In the lives of public figures, a story often prevails and that narrative becomes their story.
In the case of Jimmy Carter, it goes like this: A humble peanut farmer and former governor of Georgia defies extraordinary odds and wins the White House through a combination of virtue, decency, and a post-Watergate political purge.
Over the next four years he is overwhelmed and overwhelmed by inflation and the Iranian Ayatollah. He scolds his compatriots and wears a sweater like a hair shirt. He is attacked by a “killer rabbit” and loses his re-election – in a landslide in the Electoral College – to the lively and boastful Ronald Reagan.
But then, in a grand and noble second act, the former president travels the world spreading goodness, peace and light while helping to provide safe, affordable housing for those in need and combating the twin scourges of poverty and disease.
There is much that is correct about this report. But it also leaves out a lot and distorts some of the rest.
“There was this easy shortcut about him that actually does a disservice to the complex truth,” said Jonathan Alter, a political journalist and author of the 2020 biography “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life.”
In Alter's considered judgment, Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, was “an underappreciated and underappreciated president and a correspondingly valued but slightly overrated former president.”
Politics is a zero-sum profession whose bottom line is written in black and white. You either win or lose.
“If you're president and you lose a second term — that's the definition of failure in our system,” said Les Francis, a California Democratic strategist who worked in the Carter White House and his two presidential campaigns.
Francis, now retired in the Sierra foothills, is well aware of the narrative of Carter – lousy president, saintly ex-president – and responded to the mention in a tone that mixed weariness with resignation.
“It upsets those of us who worked for him,” Francis said, “and I know it upset him because it ignores the essential achievements of his presidency.”
This includes doubling the national park system; the first national legislation to promote green energy; major reforms in public service and government ethics; creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the Middle East peace agreement between Egypt and Israel; normalization of relations with China; and steps that contributed to the end of the Soviet Union.
In their most recent poll, released in February, presidential historians ranked Carter's performance 22nd among the nation's 46 presidencies. To give some perspective, Abraham Lincoln was the first and Donald Trump was the last.
Of course, there were many reasons why Carter lost re-election in 1980.
A tough primary challenge from the liberal leviathan, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
The toxic mix of high inflation and high unemployment called “stagflation.”
Gas pipes.
The Iranian hostage crisis and in particular a failed rescue attempt that ended in ruins and humiliation in the country Great salt desert.
Carter also had a self-righteousness that could seem stiff and hypocritical, a trait he displayed even in his good works after he left the White House.
“As a former president, he sometimes acted as a kind of freelance secretary of state and did some things that didn't seem so great in retrospect to make life more difficult for his successors,” Alter said. “I think he let his own ego get in the way a little bit at times.”
The body language on these occasions, where Carter sat alongside past and present presidents, was revealing. He stood in the middle of them, but always seemed somehow separated.
“There’s this easy shortcut about him that actually doesn’t do the complex truth any favors.”
—Jonathan Alter, Carter biographer
At heart, Carter was a fundamentally good and caring man who lived his Christian faith and whose honesty and personal honesty set an example for those who followed him to the Oval Office.
(His survival of more than a year after being admitted to hospice and refusing further medical treatment was both moving and surprising. Carter's last public appearance was in late November at the funeral of his wife Rosalyn, two days after she was admitted to hospice died at the age of 96.)
In 1976, during the presidential campaign, there was a stir when Carter told Playboy magazine that he “looked at a lot of women with lust.” I have often committed adultery in my heart.”
The controversy seems strange now compared to the convicted Trump's 2016 boast about grabbing women “by the pussy” and getting away with it. It's just one example of how low our politics have sunk, and it casts some of the criticisms of Carter in a new light.
Maybe being a micromanager and being a bit uptight weren't so terrible after all.
After news broke that Carter had been admitted to hospice, writer and GOP political consultant Stuart Stevens was one of many who offered a public reassessment of the former president.
“The first article I published in a national magazine was a scathing article … calling Jimmy Carter a failure,” Stevens said on Twitter, as the website was called at the time. “Looking back, my complacency was disgusting. I can't imagine he read it, and if he did I'm sure he wouldn't care, but I wish I had found a way to apologize.”
In a follow-up email, Stevens said his original post was “from the perspective of a Southerner who found Carter embarrassing.” Not in the political sense, but just in his manner and approach.
“There was no appreciation,” Stevens said, “for the basic decency of a man trying to do what he thought was right.”
In the summer of 1984, after his forced exit from the White House, Carter paid a return visit to Washington.
It was a rarity. The former president was never particularly popular in the Beltway, and the feeling was mutual.
But like a dutiful Democratic soldier, Carter presided over a reception and chicken dinner to raise money for his former vice president Walter Mondale as Mondale prepared to accept the party's presidential nomination. (And, as it turned out, the opportunity to be buried in another Reagan landslide a few months later.)
After leadership passed from the former president to his deputy, Mondale gave a laudatory summary of the Carter administration. “We told the truth,” he said. “We obeyed the law and kept the peace. And that’s not a bad thing.”
Not bad at all.