Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, who may have left an even greater legacy with his efforts in his post-White House years, in which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in resolving international conflicts, died Sunday. He was 100.
Carter had entered hospice care in 2023 after surviving metastatic brain cancer, liver cancer and brain surgery after a 2019 fall. He appeared at his wife Rosalyn’s memorial service in late 2023.
“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the son of the former president, in an official statement released through The Carter Center. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
The former president, who remained active well into his ’90s, served from 1977 to 1981. He had been the oldest living president since the death of George H.W. Bush and was the longest-lived U.S. President.
Elected in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Carter was unknown nationally when he began his presidential campaign in December 1974, with pundits asking, “Jimmy who?” He even appeared on the game show “What’s My Line,” in which a panel of celebrities, usually blindfolded, try to guess a guest’s profession is. Carter was so unrecognizable that the panel was allowed to keep their blindfolds off.
But a savvy campaign strategy that emphasized Carter’s honesty as a counterweight to the D.C. establishment, propelled him to the Democratic nomination over a handful of senators and other contenders. His personal biography — a Georgia peanut farmer, with a wide grin, from the small town of Plains — seemed like a breath of fresh air against a Washington still reeling from the resignation of Richard Nixon, his pardon by his successor Gerald R. Ford and the after-effects of failed American policy in Vietnam.
Carter’s accessibility was reflected in his inauguration, in which he and his wife Rosalynn got out of their limousine and walked down Pennsylvania Avenue on their way to the reviewing stand to watch the parade. Carter also shunned some of the ceremonial aspects — for a time banning “Hail to the Chief” when he entered a room for an event, or carrying his own bags. He even resurrected the fireside chat, a throwback to the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
His presidency paralleled the disco era and what could best be described as “rural chic,” with movies like “Smokey and the Bandit” and TV shows like “The Dukes of Hazzard” drawing on Southern humor while avoiding the thorny civil rights struggles of the previous decade. There was even a sitcom, “Carter Country,” that was a nod to his roots as a peanut farmer from Plains, Ga.
The 2020 documentary “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President” detailed how Carter rallied support from musicians including the Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffett during his campaign.
The sense of optimism that greeted the arrival of a Washington outsider eventually gave way to the realities of governing.
Even with substantial Democratic majorities, Carter and his team grappled with high inflation and then stagnant growth, as well as the lingering crisis over the taking of American hostages in Iran. Even decades later, Carter still expressed frustration that some of his signature initiatives, like comprehensive health care, were blocked by Democrats.
“There were times when a Congress member would try to blackmail me, or when a Congress member would make a demand that I thought was inappropriate,” Carter told CBS News years later.
In 1979 Carter gave what has generally been referred to as the “malaise” speech (even though he never used that term) in which he talked of a “crisis of confidence” in the country. By that point, the country was facing rising costs of oil imports; the president’s policies directed at conservation initiatives like solar power, energy initiatives later proved prescient, but his attempts to sell conservation came across as lecturing about wastefulness.
The speech only seemed to reinforce the notion that his presidency was faltering, bottoming out with a failed 1980 attempt to rescue American hostages from Iran. By that point, Carter was facing formidable opposition within his own party from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who waged a spirited yet unsuccessful effort to wrest the nomination away from a sitting president.
Carter’s resounding defeat in 1980 and Ronald Reagan’s victory signaled the triumph of the conservative movement. But rather than retire, Carter re-emerged in the role of peace negotiator and humanitarian activist, supervising election integrity in foreign countries and working to eradicate disease, like ringworm, in sub-Saharan Africa. Although his post-presidency efforts built on some of his accomplishments while in office — like brokering the Israel-Egypt peace accords — only after he left the White House did that achievement earn widespread acclaim. His work earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Later in life, Carter’s outspokenness, particularly about international issues, made him a polarizing figure at times. His 2007 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” drew criticism for its Israel position. Carter, however, defended the book, and his promotion of it was a central feature of Jonathan Demme’s 2007 documentary “Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains.”
In the movie, Carter is shown much as he was during his unlikely campaign: Free of trappings, full of faith and occasionally flashing his signature grin. Perhaps the signature moment was when he and Rosalynn sit down for their own dinner of hamburgers.
James Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Georgia. After his rural upbringing, he entered the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., serving seven years. He went into state politics in 1962, before running for governor in 1970 and winning. He was among a handful of governors elected in the South in the early 1970s who were billed as a sign that the region was moving away from its segregationist past. On racial issues, Carter was progressive, and he reformed the state bureaucracy. Then prohibited from running for another term, he announced in late 1974 that he was running for the White House; the New York Times noted that his supporters considered him a “Southern-style Kennedy.” His centrism was a selling point in his campaign, but a primary message was that he would bring honesty and integrity to the White House, with Watergate still fresh in voters’ minds.
He defeated incumbent Gerald Ford, whose short tenure also was untarnished by scandal but who nevertheless suffered backlash from his decision to pardon Nixon.
Carter’s out-of-the-blue rise to the top of the Democratic field in 1976 was not lost on Hollywood.
According to Dennis McDougal’s book “The Last Mogul,” after deciding to run, one of the first people that Carter reached out to from outside Georgia was Lew Wasserman. “When he let friends know he had confidence in me, it was extremely helpful,” Carter said. The Carters and the Wassermans became good friends during his presidency. But Wasserman, not too surprisingly, switched his allegiance to a former client, Reagan.
In many ways Carter’s post-presidency built on some of his accomplishments while president, including a foreign policy based on human rights.
His work for Habitat for Humanity, in which he would frequently be seen helping to build homes in low-income areas, elevated the non-profit’s visibility.
Carter published more than 30 books, including “Faith: A Journey for All,” “Christmas in Plains,” “A White House Diary” and “A Full Life: Reflections at 90,” about which New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote, “Carter, the one-termer who was a pariah in his own party, may well have improved the lives of more people in more places over a longer period of time than any other recent president.”
Carter is survived by sons Jack, Chip and Jeff and daughter Amy.
