By Will Dunham and Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jimmy Carter, the earnest Georgia peanut farmer who as U.S. president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday, the Carter Center said. He was 100 years old.
“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights and selfless love,” said Chip Carter, son of the former president. “My brothers, sister and I shared it with the rest of the world through these shared beliefs. The world is our family because of the way it brought people together, and we thank you for honoring its memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
A Democrat, he served as president from January 1977 to January 1981 after defeating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford (NYSE: ) in the 1976 US election. Carter was ousted from office four years later in a landslide as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, a former actor and California governor.
Carter lived longer after his term than any other American president. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a better ex-president than he was – a status he readily acknowledged.
His one-term presidency was marked by the highlights of the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, which brought some stability to the Middle East. But he was dogged by a recessionary economy, persistent unpopularity and the embarrassment of the Iran hostage crisis that consumed his last 444 days in office.
In recent years, Carter has had several health problems including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain. In February 2023, Carter chose to receive hospice care rather than undergo additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on November 19, 2023, aged 96. He looked frail as he attended her memorial service and funeral in a wheelchair.
Carter left office extremely unpopular, but he worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “tireless efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advance democracy and human rights, and promote economic and social development.”
As governor of Georgia, Carter was a centrist with populist tendencies when he moved into the White House as the 39th US president. He was a Washington outsider at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that led Republican Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency in 1974 and elevated Ford from the vice presidency.
“I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president. I’ll never lie to you,” Carter promised with a smile from ear to ear.
Asked to evaluate his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: “The biggest failure we had was a political failure. I never got around to convincing the American people that I was a powerful and strong leader.”
Despite the difficulties in office, Carter had few rivals for his achievements as a former president. He gained global recognition as a tireless advocate for human rights, a voice for the disenfranchised, and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, gaining the respect that had 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 polling stations around the world.
A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since his teenage years, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency, speaking openly about his religious faith. He also sought to take some of the pomp out of the increasingly imperious presidency — walking, rather than riding in a limousine, in his 1977 inauguration parade.
The Middle East was at the center of Carter’s (NYSE: ) foreign policy. The 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace accord, 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 presidential residence Camp David in Maryland for talks. Later, when the deals seemed to unravel, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy.
The treaty provided for the withdrawal of Israel from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and the establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.
By the 1980 election, the main problems were double-digit inflation, interest rates that exceeded 20% and soaring gas prices, as well as the Iranian hostage crisis that brought humiliation to America. These issues marred Carter’s presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term.
HOSTAGE CRISIS
On November 4, 1979, revolutionaries loyal to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, captured the Americans present, and demanded the return of deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was being supported by the United States and was being treated in an American hospital.
The American public initially stood behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when commandos failed to rescue hostages and eight American soldiers died in a plane crash in the Iranian desert.
Carter’s final embarrassment was that Iran held 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan was sworn in to replace Carter on January 20, 1981, and then released the planes carrying them.
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 delay consideration of a major nuclear arms deal with Moscow.
Undeterred, the Soviets remained in Afghanistan for a decade.
In 1978, Carter won narrow Senate support for an agreement to transfer the Panama Canal to Panamanian control despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also completed negotiations on full US-China integration.
Carter created two new US cabinet departments – education and energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America’s “energy crisis” is the “moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace conservation. “Our nation is the most wasteful nation in the world,” he told Americans in 1977.
In 1979, Carter gave what became known as his “weakness” speech to the nation, although he never used the word.
“After listening to the American people I was once again reminded that all the laws in the world cannot fix what is wrong with America,” he said in his televised address.
“The threat is almost invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart, soul and spirit of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future threatens to destroy the social and political fabric of America.”
As president, the laid-back Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his hard-drinking younger brother, Billy Carter, who boasted, “I got a red neck, white socks and Blue Ribbon beer.”
‘HERE YOU AGAIN’
Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980, but was politically weakened heading into his general election battle against a strong Republican opponent.
Reagan, a conservative who projected an image of strength, threw Carter off balance during their debates before the November 1980 election.
Reagan scornfully told Carter, “There he goes again,” 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 a large number of Electoral College votes.
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and merchant. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and went on to run the family peanut business.
He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, and called that marriage “the most important thing in my life.” They had three sons and a daughter.
Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator, and the governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 and bested his rivals to face Ford in the general election.
With Walter Mondale as his running mate, Carter got a boost from Ford’s big gaffe during one of their debates. Ford said that “there is no Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration,” despite decades of just such dominance.
Carter beat Ford in the election, even though 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 HW Bush, both Republicans, were said to be unhappy with Carter’s freewheeling diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.
In 2004, Carter called the Iraq war launched by the younger Bush in 2003 one of the “most egregious and damaging 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 the legitimacy of Republican Donald Trump 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 traveled to communist North Korea. The 1994 visit defused the nuclear crisis, as President Kim Il Sung agreed to freeze his nuclear program in exchange for continued dialogue with the United States. That led to a deal in which North Korea, in exchange for aid, promised not to restart its nuclear reactor or reprocess the plant’s spent fuel.
But Carter angered Democratic President Bill Clinton’s administration by announcing the deal with North Korea’s leader without first checking with Washington.
In 2010, Carter won the release of an American sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korea.
Carter has written more than two dozen 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 All” was published in 2018.
(Reporting and writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Bill Trott and Diane Craft)
