Written by Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jimmy Carter, the hard-working peanut farmer in Georgia who as US president suffered a bad economy and a hostage crisis in Iran but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, has died at his home. The Carter Center in Plains, Georgia, said on Sunday. It was 100.
“My father was a hero, not only to me, but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and selfless love,” said Chip Carter, the former president's son. “My brothers, sister, and I have shared with the rest of the world through these shared beliefs. The world is our family because of the way it has brought people together, and we thank you for honoring its memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
The Carter Center said there will be public celebrations in Atlanta and Washington. She added that these events will be followed by a private burial in the plains.
Final arrangements for the former president's official funeral are still pending, according to the center.
Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, served as president from January 1977 to January 1981 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford (NYSE:) in the 1976 US election. Carter was removed from office four years later by a landslide in the election as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, former actor and governor of California.
Carter lived longer than any other US president after his term ended. Along the way, he gained a reputation as a better former president than president — a status he readily acknowledged.
His one-term presidency was marked by the successes of the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, which brought some stability to the Middle East. But it suffered from economic stagnation, continued unpopularity, and the embarrassment of the Iran hostage crisis that consumed his last 444 days in office.
In recent years, Carter suffered from several health problems, including skin cancer that spread to his liver and brain. Carter decided to receive hospice care in February 2023 rather than undergo additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on November 19, 2023, at the age of 96. He appeared frail when he attended her memorial service and funeral in a wheelchair.
Carter left office deeply unpopular, but for decades he worked actively on humanitarian issues. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of “his tireless efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to promote democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
Carter was a centrist when he was governor of Georgia and had populist leanings when he moved into the White House as the 39th president of the United States. He was an outsider in Washington at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that prompted Republican Richard Nixon to resign as president in 1974 and elevate Ford as vice president.
“I am Jimmy Carter and I am running for president. I will never lie to you,” Carter promised, grinning from ear to ear.
When asked to evaluate his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: “Our greatest failure is political failure. I have never been able to convince the American people that I am a strong, powerful leader.”
Despite the difficulties he faced in office, Carter had few rivals for his accomplishments as a former president. He gained a global reputation as a tireless advocate for human rights, a voice for the disenfranchised, a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, and earned the respect that eluded him in the White House.
Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election observation delegations to polls around the world.
A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since his teens, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency, speaking openly about his religious faith. He also sought to bring some pomp to the increasingly imperial presidency, walking rather than taking a limousine in his 1977 inauguration procession.
The Middle East was the focus of Carter's (NYSE:) foreign policy. The 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David Accords, ended the state of war between the two neighbors.
Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland for talks. Later, when the agreements appeared to be collapsing, Carter saved the day by traveling to Cairo and Jerusalem to conduct personal shuttle diplomacy.
The treaty stipulated Israel's withdrawal from the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and the establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat both won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.
By the 1980 election, the dominant issues were inflation exceeding 10%, interest rates exceeding 20%, soaring gas prices, and the hostage crisis in Iran that brought America humiliation. These issues marred Carter's presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term.
Hostage crisis
On November 4, 1979, revolutionaries loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the American embassy in Tehran, detained the Americans present and demanded the return of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was supported by the United States and was being treated in Iran. American hospital.
Initially, American public opinion rallied behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, and eight American soldiers were killed in a plane accident in the Iranian desert.
Carter's final infamy was that Iran held the 52 hostage until minutes after Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981, to replace Carter, and then released the planes carrying them to freedom.
In another crisis, Carter protested the former Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also asked the US Senate to postpone consideration of a major nuclear arms agreement with Moscow.
The Soviets were unaffected, and remained in Afghanistan for a decade.
Carter narrowly won Senate approval in 1978 for a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to Panama's control despite critics who said the waterway was vital to American security. He also ended negotiations on full US relations with China.
Carter created two new departments in the US Cabinet: Education and Energy. With gas prices soaring, he said America's “energy crisis” was the “moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace environmentalism. “Our country is the most extravagant nation on earth,” he told Americans in 1977.
In 1979, Carter gave what became known as his “feel-good” speech to the nation, although he never used the word.
“After listening to the American people, I am reminded once again that all the legislation in the world cannot fix what is wrong with America,” he said in his televised speech.
“The threat is almost invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the heart, soul and soul of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future threatens to destroy the social community.” and the political fabric of America.”
As president, Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his hard-drinking younger brother, Billy Carter, who bragged, “I got red neck, white stockings, and Blue Ribbon beer.”
“There you go again”
Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980, but waned politically before his general election battle against a powerful Republican opponent.
Reagan, a conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during their debates before the November 1980 election.
“There you go again,” Reagan told Carter dismissively, when the Republican challenger felt the president had misrepresented Reagan's views during a debate.
Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who won 44 of the 50 states and won a landslide victory in the Electoral College.
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and store owner. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to run the family peanut farming business.
He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, a union he described as “the most important thing in my life.” They had three sons and a daughter.
Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator, and governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. He made an underdog bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, and beat out rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election.
With Walter Mondale as Vice President, Carter got a boost from Ford's big mistake during one of their debates. Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration,” despite decades of such domination.
Carter edged Ford in the election, although Ford actually won more states – 27 to Carter's 23.
Not all of Carter's post-presidential work was appreciated. Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, both Republicans, were said to have been displeased with Carter's independent diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.
In 2004, Carter described Bush Jr.'s 2003 Iraq War as one of the “most dangerous mistakes our nation has ever made.” He called the George W. Bush administration “the worst in history” and said Vice President Dick Cheney was “a disaster for our country.”
In 2019, Carter questioned Republican Donald Trump's legitimacy as president, saying: “He was put in office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump responded by calling Carter a “terrible president.”
Carter also made trips to communist North Korea. A 1994 visit defused the nuclear crisis, with President Kim Il Sung agreeing to freeze his nuclear program in exchange for resuming dialogue with the United States. This led to an agreement under which North Korea promised, in exchange for assistance, not to restart its nuclear reactor or reprocess the plant's spent fuel.
But Carter angered the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton by announcing the agreement with the North Korean leader without first checking with Washington.
In 2010, Carter succeeded in freeing an American who had been sentenced to eight years in prison with hard labor for illegally entering North Korea.
Carter wrote more than twenty books, ranging from presidential memoirs to children's books and poetry, as well as works on religious faith and diplomacy. His book, “Faith: A Journey for Everyone,” was published in 2018.
(Reporting and writing by Will Dunham; Additional reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Bill Trott, Diane Kraft and Lisa Shoemaker)
