The Carter Legacy: Let's Remember the Good

Over the last several months, I have been contacted by dozens of print reporters and radio and TV producers who want to know of my availability to talk about the presidency of Jimmy Carter, and its legacy.

My history of the revolutionary election of 1980 — "Rendezvous With Destiny," was widely praised.

I interviewed President Carter extensively for that book. Needless to say, I’ve become well versed on the subject of our nation’s 39th president's time in office, as well as the years following it.

In the interceding years since that election (on which I worked) and now that the battle is long over and the battleground has cooled, so to speak, Carter deserves a second and third look at his presidency.

We all know he has been an exquisitely great former president with his constant humanitarian efforts at home and globally; but there is more to the man than just these actions.

Carter was never the worst president in American history.

That place is reserved for Joe Biden, alongside Herbert Hoover and other lesser lights such as Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.

Domestically, Carter’s record is below average, replete with record high inflation, high interest rates, and high unemployment.

However, Carter did support deregulation of the trucking and airline industries. Thes stances actually were in defiance of the unions who had supported his election.

Carter’s problem domestically was that he could never decide what he actually was.

Was he the reforming populist who ran on cleaning up Washington, D.C. and shrinking government; or was he the typical left-adherent, bent on growing government and regulating lives?

He did both. As he once told me, he was hard to categorize.

On the foreign policy side, his record deserves more thought.

True, he did flub the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan badly, and underestimated Soviet intentions, but he did produced the durable Camp David Accords, creating a last peace between Egypt and Israel. Carter deserved a Nobel Peace prize for that.

Who can forget his hours upon hours of work to release the Iranian hostages?

Wisely, he froze Iranian assets in the United States, the six billion that is at the center of today’s debate.

And perhaps most importantly, he did introduce the concept of human rights to the domestic and global debates on that area.

Before Carter arrived on the scene, international debates had been about war and peace, land masses, and national borders. Carter, in pushing the human rights issue, did much to embarrass the Soviet Union on the global stage, as they were not infrequent users of torture, so-called mental hospitals for political opponents, and of course gulags.

These tactics at stifling opposition were made famous by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece, "The Gulag Archipelago."

Carter distributed thousands of copies of the book behind the Iron Curtin while cranking up the power of Radio Free Europe’s broadcasts.

Carter would lose the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan in a landslide but did so not as a result of his work on human rights. As Carter is now in hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, but he can look back with a sense of pride at what he did for the cause of peace and human rights.

Estimates of his presidency will rise in years to come.

In this regard, let us well remember the good, especially as world peace is imperiled, especially as it is so ominously now.

Craig Shirley is the Chairman of Citizens for the Republic, as well as a Ronald Reagan biographer and presidential historian having written six books on Reagan. He's also written The New York Times bestseller, "December, 1941" and also published the companion book, "April, 1945." He's also the author of the book "Mary Ball Washington," which won the People’s Choice Award from the Library of Virginia. His book on the 1980 presidential campaign, "Rendezvous with Destiny" was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the five best campaign books of all time. Read Craig Shirley's Reports — More Here.

Craig Shirley is the Chairman of Citizens for the Republic, as well as a Ronald Reagan biographer and presidential historian having written six books on Reagan. He's also written The New York Times bestseller, "December, 1941" and also published the companion book, "April, 1945." He's also the author of the book "Mary Ball Washington," which won the People’s Choice Award from the Library of Virginia. His book on the 1980 presidential campaign, "Rendezvous with Destiny" was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the five best campaign books of all time. Read Craig Shirley's Reports — More Here.