Turning 100: A look at the life and legacy of Jimmy Carter

From peanut farmer to statesman

James Earl Carter, the son of a nurse and successful businessman of Irish descent, was born in Plains, Georgia, on October 1, 1924. He always took great pride in his countryside origins and the fact that both he and his ancestors were farmers. As a teen, his father gave him an acre of farmland to grow, package, and sell peanuts.

He enrolled at the US Naval Academy before entering the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where he met his future wife, Rosalynn Smith, whom he married in 1946. Carter served as a naval officer and briefly joined a nuclear submarine programme in 1952 until being discharged at the rank of lieutenant in 1961.

One year later he ventured into politics, joining the Democratic Party and running for the Georgia Senate at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He had rather unorthodox views for his times, arguing against racial segregation—inspired no doubt from growing up surrounded by children of black farmers in Plaine. When elected governor of Georgia in January 1971, he declared: "The time of racial discrimination is over."

Presidential bid

Five years later, he announced his nomination for the presidency, championing equality, more jobs, and "change" in American politics. Unlike his predecessors, Carter didn't see the world simply through the narrow prism of Cold War politics, which made his victory a far stretch, given that he was battling the primaries with 16 candidates from his own party, who were all far better known than him, and far more mainstream in Washington. 

Nonetheless, he campaigned vigorously with his wife's unwavering support, visiting 37 states and delivering over 200 speeches. By March 1976, he was far ahead of all contenders, including incumbent president Gerald Ford, who had entered the White House after Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation.

But it was precisely Ford's association with the Nixon Era and his controversial pardon of Nixon that turned people toward a candidate who represented "change," and Carter was there for the taking. He was a Washington outsider whose name was unmired by all the controversy surrounding the Nixon White House. On election day, he narrowly defeated Ford, becoming the 39th president of the United States on 20 January 1977.

The Carter White House 1977-1981

Carter came to office during a gripping energy crisis triggered by oil-producing Arab countries in the wake of the October War of 1973, whose effects could still be felt by 1977. It was a period marked by fuel shortages in the US and skyrocketing energy prices, although the embargo itself was lifted in 1974.

As president, he pushed for gasoline rationing and encouraged energy conservation. He is credited for the installation of solar water heating panels at the White House. When it became too cold during the winter, he would wear sweaters, hoping to lead by example among staffers and senior staff. And on 4 August 1977, he created the Department of Energy in the US — the first new cabinet position in 11 years.

He was also a president with a surgeon's eye for detail. He frequently returned memos to staffers with grammatical corrections scribbled in his own handwriting. He also refused to conform to the patron-client system of Washington politics, turning down calls from members of Congress and refusing political favours.

Middle East Peace and the Camp David Accords

In the Middle East, Carter is most remembered for trying to achieve sustainable peace in the Arab world. Shortly after assuming office, he welcomed Egypt's President Anwar al-Sadat, Jordan's King Hussein, Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Fahd to the White House.

He made a similar invitation to Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, who refused to make the trip. Instead, the two men would meet at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva in May 1977. Rabin—himself a Washington insider for nine years—was not a fan of Carter, who wanted to push Israel into making what then seemed like unfathomable concessions to the Palestinians, including the total surrender of the West Bank.  

Carter was never anti-Israeli, but he sympathised with Palestinian suffering and believed they had legitimate grievances that needed to be addressed. His views on Palestine were voiced more strongly after leaving office when, in 1982, he condemned the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon.

In 2006, in his seminal book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid—which became a New York Times Bestseller—he described Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza as akin to apartheid "worse than South Africa's." When accused of anti-Semitism, he replied that he hoped to spark a debate on the Palestinian issue "which has not existed in this country," stressing that there won't be peace in the Holy Land before Israel withdraws from occupied land. He added, "The greatest commitment in my life has been trying to bring peace to Israel."

And that is exactly what he did by nudging President Sadat to visit Jerusalem in November 1977 and then to sign the Camp David Peace Accords in September 1978. Although that agreement failed to bring justice to the Palestinians, it did lead to ending the state of war between Egypt and Israel, which had lasted since 1948.

Post-presidency, Carter still tried to broker Middle East peace, meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in September 1981 and, in March 1983, with members of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) in Cairo.

In 1993, he was invited to witness the signing of the Oslo Accords at the White House lawn, and in his memoirs, Dennis Ross credits him—rather than Bill Clinton—with the historic handshake between Arafat and Rabin. When Arafat died at a Paris hospital in November 2004, Carter came out with a statement describing him as "a powerful human symbol" and "father of the modern Palestinian national movement."

His legacy in the Middle East was summed up by President Sadat in his 1978 autobiography In Search of Identity, in which he says: "President Carter knew of the tremendous psychological barrier that separated the two sides. He must have realised this himself when I met him in Washington during my April 1977 visit to the United States."

"As a matter of historical honesty, I must state, for the record, that President Carter is true to himself and true to others. I find that I am dealing with a man who understands what I want, a man impelled by the power of religious faith and lofty values—a farmer, like me."

Relations with China

In China, Carter carried on with the rapprochement started by Nixon, hoping to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow and play one communist nation against the other. In fact, he even went a step further in 1979, formally extending diplomatic recognition of China while allowing the sale of military supplies and initiating cooperation in military intelligence. In January 1980, he revoked the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China in Taiwan.

Read more: 51 years after Nixon's groundbreaking visit, China-US relations at an all-time low

Relations with the Shah

However, Iran would eventually break Jimmy Carter and cost him his presidency. Relations between the two countries were strong under the Shah, with Carter famously calling Iran under his rule "an island of stability." Carter spent New Year's on 31 December 1977 as a guest of honour in Tehran, but he didn't lift a finger to protect the Shah when he was toppled by the Islamic revolution in 1979.

