Last week’s eulogies for Jimmy Carter focused on his public service since leaving the White House, during which he monitored elections, advocated peace, and worked to eradicate disease and alleviate suffering.
His career as a humanitarian colors our understanding of his presidency, when his ideas and actions mattered most.
Commentators on the right label Carter’s presidency a liberal failure from which Reagan rescued the country.
Those on the left ignore his principles and accomplishments, to try promoting their own agendas, which he facilitated by endorsing successive Democratic presidential candidates with whom he had less and less in common.
Now that he's beyond the reach of partisanship we can begin to see him whole.
He was an unlikely candidate in 1976 — a one-term governor from Georgia competing against accomplished Washington insiders.
They underestimated Carter, who proved adept at retail campaigning in living rooms and church halls in Iowa and New Hampshire.
He was refreshingly populist. "The course of human events" he said, is "controlled by the combined wisdom and courage and commitment and discernment and unselfishness and compassion and love and idealism of the ordinary people."
Weariness with insiders led to his victory — a watershed in our political history.
Of the 17 presidents elected in the century before Carter, only two — Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson — had never served in federal office.
Wilson was an accident, elected because Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft divided the majority in a three-way contest.
Cleveland was governor of New York and a national figure. Carter was an aberration.
The aberration became the norm.
Of the seven presidents elected since 1976 only the elder Bush and Obama had federal experience. The others — Carter, Reagan, Clinton, the younger Bush, and Trump — defeated veteran Washington insiders.
Since 1976 voters have opted for outsiders promising to make the federal government leaner and more responsive to the public will.
That none of them succeeded — some did better than others — accounts for much of the intemperance of our politics.
In his inaugural address Carter emphasized prudence, moderation, and humility, "We have learned that more is not necessarily better, that even our great nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems."
He proved unable to solve economic problems, but not because his principles were wrong.
Inheriting a $73.7 billion deficit, he recognized federal spending as a root cause of inflation. He favored fiscal discipline, including a greater reliance on the market to achieve prosperity, made controlling inflation a priority over checking unemployment (after vacillating too long), and sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to balance the federal budget.
Like later reformers, Carter found that an outsider can win the presidency but lack the leverage to get his agenda passed.
He was right to focus on the deficit and inflation, but this cost him the support of congressional Democrats, including those dependent on organized labor. They favored spending to fight unemployment.
He championed deregulation of airlines, trucking, railways, and oil prices to achieve efficiency through the market — his most important contribution to long-term prosperity.
Discipline cut the deficit to $40.2 billion in 1979.
Carter was undone by rising energy prices, which drove inflation to over 13% in 1979, gas lines, and the Iran hostage crisis.
With Cold War tensions rising Congress voted for more military spending than Carter asked for and increased domestic spending he wanted to cut.
The deficit ballooned to $79 billion. Sen. Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy, sensing Carter’s weakness with traditional Democratic constituencies, challenged him from the left.
He advocated national health insurance, which Carter opposed as fiscally irresponsible.
Jimmy Carter warned against self-indulgence and materialism.
He advocated personal independence, self-sufficiency, conservation, and the pursuit of happiness beyond material wealth.
The country, he said in a national address in the summer of 1979, was on the path of "fragmentation and self-interest."
Freedom, he said, means more than the opportunity to profit and consume.
"All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to the true freedom for our nation and ourselves."
No conservative could say it better.
In early 1984 I had lunch with him in the basement of a Baptist church. I asked him how he thought the speech would be remembered.
"I don’t know," he said modestly, "but I hope people will take it to heart."
Jack Warren is an authority on the history of American politics and public life and editor of The American Crisis, an online journal of history and commentary (www.americanideal.org). His newest book is, "Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution." Read Jack Warren's Reports — More Here.
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