Jimmy Carter (Plains, Georgia, 1924), former US president, has died, according to The Washington Post announced this Sunday. Carter, who was at home in hospice care and voted in the last election, had been treated for an aggressive form of melanoma skin cancer, with tumors that had spread to the liver and brain.
He was the 39th president of the United States between 1977 and 1981. Before that he was governor and senator of the state of Georgia. He was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1977 – 1981) was overshadowed by great challenges and several failures. One of them was to become the first president not to renew his mandate in more than 40 years. However, after more than four decades of activism, volunteerism and diplomacy that have earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, the United States today bids farewell to the Democrat as its “best former president.” The former president had begun receiving palliative care on February 18 after several health problems. On November 19, Rosalynn, his wife and “partner” in everything he achieved, died, according to the former president.
Born in Plains in 1924, Carter grew up on a plantation without electricity or running water. It was the 1920s in the racially segregated South. In ’53, newly married and a graduate of the US Navy, he decided to return home to take charge of the family farm. Nine years later, after entering the local community as a pastor and catechism teacher, he entered politics.
He did it as a great unknown. In 1962 he won his first bid by surprise to become first a senator from Georgia and eight years later Governor. After losing re-election, he decided to go for national politics. He was greeted with a report titled “Jimmy who’s running for what?” That Jimmy was James Earl Carter Jr and he also surprised some Democratic voters who made him the 39th president of the United States in 1976.
The country had just left behind the Watergate scandal that ended with the resignation of Republican Richard Nixon, as well as the end of the Vietnam War. The fact that Carter was almost unknown beyond the American South may have worked in his favor. But the lack of ties with Washington, where any president needs pacts inside and outside his own party, ended up taking its toll.
One of the last blows of his political career was precisely the announcement by another Democrat, Ted Kennedy, that he would be his rival in the elections in which Carter sought re-election. Kennedy was taking advantage of Carter’s decline in the polls due to his poor management of an economic crisis with inflation at 13%, threats of recession and oil shortages, which forced Americans to stand in long lines at gas stations to fill up. deposit.
The discourse of discomfort
Tension was building in the streets when Carter canceled, at the last minute, the president’s traditional speech on the occasion of Independence Day, on July 4, 1979. It took 10 days to appear. He took refuge in the Camp David residence, where many presidents usually spend days off. He was accompanied by advisors, experts and those responsible for writing his next speech.
The intervention, like its cancellation on the national holiday, went down in history. It is known as the “malaise” speech, even though Carter never uttered that word. What he did say was that the difficult situation the country was going through could well be related to the consumerist fever and the habits of Americans at the time.
“In a nation that was proud of the hard work and strength of its families,” Carter said in a speech titled ‘Confidence Crisis‘, “now too many of us tend to worship consumption and indulgence.” The president stated that “human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one possesses” and added that the US had already discovered that “possessing and consuming no longer satisfy our desire for meaning: accumulating material goods will not be able to fill the emptiness of our lives.”
The audacity to ask Americans to reconsider their values was not the problem. Citizens responded favorably. But Carter did not seize the moment and misjudged his next move, when he fired much of his cabinet. According to his biographer, Jonathan Alter, it was “the second worst decision” of his presidency.
The hostage crisis
The worst of all marked his mandate until the last day. Carter agreed in 1979 to host the deposed Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, for “humanitarian reasons.” The regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had just come to power and interpreted the US measure as an offense. Shortly after, hundreds of followers of the Islamist revolution would take over the country’s embassy in Tehran, initiating the kidnapping of 52 Americans inside.
The so-called “hostage crisis” lasted 444 days. More than a year in which Carter failed in the first attempt to rescue them – eight US soldiers died -, received support from Canada and ended up accepting a secret plan – portrayed in the film ‘Argo’ (2012) – that included simulating the recording of a film for the secret service to free six diplomats who evaded kidnapping at the embassy, but were still trapped in Tehran. That would ultimately help negotiate the release of all the hostages, but Carter did not achieve it until the last moments of his presidency.
And it also overshadowed one of the greatest achievements of his mandate: the signing of the historic Camp David agreements in 1978. All of his successors have tried to emulate similar pacts, with greater or lesser success, because that signing put an end to the conflict between Egypt and Israel, which had already accumulated four wars in three decades. The achievement had also occurred in a presidency that also dealt with the transfer of control of the Panama Canal, the dialogue with China or the arms agreements with Russia, which would invade Afghanistan a few days before Carter left the White House.
Humanitarian work
Internal crises and international tensions have left little space in the memory of a presidency that, already in the 80s, had room for pioneering laws. Carter approved the government’s first whistleblower protection, created the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, and founded the Federal Emergency Agency, which has since accelerated response to environmental catastrophes. He also signed more than a dozen environmental laws and installed solar panels on the White House. They were retired by his successor, Republican Ronald Reagan, after taking office in 1981.
Outside of Washington, the Democrat has dedicated more than four decades to shoring up that legacy that has earned him the title of “best former president.” He fulfilled the tradition of creating a presidential center after his mandate, The Carter Center in Atlanta. It became the starting point for numerous humanitarian missions ranging from the fight against malaria in Africa, conflict resolution and mediation, surveillance of democracies in the world —the US rating was lowered during Donald Trump’s mandate— or the construction of housing in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity.
The New York Times recently received one of his biographies with the doubt if it was possible “choose the most humiliating moment” of his presidency. At 98 years old, with a Nobel Peace Prize and four decades of humanitarian work behind him, however, the US may now have several examples to choose from which will be the greatest legacy of Carter’s career.
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