Jimmy Carter was president when I was born. As a squishy infant with limited cognition, I knew nothing about inflation, gas shortages or the Iran hostage crisis. My memories of American politics begin with Ronald Reagan’s steely eyes glinting at me through our color TV. But I heard Carter’s name time to time, sometimes confusing it with Jiminy Cricket from Disney’s “Pinocchio.”
Jiminy Cricket was Pinocchio’s conscience, the small voice that steered him to do right instead of wrong. Over these last four decades, many Americans — including some who voted for Reagan — came to see Jimmy Carter as our nation’s conscience.
It wasn’t just Carter’s famous volunteer work building 4,331 houses for Habitat for Humanity well into his 90s. It was also his quiet insistence on peace in his writing, speeches and diplomatic work. Carter’s legacy became decency, expressed through his apolitical Christian beliefs in forgiveness, charity and God’s lessons for how to live.
Carter died last Sunday at the age of 100, leaving an important vacancy at this crucial time in our history. We need a conscience now more than ever.
In 2012, my wife and I traveled to Atlanta for a conference she was attending. While she conferenced, I went sightseeing. I spent an entire afternoon walking the neighborhoods of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once preached, and the Carter Center, which houses Carter’s presidential library and nonprofit work.
It was a curious experience walking the two miles from Dr. King’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood, past the house where General Sherman conducted the Union siege of Atlanta during the Civil War, to the Carter Center. The journey took me through black and white neighborhoods, past evidence of America’s enormous wealth and progress, but also its failure to address economic suffering and structural racism.
In a sense, this walk was an expedition through Carter’s life, an American century. The first U.S. President born in a hospital, Carter shared air with living Confederate veterans and formerly enslaved people. He entered the U.S. Naval Academy during World War II, becoming a Cold War nuclear engineer and submarine officer.
Carter was a peanut farmer during an age when farming tilted away from families and toward corporations. A reserved, polite man, he threw open the doors of the Georgia Governor’s Mansion for rowdy rock ’n’ rollers like the Allman Brothers (and Hibbing’s own Bob Dylan). He was a born-again Christian who fought racism. He walked with a foot on both sides of today’s culture wars.
On the wall of the Carter Center, a printed statistic clearly brought great pride to Carter. His was the only presidency in which no American lives were lost in armed conflict. It is a stunning fact, one that also explains why people don’t give him much credit. Winning a war makes you a hero. Preserving peace earns you no ticker-tape parades.
A popular sentiment we’ve heard this week is that Carter was “a bad president, but a good ex-president.” Of course, Carter lost his re-election bid in an electoral college landslide after a term in office full of economic and foreign policy turmoil. It’s understandable that he’d be summed up that way. But contemporary views of presidencies are often more emotional than they should be.
The “best” 20th Century president in terms of administrative competence, intelligence and preparation was probably Herbert Hoover. He was a brilliant humanitarian, perhaps the last progressive Republican president. And yet, he goes down in history as the heartless instigator of the Great Depression. That isn’t actually true, though some of his allies shared responsibility. Hoover was overwhelmed by sudden change and couldn’t fix the problem fast enough.
Like Hoover, Carter was tagged with what he himself called the “malaise” of the late 1970s, when the global economic and diplomatic order suddenly shifted at the hands of new players. The gas crisis of those days was a forerunner of a global oil market that continues to hold us hostage. Extremists in the Middle East rose to power, and exploitive foreign policy rose with them. Carter took on these matters earnestly, but he asked for sacrifice and voters weren’t willing.
One thing that separates Carter from more popular presidents, however, was the manner in which he led.
Carter was steady, humble, focused on small gains and peaceful solutions, free of scandal and self-seeking behavior. He was exactly the man elected to clean up the country after Watergate. But his downfall was another fact of American life. Quite often, Americans don’t want what they say they want. They want something else.
Jimmy Carter gave us moral clarity, acceptance, forgiveness and a kind of patriotism that welcomes everyone to wave a flag. It’s not what America wants, then or now. It is, however, what we need. Without him, we must forge this kind of common decency on our own.
Aaron J. Brown is an author and college instructor from northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He writes the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and co-hosts the podcast “Power in the Wilderness” on Northern Community Radio. This piece first appeared in the Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025 edition of the Mesabi Tribune.
Thanks for writing this. I can’t believe how quickly people jump to historical conclusions without much evidence. We are a culture of jumping on the mass media bandwagon–whatever song it happens to be playing at the time. Jimmy Carter was probably 50 years ahead of his time.
You and my daughter are just about the same age, and I have a vivid memory of being upset when Reagan won, and I was holding my baby in that memory. She must have been just about a year old at the time of the election. Apparently there was something in Reagan’s platform or promises that I thought was a threat to my husband’s employment, so I was not happy. Reagan must not have done what he promised because here we are, on the same property, better house.
I remember thinking that maybe Carter was too honest or open, thinking here about the malaise speech. Not enough bluster, apparently. Now we get more bluster than substance, speeches like a hot air in a balloon,
Is it just me, or has the current president elect been bloviating more than most prez elects do in this period of time? I know for sure DT didn’t know much about what was up last time around.
It was good to hear some of the speeches today praising Carter’s initiatives and accomplishments. KH recounted the offices and cabinet positions, etc. started during his term. I remember that the Dept of Ed was controversial. I know that had a mandate about teaching the kids who struggle in school, which, looking back, makes me realize what wasn’t happening in some areas. I also think about the state where my son has been a teacher and now teaches students studying to be teachers. When he taught 6th grade, only about 9 or 10 years ago, they had no text books in the classroom and the state ranked 48th, [People who criticize our schools here have no idea.]