The Life & Legacy Of Jimmy Carter

Summary

The Life & Legacy Of Jimmy Carter

The NPR Politics Podcast | Released: December 30, 2024

On December 30, 2024, The NPR Politics Podcast paid tribute to the life and legacy of President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on the preceding Sunday. Hosted by Sarah McCammon, the episode featured insightful discussions with political correspondents Ron Elving and Mara Liasson, delving into Carter's journey from rural Georgia to the White House, his presidency, and his enduring impact through post-presidential humanitarian efforts.

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Early Life and Path to the Presidency

Ron Elving provided an overview of Carter's humble beginnings and ascent to national prominence:

"He started life in rural Georgia in a little town called Plains... went into the nuclear Navy... returned to help the Carter family peanut business, and that's when he became known as a peanut farmer." (01:04)

Carter's political career began in the Georgia state legislature, followed by an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid against segregationist Lester Maddox. Undeterred, Carter ran again four years later, winning the governorship with a landmark inauguration speech declaring an end to racial discrimination in Georgia. This bold stance earned him recognition as a symbol of the "new South."

Ron Elving highlighted Carter's strategic campaign efforts:

"He had an aide named Hamilton Jordan, who was a remarkable man... lined up exactly how Carter... could transfer himself into Iowa and New Hampshire... he became practically a resident [in Iowa]." (02:07)

His grassroots campaigning in early primary states resonated with voters, propelling him from 2% name recognition to a leading contender and ultimately securing the Democratic nomination and presidency in 1976.

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Presidential Campaign and Appeal

Mara Liasson contextualized Carter's appeal amid the turbulent political climate:

"He was supposed to be the antidote to the chaos and corruption really of the Nixon years." (04:00)

Carter positioned himself as a trustworthy and honest alternative following the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal. His commitment to integrity was encapsulated in his campaign promise:

"I'll never lie to you, I'll never make a misleading statement, I'll never betray the trust of those who have confidence in me, and I will never avoid a controversial issue." (04:17)

His image as a humble, small-town leader contrasted sharply with his predecessor, appealing to a populace weary of political deceit.

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Challenges During the Presidency

Carter's tenure was marked by significant challenges:

1. Economic Troubles: High inflation and unemployment rates, a phenomenon known as stagflation, plagued his administration. Mara Liasson noted:

   "He had to do all of the unpopular things to bring inflation down... [with] the hostage crisis where 52 American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran." (05:03)

2. Iran Hostage Crisis: The prolonged hostage situation severely impacted Carter's standing. A failed rescue attempt and the eventual release of hostages following Ronald Reagan's election were seen as personal affronts.

3. Energy Crisis: Carter advocated for reduced energy consumption and decreased oil imports, proposing restrictive measures that were unpopular with many Americans.

Despite these hurdles, Carter achieved notable accomplishments:

• Panama Canal Treaties: Re-defining U.S. relations with Latin America by facilitating the transfer of the canal to Panama.

• Camp David Accords: Brokered peace between Israel and Egypt, a lasting diplomatic triumph recognized globally.

Ron Elving emphasized Carter's strategic foresight in energy policy:

"He said, we've got to cut back on our consumption of energy of all kinds. We've got to stop importing so much oil." (07:38)

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1980 Reelection Campaign and Defeat

Carter's bid for reelection in 1980 was undermined by internal party challenges and mounting national discontent. Mara Liasson explained:

"Inflation was too high, the hostages had been held for too long, and Kennedy was famously asked why he was running for president and couldn't really articulate it." (07:54)

Ron Elving discussed the intra-party dynamics and Carter's political positioning:

"There was a critique too of Carter that while he was a Democrat that he was never really a liberal... Jimmy Carter had a lot of charm... it just didn't wear as well in office." (08:19)

The primary challenge from Senator Ted Kennedy exposed fissures within the Democratic Party, weakening Carter's reelection prospects. Ultimately, these factors contributed to his defeat by Ronald Reagan.

