Jimmy Carter, former US president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, dead at 100, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution By Reuters

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON, 2024 (Reuters) – Jimmy Carter, the serial peanut farmer from Georgia who, as president of the United States, struggled with a bad economy and the hostage crisis in Iran, but negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt and later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, he died. , the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Sunday. It was 100.

A Democrat, he served as president from January 1977 to January 1981 after defeating Republican incumbent President Gerald Ford (NYSE: ) in the 1976 U.S. election. Carter was removed from office four years later in an electoral landslide as voters embrace Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, the former actor and California governor.

Carter lived longer in office than any other US president. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a better ex-president than he was a president – ​​a status he readily acknowledged.

His unique presidency was marked by the maxims of the Camp David accords of 1978 between Israel and Egypt, bringing some stability to the Middle East. But she has been dogged by a sagging economy, lingering unpopularity and the embarrassment of the Iran hostage crisis that consumed her last 444 days in office.

In recent years, Carter had several health problems, including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain. Carter decided to receive hospice care in February 2023 instead of undergoing additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on November 19, 2023, at the age of 96. She looked frail when she attended his funeral and funeral in a wheelchair.

Carter left office deeply unpopular, but worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “tireless efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

Carter had been a centrist as governor of Georgia with populist tendencies when he moved to the White House as the 39th president of the United States. He was an outsider to Washington at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that led Republican Richard Nixon to resign as president in 1974 and elevated Ford to vice president.

“I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president. I’ll never lie to you,” Carter promised with an ear-to-ear smile.

Asked to evaluate his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: “The biggest failure we had was a political failure. I was never able to convince the American people that I was a strong and strong leader.”

Despite his difficulties in office, Carter had few rivals for achievements as a former president. He won global acclaim as a tireless defender of human rights, a voice for the disenfranchised and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House.

Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election control delegations to polls around the world.

A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since his teens, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency, speaking openly about his religious faith. He also sought to take some pomp out of an increasingly imperial presidency — by walking, rather than riding in a limousine, in his 1977 inauguration parade.

The Middle East was the focus of Carter’s (NYSE: ) foreign policy. The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David accords, ended a state of war between the two neighbors.

Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland for talks. Later, just as the deals seemed to be unraveling, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy.

The treaty provided for the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and the establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat each won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

In the 1980 election, the main issues were double-digit inflation, interest rates exceeding 20% ​​and rising gas prices, as well as the Iranian hostage crisis that he brought humiliation to America. These problems overshadowed Carter’s presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term.

HOSTAGE CRISIS

On November 4, 1979, revolutionaries dedicated to the Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans present and demanded the return of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was supported from the United States and was treated a United States hospital.

The American public initially rallied behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, with eight American soldiers killed in a plane crash in the Iranian desert.

Carter’s final ignominy was that Iran held the 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan took the oath of office on January 20, 1981, to replace Carter, then released the plane that they led them to freedom.

In another crisis, Carter protested the invasion of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union in 1979 by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also asked the US Senate to postpone consideration of a major nuclear weapons deal with Moscow.

Unswayed, the Soviets stayed in Afghanistan for a decade.

Carter won narrow Senate approval in 1978 of a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to Panamanian control despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also ended negotiations on full U.S. ties with China.

Carter created two new departments of the US Cabinet – education and energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America’s “energy crisis” was “the moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace conservation. “Ours is the most despicable nation on earth,” he told Americans in 1977.

In 1979, Carter delivered what became known as his “malaise” speech to the nation, although he never used that word.

“After listening to the American people I was reminded again that all the legislation in the world cannot fix what is wrong in America,” he said in his televised address.

“The threat is almost invisible in the ordinary way. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes the heart and the soul and the spirit of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future threatens to destroy the social. and the political fabric of America.”

As president, the tight-lipped Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his younger brother, Billy Carter, who boasted, “I had a red collar, white socks and Blue Ribbon beer.”

‘FALL GO AGAIN’

Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, but was politically diminished in his general election battle against a vigorous Republican opponent.

Reagan, the conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during his debates before the November 1980 election.

Reagan sneered at Carter, “Here we go again,” when the Republican challenger felt the president had misrepresented Reagan’s views during a debate.

Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who won 44 of the 50 states and enjoyed an Electoral College sweep.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and a merchant. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and went on to manage the family peanut farming business.

He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, a union he called “the most important thing in my life.” They had three sons and a daughter.

Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator and the governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. He mounted an underdog bid for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, and defeated his rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election.

With Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate, Carter was given a boost by a major Ford gaffe during one of his debates. Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration,” despite decades of domination alone.

Carter beat Ford in the election, although Ford won more states – 27 to 23 than Carter.

Not all of Carter’s post-presidential work was appreciated. Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George HW Bush, both Republicans, were said to be displeased with Carter’s freelance diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.

In 2004, Carter called the Iraq war launched in 2003 by the younger Bush one of the “biggest and most damaging mistakes our nation has ever made.” He called the George W. Bush administration “the worst in history” and said Vice President Dick Cheney was “a disaster for our country.”

In 2019, Carter questioned the legitimacy of Republican Donald Trump as president, saying that “he was put in office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump responded by calling Carter “a terrible president.”

Carter also made trips to communist North Korea. A 1994 visit sparked a nuclear crisis, as President Kim Il Sung agreed to freeze his nuclear program in exchange for resuming dialogue with the United States. That led to a deal in which North Korea, in exchange for aid, promised not to restart its nuclear reactor or reprocess the plant’s spent fuel.

But Carter angered the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton by announcing the deal with the North Korean leader without first checking with Washington.

In 2010, Carter won the release of an American sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korea.

Carter has written more than two dozen books, ranging from a presidential memoir to a children’s book and poetry, as well as works on religious faith and diplomacy. His book “Faith: A Journey for All”, was published in 2018.

(Reporting and writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Bill Trott and Diane Craft)