PHOTO; The late United States President, Jimmy Carter
By Joe Bartuah
I have learned that our greatest blessings come when we are able to improve the lives of others, and this is especially true when those others are desperately poor or in need.—Jimmy Carter
Former United States President Jimmy Carter, who peacefully passed away on Sunday, December 30, 2024 in his small hometown of Plains, Georgia at the grand age of 100 years and 89 days, was one of the rarest gems of the world, or one of God’s noblest gifts to the human race.
In this day and age where societal values have seemingly been turned upside down, in an age where it seems that evil has conquered good, to the extent that brutality, thuggery, buffoonery, demagoguery, snobbery, cruelty and sheer racism are being mischaracterized as “patriotism”, are being cheered on and virtually worshipped in a cult-like fashion, it is befitting to eulogize, a gentleman whose personal character was an epitome of undaunted courage, selflessness and moral rectitude, an inspirational leader whose exemplary deeds put smile on the faces of millions of people around the world.
As a Liberian, I’m elated that our own illustrious President William Richard Tolbert, Jr. had the near prescient instinct of giving President Carter the nickname—“Citizen Carter” when the U.S. president and his wife, Rosalynn made a brief visit to Liberia in 1978, because as it later turned out, through his selfless services in uplifting some of the most vulnerable people around the world, in championing the cause of human rights, democracy and world peace, Jimmy Carter undeniably proved to be an iconic global citizen. Through his more than four decades of exemplary post-presidential services to humanity, President Carter abundantly proved that for him, the White House was merely a means to an end, not an end in itself. In other words, he had sought the White House in the 1976 election cycle as a platform to serve humanity, not a pedestal to lord himself over the people.
Because he believed in causes beyond the White House, after losing his reelection bid in the 1980 electoral cycle, he didn’t go on lying all over the place that he had been cheated, neither did he clandestinely foment chaos to wrestle power from the American people. By all accounts, Jimmy Carter was an exemplary leader with a moral rectitude, not an opportunistic demagogue seeking to manipulate the gullibility of his minions by maligning the nation’s universally acclaimed democratic system. He had the conviction that exercising presidential power is a privilege to serve and make a positive difference in the lives of the people, not an opportunity to persecute or denigrate them.
He was principled and staunchly believed in noble causes—universal causes—that transcended the parochial confines of the White House in Washington, DC. He strongly believed in the commonality of the human race, for which he made championing of human rights not only as the foundation of his presidential bid, but also the fulcrum of his administration and the focus of his post-presidential services to the world. Hailing from a humble background as the son of farmers, humility was his guiding light, for which he never looked down on others, or brazenly bragged about his status. As a result, rather than preying on the poverty and deprivation of those at the lower rung of the socioeconomic ladder, he instead sought to uplift the downtrodden in society. When James Earl Carter, Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, the population of his hometown was estimated at 500 at the time, and when he passed away on December 30, 2024, the current population of Plains is now estimated at 573. Perhaps due to the close knit fabric of his formative years in Plains, he was endowed with empathy, sensibility and connectivity to his fellow human beings, essential attributes that are lacking in many leaders nowadays.
Following the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, which led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974, President Carter’s ascendancy to the White House on January 20, 1977 to succeed Gerald Ford—Nixon’s accidental vice president who had succeeded him–tremendously helped to restore the eminence and dignity of the Oval Office. The mere fact that President Nixon had to resign speaks loudly about how the nation venerated the Oval Office and equally demanded a modicum of decency from its occupant at the time. I reckon that if the Watergate scandal or a similar disgraceful episode were to erupt today, it’ll be thrown into the dustbin of cultism, or egregiously swept under the proverbial carpet of indecency and demagoguery. This is because unlike now, during the Carter years and even before, the American public demanded probity from their leaders and once such a virtue was lacking, a political reprimand was exacted, rather than an outrageous reward.
Some of the late president’s detractors have been causing noise about the fact that he was not reelected in the 1980 electoral cycle; that he had only served for one term, as if he was the only president in American history who was not reelected. Even though he was not reelected, the stark reality is that the Carter presidency made some landmark strides domestically and internationally during those four years. The federal Department of Education, which has enabled millions of Americans to have access to higher education, came into being during the Carter administration. His was the first administration that recognized mental health as a societal problem and passed a law about caring for mental health patients. Jimmy Carter also appointed women to some key cabinet posts and named Mr. Andrew Young, a Black civil rights activist as Ambassador to the United Nations.
On the international scene, in 1979, he effectively utilized the leverage of the Oval Office in persuading President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Israeli Prime Minister Benachem Begin to sign a peace treaty and forge diplomatic ties between their two countries. In June 1979, he held a summit with Leonid Brezhnev, the late Soviet leader and signed the strategic nuclear limitation treaty with.
Upon reflection, two dramatic international incidents conspired against the Carter administration, leading to the 39th president’s electoral loss, most especially the melee of the Islamic revolution, which toppled the Shah of Iran. The other incident was the erstwhile Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
In the case of the Ayatollah Khomeini-led Islamic revolution, 66 American diplomats at the U.S. embassy in Tehran were seized, blindfolded, paraded in front of international television networks and humiliated by young militants of the Islamic revolution. The U.S. military then carved out a plan to rescue the American hostages, which President Carter as commander-in-chief, reluctantly approved. But apparently after soul-searching, the man of peace was convinced that the tentative mission, which involved carrying military helicopters to attempt rescuing the hostages from an embassy compound that had already been occupied by thousands of radical Islamic students, was too risky to execute.
Because he was convinced that there would be casualties and possibly collateral damage, especially involving the U.S. hostages, President Carter later called off the mission. Unfortunately for him, at least one of the helicopters mechanically malfunctioned and crashed, killing eight service members. Of course, that incident, which occurred amid the U.S. presidential election, was grossly exploited by the Republican opposition and the vibrant American media; the president was lambasted as being “weak.” At the time, Ronald Reagan—his Republican opponent was eliciting thunderous cheers by vowing to bomb “that oil reservoir”, if elected. Besides that, there was division within the Democratic Party, occasioned by Senator Edward Kennedy’s primary challenge to President Carter.
From my perspective, the late President Jimmy Carter whose mortal remains will be interred this week in his beloved hometown of Plains, Georgia, was the most famous and most admired of all former American presidents, because of the gentleman’s post-presidential services to humanity. Through the vibrancy of his post-presidential years, he proved to the American people and the global community that a one-term presidency is neither a banishment into obscurity, nor a license for inactivity. As a result, unlike many presidential libraries, which tend to be mundane institutions or passive archives, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, Georgia, has been globally engaged since it came into being in the early 1980s. With his passing, the world has lost one of its most serviceable citizens.
May the selfless soul of President Jimmy Carter rest in perpetual peace.