Published:  December 30, 2024

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

"We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes - and we must." -- President Jimmy Carter

Introduction

We don't want to lose anyone, to death. Any brother or sister.

But when we lose one of the good ones, like former President Carter, it really hurts. It hurts us, personally, and it hurts our culture and our society.

Now I want to clarify a fundamental misunderstanding about President Carter. When assessments or opinions of this man are sought, a common view might underscore his good heart, but poor performance in office, as president. Indeed, since the coverage of his passing began, I heard someone on the radio remark that President Carter was "...a good man, but a terrible president."

As a so-called Baby Boomer I'm old enough to remember when "The President of the United States" was a big deal. Not because, as now under Donald Trump, he confirmed, justified, and buttressed our own egocentricities, biases, narcissism, unthinking approach to politics and unfeeling approach to people, even to other Americans, but rather the opposite: when the president held, or otherwise represented, good if not excellent character, manifest in personal and professional qualities like honesty, honor, candor, respect, sensitivity, education, wide-ranging knowledge of political, social, cultural, and economic matters, and creative thinking. And when the President held one or more of these qualities--we encouraged our children to admire the president, or certainly didn't discourage it.

When objective assessments of President Carter and the Carter presidency are proffered, it is usually observed that he was ahead of his time, and in support of this assertion the fact of his having put solar panels on the roof of the White House is invariably mentioned.

Notable as well was another strong theme running through President Carter, himself, and thus his governance and administration: continual earnest praise for the American people, starting with our intellect and values, he was certainly always thinking in terms of the best America, the best Americans that we are.

I'd like to proffer yet another way in which President Carter was clearly ahead of his time, that I've never heard anyone mention, nor would they, as there is no permanent, substantive, or explicit focus on Brotherly Love among our American chattering class, Fourth Estate, the American citizenry, itself, nor any other grouping or subgrouping, in America, with the possible exception of a random, and likely small, smattering of Christians or Christian groups:

President Carter informed all his actions and affairs of governance with brotherly love. I don't believe he was in the habit of using the term "Love," but it seems clear that this value and principle was what was informing and animating essentially all his actions during, and after, his presidency. A concrete concern for the welfare of people that he made manifest through his various actions whether waging peace between Egypt and Israel while in office, or eradicating guinea worm afterward. "Love" is actually a rubric, a category, a parent concept, consisting of many different attitudes and behaviors, such as compassion, empathy, sympathy, respect, tolerance, patience, mercy, charity, and solicitude (i.e. caring). In other words, all or many of the behaviors shown by Jimmy Carter throughout his Presidency and indeed, his life.

There's one last reason that I esteem President Carter, and it's his assessment of a particular event in recent American politics and history, but an assessment based on values and principles that he obviously held throughout his presidency, likely throughout all of his adult life. Of the January 06, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capital in Washington, he wrote, in The New York times:

"Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss. Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late." -- Jimmy Carter in a New York Times op-ed, Jan. 5, 2022. It is notable that President Carter readily recognized the tripartite significance of that insurrection: 1.) it signaled a catastrophic shift in the general attitude toward America and American government by the citizenry; 2.) it was, itself, an expression of that shift, and 3.) as both, it was vital that the phenomenon be reversed by hook or by crook. Given that so many commentators and politicians, usually those on the right, which pains me as I am on the right, willfully or not completely miss the dire significance of that event, it doesn't surprise me that President Carter fully recognized it, and has alerted us and called us to action.

All things considered, then, I am declaring, here and now, that Jimmy Carter was one of the best presidents this country, and perhaps any country, has ever seen, and this view is based on a judgment, itself based on a set of values that seem to have fallen out of favor in this country, or at least are not exemplified in any way by a recent Republican president: the American values of honesty, concern for neighbor, and view of all Americans as one people.

President Carter, in other words, a man of obvious intellect, was also of exceptional character, thus marking him as a president that our children could admire. A president that we would want our children to look up to; to emulate. And thus is President Carter one of the best presidents this country has ever seen.

Which recent president would you want your children to model themselves after? To emulate?

Trump? Incompetent, crass, narcissistic, ignorant, and dishonest? Clinton? Disgracing the white house and the nation by turning the oval office into a cathouse? Nixon? Committing explicit crimes and lying to the American people?

Obama? Biden? There may have been a loving impulse in these two men; I saw it fairly explicitly in President Biden, as he continually tried to persuade Israel to modulate its military action against gaza and other mideast regions, in the face of the explicit humanitarian nightmare Israel's Netanyahu was causing. But in terms of a kind of definitive purity of heart, that in fact motivated President Carter's humanitarian efforts around the world, resulting, for example, in the near-wholesale eradication of guinea worm in Africa, and he and his wife Rosalynn's work, using the former president's own hammer and tool belt, to "...help to build, renovate or repair 4,447 homes in 14 countries for Habitat for Humanity..." his loving posture toward the world seems unique.

In such purity of heart, manifest in real-world help delivered to real-world persons, I don't know that Jimmy Carter can be beat. And the world agrees, judging by the number of well-wishes and expressions of condolence pouring into the United States, and the Carter Center, specifically.

Even those criticizing his presidency would likely agree that his personal qualities were worthy of admiration and emulation. Where such critics might go wrong, however, would be in asserting that said qualities were unnecessary for a president of the United States.

Because, you see, the high moral standard and referent in question preserved and adhered to was not manifest merely in the presidency of Jimmy Carter--but in Jimmy Carter, himself.

Recommended Resources

The Carter Center