But after getting an angry phone call from ex-secretary of state Henry Kissinger—who threatened not to endorse the SALT II treaty that Carter had just signed with the USSR unless Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was allowed entry to the US—Carter reluctantly accepted to grant him refuge in the US for medical treatment.

In a 2011 biography of the Shah, Iranian-American historian Abbas Milani says that Carter initially hung up the phone in Kissinger's face, saying, "(expletive) the Shah." But he eventually agreed to grant him permission to enter to get the Republicans off his back, who were accusing him of giving too many concessions to Moscow and trashing SALT II.

Iran hostage crisis

On 22 October 1979, the Shah was reluctantly allowed to enter the US, where he underwent treatment for his cancer in New York. Many believed that it was the Shah's admittance to the US that prompted the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran, also known as the Iran Hostage Crisis.

In his memoir Answer to History, the Shah says that the Carter administration asked him to leave the US, which he did on 15 December 1979.

In 2016, BBC published a report based on what it described as "newly declassified US diplomatic cables," saying that the Carter administration had contacts with Ayatollah Rohullah al-Khomeini prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. One cable, dated 9 November 1978, says the US ambassador to Tehran wrote to the State Department describing the Shah as "doomed." In January 1979, Carter sent General Robert E. Huyser to Tehran, ostensibly to drum up support for the Shah.

The BBC report, however, says that the true objective of his trip was to neutralise the Iranian military and prevent it from saving the Shah. Members of the Carter team have strongly denied these accusations and those that the president gave serious consideration to extraditing the Shah in exchange for the release of 52 hostages taken at the US Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979. They would remain hostage for the next 444 days and would only be freed after Ronald Reagan came to office in January 1981.

Carter had originally refused to resort to military tactics, opting instead for economic sanctions on Khomeini's Iran on 7 April 1980.

Two weeks later, however, he ordered Operation Eagle Claw to free the hostages, which ultimately failed and led to the death of eight Americans and two aircraft destroyers. This failure, coming close to elections, famously led to the resignation of Carter's Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance.

Afghanistan and the Mujahideen

Fifteen months into the Carter Administration, the communists seized control of Afghanistan, signing a treaty of friendship with the USSR. An internal coup in Afghanistan triggered the Soviet invasion one year later, sending shockwaves throughout the United States.

The CIA had already begun bankrolling the Afghan mujahideen with $695,000 worth of non-lethal assistance since July 1979, and that December, took their support to a new level, sending military equipment to fight the Soviets.

On 23 January 1980, Carter announced sanctions on the USSR, shelved SALT II, imposed an embargo on grain shipments to Moscow and requested an annual 5% increase in defence spending to ward off the Soviet threat in Afghanistan.

He would send more arms to the mujahideen in 1980, which eventually found its way to al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, although the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan did not happen until 1989, eight years after Carter left the White House.

The 1980 Elections

The Iran Hostage Crisis hurt Carter's 1980 bid for re-election, and it was manipulated brilliantly by his Republican opponent, actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan.

Reagan came across as far more charismatic and charming than Carter, who was hard-boiled and serious. He eventually defeated Carter in a landslide—the first incumbent president since 1932 to lose re-election, which would be repeated by George HW Bush and, more recently, by President Donald Trump during the last presidential election. Carter had started his term with an approval rating of 66%, which dropped to 34% by 1981 due to a number of issues, among which, no doubt, was the mishandling of the Iran Hostage Crisis.

Post-Presidency

Many tried talking Carter into running for the 1984 presidential elections, but he declined, preferring to spend the remainder of his years in active country service, away from the White House. In 1982, he founded the Carter Center, a non-profit NGO dedicated to advancing human rights across the world. In 1994, President Bill Clinton mandated him to join a peace mission to North Korea, although the two men had never gotten along, and Carter missed Clinton's inauguration ceremony.

In 1999, he visited Taiwan under Clinton and met with President Lee Teng-hui. Carter was vocally opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, claiming that it was based on "lies and misinformation." In May 2007, he was quoted saying President George W. Bush's administration had been "the worst in history." Two months later, he teamed up with President Nelson Mandela to establish The Elders—an initiative to bring global leaders together on peace and human rights. This initiative took him to Darfur, Sudan, Cyprus, and Syria.

Carter was also critical of Donald Trump but eventually made peace with him until the US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021. He supported Joe Biden for president with a recorded audio message but was unable to attend his inauguration due to declining health. The ageing former president had been diagnosed with cancer in August 2015, but he later claimed to have been cured by God.

Since leaving office, Carter has taught at Emory University in Atlanta and has occasionally taught Sunday school at his Baptist Church since 2019, when he also became a deacon. Evangelical Christianity was a key driver in Carter's long life and, while serving as president, he would pray several times a day at the White House, always saying that his inspiration and drive was none other than Jesus Christ.

Carter was the eldest president to attend a presidential inauguration at 92 in 2017 and the first to live to the 40th anniversary of his inauguration. In March 2019, he became America's longest-living president, surpassing George HW Bush, who died at the age of 94 in November 2018. During a 2019 interview with People magazine, Carter said that the secret to his long life was a good marriage. In 2023, the Carters celebrated 77 years of marriage, before her death that November.

A wheelchair-bound Carter showed up for the funeral but could not speak to bid her farewell and although away from the public eye since then and in hospice care, he has endorsed his fellow Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for the upcoming US presidential election. "I am only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris" he said to his son Chip and grandson Jason Carter.