Jimmy Carter’s personal virtue didn’t ensure a virtuous or successful presidency

The stock of historical figures rises and falls with the changing times that follow them.

That is especially true for American presidents. Admirers of former President Jimmy Carter are hoping that posterity will treat him in a similar treatment.

The 39th president went into hospice at his Georgia home in February 2023. But remarkably, he lived for another 22 months with his wife, Rosalynn, dying in the interim. He even had the opportunity to cast one last vote for a predecessor (for Vice President Kamala Harris), dying this weekend at the age of 100. That makes him the longest-living president in U.S. history. And since he left office nearly 44 years ago, his was the longest post-presidency as well. More than one out of five Americans were born after he left the White House in 1981. In the intervening decades, the memories of those who were alive then may have dimmed.

That is part of the reason why the campaign to revive his reputation has already had such success. It was already in full swing when he went into hospice as articles and opinion pieces boosting him and attempting to depict his single term in office as both underappreciated and unfairly attacked proliferated.

Assessing presidents

Examples of leaders whose reputations have risen and fallen in succeeding generations abound. Some who exit office with low popularity ratings wind up being thought of with respect once the immediate political circumstances pass, and both historians and the public are able to judge their achievements with more dispassion.

The most outstanding example of this phenomenon is Harry Truman, who was deeply unpopular when his presidency ended due to the inconclusive and bloody Korean War, a sagging economy and the nation’s weariness with the Democrats after 20 years of their rule in Washington. But within a few decades, Truman’s reputation would soar. He would come to be appreciated for his postwar leadership against Soviet expansionism and for his plain-spoken style that at the time was judged as something of a letdown after the patrician bearing and soaring style of Franklin Roosevelt, whom he had succeeded. A 2021 C-SPAN poll of historians now ranks Truman as the sixth greatest president in history—a development that few but his closest associates would have believed possible when he left the White House in 1953.

Carter stood at 26 out of 45 (President Joe Biden had just taken office) in that poll; however, that seems more than a bit generous when recalling that his approval rating at the end of his term was a dismal 34%—lower even than the current 38.7% for Biden, although he has an even higher disapproval number with 56.7% as opposed to Carter’s 55%.

The similarities between Carter and Biden are striking, and they were the subject of Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel’s insightful 2023 book, The Biden Malaise: How America Bounces Back From Joe Biden’s Dismal Repeat of the Jimmy Carter Years.

Among the chattering classes, Strassel’s is a minority view. According to the growing legion of his defenders, Carter, who was defeated for re-election in a landslide that swept former California governor and film actor Ronald Reagan into office, has been “wronged by history.” The author of the fawning biography insists that his presidency “was not what you think.” These unabashedly revisionist accounts purport that his weakness and the calamities, both at home and abroad, endured by the United States on his watch were actually not as bad as everyone thought at the time.

While Carter’s death will necessarily put a damper on critiques of his life and career, the temptation to indulge this push to lionize him should be resisted. While there has always been much to admire about his life and career, there is no reason to ignore the facts about his presidency.

Just as important, the widespread praise he has received for his post-presidential life shouldn’t cause Americans to uncritically accept the effort to reimagine him as a martyr to forces that were beyond his control. His good personal qualities notwithstanding, the notion that Carter was the public conscience of the nation cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. Above all else, his vendetta against Israel and the pro-Israel community, coupled with his efforts to legitimize the notion that Israel is an “apartheid state,” should cause fair-minded observers to judge him harshly.

The roots of revisionism

Part of the Carter revisionism is rooted in partisanship. Though he left the White House four and half decades ago, many Democrats of a certain age still fume over Reagan’s victory and the way that his presidency, which led to victory in the Cold War among other successes, is contrasted with Carter’s. The tenure of the 37th president is best remembered for the Soviet Union’s unchecked adventurism, the humiliation of the Iran hostage crisis and a dismal “malaise” speech in which he seemed to blame the American people for the sorry state of the country rather than take responsibility for it himself.

Indeed, some on the left have never let go of the conspiracy theory about Republicans colluding with Iran to ensure that the hostages weren’t released until Carter left office. This conspiracy theory, which has been succeeded by a never-ending stream of Democratic myths about their opponents that author David Harsanyi has called “BlueAnon,” was conclusively debunked decades ago. But partisan liberal outlets continue periodically to revive it, as The New York Times did in 2023 in an unpersuasive and misleading article that gave new life to that canard.

Nevertheless, a Carter revival has always been based more on the glowing reviews of his post-presidential life than on an effort to claim that his chaotic administration was anything other than four years of national disaster.

The leftist magazine The Nation acclaimed him as “Our Greatest Former President,” and there are many who will undoubtedly agree with that evaluation. Carter was widely admired for his charitable work and willingness to volunteer in endeavors like Habitat for Humanity, in which he and his wife built homes for the poor earned him appreciation.

After the presidencies of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Americans have grown used to the idea that presidents can be deeply flawed individuals. For all of his shortcomings as a leader, Carter was a throwback to the antique notion that a president should be an exemplary individual, even if that idea was often more observed in the breach than most people were prepared to admit.

A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Carter became a submarine officer and a nuclear engineer. After his father’s death, he returned home to run the family’s peanut farm in Plains, Ga., and, due in no small part to his scientific acumen, he was able to turn it into a success.

He was also a deeply religious man, as well as a faithful devoted husband and father—qualities that in retrospect have taken on even greater importance in the latter half of his life as some of his successors lacked those attributes. The Founders of the American Republic believed that morality and public virtue were a necessity for its survival, and that remains arguably true. Though persons who lacked Carter’s upstanding personal qualities have been among our greatest leaders, a return to an era when an exemplary character was considered a necessity for a would-be president is something we should all desire.

