As the 39th president of the United States, James Earl Carter Jr. held office from 1977 to 1981. Carter was the longest-living former United States president in American history.
Carter died in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday, December 29, 2024, surrounded by family, according to a statement from the Carter Center. He was in home hospice care since February 2023 after a series of short hospital stays, according to CNN. He was the only US President elected from Georgia.
Carter is widely remembered for several domestic and foreign policy accomplishments, but two benchmark changes in the Middle East mark his legacy. He stewarded the completion of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, fostering peace between the two enemies of 30 years. His administration also engaged with Iran as the Shah fell, which led to the rise of the Iranian Islamic Republic, which held 444 Americans hostage for the last two years of his presidency. The impact of both events still reverberates through the Middle East.
In his post-presidency era, Carter became the most publicly engaged former president in US history. He founded the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which became his public forum for speaking out on contemporary policy issues. Carter wrote more than 30 books and hundreds of newspaper opinion pieces. For three decades, he lectured regularly at Emory University on topics ranging from judicial reform, arms control, and democracy in the Americas and the Middle East. In 2002, he received the Nobel Prize for his humanitarian work in eradicating disease, monitoring elections, and promoting democracies.
Carter was born on October 1, 1924, in the rural town of Plains, Georgia. He was the first US president to be born in a hospital. His father was a farmer and businessman of very modest means. He went on to graduate from the US Naval Academy and wanted to become a submarine captain. He was denied that opportunity and diverted back to Plains in 1953 to lead the family's faltering peanut-growing business, where he turned modest profits.
Political background
In 1946, he married Rosalyn Smith. They had four children together, 11 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren. Roslyn Carter died in November 2023 after the two celebrated 77 years of marriage.
Carter became a Georgia State Senator in 1963 and Governor of the state from 1971 to 1975. While out of office, Carter emerged on the national political scene in the immediate post-Watergate era after Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. He slowly captured people's attention as an honest, moral voice that came from outside of the Washington establishment.
Carter used the campaign reforms and delegate selection process instituted before the 1976 election to capture the presidential nomination and win the election. He ran his 1976 campaign as a Washington outsider; he did not lobby traditional Democratic bases for support and consequentially didn't feel beholden to them upon reaching office.
In the 1976 election, Carter very narrowly defeated Ford as the Republican incumbent, with 297 electoral votes to Ford's 240. By comparison, in the 1980 election, Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in a landslide, taking only 49 electoral votes to Reagan's 489 electoral votes.
Carter's rural background, with few connections beyond southern Georgia, helped shape his personality and his views of those in the political realm. More than any other characteristic, Carter developed a self-assertive view that the decisions he made were the correct ones and that others must follow his lead. According to Carter's biographer, Peter Bourne, he "tended to view self-serving constituency groups as threatening to distract him from what he believed was the right thing for the country. In his dealings with Congress, he assumed that as reasonable people, if they understood his approach, he would earn their respect."
Carter had a relentless drive for hard work and seeing tasks through to their conclusion. He was tenacious and industrious beyond most people's comprehension. With an engineer's mentality, Carter believed that problems had a potential solution if reason, logic, and will prevail. He disdained obstacles that were clearly in his decision-making path, be they politicians, systems of government, or historical hang-ups that he believed fossilized the thinking of foreign leaders. More than merely being annoyed, he disliked limitations on his prerogatives. He particularly disliked lobbying groups, and here he ran afoul of American Jews who were passionate about his administration not trodding upon Israeli decision-making.
In 1984, Carter told an interviewer, "I did what I thought was best for the country, and I didn't worry much about the domestic political consequences; I could overcome them." Stuart Eizenstat, Carter's Domestic Affairs advisor from his time as governor of Georgia, noted that there "was his overriding guiding principle of presidential governance to do the things that had to be done, in the belief that he was doing the right thing, he would ultimately be rewarded by the American people with another term.
"Carter felt that foreign policy in general, and the Middle East in particular, should be insulated from domestic politics," Eizenstat stated.
While being a fiscal conservative, Carter was a liberal idealist. He did not have an overarching attitude about foreign affairs as Ford or Reagan had against the Soviet Union. With limited knowledge of foreign affairs, he relied very heavily on reading what he did not know and upon Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Columbia University Professor who became his National Security Adviser.