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Post-Presidency and Humanitarian Efforts

Carter's post-presidential life, spanning over 43 years, is often regarded as more impactful than his time in office. Mara Liasson highlighted his dedication:

"He worked for Habitat for Humanity... eradicated the guinea worm disease in Africa... taught Sunday school at his Baptist church for decades." (10:37)

His selfless commitment to humanitarian causes earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Ron Elving elaborated:

"He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his worldwide humanitarian efforts to eradicating disease and hunger." (11:35)

Carter eschewed the limelight and financial gain, choosing instead a life of modesty and service, which solidified his legacy as an exemplary public servant.

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Legacy and Reflections

In their closing thoughts, both correspondents reflected on Carter's enduring legacy:

Mara Liasson remarked:

"He represented American values that have become from this point in history, looking back, seem quaint, if not completely outmoded." (12:21)

Ron Elving added:

"Jimmy Carter was the anomaly. He was the person who was quite different in personality from most of the people who have fought their way to the presidency of the United States." (12:42)

Carter is remembered not just for his political endeavors but for embodying integrity, humility, and a steadfast commitment to humanitarianism. His life continues to inspire discussions on the role of personal values in public service.

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Conclusion

The NPR Politics Podcast episode on Jimmy Carter offers a comprehensive examination of his multifaceted life—from his early days in Georgia and presidency marked by both achievements and challenges, to his unparalleled post-presidential contributions to global humanitarian efforts. Through thoughtful analysis and poignant reflections, the podcast underscores Carter's unique place in American history and his lasting influence on both national and international stages.

Transcript

[Sarah McCammon]

Hi, I'm Ramtin Arablouei from Throughline, Electricity, Internet, cell service, all the things we rely on every day can be unreliable or inaccessible in an emergency. But through any storm or crisis, radio is a lifeline. Support the resource that's here for you no matter what. Give [e-mail] hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCamm. Politics and it's 10:40am on Monday, December 30, 2024. And on the pod today, we will look back at the life of President Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday. Ron Elving and Mara Liasson are joining me now to talk about his life and legacy. Hi, Mara and Ron.

[Mara Liasson]

Hi there.

[Ron Elving]

Good to be with you, Sarah.

[Sarah McCammon]

Ron, I'm going to begin with you. Jimmy Carter was, of course, a Democrat. He was president from 1977 to 1981. But I want to talk about his life before that, before he was president, how did he find his way to the highest office in the land?

[Ron Elving]

Everybody knows, I suppose, that he started life in rural Georgia in a little town called Plains. His big break, in a sense, was going to the United States Naval academy in the 1940s, in the latter part of World War II, came out of that and went into, for a short time, the nuclear Navy under Admiral Rickover, kind of a glamorous part of the Navy at that time, but the family business needed help. He went back to help the Carter family peanut business, and that's when he became known as a peanut farmer. A little later on, he ran for the state legislature, served a short period of time there, ran for governor, lost to segregationist Lester Maddox, but came back after four years, challenged Maddox again and won. And in his inauguration speech as governor of Georgia, announced to the stunned audience, the era of racial discrimination is over. So not long after that, Time magazine put him on the COVID called him a symbol of the new south. And not long after that, he started telling people he was running for president, 2% name recognition, and a couple years later, he was president.

[Sarah McCammon]

And Ron, what was stunning about that, was it the fact that he had won that election or was it his statement that was so explicitly anti segregation?

[Ron Elving]

It was the statement, the fact that he took this moment when everyone in the state of Georgia would be paying attention and many people in the rest of the country, as he well knew, and suddenly declared that he was a sense the spokesman for a new south in which segregation would not be the be all and end all of politics, and where in fact, he would say, we need as Georgia Democrats to line up against racial segregation. That was a very big deal in that era.

[Sarah McCammon]

And then he decides to run for president.

[Ron Elving]

Yes. And he had an aide named Hamilton Jordan, who was a remarkable man and who wrote a memo lining up exactly how Carter, as a one term governor of Georgia, he only served one term, could transfer himself into Iowa and New Hampshire as the earliest voting primary states or caucus states of the presidential process and exploit something that we had first seen used in 1972 by the George McGovern campaign, but really take it to the max. I mean, go into Iowa, become practically a resident. And he did that. And he resonated with a lot of people in Iowa with his rural background and his farmer background and his very strong identification with his Baptist faith, his evangelical side. And that in Iowa played very, very well. He shocked the world by winning the Iowa caucuses. And then the next thing you know, he's winning New Hampshire, the first primary, the one that the people on the east coast really pay attention to. And suddenly he was one of the frontrunners for the presidential nomination in 1976.

