The former US president recovered from the economic failure of his mandate with a later life dedicated to crisis resolution
Former US President Jimmy Carter (Plains, Georgia, 1924), winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his legacy as an international mediator, promoter of electoral observation missions in various countries around the world, leaves a somewhat unusual legacy, more notable for his activities outside the White House than for a single mandate as brief (1977-1981) as tumultuous, marked mainly by the devastating economic crisis that the United States suffered throughout the 1970s.
Carter, heir to a wealthy family from Georgia and a graduate of the Naval Academy, ran for the 1976 presidential elections as a moderate and technocratic Democrat due to his education as an engineer, who connected with Americans by defining himself as an honest man in response to the The discontent generated by the Watergate scandal during the Richard Nixon era and the Vietnam War.
In the end, the election against Gerald Ford, recalls the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), was the closest in 60 years: the Democrat Carter was proclaimed president with 50.1 percent of the popular votes and 297 electoral votes corresponding to 23 states, while Ford lost the game with 48 percent of the popular votes, 240 electoral votes and 27 states to his account. Carter swept the southern states, which had not produced a president since the election of Zachary Taylor in 1848.
As soon as he took office, he pushed through a series of initiatives to pull the country out of recession through the so-called Economic Stimulus Appropriations Act, which ultimately proved ineffective: despite a decline in unemployment, the rising cost of living due to the rise in oil prices ended up swallowing up any further initiatives from his administration.
He also partially deregulated the airline, railroad and trucking industries and established the Departments of Education and Energy, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He designated large tracts of land in Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges, appointed a record number of women and racial minorities to federal posts, and, though he never managed to secure a Supreme Court nomination, he did elevate civil rights lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the nation’s second-highest court, with a view to her eventual promotion in 1993.
None of this mattered to American voters in the late 1980s. Inflation eventually soared into double digits, and it took only one more failure, this time in foreign policy, to put the final nail in his coffin. His darkest hour came when eight Americans died in a botched hostage rescue at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in April 1980, cementing his crushing defeat to his Republican rival, Ronald Reagan.
That an international crisis ended up destroying his re-election aspirations contrasts with the successes achieved in this area during his mandate, such as the treaties on the Panama Canal, the Camp David Peace Accords (peace treaty between Egypt and Israel), the SALT II treaty with the USSR and the establishment of diplomatic relations with China.
POST-PRESIDENTIAL LEGACY
Outside the White House, Carter soon began a career as an international mediator. Encouraged by the negotiations he sponsored at Camp David for 13 days in 1978 between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, he ended up founding in 1982 the Carter Presidential Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to issues related to democracy and Human Rights.
The former president began working as an independent negotiator and setting up election observation missions in countries with a history of fraudulent voting processes, such as Panama, Nicaragua, Bangladesh, Zambia, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela or Mexico.
Carter was involved, recalls Professor Robert Strong for the Miller Center for Political Studies, in mediating disputes between the State Department and particularly volatile foreign leaders, including North Korean leader Kim Il Sung or Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
He also worked with Habitat for Humanity International, an organization that works around the world to provide housing for disadvantaged people, as the face of the organization at events in which he was participating until an advanced age, until the coronavirus pandemic greatly limited his public appearances.
NOBEL PRIZE
His involvement in international affairs, however, has not been free of controversy, as he has sometimes deviated from the official line set by successive US administrations and has maintained rapprochements with governments perceived as hostile by Washington.
However, his “tireless efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advance democracy and human rights and promote economic and social development” earned him recognition in 2002 from the Norwegian Committee, which awarded him the Nobel Prize.
“I cannot deny that as a former president I am better than I was as president,” he acknowledged, in a statement supported by statistics. During his term in office, Carter obtained an average approval rating of 45.5 percent, according to the Gallup firm, but in 2009 a CNN poll raised the approval rating for his administration to 64 percent, now in retrospect.
Former US President Jimmy Carter Dies at 100
Former US President Jimmy Carter died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 100, the Carter Center has confirmed.
“Our founder and former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family,” the Carter Center said in a statement.
Carter, born on October 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia, was president from 1977 to 1981 as a candidate for the Democratic Party.
In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his initiatives “to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, promote democracy and human rights and foster economic and social development.”
