Former President Jimmy Carter Dead at 100

James Earl Carter, 39th president of the United States, is dead at the age of 100. The Carter Center announced his passing on X: 

Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia. pic.twitter.com/aqYmcE9tXi

— The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) December 29, 2024

Carter had been under hospice care since Feb. 2023 after reports that melanoma had spread to his liver and brain. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, predeceased him in November of that year. 

One of the more unlikely candidates to ascend to the presidency, Carter worked his way up from state senator in Georgia to governor and then the presidency. He did this all with his own brand of disarming down-home charm and tireless hands-on campaigning. 

A product of the rural peanut farming community of Plains, Ga., he became a nuclear engineer in the Navy. There, he became a great admirer of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the driving force behind the creation of America's nuclear submarine fleet. Carter said Rickover was one of the greatest influences on his life after his parents.

Carter's first attempts at elected office were challenging. After enduring what he believed to be campaign fraud by local party bosses, he eventually prevailed in a legal challenge, and the Georgia legislature seated him.

In the wake of President Richard Nixon's resignation and his subsequent pardon by President Gerald Ford, the stars seemed aligned for a Democrat election rebound in 1976. Sen. George McGovern had gone down to a record-setting electoral defeat in 1972, winning only Massachusets, with Republicans successfully painting Democrats as the party of  "amnesty, acid and abortion."

In his 1976 campaign book, "Why Not The Best?" Carter seemed to offer a change from Washington's politics as usual. He ran as a clean-cut politician with a campaign promise: "I'll never lie to you." His challenge to President Gerald Ford was given a tailwind by a split within the Republican Party over keeping the unelected Ford as the party standard bearer or nominating Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. While Ford prevailed in a close-fought convention, he fumbled in the debates with Carter and alienated key voters in New York State as New York City faced bankruptcy, all while inflation had hurt the economy nationwide.

Carter seemed the perfect antidote to the Republican southern strategy Richard Nixon had perfected and was able to resurrect the traditional Democrat coalition of Southern states and Northern big cities to be elected.

Once in office, his popularity gradually began to fade, partly because of his drift to the Left. He supported the legalization of abortion by the courts, and his first act in office was to pardon all Vietnam War draft dodgers. In some ways, it was the McGovern agenda without the McGovern political baggage. His aides were often inexperienced in Washington's ways, and like the only other engineer elected president, Herbert Hoover, Carter had an unfounded faith in his ability to both lead and micromanage his administration.

While in office, he created the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. In a hotly contested decision, he gave away the American-built Panama Canal. He faced an energy crisis sparked by war in the Middle East and an Arab oil embargo, which Carter called the "moral equivalent of war." 

But critics saw his address to the nation on the energy crisis while wearing a sweater as a sign of weakness in American global leadership. He seemed to ask Americans to get by with less and lower national expectations. In a struggling economy, he provided the equivalent of $11 billion to bail out a failing Chrysler Corporation as Japanese car imports flooded the struggling American automobile market.

In his famous "malaise speech" towards the end of his term, he epitomized the economic malaise the nation was experiencing under his leadership with high gas prices, inflation, and slow economic growth. 

Outspoken in his Christian faith, Carter was one of the few modern presidents to be so open about his religious beliefs. While in office, his mother, Lillian, brother Billy, and sisters, Gloria and Ruth, became widely known to the country. Ruth Carter Stapleton was an evangelist, Gloria Carter Spann a motorcycle rights advocate, and Billy, who ran the family peanut farm, was the seemingly laid-back beer-drinking opposite of his more straight-laced brother. All his siblings would eventually succumb to pancreatic cancer.

Carter's crowning foreign policy achievement was inviting President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David in September 1978. This resulted in Egypt recognizing Israel and the establishment of elected governments in the West Bank and Gaza. It was an historic agreement in a seemingly intractable conflict. Both foreign leaders faced criticism at home and won the Nobel Prize due to Carter's insistence that they not depart Camp David despite a complete deadlock. Agreeing to remain, they eventually reached an agreement. A few years later, Sadat was assassinated by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Two decades later, Carter would receive the Nobel Prize for his lifetime efforts for peace.  

The overthrow of the Shah in Iran was the low point of Carter's foreign policy. In the end, the U.S. embassy was sacked, and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. A small covert military attempt to free the hostages ended in disaster as rescue helicopters collided and crashed in the desert.

Despite having Democrat control of both houses of Congress, Carter had rocky, if not stormy, relationships with House Speaker Tip O'Neill and Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kennedy had not pursued the White House in the wake of the Chappaquiddick scandal, but he now saw his chance with a weakened Carter. Kennedy's failed primary challenge, followed by the most tepid of endorsements, did not help Carter's sagging popularity.

The perception of America as a helpless giant dogged Carter's last years in office and set the stage for his defeat in 1980. Washington was utterly shocked that Gov. Ronald Reagan, a conservative former actor, had unseated him. While Carter's folksy ways had endeared him to voters in 1976, the lack of results, the poor economy, and the very "malaise" Carter had lamented likely lost him the election in 1980.

After leaving office, Carter lived longer and was an ex-president longer than any of his predecessors. He focused on various charities such as Habitat for Humanity, where he would be seen pitching in to help build thousands of homes. He also founded the Carter Center, a non-governmental organization that advances human rights. A key area he focused on was monitoring election integrity in Third World countries. 

Carter was married for 77 years to Rosalynn Carter, one of his key political advisors and advocates. When asked what the key to such a long life was, Carter said, "I think the best explanation for that is to marry the best spouse: someone who will take care of you and engage and do things to challenge you and keep you alive and interested in life.” The Carters are survived by their four children: Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy Lynn.