting. But when you throw in a degree in engineering, captain of a nuclear submarine, governor of Georgia, president of the United States, architect of the Camp David Accords, his work with Habitat for Humanity, establishing The Carter Center in Atlanta, authoring 32 bestselling books, a 77-year marriage, with a Nobel Peace Prize to boot, this humble peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia turns out to be anything but plain.
Or humble.
Google “Jimmy Carter, humble/humility” and see how many hits you get. The postmortem media coverage has run with the H word in headlines and remembrances. But nobody who looks in the mirror and thinks, “That guy should be president!” is actually humble. Humble people don’t run for president. Still, Carter strived for humility, considering it an obligation of his faith.
The Yin of Carter’s quest for power often conflicted with the Yang of his commitment to serve others. The Jimmy Carter who swung hammers building low-cost housing was hard to square with the Jimmy Carter empowered to bring down the hammer of U.S. might as leader of the Free World. The dichotomy of Carter’s competing ambitions made him a frequently frustrating character to work with, and an enigmatic subject for journalists and historians. Branded a failure when he left office, the passage of time has proven kinder to Carter.
The unpaid bills of the Great Society and Vietnam War came due on Carter’s watch, just as the Great Depression hit a month after Hoover took his hand off the Bible. Under Carter, interest rates soared. The first Arab oil embargo resulted in gas lines and price hikes. Lacking the warmth of FDR, Carter’s attempt at a “Fireside Chat” became instead a lecture on “national malaise.” Then American hostages were grabbed in Iran. A failed rescue attempt and feckless gestures like not lighting the national Christmas Tree cast Carter as a weakling. Ted Kennedy led the left in opposition. The Democrats split. Carter lost to Ronald Reagan.
For the next 40-years, historians lumped Jimmy Carter with the perennial cellar-dwellers of American history: James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore and brilliant, unlucky, unloved Herbert Hoover.
But unlike Hoover, Carter lived long enough, hammered enough joists and window frames, wrote enough books and interjected himself into enough world affairs and elections to gain traction with both historians and the public. Hey, Willie Nelson loved him, why not us?
I interviewed Jimmy Carter three times: twice over the phone, and once, in 2008, in person at the Democratic National Convention. When I asked what it meant to have an African-American nominated for President of the United States, Mr. Carter, born in decidedly Jim Crow Georgia, told the following story:
As a kid, his playmates were the sons of workers on the family farm, mostly Black boys his age. They ran together, fished together, played ball together. But on his 13th birthday, Jimmy’s “puberty birthday”, when the lunch bell rang all the kids ran toward the house until they reached a gate. The Black boys stopped, one holding the gate for young Mr. Carter to enter the yard first. Only then would they pass through.
70-years later, this remained a Rosebud memory for the ex-President. The Obama nomination and subsequent election in 2008 was an event unthinkable in Carter’s boyhood. While Jimmy Carter may not have held the gate for Barack Obama to enter the White House, he did his best to remove the lock.
Carter’s century-long fight for a better, kinder, fairer world undoubtedly accounts for the millions of us, even those of us who didn’t vote for him, who feel genuine grief at his passing. That struggle began within himself, as a man of great ambition fought to achieve humility in the service of others.
Doug McIntyre’s novel, “Frank’s Shadow” is available at Amazon.com.