Jimmy Carter's Presidency

Until recently, I knew very little about Jimmy Carter. I knew he was a peanut farmer, that he built homes with Habitat for Humanity after his presidency, and that he was very old. His passing has inspired many different reactions from people I know who knew a little bit more about him. The range of emotions I saw in response to his death was curious; everything from grief and sadness to contempt and resent. I wanted to learn more about his presidency.

NPR talked about him on the radio every day, honoring his story of rising from a barefooted kid on a peanut farm to the presidency to a Nobel Peace Prize. Jack Carter, Jimmy's eldest son, even took an interview for the radio where he talked about his dad's legacy. He said his father had made a lot of mistakes, but that he was a good person with the greatest of intentions to do the right thing.

As Governor of Georgia, he increased the number of Black and women staff members in Atlanta by 25% and set out to reform the state's outdated bureaucracy. He was arrogant, though, which isolated him from some of the Democrats who might have otherwise been his ally. He didn't work well with the state congress, which perhaps laid out some natural foreshadowing for his political future. Still, after just one term as governor he launched his bid for President.

The presidential race in 1976 between Carter and the incumbent Ford was neck-in-neck. Carter managed to eek out a win with 51% of the popular vote after a tumultuous race for both candidates.

As president, Carter didn't work well with Congress. He viewed them as greasy politicians, out for themselves rather than the public good. He didn't know how to build relationships in government, and didn't show much interest in learning. He didn't win much favor from his fellow Democrats because of his staunch commitment to fiscal conservatism, but this commitment is largely what drove his approval rating up to 70% in the first six months of his presidency.

When his budget director was accused of unethical banking activity despite having committed no crimes, Carter stood by him and the media took it has hypocrisy. He didn't fire Lance and for several weeks the spectacle continued until Lance resigned. The affair weakened Carter's image as an honest man with an honest administration, and his approval rating dropped significantly; the first decline of many to come.

Carter centered his foreign affairs on human rights, but turned a blind eye where it was too inconvenient to push back against human rights violations, such as in Iran and East Timor. His support of the sitting Iranian government was likely a strong contributing factor to the US embassy hostage takeover after the Iranian revolution drove the US-allied leader out of the country. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for more than a year. The revolutionaries had been threatening for weeks to take the embassy, so I'm not sure why it wasn't evacuated, but once the hostages were taken Carter was hesitant to take risks to free them, for fear of even a single life lost. One attempted mission failed disastrously and Carter called it off before they could reach the hostages. It wasn't until the very moment Reagan took office after Carter that all 52 hostages were released alive.

 

Inflation was among the largest of his domestic woes apart from public perception of the Iranian hostage crisis. Caused in part by the end of the Vietnam war and increases on the price of oil in the Middle East, Carter was largely powerless to help and didn't take a particularly helpful leadership position with the American people. He shrunk social programs to temper spending, which didn't help with inflation and also didn't curry favor with voters. He was floundering for a way to redeem himself, and took a 10 day retreat to Camp David where he flew all kinds of people in to discuss his political woes, and where he'd gone wrong. Upon his return to the White House, he made a speech to the American people, pointing the finger back at them for their obsession with consumption and their lack of confidence in America's future. When that didn't work to redeem him in the public eye, he told his entire cabinet to submit their resignations of which he accepted five. He was clearly grasping at straws, and the whole country knew it. He wasn't viewed as a strong leader at all. The general consensus was that he was ill-equipped to do the job and to make the difficult decisions a president needs to make. 

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Carter's response despite ongoing rampant domestic inflation was to place an embargo on the sale of grain to the Soviets. It was intended to punish the Soviets, but they were able to secure alternative suppliers and were largely unaffected. American farmers weren't so lucky. It just so happens that this was a contributing factor to my grandfather-in-law losing the family farm, and I'd wager that he wasn't alone. The affects of this policy echoed through the decades with high inventories, stagnant prices, and an export subsidies crisis.

There were some international success stories during Carter's time in office, though. He brokered a peace deal between Israeli and Egyptian leaders, a task considered impossible, by bringing them to Camp David (his vacation spot in Maryland) and serving as the mediator for negotiations for almost 2 weeks. He also established formal relations with China, an arms control agreement with the Soviets, and returned the Canal Zone to Panama.

Carter was elected because he was honest, and after Nixon's resignation the country yearned for some of that every-man integrity. He was true to his promise not to lie to the American people, but when opportunities came for him to stand up for his principles he sometimes fell short. When it came to leading the nation through trying times, he didn't meet the bar. He committed to human rights more consistently after his time at the White House, dedicating his presidential center to democracy and the mediation of human rights concerns. He won a Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development” and volunteered for several charities, the most well-known of which was Habitat for Humanity International. He wasn't the worst president in our history, but he certainly wasn't anywhere near the top of the list, either. (US News published a list of the 10 worst presidents in our history which I found interesting) He improved his image after he left the White House and has been regarded by some as our greatest former president. From my view: he was a good man with strong morals, though very flawed, and a rather mediocre politician dealt a very difficult hand.

RIP President Carter.

"I have come to realize that in every person there is something fine and pure and noble, along with a desire for self-fulfillment. Political and religious leaders must attempt to provide a society within which these human attributes can be nurtured and enhanced." — from 1975 book “Why Not the Best?”