Remembering President Jimmy Carter

His period in office is bookended by the political carnage of mid 1970s America, left by the earlier Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford presidencies, and the Hollywood style of Ronald Reagan from 1981. Carter’s term is largely overlooked and often derided, yet he had some important success.

Carter won the November 1976 election and took office in January 1977. The United States was mired in political tumult after the Watergate scandal which saw the resignation of Nixon in 1974, and the end of the highly divisive Vietnam war in 1975. Nixon’s replacement, Gerald Ford, was marking time until the American public could vote the Republicans out of office as punishment for Nixon’s sins. It paved the way for Carter.

Jimmy Carter, a southern man of strong moral conviction, was determined that his administration would not be staffed with traditional Washington political elites. With a formidable work ethic, Carter demanded of himself total mastery of everything that came before him. His biggest challenge was to lead the United States’ recovery at home and abroad.

Domestic policy

Domestic policy was largely consumed by the stagflation of the 1970s. His presidency was beleaguered by the international energy crisis, and he was unable to find an energy policy that addressed Americans’ need for relief from rising energy prices. This contributed to his loss of the 1980 election.

Carter viewed US dependence on foreign oil as a national security problem. His initiatives to solve it were rejected by Congress. It is a measure of the man’s character that he admits, without equivocation, in his memoirs that he was well aware of how low his standing with the American people had dropped as a result of his unpopular energy policies.

One of Carter’s finest domestic policy achievements rested on his commitment to the environment. In many ways, he was and remains on this issue ahead of his time. He was the first president to strongly emphasise the need for environmental protection and used the 1906 Antiquities Act to save more than 100 million acres of land in Alaska from future exploitation.

Ultimately, he was beset by challenges related to energy. In 1979, gasoline prices spiked to record levels. In addition, there was a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Concurrently, unemployment was on the rise and inflation jumped to 14.5 percent.

The American public grew disenchanted and lost faith in Carter’s ability to solve their problems and restore the economy. This was compounded by Carter’s share of international problems.

Foreign policy

Carter, in his own words, had four key foreign policy objectives: peace, human rights, nuclear arms control, and stability in the Middle East. His foreign policy was guided by his moral convictions, and he eschewed the realpolitik of the preceding Republican presidencies of Nixon and Ford.

Strategic arms control was an important issue. Carter was determined to finish the work started by his predecessor on SALT II which aimed to curtail the strategic weapons platforms and capabilities of the US and the USSR. However, by March 1978, Carter’s view of strategic relativity and détente with the Soviets had shifted. In the following year his administration adopted a more robust strategy for nuclear warfighting. Ultimately, and a fact largely overlooked, Carter initiated the strategic arms buildup that his successor, Ronald Reagan, would largely claim as his own.

Near the end of his term in December 1980, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. This sank any chance Carter had of having SALT II ratified by the Senate before his term ended. The era of détente was over; the Cold War was heading into another dangerous phase. In 1982, Carter reflected that his failure on nuclear arms control was one of his greatest regrets.

It was the Middle East where Carter found his signature foreign policy win. He brought about the 1978 Camp David Accords, establishing a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. Long troubled by the state of Israeli – Arab relations, Carter hoped this would go some way to bringing peace to the highly volatile region.

Carter was also instrumental in normalising US relations with China and, with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, ceded US control of the Panama Canal to Panama. Even so, events in the Middle East conspired against him. Approaching the final year of his term, on 4 November 1979, the US Embassy in Iran was stormed by a large militia. Sixty-six staff were taken hostage. Some were released early but the majority, over fifty, were held for 444 days. Negotiations to release them stalled and Carter ordered a military operation to rescue them in late April 1980. The mission was a disaster with the loss of eight lives and two aircraft inside Iran. Carter became paralysed by his need to stay in the White House to work on the release of the hostages rather than being on the campaign trail as he sought a second term through the remainder of 1980. His failure to quickly resolve this issue was viewed by much of the American public as further evidence of Carter’s foreign policy ineptitude. Their judgment was brutal. Carter was handed a resounding loss at the ballot box.

Carter’s memoir opens with an account of his final days in office. He is candid about the anguish he felt over not being able to resolve the hostage crisis. This plagued him to the moment his successor, Ronald Reagan, was inaugurated on January 21. Ironically, only minutes after Carter left office, the hostages were released and flown out of Iran.

The Carter legacy in context

But Carter was not a man to sit and lick his wounds. On losing the presidency, Carter and his wife Rosalynn started the Carter Center, maintaining their commitment to improving the human condition. He worked on a vast range of projects from building houses to election monitoring to disease prevention and conflict resolution and human rights. In many ways this is his greatest legacy and the one for which he may be best remembered. For these efforts, Carter was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

In recent years, he faced several serious health issues, including brain and liver cancer, but recovered and continued with his humanitarian work.

It is too easy to characterise Carter’s presidency as a failure.. With the benefit of hindsight, a far broader context shows a president ahead of his time on environmental policy, and his administration passed some important pieces of legislation.

Moreover, in light of the foreign policy failures of some of his successors, Carter’s record does not look as bad as it did in 1981. George W. Bush failed in Iraq; Obama in Libya and Syria. However, aach president is, to a certain degree, constrained by the era in which they serve.

Carter remained honest and true to his beliefs to the end of his life. He is widely admired and respected because of it. It is fitting, despite his failures in office, that he has come to be regarded so highly as politics in the United States has sunk to new lows.

Jimmy Carter’s greatest legacy is the integrity he displayed in office and his unwavering commitment to making the world a better place.

VIEW ORIGINAL ARTICLE