Throughout my career, the Republican Party seemed to be pitted against Jimmy Carter. From my days as a rookie reporter in Texas, beginning in the middle of his single term, to my years in Washington covering presidencies and presidential campaigns in the new century, Republicans made Carter's name synonymous with failure and attached it to every Democratic candidate an albatross around the president's neck, all the way to the top Joe Biden.
“Another Jimmy Carter,” Republicans would growl about almost any Democrat. Or worse than Carter: Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, tweeted in 2022 that “Jimmy Carter has a defamation case against anyone who compares him to Joe Biden.”
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes takes a critical look at the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
In death, however, Carter will be celebrated by Republican leaders and Democrats as he returns to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda ahead of his state funeral on Thursday. “Whether he was in the White House or in the years following his presidency, Jimmy Carter was willing to roll up his sleeves to get the job done.” praised House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana who was just four years old when Carter won in 1976.
Don't speak ill of the dead, goes a time-honored saying. But Carter didn't have to die before some historians and biographers, if not Republicans, began to view his presidency more positively. The centenarian lived long enough to read and even contribute a justifiably kinder account of his time in office.
Such revisionist history is not uncommon for US presidents. Polls showed that Harry Truman was popular with less than 30% of Americans at the end of his term, and George HW Bush's rating fell even further before voters rejected him in favor of Bill Clinton. But both Truman and Bush have rightly become more popular among history administrators of late.
In the Ranking 2024 In the list of presidents by more than 150 historians, Truman was sixth of the 45 presidents and Bush was 19th, well ahead of his two-year-old son George W. Bush, No. 32. George W. told us reporters on his campaign plane that history would be kind to his father, even if the voters hadn't. At least I agreed with him on that. But I also thought (rightly) that time would not significantly improve his own reputation. (In last place in the ranking: the newly re-elected President, Donald Trump.)
And Carter? In 2024, he was ranked 22nd, four spots higher than his previous rankings in 2015 and 2018, putting him right in the middle of the presidential field. Additionally, Carter was ranked “the most underrated president.” HW Bush came third and Biden sixth in this category.
Biden, who will eulogize Carter at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday, just 11 days before he leaves the presidency, can take some comfort in the record of revisionism. Perhaps.
He ranked 14th among presidents in 2024, a respectable ranking that reflects the legislative successes of his first two years and his restoration of normalcy after Trump's norm-breaking. “One of the best one-term presidents in American history,” presidential researcher Mark K. Updegrove said recently wrote. But Biden's reputation could well suffer given his difficulties over the past two years, particularly his stubborn insistence on running for re-election – despite his previous announcement that he would be “a bridge” to younger Democrats – until it was obvious Four years later he was no longer up to speed and his party pushed him out of the race.
For Carter, the narrative's decades-long shorthand — failed one-term president but an exemplary ex-president given his global humanitarian and diplomatic achievements — was changed (no pun intended, biographer). Jonathan Alter). He now receives justifiable credit for the consistent successes he achieved in his four years in the White House, as he was otherwise beset by crises, largely inherited or inflicted, including high inflation, a global energy crisis and Soviet militancy.
To the foreign front: Carter brokered the Camp David Accords for peace between Israel and Egypt. He built on Richard Nixon's opening to China to fully normalize relations. He negotiated the Panama Canal Treaty, which gave control of the passage to Panama and resolved a long-standing dispute between the United States and Latin America – a legacy that Trump has now left behind threatens. And he established human rights as a pillar of international politics.
At home: Carter signed the first power of attorney Energy policy Law, with visionary incentives for greater energy efficiency and alternatives to fossil fuels. He paid attention to consumer friendliness deregulation the aviation, trucking and alcohol industries. He appointed more women and minorities in federal judgeships than ever before. And he was the trailblazer after Watergate Ethics reforms to address the abuses of power that brought down Nixon and undermined Americans' trust in government.
As an age wrote in Time magazine after Carter's death on December 29: “His presidency – marked by a terrible economy, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure of American hostages in Iran – was a stunning political failure but a greater substantive success than his was credited with Time recognized.” was ousted for re-election by Ronald Reagan in 1980.”
Failure to seek re-election almost always counts against a president throughout history. Carter contributed to his own defeat with his penchant for prickly self-righteousness. He “proved himself a better statesman and worse politician than anyone could have expected.” said Peter Jay, the astute British ambassador to the United States in Carter's time.
I saw a little of his bad side. During one Interview 2001 At the Carter Center about an election reform commission that he and his Republican rival and friend Gerald R. Ford led after the disputed 2000 presidential election, Carter spoke harshly about a Democratic enemy of his presidency, the Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill – speaking of nothing and years after O'Neill's death and Carter's departure from office.
But such shortcomings and the problems they caused Carter were offset by his strengths and the successes he achieved – as even (some) Republicans eventually recognized.