As a conservative Republican, I did not vote for President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and often disagreed with his policies and public statements. But I have far more respect for Carter than I do for most politicians—of either party. Indeed, it is hard to think of another political leader with such an abiding commitment to his Christian faith, integrity, courage, hard work, and helping others. Whether serving in the U.S. Navy, on the Sumter County School Board, in the state legislature, as governor, president, the head of the Carter Center, or Sunday School teacher, Carter has given his entire wonderful life to the service of others. Like his policies or not, he has conducted himself with grace and honor.
And there is much to admire about so many Carter policies and pronouncements. As Georgia’s first non-segregationist governor, he declared that “the time for racial discrimination is over,” placed a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the state capitol and named a record number of black Georgians to public office. He streamlined state government by combining a lot of departments and agencies, improved state prisons and, with his wife Rosalynn’s help, reformed Georgia’s mental hospitals.
As president, he was a great environmentalist for protecting more land from development than any other president. Over the opposition of many in his own party, he deregulated banks, railroads, trucks, and airlines, which enabled far more Americans to afford to fly.
Former President Jimmy Carter departs after the funeral service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter at Maranatha Baptist Church, in Plains, Georgia, on Nov. 29.
ALEX BRANDON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
In foreign policy, he repeatedly tackled seemingly intractable challenges that his predecessors avoided. He got the Panama Canal Treaties, giving back what was seen as a colonial possession, which improved U.S. relations with Latin America. Through tireless personal diplomacy, he got the Camp David Peace Accords, which have kept the peace between Israel and Egypt since 1979. He got the U.S. to live up to its creed of freedom by strongly pushing for more human rights for everyone around the world, including our allies. This gave Latin Americans tremendous hope and helped inspire the region’s dramatic move to democracy in the 1980s. Carter also signed the SALT II nuclear arms control treaty with the Soviet Union to put some brakes on the Cold War arms race.
Daring to pursue yet another major controversial policy initiative he believed would help the entire world, in 1979 Carter became the first U.S. president to normalize relations with communist China and even hosted Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping at the White House. Carter and Deng began supplying the guerrillas fighting the Russian Army’s cruel occupation of Afghanistan. With U.S. and Chinese help, the Russians withdrew from the country in 1989. Carter and Deng also began what became the enormous Sino-American trade that has benefitted both economies tremendously.
Throughout his presidency from 1977 to 1981, the U.S. never bombed, fired at, or invaded anyone anywhere in the world, and Carter led a scrupulously honest administration free of any significant scandal. How many presidents can say anything like that about theirs?
As a retired president since 1981, for four decades Carter traveled the world to push for peace; to make sure elections were conducted fairly; to promote human rights; to assist agricultural and economic development in the developing world; to save so many lives in Africa through vaccination; and to build homes for poor people in America—even in his 90s after beating brain cancer.
Carter did so much to help people on the macro and micro levels. Long after retiring from elective politics, he still visited poor families with fruit, hosted disadvantaged children in his home and played tennis with them, and helped get a public pool in 1998 for impoverished southwest Georgia black children. He and Rosalynn Carter were even there when it opened to swim with them.
The three best Sunday School experiences of my life were in Carter’s classes at Plains, Georgia’s Maranatha Baptist Church. Arriving only with his Bible, he would eagerly ask where everyone was from, commenting on his connection to each location. He then updated us on his and Mrs. Carter’s latest travels before reading scripture, giving his lesson for the day, and concluding with prayer. After the service, he and Rosalynn patiently stood for photographs and shook hands with all of us.
Whatever policy differences we may have had with President Carter—and I had many—can any of us honestly say that our politics and government would not be dramatically better if even a fourth of our leaders had the faith, vision, work ethic, and decency of Jimmy Carter? He truly is that rare great man of history who is genuinely good. Tremendous thanks, a very well-deserved happy 100th birthday, and may God bless you, kind sir.
Dr. Douglas Young is a political science professor emeritus who taught government and history for over 33 years and whose essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications in America, Canada, and Europe. His first novel, Deep in the Forest, was published in 2021 and the second, Due South, came out in 2022. His first book of essays, This Little Opinion Plus $1.50 Will Buy You a Coke: A Collection of Essays, appeared in 2024.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
