After nearly two years in hospice following years of cancer, 100-year-old former US president Jimmy Carter died on Sunday.Â
For the US president who oversaw a landmark Middle East peace treaty, it is ironic but perhaps fitting that he is more known for his life after politics.
The 39th president of the United States was probably best known during his one term for overseeing the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt – which is remembered for sidelining Palestinians – and for missing out on freeing American hostages held in Iran during the 1979 Iranian revolution.
In both cases, a growing number of people believe he was short-changed. Â
“There was a campaign on the part of the Reagan Republicans to tarnish him and make him responsible for all the ills of the world. They ridiculed him and said he was a country bumpkin. It was wrong,” James Zogby, a veteran pollster and president of the Arab American Institute, told The New Arab.
“He was actually a good president in so many ways, and the greatest ex-president ever,” he said.
Seeing Carter through a present-day lens
To understand this outpouring of regretfully belated support, it is important to understand the difference between the era in which Carter served as president and that in which he served as a democracy and human rights advocate.
His presidency was marked by high oil prices, high inflation, stagflation, and a hostage crisis. It was followed by someone who appeared to have the answers to these problems.Â
In recent years, Ronald Reagan’s policies have seen the scrutiny that they perhaps deserved when he was running. Reaganomics, or trickle-down economics, has become synonymous with unsustainably high levels of inequality.
Meanwhile, the use of the term ‘apartheid’ to describe how the Israeli government treats Palestinians has become increasingly mainstream, a far cry from the taboo, though still provocative, lens of how it was seen when Carter’s book was published in 2006.
But to understand Carter’s grit and willingness to go against the grain, it is important to go further back, to his pre-presidential years.
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Humble beginnings
Carter started his life in rural Georgia in 1924, the son of a businessman who owned a small general store and a nurse in the small town of Plains. His family moved multiple times when he was growing up.
After returning to his southern roots after a tour in the Navy as a submarine officer, he revived his family’s peanut farming business, which had fallen on hard times. Though it took several years for the farm to see success, the work helped develop his community involvement, which would pave the way for his political career.
He began serving on local boards at a time when racial tensions in the South were under the international spotlight amid the growing civil rights movement. He won a seat on the Sumter County Board of Education in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of schools. He was one of the few whites in a leadership position to oppose segregation.
In 1962, he ran for an open state senate seat, narrowly winning after an investigation into his opponent found voter fraud. After four years, he turned to the Georgia governor’s race, losing in his first attempt, and then winning in 1970. While governor, he became chair of the Democratic National Committee’s congressional and gubernatorial campaigns.
Not having come from a privileged background, nor having forged a conventional political career, his ascent to the presidency was not predictable. Considered a dark horse, he won the presidency using populist messaging.
Upon taking office, he put his peanut farm into a blind trust to avoid a conflict of interest, a move that has in recent years elicited comparisons with President-elect Trump, who used his office in his first term to enrich himself through his multiple businesses.
Camp David
The Israel-Egypt peace agreement was one of Carter’s most important moments in office, though not without controversy, particularly among Palestinian advocates who did not see it as a fair deal given their lack of input, as well as Israel being favoured over Egypt in the negotiations.
Many saw it as setting the stage for Israeli normalisation in the region, along with weakened Arab states.
Haitham Salawdeh, an activist with the US Palestinian Community Network who spoke with TNA shortly after Carter entered hospice, said, “I have never met Carter. I have only experienced him as a Palestinian through his policies. It would not be overstating it to say it’s complicated”.
Though he noted his objections to what transpired in the region after Camp David, he also emphasised his appreciation for his post-presidential work, including his advocacy for Palestinians.
“As a human being, especially in his later years, his heart was in the right place,” he said.
Those who have known Carter over the years have been struck by his humility and his willingness to acknowledge regret, something that some believe fuelled his drive in his post-presidential years to focus on human rights.
“On Camp David, he was betrayed,” said Zogby, who had written Carter a letter expressing his disappointment in the election result after he lost his second White House race.
“He wrote back on the White House stationary about his regrets. It will stay with me forever. The Palestinians deserved more than they got.”
Zogby believes then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin misled Carter on plans to freeze new Israeli settlements.
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The Iran hostage crisis
Along with high oil prices and inflation, the kidnapping by Iranian activists of 53 US diplomats and other citizens held for over a year set the stage for Carter’s re-election defeat.
After being unable to secure the hostages’ release during his presidency, his successor, Ronald Reagan, appeared to have better luck. They were released minutes after his inauguration.
It was one of the more humiliating moments of Carter’s presidency, as the world saw the farmer from Georgia replaced by a charismatic former actor who took the role of hostage hero.
It was long speculated that Reagan’s inner circle had manipulated the hostage crisis to their advantage, which was recently confirmed by one of his close allies at the time.
An evolving legacy
In his post-presidency, he was probably best known for his work on democracy with the Carter Center and for his advocacy for Palestinian rights, something for which he has been widely criticised over the years, but for which he has gained widespread appreciation only recently.Â
News of his move into hospice nearly two years ago elicited not only the expected tributes but also a collection of mea culpas.Â
An article appeared in the New York Times about Ben Barnes, a politician from Texas who was active during Carter’s generation, who claimed that Republicans had likely pressured the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages to help tip the presidential election in favour of Ronald Reagan, who won a landslide 44 states.
Around the same time, Steve Berman, who previously worked on the board of directors at the Carter Center but then led a mass resignation after Carter’s controversially titled book ‘Peace Not Apartheid’, wrote in The Forward in March that he had written Carter a letter of apology. He then received a personal response, saying there was no need to apologise.
Shibley Telhami, a Palestinian American political science professor who knew Carter through his academic work (and was impressed that he was generous with his time in reviewing his manuscripts), sees his legacy overall as positive and believes it will only improve with time.
“Most former presidents are jet setters and make millions. He has dedicated his life to doing good in the world. We’ve never had a president like that,” he told TNA shortly after he was admitted to hospice.
“He has forced people to re-examine his presidency and to challenge the prevailing narrative.”
Brooke Anderson is The New Arab’s correspondent in Washington DC, covering US and international politics, business, and culture.
Follow her on Twitter:Â @Brookethenews
