US President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Carter turns 100 years old on 1 October, by far the longest-lived American president. Photo: AFP / File
Analysis - Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived American president, and as he turns 100 years old, it turns out he was also pretty much the last of his kind.
Growing up in California, I was just a kid when the former peanut farmer from Georgia became an unlikely president in 1976, aiming to wipe away some of the disillusioned taint of the Nixon years. He's the first president I have memory of, smiling away from the tiny TV in our kitchen.
He turns 100 years old on Tuesday, 1 October, and despite his single term, he will never quite be the footnote of other presidential one-termers like Millard Fillmore.
Carter is the last living American president from the 1970s and 1980s, the last World War II veteran to take that mantle, and nobody under age 50 now will have any real memories of his term in office. Yet, he was unique among recent American leaders and marked a sea change from the stern likes of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter wore blue jeans and denim shirts and cracked a disarmingly wide grin that quickly became iconic in politics.
He was the last true "dark horse" presidential candidate to win, almost unknown outside of Georgia a mere 18 months before the election. His opponents asked, "Jimmy who?"
In contrast, Barack Obama had already made the keynote speech at the national Democratic convention four years before his own election, and TV host and self-promoter Donald Trump was long a household name.
U.S. President George W. Bush (centre) meets with President-elect Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former President Jimmy Carter (far right) and former President George H.W. Bush in the Oval Office 7 January 2009 in Washington, DC. Photo: MARK WILSON / AFP
Other than Trump, there have been few other presidents who have been quite so visible a force in American history after their term ended. Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to forge peace agreements and awareness of human rights in 2002, long after he left office humbled by a landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan.
Compare that to, say, George W. Bush, who practically vanished from public life after 2009. Carter kept on being a voice for what he believed in, even when it ticked off the current presidents.
His post-presidency has lasted an astonishing 43+ years, the longest ever by more than a decade. That in large part accounts for his historical redemption. You outlive your enemies.
Carter's humility is part of his brand - he continues to live in the house in Plains, Georgia he moved into in 1961, and until his health deteriorated, taught at the local Sunday School for years.
He didn't always take on sexy causes, but work like the Carter Center's efforts to eliminate awful parasitic Guinea worm infections in Africa improved millions and millions of lives.
Former US president Jimmy Carter takes part in a Habitat for Humanity project 4 October 2010 in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP / File
Even back in the 1990s, Carter's reputation was gradually recovering, as his work for Habitat for Humanity and diplomatic efforts became more widely known, and Reagan-mania receded into the past.
Long before Jacinda Ardern came along, more than anything, it felt like Jimmy Carter's ultimate message was, "Be kind."
President Jimmy Carter flies commercial, greets every passenger on the flight. pic.twitter.com/xX8DIsMUZz
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) February 18, 2023
An excellent biography a few years back, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter - A Life by Jonathan Alter, makes a compelling case that Carter's presidency mattered more than we thought. He brought the language of environmentalism into the mainstream and spoke up for human rights. He worked to end nuclear proliferation - a policy followed up by Reagan - and pushed for more diversity and equality in government positions.
Yet he was far more of a micro-manager than a leader, a quality which ultimately sealed his defeat in 1980. The fumbled attempts to solve the Iran hostage crisis ensured his fate. Carter couldn't match Reagan's inspiring if often insubstantial rhetoric and seemed small compared to the ex-Hollywood star's breezy confidence.
Optimistic Reagan was memorably described by historian Rick Perlstein as an "athlete of the imagination," while Carter is recalled by Alter as "a visionary who was not a natural leader." While Carter, more than 10 years younger than Nixon or Gerald Ford, was arguably the first "modern" President, in the end he was replaced by the first "Hollywood" President.
Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat (L), Israeli Premier Menachem Begin (R) and US President Jimmy Carter shake hands after a press conference in the East Room of the White House, on 17 September 1978. Photo: AFP / File
Carter was hardly a perfect president - he could be abrupt and too pious and faltered dealing with some of the crises in his administration. That famous grin could drop quickly and reveal a cold, frosty side.
Yet his own ego always seemed a little less in the service of raw greed and power-mongering like certain recent presidents we could mention, and more a driving fundamental core of his character fuelled by a deep religious faith. Carter wanted a perfect world.
Did he succeed? Well, no, but Carter speaks more to the good side of much-mythologised American can-do spirit - and his unwavering dedication to seeing that better world through the next 40-plus years of his life tells us it wasn't just an act.
Jimmy Carter was neither the best nor worst of American presidents, but he had a quality that feels rare in an America torn apart by division, outrage merchants and an entire generation of politicians that now seems to be competing to see who can be the biggest jerk.
Jimmy Carter is sworn in on 20 January 1977, by Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in front of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, as the 39th President of the United States. Photo: AFP / File
The presidency has been full of con men, before and after Carter. There have been elements of Carter in his successors - Clinton's boundless energetic attempts to sow his own charitable legacy; Obama's cool intellectual approach to governing; George W. Bush's down-home mannerism, Biden's soft-spoken optimism.
Yet in the past century, there has never been another president quite like the unique combination of humble Southern charm and faith-filled confidence that animates all the long years of Carter's life.
"Today almost every politician wants to be seen as an outsider," Alter writes. "Carter was the real thing."
