John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com
December 31, 2024
During his years in the White House, he was caricatured as a naïve, moralizing micromanager who was in over his head.
While he was commander-in-chief, events conspired to magnify his all too human shortcomings. Critics, for example, spun the tale of him scheduling time on the White House tennis court as an example of his controlling nature, rather than seeing it for what it was—a desperate attempt to keep squabbling longtime aides whom he could trust by his side while he struggled to defend himself in a hostile political climate.
The cliché is that his presidency was a failure.
In political terms, perhaps it was. His repudiation by the voters in the epochal 1980 presidential election in favor of Republican Ronald Reagan was decisive—so overwhelming that his fellow Democrats distanced themselves from him during campaign seasons for the rest of his long life.
Other Democratic presidents—Bill Clinton, Barack Obama—would find themselves in demand during election cycles, but rarely Carter, so toxic were the memories of his time in power.
The truth is that, in policy terms, his presidency was far more successful than it appeared.
His political weakness sprang from the same qualities that were his greatest source of strength—his determination to see things with his own eyes and make his own decisions, consulting in the end only with his own heart and his God in the process.
In those post-Vietnam years, he angered his fellow Democrats by strengthening the U.S. military. He thought the United States needed to have more flexible might at its disposal to meet the challenges presented by an evolving world.
After Carter left the White House, much of the muscle-flexing Reagan did on the world stage was done with muscles Carter provided.
The same was true of his economic policies.
He, perhaps alone among modern presidents, refrained from trying to artificially juice the American economy as he approached reelection. He believed in cycles of growth and saw government’s role as a source of support for those who suffered during downswings, not as a stimulant to unnatural and ultimately dangerous growth spurts.
In short, he was the sort of president—independent, guided by his own conscience—that so many Americans say they want but rarely mean it when they say it.
The characteristics that doomed his chances to be a two-term president, though, liberated him when he left the White House.
The second great cliché of Carter’s life was that his post-presidency was a spectacular success.
In many ways it was.
He won a Nobel Prize for his humanitarian and diplomatic labors and earned the world’s respect for his advocacy of enduring moral principles.
The same qualities that made him easy prey for Reagan served him better outside presidential strictures.
The traits that encouraged the presidents, Republican or Democrat, to keep him at arm’s length—his independence and determination to follow his own conscience—made the poor, the dispossessed and the disparaged of the world see him as an honest broker, someone they could trust to hear and speak to their grievances and concerns.
It was this appreciation of the shared humanity of people around the world that tied his political career and his long post-presidential odyssey together.
His faith was grounded in a worldly understanding of human frailty.
When he ran for president, he said in an interview that he had known lust in his heart. In an era in which our dominant political figure lusts openly for sex, for money and for power, Carter’s admission seems quaint.
But his acknowledgement was consistent with his beliefs.
Before he was even sworn in as president, he stripped the inaugural proceedings of much of the pomp and circumstances that defined previous transitions of power. He and his wife, Rosalynn, walked in the parade as a reminder that they were not elevated above or distant from the people they led.
His message, in the White House or not, was always the same: We are all failed creatures in a hard world, and we should not look for strong men to save us.
Redeeming the life of this planet is God’s work and, for the devout, God’s work must truly be our own.
Jimmy Carter in all his flawed nobility died Dec. 29. He was 100.
May he rest in peace.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
