Jimmy Carter's Unappreciated Legacy

Jimmy Carter lived a long and full life that took him from the Georgia hamlet of Plains to the White House.

- Stuart E. Eizenstat

He served as a naval officer, a Georgia state senator and governor of the Peach State. He received the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and for his work at the Carter Presidential Center curing African diseases, monitoring elections, and mediating international disputes from Bosnia to Haiti. He did it all with his loving wife Rosalynn by his side. They were married in 1946; she died at 96 in November 2023.

After more than four decades, it's time for history to redeem the Carter presidency. There were gasoline lines, high inflation, the Iranian hostage crisis, a speech dubbed "malaise" (a term he never used) and a landslide re-election defeat. He left office with an approval rating lower than any post-World War II president except Richard Nixon and Harry S. Truman, and equal to those of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. But he should also be remembered as a consequential president whose single term produced lasting accomplishments.

Carter's success rate at passing major legislation was among the highest of modern presidents, not far below Lyndon B. Johnson's. More than 10 million jobs were created in his four-year term-double that of Ronald Reagan's first term and more than five times as high as George H.W. Bush's one term. He also managed average real GDP growth of 3.4%, a figure surpassed by only three modern presidents-John F. Kennedy, LBJ and Bill Clinton. He laid the foundation for Reagan's military buildup while negotiating a nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, later implemented by Reagan and the Soviets.

He respected the institutions of government and the free press, no matter how brutal its coverage.