Brzezinski had an outsized influence on Carter's foreign policy in general. He convinced Carter that the Arab-Israel conflict could be resolved comprehensively. He convinced Carter that rising oil prices or a potential oil embargo from Arab states could be avoided if the Palestinian quest for self-determination were satisfied and an Israeli withdrawal from Jerusalem was achieved. Both would greatly satisfy Saudi Arabian political objectives. Carter took on the challenge to satisfy Palestinian political interests because, for him, their quest for self-determination was a civil and human rights objective.
For his entire presidency, the Carter administration drove to achieve a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace; its efforts resulted in partial success with the 1978 Camp David negotiations between Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Seventeen days of negotiations resulted in the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty as well as an outline for Palestinian self-government, which was realized in a limited area with the implementation of the 1993 PLO-Israeli Oslo Accords.
A bitter dispute arose between Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Begin over Israel's continued insistence on building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the areas that the Carter administration wanted reserved for the evolution of Palestinian self-determination. That dispute about Israel's management of the territories remained a core component of the US-Israeli relationship throughout Carter's lifetime.
Carter doggedly immersed himself in the nuances and the details of the negotiations unprecedented for any President in 20th-century American diplomatic history. Carter gained great respect for stewarding Begin and Sadat to a positive outcome. while Moshe Dayan, Begin's Foreign Minister, had many extraordinary and frequent disagreements with Carter over content and procedures, Dayan respected Carter's "diligence, dedication and resourcefulness to see agreements concluded. If not for Carter, we [Israelis and Egyptians] would not have arrived at a final agreement." Carter contributed at least as much to securing Israel's long-term existence as President Harry Truman did when he recognized Israel's establishment in 1948.
During his second two years of office, Carter was challenged by a whole host of issues that undermined the American public's confidence in his performance in office. In mid-July 1979, he gave a rousing speech to the nation chiding Americans for 'self-indulgence, consumption, and pursuing self-interest.' The speech was received well, but within a month, he fired half of his cabinet, hoping to have more competent people in place as he headed to the 1980 election. According to his pollster Patrick Cadell, 'the speech was successful until he fired the cabinet and the whole tenor of things changed.' Carter's approval rating slumped. In the context of rising inflation, higher oil prices, and gas lines, the cabinet firings were seen by some as a sign of desperation led by presidential pessimism.
1979 brought the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty but also ushered in emerging turmoil in the Middle East. In addition to the rise of the Iranian Islamic Republic and the hatred it spewed against the United States, by the end of the year, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, and Americans were held hostage in Tehran. In April 1980, a military effort to rescue the hostages failed. The economic numbers prior to the November 1980 election were not in Carter's favor.
Hamilton Jordan, Carter's chief policy adviser, said this about Carter's 1980 loss, "We had a divided Democratic party, a president who was trying to take that party—a liberal party—in a moderate direction; and second, we had bad economic circumstances. When we came into office, the price of a barrel of oil on the world market was eight dollars; when we left, it was thirty-two. That drove our economy and created an economic set of problems that I think made President Carter's reelection impossible."
Post- Presidency
As soon as Carter left office on Monday afternoon, January 20, the Iranian government released the American-held hostages. Carter went to greet them, but their release did not do anything to remove the remorse shaken by their loss. When the Carters came home to Plains in 1981, they were devastated by the smashing defeat at the hands of Governor Reagan. As they worked on their memoirs, Carter joined Emory University as a 'Distinguished University Professor.'
Several miles from campus, he chose to build his presidential library in tandem with the Carter Center. Carter told several of us Emory professors, working to outline what the center would do, that he did not want its work to be passive, like writing position papers, but focused on topics that interested him where action engagements were possible. He chose arms control discussions, the pursuit of democracy in the Americas, the promotion of peace negotiations in the Middle East, and speaking out for human rights abroad. The center later added multiple healthcare issues, the eradication of disease, and election monitoring to its platform. His post-presidency life and the center were coterminous: he wanted to be proactive and make a difference in people's lives. For the next quarter century, he also lectured monthly at Emory in a variety of classes, engaging with professors and students. His lectures to my Emory undergraduates on Arab - Israeli negotiations and the fall of the Shah were gripping and memorable.
