Former US president Jimmy Carter dies at 100

Washington: America has lost its oldest former president. Jimmy Carter, who dedicated his post-politics life to charity, has died in Georgia, two months after fulfilling his wish to vote for Kamala Harris at the 2024 US election.

Carter’s death at 100 came just over a year after the death of his childhood sweetheart and wife, Rosalynn, in November 2023.

Former US president Jimmy Carter in 1993.

His death came after he opted to begin palliative care at his home in February 2023 instead of receiving additional medical intervention. The decision followed a series of brief hospital stays as his health deteriorated, requiring him to use a wheelchair to get around.

“I just heard of the news about the passing of president Jimmy Carter,” President-elect Donald Trump wrote on social media. Trump will return to the White House next month after defeating Harris in November’s election.

“Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as President understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the Greatest Nation in History. The challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.”

Carter in 2009 celebrating his 85th birthday at the reopening of the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta.Credit: The Carter Centre

Carter was a former peanut farmer, engineer and Georgia governor who climbed the ranks of state and federal politics to become the United States’ 39th president. The Democrat served in the White House from 1977 to 1981, but was defeated after one term by Republican Ronald Reagan.

During his tenure, he sought to restore trust in government following the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Another highlight of his presidential term was the Egypt-Israel peace deal signed in 1979, which formally ended the state of war between the two countries.

But Carter’s tenure also coincided with a string of domestic and foreign policy challenges, from high inflation and soaring cost of living pressures, to a siege at the US embassy in Iran in which 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage by a group of militarised Iranian college students.

His life after politics, however, was dedicated to humanitarian work and peacekeeping efforts, earning Carter wide acclaim and contributing to him winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

As Gunnar Berge, a member of the Nobel committee, said at the time: “Jimmy Carter will probably not go down in American history as the most effective president. But he is certainly the best ex-president the country ever had.”

Two months before becoming a centenarian in October, Carter told son Chip he wanted to reach his 100th birthday so he could vote for Harris, hoping she would become president. On Sunday, Harris said: “I had the privilege of knowing president Carter for years. I will always remember his kindness, wisdom and profound grace. His life and legacy continue to inspire me – and will inspire generations to come. Our world is a better place because of president Carter.”

After leaving the White House, the former president and his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, lived in the home they built in Plains, Georgia, the southern US hometown where they met as children. Theirs is a story of enduring love: for much of his life, when asked to recount the greatest decision he ever made, Carter would often reply: “Asking Rosalynn to marry me.”

Despite retreating from public life recently, particularly during the global pandemic, Carter continued to speak out about the threat to democracy, which had long been a passion.

In a 2023 New York Times article before the anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Carter warned that the US “teeters on the brink of a widening abyss” and that “without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy”.

Jimmy Carter and then-senator Joe Biden in 1978.Credit: AP

A devout Christian, Carter also spent decades teaching Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown.

He also shared a longstanding connection to Joe Biden, who was one of the first senators to endorse Carter’s presidency in 1976.

Biden and wife Jill said Carter was “a man of great character and courage, hope and optimism”.

“We will always cherish seeing him and Rosalynn together. The love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism.”

Carter left office profoundly unpopular but worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter pictured at an NFL football game in Atlanta in 2018.Credit: AP

Carter was a centrist as governor of Georgia with populist tendencies when he moved into the White House. He was a Washington outsider at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that led Nixon to resign as president in 1974 and elevated Gerald Ford from vice president.

“I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president. I will never lie to you,” Carter promised voters with an ear-to-ear smile.

Asked to assess his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: “The biggest failure we had was a political failure. I never was able to convince the American people that I was a forceful and strong leader.”

Despite his difficulties in office, Carter had few rivals for accomplishments as a former president. He gained global acclaim as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House.

Carter promoted human rights and resolved conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Centre in Atlanta sent international election-monitoring delegations to polls around the world.

Carter with Israel’s Menachem Begin (left) and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat during their peace talks at Camp David in 1978.Credit: AP

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 take some pomp out of an increasingly imperial presidency – walking, rather than riding in a limousine, in his 1977 inauguration parade.

The Middle East was the focus of Carter’s foreign policy. The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David accords, ended a state of war between the two neighbours.

Carter brought then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland for talks. Later, as the accords seemed to be unravelling, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy.

The treaty provided for Israel’s withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and the establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat both won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

By the 1980 US election, the overriding issues were double-digit inflation, interest rates that exceeded 20 per cent and soaring petrol prices, as well as the Iran hostage crisis that humiliated America. These issues marred Carter’s presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term.

Hostage crisis

On November 4, 1979, revolutionaries devoted to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the US embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans present and demanded the return of the ousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was backed by the US and being treated in an American hospital.

American hostages are paraded in Tehran in 1979 after the US embassy was stormed by Iranian militants.Credit: Getty Images

The American public initially rallied behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, and eight American soldiers died in an aircraft accident in the Iranian desert.

Carter’s final ignominy was that Iran held the 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan took his oath of office on January 20, 1981, to replace Carter, then released the planes carrying the hostages to freedom.

In another crisis, Carter protested against the former Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the United States’ involvement in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

He also asked the US Senate to defer consideration of a major nuclear arms accord with Moscow.

Unswayed, the Soviets remained in Afghanistan for a decade.

Carter won narrow Senate approval in 1978 of a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to the control of Panama despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also completed negotiations on full US ties with China.

Carter created two new US cabinet departments, education and energy.

Amid high petrol prices, he said America’s “energy crisis” was “the moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace conservation. “Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth,” he told Americans in 1977.

In 1979, Carter delivered what became known as his “malaise” speech to the nation, although he never used that word.

“After listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,” he said in his televised address.

“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.

“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”

As president, the strait-laced Carter was embarrassed by the behaviour of his hard-drinking younger brother, Billy Carter, who had boasted: “I got a red neck, white socks and Blue Ribbon beer.”

Loss to Reagan

Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, but was politically diminished heading into his general election battle against Reagan, a vigorous Republican adversary.

Reagan, the conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during their debates before the election.

Carter and Ronald Reagan shake hands before their presidential debate in 1980.Credit: AP

Reagan dismissively told Carter, “There you go again” when the Republican challenger felt the president had misrepresented Reagan’s views during one debate.

In the election, Reagan won 44 of the 50 states and amassed an Electoral College landslide.

From Georgia

James Earl Carter Jr was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and shopkeeper. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to manage the family peanut farming business.

He married Rosalynn in 1946, and later called the union “the most important thing in my life”. They had three sons and a daughter.

Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator and Georgia’s governor from 1971 to 1975. He mounted an underdog bid for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, and out-hustled his rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election.

Carter waves to the crowd while walking with wife Rosalynn (right) and daughter Amy from the Capitol to the White House on his 1977 inauguration day.Credit: AP

With Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate, Carter was given a boost by a major Ford gaffe 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, even though Ford actually won 27 states 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 by Carter’s freelance diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.

Carter’s death leaves the US with five surviving presidents; incumbent Biden is the oldest of the group at 82.

With Reuters

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