You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Obi-Wan Kenobi
No one at the time could have imagined that one from relatively humble beginnings in Plains where he was a successful peanut farmer before becoming a one-term governor of Georgia and soon after would serve as the 39th President of the United States.
But to James Earl Carter Jr (who often preferred his nickname of Jimmy), he always believed that “citizen” was the highest and most powerful title one could aspire to, even above that of President.
One may well debate the success of his presidency (and we’ll hit some of those highlights and challenges in the coming paragraphs) but with the passing of President Carter at the age of 100, America has not only lost it’s longest-lived president ever but also arguably one of the most intelligent, decent, and caring human beings to ever serve in the Oval Office.
Truth be told, I was rather shocked he survived as long after Rosalynn’s (his wife of 77 years) passing last year as he did given how inseparable that were a living testament to the concept of soul mates. She was very much his rock and closest confidant and was rarely far from his side whether it was when he was taking the oath of office at his inauguration in 1977 or after his one term ended helping building houses with Habitat for Humanity or teaching Sunday school in their Baptist church at home that was never extravagant but rather quintessentially humble.
Anything more ostentatious would have likely sorted ill with the Carters.
President Carter certainly inherited a challenging political environment when he entered the White House in 1977.
The nation was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon and further reduced what little trust Americans had in their government and institutions. Adding fuel to the fire was President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon soon the resignation which shielded him from criminal prosecution, the remnants of which we’re still dealing with to this very day. One cannot forget the backdrop of the humiliation of the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon which heralded the failure to achieve any of the political objectives of preventing South Vietnam from being incorporated into a Communist country hostile to America.
Those would be daunting enough to deal with but President Carter’s term would largely be marked by stagflation, a particularly pernicious economic environment combining high inflation, a stagnant economy, and persistently high unemployment in which the usual Keynesian methods of dealing with inflation and unemployment would have disastrous consequences. Interest rates were sky-high and the lack of supply of petrol leading to long queues at the pumps and rationing (where you’d only be allowed to buy petrol on certain days and often in limited quantities short of filling the tank).
It didn’t help that President Carter was the ultimate Washington outsider (indeed, there were more than a few people who wondered who the hell he was during the campaign as they’d never heard of him and he certainly wasn’t particularly famous outside of Georgia!). Lacking the long-term relationships to members of his own party in Congress (especially with his own party!) and often chafing at the usual Washington way of working through problems hamstrung his ability to push his preferred legislation through ensured that relatively little of his domestic agenda was enacted into law.
He did score a couple of domestic victories, one of which was his signature environmental legislation known as the Superfund in response to the need to remediate a horrific toxic waste dump in the Love Canal neighbourhood of Niagara Falls NY. Superfund would not only clean up Love Canal but many other heavily polluted sites.
The other major domestic “victory” (which has definitely had many switches and roundabouts since 1978) was the deregulation of the airline industry by essentially neutering the Civil Aeronautic Board’s control over fares, routes, and ability of airlines to enter the commercial aviation market. It certainly achieved it’s goals of generally reducing fares from the astronomical fares charged in the 1970s and earlier and increasing competition with new airlines introducing service to compete with incumbent carriers that had previously enjoyed a monopoly on a given route. Airlines were able to be much more efficient matching the proper sized aircraft to the demand on the route but the downsides has been crowded planes due to exponentially more passengers able to afford to fly and a general degradation in service quality (the “race to the bottom”) and associated turmoil where several iterations of bankruptcy reorganisations and liquidations as well as mergers that have reduced competition have created a few dominant carriers that defend “fortress hubs” where they can enjoy much more pricing power than a competitive industry would imply.
It was on the foreign stage that President Carter was far more comfortable than dealing with Congress and would enjoy his greatest success during his administration with the negotiation and signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978 and the subsequent Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty which brought to an end the war between Egypt and Israel. These two agreements have dominated the politics in the region ever since (for good and ill depending on your point of view) but Egypt’s recognition of Israel’s existence fractured the unity of the Arab states which has never recovered and likely prevented all-out war that likely would escalate to a global war in the region in favour of occasional uprisings and limited wars with periods of negotiations and relative calm in between the battles.
President Carter would only serve one term thanks in large part to the dismal prevailing economic conditions combined with the taking of American hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran Iran which lasted for 444 days and the hostages were released only after President Reagan’s inauguration despite the Carter administration’s diplomatic efforts as well as a botched rescue mission that had to be canceled when one of the helicopters failed and crashed in the Iranian desert. He managed to fend off a vigourous primary challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy but would eventually go down to a massive defeat in the Electoral College to his charismatic rival, former actor and Governor of California Ronald Reagan.
The mood of the country at the time was best described as “weary” and the voters clearly responded to Reagan’s upbeat messaging with the recent memories of the long lines at the petrol stations and the news stories of the hostages in Tehran playing constantly on a brand-new innovation of the 24-hour news cycle on a cable channel called the Cable News Network (CNN).
President Carter and Rosalynn would return home to Plains but it wasn’t long before they would form the Carter Center to advance human rights and alleviate suffering which would help tremendously as he continued decades of the diplomatic work that he had started at Camp David.
Though the historians generally rated his administration as a failure due primarily to the economy and events generally beyond his control, no one can deny that the next forty years would see him become one of the most accomplished elder statesman this country has ever known all the while remaining true to his humble nature and genuine love of people, particularly those in pain and distress.
One of my father’s military commendations was for drafting the operational and logistics plans for when President Carter would visit Fayetteville and Fort Bragg. President Carter’s youngest sister Ruth Carter Stapleton lived in a house on Morganton Road not too far from what was then Fayetteville Technical Institute. As you were heading toward downtown Fayetteville, her house was on the right and had a small white guard hut on the corner of the lot next to the driveway.
The plans had to envision what the Army and Air Force would do in response to many scenarios ranging from nuclear attack (Fort Bragg was always high on the Soviet’s target list) to more mundane issues such as a member of the presidential entourage taking ill. The All American Freeway featured prominently in most of those plans to quickly evacuate the family from Fayetteville onto Fort Bragg and then to Pope AFB to depart on Air Force One.
As far as I know, they never had to put those plans into action but I remember being drafted into helping him during those long nights as he was working through the various scenarios. Ruth Stapleton would die of pancreatic cancer relatively young soon after he left office and it’d be a few years afterward that the guard shack was removed from in front of the house and only the long-term residents of Fayetteville would remember the city’s connection with President Carter’s family.
For me, I’ll always remember President Carter as a kind and decent gentleman who cared far more for the world than many would give him credit. In the end, he became far stronger and powerful after his presidency than during it and in so doing fulfilled Obi-Wan’s prediction in the decades that followed more than any President this country has ever seen.