As a young Emory Middle Eastern history professor, I met Carter in 1982 and later became the Executive Director of the Center and then his primary analyst on Middle Eastern matters. For the first years of the center's operation, even before the Center building was opened in October 1986, Middle Eastern topics and programs took up at least a third of all the programs.
When we wrote The Blood of Abraham (1984) together, I realized more and more how deeply angry he was at Menachem Begin for failing to move forward on Palestinian self-rule and for his persistence in building Jewish settlements in the territories. Carter was frustrated that he could not make the changes he believed were necessary outside of the Oval Office. At times, he would express to me and others that if American Jews had not abandoned him, he would have beaten Reagan. Carter placed a lot of blame for his loss directly on Begin's shoulders.
It seems a few of his advisors did as well. Eizenstat wrote in a 2023 op-ed to the Forward that "No American President has done more to advance the security of the state of Israel, champion the rights of the Jewish people around the world, memorialize the victims of the Holocaust and honor its survivors, and embody the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, repairing the world, than Jimmy Carter, a devout Southern Baptist from the tiny hamlet of Plains, Georgia.
"And none were less rewarded politically by the American Jewish community for doing so."
In 1977, Chief of Staff Jordan warned that he thought that American Jews were titled by Carter's support of a Palestinian state.
“Although their fears and concerns about you and your attitude toward Israel might be unjustified, they do exist," Jordan wrote, as quoted in the Atlanta Jewish Times. "In the absence of immediate action on our part, I fear that these tentative feelings in the Jewish community about you (as relates to Israel) might solidify, leaving us in an adversary posture with the American Jewish community.”
In March 1983, March 1987, and March 1990, the Carters and a small staff traveled to Middle Eastern capitals and places of unique historical interest that the Carters wanted to visit. Every head of country we visited hosted us with five-star hospitality. We went to Mount Sinai, Assad's hometown in Qardaha, landed on Masada via helicopter, engaged in a massive feast in the Saudi desert (where the secret service agents' misplaced Rosalyn' for about four hours), and spent hours talking every day with leading politicians, heads of state, academics, American ambassadors, religious leaders, and every NGO imaginable.
Carter found learning from specialists without special pleadings a wonderful avenue for absorbing information quickly. Upon returning from each Middle Eastern trip, we hosted three-day meetings at Emory, where the Middle East was discussed with candor and detail with politicians and academics alike. Rarely did we have any problem in having people wanting to be part of these meetings; Carter was a magnet for interest to all because the substance was debated.
Since I met Carter, we were always honest and direct with one another. Mrs. Carter understood that I was always being forthright in my analyses and our private conversations. In March 1983 in Cairo, I noted to Carter, at Roslyn's precise suggestion, that "he could not be criticizing Ronald Reagan while in a foreign country."
With audiences, he astonished listeners with his knowledge of a Middle Eastern topic and his ability to deliver a talk without a typed manuscript. Before he gave a presentation, he wrote a few words or phrases on letter-sized paper and folded it in thirds. As he stepped to a microphone, he took the paper from his inside jacket pocket and delivered an extemporaneous talk as if he had an entire prepared text in front of him. In casual conversations, his probing questions kept everyone engaged.
Into the 1980s and 1990s, Carter became more frequently vocal and angry about Israeli politicians not doing enough to aid the Palestinians. Carter continuously felt that he could mediate an end to the conflict. Half a dozen times, Carter remarked, "If only they (the administration in office) would give me a chance, I could finish mediating this conflict." Each time, my response was the same: "Arafat is not Sadat, and the West Bank/Gaza Strip is not Sinai." Carter still had not grasped that not all Middle Eastern leaders wanted to resolve the conflict.
Hundreds of times across the world, the Carter Center intervened to make a positive difference in people's lives. It was fulfilling part of Carter's objective. Two stand out for me. He had me write monthly letters to Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, asking that he free Pope Shenoudah, who had been placed under house arrest by Sadat. Dozens of letters later, the Egyptian Coptic Pope was released. In 1987, with data provided by the ADL in New York City, Carter assisted me in having five Syrian Jews released from jail prior to Passover of 1987.