Unlike many politicians who landed in the White House, he was also something of an intellectual and a man who immersed himself in the details of policy. That was admirable in some ways but also led to many of his problems. Compared to a president like Biden, who had a well-earned reputation as a fabulist blow-hard before he became best known for cognitive decline, or to President-elect Trump and his mean-spirited social-media postings and hyperbole, someone with Carter’s cerebral style seems attractive by comparison.

White House failure

While all of that deserves to be part of the way he is remembered, Carter was still a dismal failure as commander-in-chief. The glowing reviews for his post-presidency must also be weighed against the enormous damage he did as one of Israel’s foremost unfair critics.

The revisionism about Carter being better than anyone remembers must founder on two facts. Though he was dealt a poor hand by economic factors beyond his control, his administration’s emphasis on expanding big government was a significant part of the problem, especially when compared to the subsequent success that Reagan achieved.

Leaders must also be judged on their ability to inspire people. Rather than lift the nation up—as Reagan did so well—Carter’s tendency for preachy lectures and a predilection for what would now be rightly termed “virtue signaling” did the opposite.

Yet it is on foreign policy that Carter’s reputation foundered more than any other factor.

The revisionists give Carter credit for beginning the rebuilding of the military that expanded greatly under Reagan. He is also lauded for his emphasis on advocacy for human rights around the globe.

Yet the problem is that he entered the presidency by saying that one of the country’s main problems was an “inordinate fear of communism.” That sent an undoubted signal to the Soviet Union—in 1977, few, if anyone, thought it would begin to collapse by the end of the following decade—that it no longer needed to fear U.S. power. The result was a surge in Soviet adventurism around the globe and culminated in its invasion of Afghanistan.

Though support for human rights was and still is a good thing, such efforts also led Carter to undermine imperfect regimes that were friendly to the United States, like the Iranian government then led by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Carter helped push the shah out of power and was indifferent to his replacement by a theocratic tyranny led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. That was an unforced error that led to enormous suffering in Iran and elsewhere, and for which Carter deserves eternal opprobrium. That the Islamist regime then assaulted the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and took 52 of its staff hostages—a humiliation that affected all Americans—was ironic but nevertheless a tragedy.

It’s possible that history might view Carter differently if the rescue attempt he ordered had succeeded. But it didn’t, and the debacle only added to the shame Americans felt about their government’s impotence.

Carter and Israel

Carter is also given credit by his apologists for helping to broker peace between Israel and Egypt at the 1978 Camp David Summit. That’s true, but it must also be remembered that the Mideast peace process was begun by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with his historic 1977 flight to Jerusalem took place in spite of Carter, not because of him. Carter had tried initially to involve the Soviets in these peace efforts, something the Egyptian leader rightly feared.

He also despised Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for his tenacious defense of Jewish rights and unwillingness to bow to pressure from Washington. He blamed Begin for somehow deceiving him about Israel’s intention to defend the right of Jews to settle in Judea and Samaria, which the president wanted to end. But that was not true since, if anything, Carter deceived himself about what Begin’s promise of limited autonomy for Palestinian Arabs in the territories really meant.

Carter’s hostility to Israel was no secret, and it played a part in the failure of his bid for re-election in 1980. Reagan achieved a modern record of 40% of the Jewish vote not so much because of his appeal but because of Carter’s unpopularity—something that Republicans have failed to remember as they’ve sought in vain to replicate that feat.

In fact, Carter blamed the Jews for his defeat. His hard feelings about that colored his post-presidency as he began a decades-long effort to promote Palestinian statehood and to smear Israel. He was not the only person to be wrong about the necessity for a two-state solution, but few matched the virulence with which he assailed Israel, and especially its American supporters, for their refusal to listen to his consistently bad advice.

That culminated in the publication of his 2006 book—Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid, which in no small measure began the effort, at least in the United States, to mainstream the big lie that the Middle East’s only democracy was morally equivalent to apartheid-era South Africa.

The calculus of history

For all of the applause he has received for his life as an ex-president, Carter’s animus against the Jewish state and willingness to use his moral standing and influence to besmirch it and aid the efforts of antisemitic hate-mongers and terrorists to undermine its existence is also part of his legacy. Indeed, when considering the role he played in bringing the Iranian regime—now the world’s leading state sponsor of terror into existence—all of its crimes can be traced back in some ways to Carter. That includes the actions of murderous proxies and allies, like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, which led to the atrocities committed by Hamas operatives and Palestinians in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. His moral preening and bad judgment weren’t just insufferable; they materially contributed to the polar opposite of virtuous outcomes around the world.

When assessing his legacy, how do we weigh that against the many good things that can be said for Jimmy Carter as an individual? There is no calculus by which these competing arguments can be measured exactly. Like everyone, his life was a mixture of good and bad. It is entirely possible to acknowledge his outstanding personal qualities and even his undoubted positive intentions, but also to judge his presidency to be a disaster and his post-presidential efforts to have also done as much harm as good.

His passing should be acknowledged with all of the solemnity and respect due to a former president of the United States. But we should not let that desire to think well of a historic figure to color the verdict of contemporary public opinion or history. Nor should he or his presidency be used as a club with which the corporate liberal media can assail Trump. Jimmy Carter may have been a very decent man in many respects, but he was still a very bad president and someone whose unfair attacks on the Jewish state deserve to always be held against him.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.