[Sarah McCammon]

So, Mara, what, I mean, remind us what was happening in the country at this time during the 76 campaign. What was Carter's appeal to Americans at that moment?

[Mara Liasson]

Well, Carter's appeal, as most presidents present themselves, as a foil to the last unpopular president. But we'd gone through the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon, who had lied to the American people. And he very famously, when he campaigned for president, said, I'll never tell a.

[Ron Elving]

Lie, I'll never make a misleading statement, I'll never betray the trust of those who have confidence in me, and I will never avoid a controversial issue.

[Mara Liasson]

It's very hard to see Carter's presidency without seeing it through the filter of his post presidency, which was so grounded in American values of selflessness and small town living. And, you know, he wasn't in there to make money, but he was supposed to be the antidote to the chaos and corruption really of the Nixon years. And I think that's one of the reasons he became president. Now, he did later speak about these same themes when he gave his famous malaise speech, which actually didn't use the word malaise, where he said, human identity.

[Ron Elving]

It'S no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.

[Mara Liasson]

But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. And he lived by that.

[Sarah McCammon]

Now, that was a speech he gave right during his presidency, during a time when he was. He was struggling.

[Mara Liasson]

Yeah, he was struggling. He had high inflation. So he had to do all of the unpopular things to bring inflation down. And it was stagflation. It was high unemployment and high inflation. And he had a Federal Reserve chair, Paul Volcker, who was willing to serve the country. Some very bitter medicine to get the inflation rate down. Plus he had the hostage crisis where 52American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran. He had a failed attempt to resc rescue them using the US military. And of course, in the end, the Iranians decided they would only release the hostages once Carter was out of office. And when Ronald Reagan was elected, the hostages were released. Another kind of insult by Iran to Jimmy Carter.

[Sarah McCammon]

Now, Ron, we've said that Carter faced a lot of challenges. I think the conventional wisdom is that he was not a particularly effective president overall. But what do you see as his biggest accomplishments?

[Ron Elving]

He had several. There was the ratification of the Panama Canal treaties, which were an important part of changing our relationship with all of Latin America. He brought that to fruition in a fairly short period of time. And then in his second year as president, he actually got Israel and Egypt to sign a peace treaty. The dedication and determination of these two world statesmen have borne fruit. Peace has come to Israel and to Egypt. And of course there were visionary leaders in both of those countries at that time who saw it in their interest. But Carter brought it together. He brokered the deal. He brought them to Camp David. They were called the Camp David Accords. And that was also a triumph. But at the same time he had this confluence of problems. The energy crisis, as Mara has said. The inflation that was left over from all the way back to the Arab Israeli War, 1973, which really spiked oil prices. Carter also did some far sighted things with respect to energy. He said, we've got to cut back on our consumption of energy of all kinds. We've got to stop importing so much oil. And all those things were really accomplished over time. But he started the pain all the way back in saying we should only increase our total increase of energy 2% a year. That just was too tight a pair of shoes for most Americans to wear.

[Sarah McCammon]

Now, when Carter ran for reelection in 1980, he faced kind of the ultimate challenge as an incumbent president, which was a primary from, of course, within his own party. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy challenged him in the Democratic primary. What was Kennedy's critique of Carter at the time?

[Mara Liasson]

Ron has a longer memory than me, but my memory is that things were not going well. Inflation was too high, the hostages had been held for too long, and Kennedy was famously asked why he was running for president and couldn't really articulate it. But it was enough that there was an intra party fight and that historically always damages the incumbent and it certainly did this time.

