Jimmy Carter’s fruitful postpresidential life shouldn’t overshadow his accomplishments in the Oval Office | Editorial
Assessments that conclude Carter was a better ex-president than president ignore too many of his achievements.
“Give me my flowers while I’m alive” is an expression older folks once used to hint that it sure would be nice to hear the good things people thought about them before the preacher was reading the eulogy at their funeral.
That sentiment comes to mind following the death of former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100.
Carter during his final years received an abundance of praise for all he did after leaving the presidency. But he has never received enough credit for his exemplary accomplishments while in command of the Oval Office.
Of course, it’s important to remember Carter’s humanitarian work with Habitat for Humanity and his personal attempts as an unaffiliated diplomat to sow the seeds of democracy in countries long held in bondage by despots.
But offhand remarks that Carter was a better ex-president than president ignore too many of his achievements.
No act of diplomacy since has matched the Camp David Accords brokered by Carter and signed in 1978 by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. That peace pact remains intact even amid today’s Middle East turmoil. Both Begin and Sadat at times threatened to leave the negotiations, but Carter’s determination kept bringing them back to the table.
The Georgia peanut farmer also deserves credit for China’s first steps toward a capitalist economy rooted in communism, which opened the door for the entrepreneurship that has made China one of America’s biggest, albeit adversarial, trade partners. After a historic visit to Washington in 1979, Premier Deng Xiaoping legalized private property in China.
Biographer Jonathan Alter points out that it was Carter who brokered the Senate bipartisanship needed to ratify the Panama Canal treaty; Carter who increased defense spending to develop the B2 stealth bomber and other high-tech weapons; and Carter who put solar panels on the White House, established fuel economy standards, and launched the first federal requirements for cleaning up toxic waste sites.
Those accomplishments didn’t dissolve the antipathy Americans felt for their government and particularly their president in the late 1970s, with the nation beset by high prices, gasoline shortages, and the capture of 52 hostages held for 444 days by terrorists in Iran. The Carter administration negotiated the hostages’ release, but they were not freed until the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as Carter’s successor.
Carter was not a bad president. He deserves better than murky recollections of all that went wrong during his tenure and not enough attention on what went right. That said, it’s understandable to want to emphasize the work of Carter and his late wife, Rosalynn, through the Carter Center nonprofit they cofounded with Emory University in 1982 to promote peace and human rights.
The fruit of the Carters’ hard work to make the world freer, healthier, and more sensitive to the needs of the most desperate will remain long after their deaths. Their dedication will produce flowers that Jimmy Carter only got a whiff of during his lifetime — but it didn’t seem to matter to him. His faith had informed him of a greater reward awaiting him after leaving this Earth. And for that, his many admirers can be truly thankful.