Former US President Jimmy Carter dies at 100 years of age

For a long time Jimmy Carter and the woman who was his wife for 77 years, Rosalynnthey had chosen the place where their remains would be buried: a grave that will mark a simple tombstone in the shade of a willow tree next to the pond in the modest ranch house they built in 1961 in Plains (Georgia), today part of a national park. In November of last year, after the death of the former first lady, hers arrived. And soon they will be joined by those of the man who between 1977 and 1981 was the 39th president of the United States.

This Sunday Carter’s death was announced. Had 100 years and leaves three sons and a daughter and 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Also leave an important political legacy where they shine Camp David agreements that helped the reconciliation between Israel and Egyptand the normalization of US relations with China. But his mark intensified especially after he left the White House after a single term, defeated by Ronald Reaganthe inflation and the hostage crisis in Iran.

In 1982 he founded the Carter Center and in 2002 he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his “decades of tireless efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, enhance democracy and Human Rights, and promote economic and social development.” Many consider that his work redefined and set the parameters of what a ethical post-presidency. And one of the words most associated with his figure is rarely linked to the ambition that someone is supposed to have to reach the Oval Office: “decency“.

Diseases

Carter had suffered a melanoma and in 2015, in a press conference, he announced that . He then declared himself “perfectly at peace and prepared” for whatever came and said he had “a wonderful lifea exciting and rewarding existence“His time had not yet come, however, and he overcame that attack with treatments. Carter, a deeply religious Baptist man, continued to frequently attend to the Sunday catechesisor working with groups like Habitat for humanity.

In recent years his fragility had been increasing and in 2019, for example, he suffered at least three falls.

On February 18, 2023, without giving details of his state of health, it had been reported that he had chosen “after a series of short hospital stays” to spend his remaining time at home with his family and “instead of medical intervention”. In November the death of his wife came. And after one of his grandchildren said in May that it was “coming to an end,” the vital journey is finally over. His only concern was to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris in the last US presidential election.

A son of the deep south

James Earl Carter Jr.although he almost never used that name, he was born on October 1, 1924 in the small farming town of Plains and grew up in the nearby community of Archery. That was the deep southpoor, and his parents, the farmer and businessman Earl and the nurse Lillian, were the only whites there. As remembered in ‘The Outsider: The Life of Jimmy Carter’the biography that the Pulitzer Prize winner published a couple of years ago Kai Birdgrew up without running water until he was 11 and without electricity until he was 14. And he saw the racism of his father, but he grew up modeled outside of his patterns, in large part by his mother, who ate with black people, defended Abraham Lincoln and at the age of 67 he went to India for two years with the Peace Corps launched by John F.Kennedy.

Their positions against segregation and for civil rights were reflected in his political career, which began in 1962 as state senator after having passed through Naval Academy and then be an officer in the Marinawhich he left to return to Plains in 1953 and take charge of the family business of the peanut farm. He had been married to Rosalynn since 1945 and by then he had three sons, who were joined in 1967 by his only daughter.

In 1966 he had failed in his attempt to become governor but he succeeded in 1970 and in 1976 he achieved the democratic presidential nomination and removed the Republican from the White House Gerald Ford. And he came to the presidency as a moderate, determined to try to restore confidence in the government after the vietnam war and the ‘Watergate’ scandal.

Black and light points

Los gray and black points of his mandate marked his brief presidential biography. And the images remain of the long lines at gas stations during the oil crisisthe widespread discontent in the country with the high unemployment and with inflation that skyrocketed to reach 13%, a problem to which he responded with spending cuts and austerity. And although he chose Paul Volcker to lead the Federal Reserve, the man who would end that crisis, he did so in 1979, and Volcker’s fight ended up paying off for Reagan.

Carter, with a high IQnonconformist but also stubborn and angrywas also the president of the Iran hostage crisisa kidnapping of 52 diplomats that lasted 444 days and only ended when they were released once he handed over the baton to Reagan after losing an election for which he had also faced the internal challenge in Ted Kennedy’s Democratic Party.

In his presidential biography there is, however, also luminous pointss, like the aforementioned Camp David peace agreements between Menajem Beguin y Anwar el-Sadat and the normalization of relations with Beijing, in addition to the SALT II agreement with the Soviet Union to limit nuclear weapons (although the invasion of Afghanistan blocked ratification), a human rights policy which is considered to have contributed to the end of the Cold war and the ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. And in recent years it has been reviewed with more recognition the role of his brief mandate.

“He may have been the president but understood American history,” wrote Jonathan Alter, who in 2020 published the biography “His Very Best” partly motivated by the hope that it “will illuminate a return to a certain sense of decency, responsibility and seriousness in our politics.

Milestones of his mandate

Carter, fiscal conservativebut also with social consciousnessit was a advanced in due time environmental policies and signed 15 laws in that area (he also installed solar panels in the White Housewhich Reagan removed upon arrival). Doubled the space dedicated to national parks. And his Administration imposed the security regulations that established the mandatory airbags and seat belts in cars.

He was also a promoter of the diversity and in his mandate he appointed, for example, five times as many female federal judges as all of his predecessors combined (including , which would end up reaching the Supreme Court). AND created the Departments of Energy and Education.

His work once he left the White House is what allowed him to write what Reagan biographer Craig Shirley has defined as “one of the greatest second acts in American history” and one also in which Carter broke more molds. He returned to the family home and business in Plains, where he and Rosalynn (who in the White House established the Office of the First Lady and led initiatives such as the mandatory vaccinations to school-age children) continued to live with unusual modesty in the world of former presidents.

“I never wanted to get rich”Carter once explained to ‘The Washington Post’ that he modeled his post-presidential life after the example of Harry Truman. He and his wife, for example, always traveled on commercial airlines. The former president, who received an office pension of $210,700, cost taxpayers annually less than half of what Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama cost. And his health insurance was paid for by Emory University, for which he worked (he fell short of the five years required to receive federal health benefits after retirement).

The Carter Center

He fled the world of speeches and conferences paid for with hundreds of thousands of dollars that other former leaders go through. Their books (and he has 33 signed ones, including one for children) were not bestsellers. But his work with the Carter Center, on behalf of free electionsinterceding in conflicts in places like Haiti o Sudanpromoting the human rights or fighting for disease eradication like the Guinea worm, made it a global reference. In 2010 he received the International Prize of Catalonia, and in an interview he gave to EL PERIÓDICO then, during Obama’s presidency, he already warned that his country was experiencing a polarization not seen since the civil war.

These radical divisions grew under the rule of Donald Trumpa president whom Carter called “a disaster in human rights, in taking care of people and in treating people equally.” But his look at the entire American political system raised alarm bells. When talking about Citizens Unitedthe Supreme Court decision that opened the doors to unlimited donations from corporations, individuals and unions to electoral campaigns, Carter assured that it had changed the political system “from a democracy to an oligarchy. Money is now preeminent. “Everything has gone to hell.”

Also in Carter’s legacy is the story of love and complicity with Rosalynn, with whom he fell in love on the first date and whom he married, after she rejected his first request, in 1946, when he was 21 years old and she was 18. Although initially there were traditionalist divisions in the marriage and he made family and political decisions without consulting her, such as running for governor, one day when he asked her to pack a suitcase for him she told him “you pack it yourself.” Carter understood and changed there. And the foundations were laid for a relationship of complicity that has endured for decades. “Over the years we became not just friends and lovers, but partners,” she once said. “He has always thought I could do anything and so we have had some wonderful adventures and challenges.”