[Ron Elving]

There had been a critique too of Carter that while he was a Democrat that he was never really a liberal, that he wasn't as liberal as Teddy Kennedy, that he was not even trying to be and didn't want to be. And you know, all the way back to 76, there was a wonderful Jeff McNaugh editorial cartoon that showed two vehicles at a stoplight. One's a pickup truck, the other's a Volvo. The pickup has a gun rack and a Confederate flag. You get the picture. And there's a hound dog in the back and it's got a bumper sticker in the back. This is Jimmy Carter, 76. And then on the Volvo side you've got a tweedy looking professor smoking a pipe and his pumper sticker says Save the Whales. And his other bumper sticker says Jimmy Carter in 76. That was a pretty tough straddle for any politician. And Jimmy Carter had a lot of charm when he was a candidate in 1976. It just didn't wear as well in office. And there was some high handedness on the part of the people he brought with him from Georgia that never really fit in in Washington and tried to give a lot of orders to people who thought they knew why they were in Washington. And all of that led to a rebellion within the party, particularly on the left.

[Mara Liasson]

Yeah, and it's interesting because every successful politician, every successful presidential candidate figures out how to straddle the two wh of their own party. I mean, Bill Clinton didn't just merely move the Democrats to the center, he united the center and the left. Jimmy Carter did it too. But I agree that once he was in office, especially after he was defeated, there was a whole bill of particulars against all the ways that he failed, including micromanaging. Who would use the White House tennis courts, you know. So I think that history will see his presidency in a more favorable light than than it has so far, especially because he had such an exemplary post presidency.

[Sarah McCammon]

In a moment, we're going to talk about Carter's post presidency. But first it's time for a quick break. We'll be back. And we're back. Carter, of course, served only one term. He was not re elected, but he had the longest post presidency ever of more than 43 years. He devoted his life after he was president to humanitarian work alongside his wife Rosalynn. And that eventually earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. Where did the Carters decide to focus their humanitarian work?

[Mara Liasson]

Well, he did a couple things. He worked for Habitat for Humanity. And there are countless pictures, photographs of Jimmy Carter with a hammer in his hand building low income housing. He also worked to eradicate the guinea worm disease in Africa. He lived a humble life of public service. He famously taught Sunday school at his Baptist church for decades and decades. He was an exemplary public servant.

[Sarah McCammon]

Yeah, I mean, he really kind of eschewed the celebrity status and the big speaking fees that some past first families have embraced, like the Clintons and Obamas, for example. Carter, as you noted, Mara, he lived a relatively modest life after leaving office. What was it about Carter that made him choose that kind of life?

[Mara Liasson]

I think he really believed in those values. He could have made a lot of money. It wasn't important to him. He got meaning from his life when he was doing something to help others.

[Sarah McCammon]

Ron, what about his foreign policy legacy after he left office?

[Ron Elving]

Yes, we should at least mention that in the year 2002, 22 years after he left office, Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Prize for his worldwide humanitarian efforts to eradicating disease and hunger. Going after very specific things like the guinea worm, but also going after things as broadly suffered as a lack of education, lack of sufficient supplies of food. He really took on the big ones and that was impressive to a number of international organizations that honored him over the years. But certainly the thing that gets mentioned in the first paragraph is the Nobel Prize.

[Sarah McCammon]

Carter's funeral has been scheduled for January 9th, and there will be many more reflections in the coming days. Ron and Mara, before I let you go, any final thoughts on Carter's life and legacy?

[Mara Liasson]

Well, I guess my reflection is how he represented American values that have become from this point in history, looking back, seem quaint, if not completely outmoded. Like when he said, I will never lie to you, the way he lived his post presidency with humility, eschewing materialism.

[Ron Elving]

That's right. I think we're going to be remembering Jimmy Carter as one of the poles, the polar opposites of different approaches not only to the presidency, but to governing, to politics, to whether or not it is a blood sport, to whether or not it is something that tries to bring out the very best in people, even to the the point of bringing out religious values of the most shared kind, so that any people of religion, whatever their religion, can recognize it as sincere and look up to it. I mean, this is, this is. Jimmy Carter was the anomaly. He was the person who was quite different in personality from most of the people who have fought their way to the presidency of the United States.

[Sarah McCammon]

All right. We'll leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I covered politics.

[Mara Liasson]

I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

[Ron Elving]

And I'm Ron Ilving, editor correspondent.

[Sarah McCammon]

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

[Mara Liasson]

Hi, I'm Catherine Marr, CEO of npr, where we're guided by a bold to create a more informed public. Join us today by [e-mail].

[Sarah McCammon]

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[Ron Elving]

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[Sarah McCammon]

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