By the early 1990s, the Carter Center and Carter had changed their engagements from being almost always a place to meet with some interventions abroad to becoming more assertive and doing so much more abroad. He traveled the world, sometimes with and sometimes without the permission of sitting presidents; my notes from numerous Carter Fellow meetings reminded me of how and when he described telling US presidents and vice presidents that he was going to visit a country or individual but not really asking for permission.
Carter sometimes bordered on the violation of the Logan Act, which is supposed to criminalize unauthorized American citizens having contact with a foreign government. He met controversial leaders and many unsavory autocrats simply because he could. Election monitoring and eradication of disease had become central and successful interventions for the Carter Center. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his humanitarian engagements. He spoke up and spoke out. His views were news, and no media outlet refused to interview him or publish his opinion pieces.
The last time Carter lectured in one of my Emory undergraduate classes was in October 2006, just as his book Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid was released. Prior to giving that class presentation, he told me that he had another book on the Middle East about to be released; he clearly made the point, "I did not want you reading it in advance." Together, we crafted several versions of the 1984 book The Blood of Abraham. We had swapped chapters numerous times in that book's preparation. He was not interested in my comments this time, knowing I would read them with a fine-tooth comb.
Carter, in writing Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, wrote history in the way the way he wanted it to be. Some of his criticisms of Israel were certainly valid. Of all the former politicians in the world, Carter knew fact from fiction about Middle Eastern diplomacy; Moshe Dayan had lauded him for his dedication and knowledge of detail.
Yet, Carter made false claims in the book. Some were invented. When I compared what he had written in the book with the notes I had taken in our meetings with Assad, the two accounts were fully incompatible. Besides using words and concepts to deftly put the onus on Israeli shoulders for non-diplomatic action, he asserted a singularly harsh statement about Jews. Egregiously, he wrote, "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when (my emphasis) international laws and the ultimate goals of the 'Roadmap' for peace are accepted by Israel."
Perhaps he did not mean what he had written, or maybe he failed to catch what a copy editor might have missed, but he included a sentence that simply legitimized the killing of Jews. I publicly resigned from my position at the Carter Center, followed by fourteen members of the Carter Center Advisory Board.
And then there was another side of Carter, some recollections wonderfully positive. Two positive vignettes stand out from the 1983 March trip to the region. In Egypt, when we exited from one of the tombs at Luxor, a group of young Israeli tourists greeted us with the song, "Heveynu Shalom Aleichem." Hearing the translation, 'Peace be upon you,' Carter teared up.
Then, at 25,000 feet in a private jet flying from Lebanon to Morocco on a Friday evening, four of us were sitting around the table, ready for dinner. Faye Dill, his most able and devoted secretary, Rosalyn, and me. Carter asked the steward to bring out the wine for dinner. With it, Carter produced a challah, which he had put on the plane when we had been in Israel several days earlier. As we sat around the table, ready for dinner, Carter asked if I would say the blessings over the candles and the wine and the challah, as I had done virtually every Friday night throughout my entire life. It was a lovely moment.
Peter Bourne, Stuart Eizenstat, Steve Hochman, and others who knew Carter over a lifetime have pointed to the same recurring personality trait. Carter was going to do, say, or write what he thought was right, giving little concern for fall-out. He impressed many with his dedication to a cause, commitment to beliefs held, and curiosity.
As the first US President to call for a Palestinian homeland and work for it diligently while in office and afterward, he forever placed the quest for Palestinian political rights as an objective for future American presidents. His prolonged involvement in Arab - Israeli negotiations created an expectation that presidential engagement is absolutely essential for future agreements to be negotiated and reached between Arabs and Israelis. For forty-plus years, he used the post-presidency as an extended second presidential term that he fervently believed he deserved but wrongfully lost. Among former US presidents, Carter set a standard for public commentary and engagement in foreign affairs that likely will never be matched.
Kenneth Stein is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History and Political Science at Emory University. He worked at the Carter Center and with President Carter during his post-presidency.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this feature.