Jimmy Carter, who died this past week, age 100, was quite probably the smartest person ever to serve as President of the United States. At least that is the case if you go by academic intelligence alone. He was also possessed of a high dose of creative intelligence. As for situational intelligence, social-emotional intelligence, and any of the other intelligences conjured up by the shrinks and other analysts who think about these things, those are another story.
You did not get a job with Admiral Hyman Rickover’s nuclear naval staff unless you were at least a borderline genius. Jimmy Carter was and did.
He was also a man of high integrity, something that we don’t often see in our political leaders. When he said to the American people upon assuming office, “I will never lie to you,” he meant it…and he didn’t.
He had the supremely bad luck of having thrust upon him the highest inflation since World War II. He did, however, do one very important thing to combat it: appointing Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve. Eventually, Volcker squeezed inflation out of the economy, for which Ronald Reagan got the credit. The inflation was not Carter’s fault, but rather the result of his predecessors’ (LBJ and Nixon) refusal to “pay-as-they-went” for the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, presidents invariably get blamed for high prices regardless of culpability. Life is unfair.
The gas lines that made the public irate derived from the mullahs in Tehran turning off the spigot to punish America for allowing the deposed Shah to be treated for his cancer in the U.S. The hostage crisis was also mullah-generated.
However, Carter did have substantial accomplishments, many of which still resonate today:
Foreign Policy
Domestic Policy
Note the many items above for which Ronald Reagan got the credit!
Above all, Jimmy Carter was an honest and decent human being. He went about his business with dignity and a certain humility that also is not a trait normally associated with presidents. In 2025, that should make us all nostalgic.
Carter made his share of mistakes. He boycotted the 1980 Olympics, ruining the opportunities for thousands of athletes who had worked hard all their lives for their chance at glory. His relations with Congress were generally frosty. He did not know how to capitalize his successes.
His presidential term received a bad rap from pundits, but he was arguably the most consequential and successful one-term president in history up to that time.
Finally, he had unquestionably the greatest post-presidential run of any commander-in-chief. He participated in the construction of thousands of homes for Habitat for Humanity. His Carter Center has monitored elections all over the planet for fairness. Under his leadership, the Carter Center has virtually eradicated Guinea Worm, a tropical disease that infected 3.5 million people a year, and in 2023 infected just 11 individuals. It has also tackled River Blindness, another parasitic disease that affected millions, and now has been virtually eliminated.
He did not cash in, like almost all of his predecessors and successors. His life came full circle when he went home to Plains, Georgia and taught Sunday school well into his nineties. He was the epitome of a mensch.
Jimmy Carter had a great run. He came up from nothing, roots so humble he grew up in a home that lacked electricity, running water and indoor plumbing. He was Horatio Alger in the flesh. He had a 75-year love affair with only one woman. Scandal was not a word with which he was familiar.
History has already begun to reassess and revise the snap judgments of the Carter presidency that dismissed him as a failure. He was anything but. Looking back, we wish leaders like him were around today. We should honor and appreciate such a life.
Dick Hermann
January 4, 2025
You did not get a job with Admiral Hyman Rickover’s nuclear naval staff unless you were at least a borderline genius. Jimmy Carter was and did.
He was also a man of high integrity, something that we don’t often see in our political leaders. When he said to the American people upon assuming office, “I will never lie to you,” he meant it…and he didn’t.
He had the supremely bad luck of having thrust upon him the highest inflation since World War II. He did, however, do one very important thing to combat it: appointing Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve. Eventually, Volcker squeezed inflation out of the economy, for which Ronald Reagan got the credit. The inflation was not Carter’s fault, but rather the result of his predecessors’ (LBJ and Nixon) refusal to “pay-as-they-went” for the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, presidents invariably get blamed for high prices regardless of culpability. Life is unfair.
The gas lines that made the public irate derived from the mullahs in Tehran turning off the spigot to punish America for allowing the deposed Shah to be treated for his cancer in the U.S. The hostage crisis was also mullah-generated.
However, Carter did have substantial accomplishments, many of which still resonate today:
Foreign Policy
- His Camp David Accords brought 30 years of war between Israel and Egypt to an end, an enormous achievement, one of the greatest foreign policy triumphs in American history.
- Carter signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) with the Soviet Union, the platform for all subsequent nuclear arms reduction agreements.
- He increased defense spending, green-lighted the MX missile and Stealth bomber programs, introduced intermediate-range nuclear missiles into Europe to counter Soviet threats, and resisted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
- He normalized relations with China upon the visit to the White House of Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping.
- He signed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
- He nurtured the transformation of a number of Latin American autocracies into democracies.
- He injected a human rights component into American foreign policy that, among other things, encouraged the Eastern European liberation movements that, soon after, led to the demise of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War.
- He negotiated the Panama Canal treaty, thus avoiding an almost certain destabilizing and bloody guerilla war in Central America.
Domestic Policy
- He continued and improved on the environmental records of his two immediate predecessors, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and was the first president to voice concern about climate change and try to do something about it. His installation of solar panels on the White House roof was an important symbol of that. Ronald Reagan had them removed.
- He mandated strong new pollution controls and launched the concept of toxic waste cleanup.
- He instituted fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.
- He deregulated the airline, trucking, railroad and utilities industries and began the restructuring of the financial services and communications sectors.
- He banned “red-lining” by banks and required them to invest in low-income communities.
- He cut the deficit.
- He created the Departments of Education and Energy.
- He formulated the nation’s first wide-ranging energy policy, pushing three major energy bills through Congress that changed the course of U.S. energy production, conservation, and renewables.
- He set aside more land for national parks than any President since Teddy Roosevelt.
- He was in the forefront of civil service reform and government ethics initiatives.
- He gave more authority to his Vice President than any prior chief executive.
Note the many items above for which Ronald Reagan got the credit!
Above all, Jimmy Carter was an honest and decent human being. He went about his business with dignity and a certain humility that also is not a trait normally associated with presidents. In 2025, that should make us all nostalgic.
Carter made his share of mistakes. He boycotted the 1980 Olympics, ruining the opportunities for thousands of athletes who had worked hard all their lives for their chance at glory. His relations with Congress were generally frosty. He did not know how to capitalize his successes.
His presidential term received a bad rap from pundits, but he was arguably the most consequential and successful one-term president in history up to that time.
Finally, he had unquestionably the greatest post-presidential run of any commander-in-chief. He participated in the construction of thousands of homes for Habitat for Humanity. His Carter Center has monitored elections all over the planet for fairness. Under his leadership, the Carter Center has virtually eradicated Guinea Worm, a tropical disease that infected 3.5 million people a year, and in 2023 infected just 11 individuals. It has also tackled River Blindness, another parasitic disease that affected millions, and now has been virtually eliminated.
He did not cash in, like almost all of his predecessors and successors. His life came full circle when he went home to Plains, Georgia and taught Sunday school well into his nineties. He was the epitome of a mensch.
Jimmy Carter had a great run. He came up from nothing, roots so humble he grew up in a home that lacked electricity, running water and indoor plumbing. He was Horatio Alger in the flesh. He had a 75-year love affair with only one woman. Scandal was not a word with which he was familiar.
History has already begun to reassess and revise the snap judgments of the Carter presidency that dismissed him as a failure. He was anything but. Looking back, we wish leaders like him were around today. We should honor and appreciate such a life.
Dick Hermann
January 4, 2025
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