Gordon Lucy: Devout Christian and Washington outsider, Jimmy Carter used his post-presidential life to do good

Interviewed on that occasion, he confessed that he never expected to live as long as he had and that the best explanation for his longevity was a good marriage.

Back in August Jimmy Carter’s son Chip asked his father if he was trying to make it to his 100th birthday. According to the former president’s grandson Jason, his reply was ‘I’m trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris.’ (In May of this year Jason had thought his grandfather’s life was ‘nearing its end’.)

James Earl Carter was born on October 1 1924 in the small farming town of Plains, Georgia. He is a descendant of Scots-Irish settler Andrew Cowan, a Co Antrim Presbyterian, who in 1772 became one of the first residents of Boonesborough in the South Carolina Piedmont.

In December 1974, just before the expiry of his term as governor of Georgia, Carter announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination: ‘My name is Jimmy Carter and I am running for president.’

Although lacking a national profile or major backing, he campaigned vigorously against party establishment figures to create a broad support base.

His campaign slogan was ‘A Leader, For A Change.’ This had a special resonance in the aftermath of Watergate which had generated widespread unease about the abuse of power.

Making a virtue out of being a political outsider, he presented himself as a man of strong principles who could ‘clean up the mess in Washington’ and restore the faith of the American people in their leaders. In the space of nine months this obscure southern governor morphed into becoming the president-elect – an astonishing achievement.

He did not conform to the southern Democrat ‘good ole boy’ stereotype – someone adept at machine politics, backslapping and dodgy deal making. Nor was he a segregationist.

Carter’s high-mindedness was the product of his deep religious faith. His piety was even reflected in his Secret Service codename: ‘Deacon’. As president, Carter prayed several times a day, and claimed that Jesus was the driving force in his life. He was greatly influenced by a sermon he had heard as a young man that asked: ‘If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?’ He believed: ‘We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon.’

He adopted an informal style of dress and speech in public appearances, held frequent press conferences, and significantly curtailed the pomp associated with the office in the era of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

As governor of Georgia, Carter viewed backroom wheeling and dealing with distaste. Because that is how politics in Washington works, Congress found him difficult.

Despite this, curiously Carter’s success rate in getting presidential initiatives through Congress was much higher than that of his predecessors Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and successors Reagan and Bush. Only Lyndon Johnson out-performed him in this respect but not by much. So by this yardstick, the charge that Carter was politically inept would appear to be misplaced.

His term coincided with an array of serious problems – stagflation, the energy crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the US embassy hostages in Iran. At the time he was the butt of serious criticism for how he addressed these issues but more recent evaluations tend to be more sympathetic than contemporary ones – not least because there is now a greater appreciation of the sheer enormity of the task he took on in 1977.

Carter’s greatest triumph was the Camp David Accords of 1978. Having invited Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, and Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister, to the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, he secured their agreement to the Accords that ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries since Israel’s foundation in 1948.

Between September 5 and 17 Carter shuttled between Israeli and Egyptian delegations, hammering out the terms of peace. Begin and Sadat reached a historic agreement: Israel would withdraw from the entire Sinai Peninsula; the US would establish monitoring posts to ensure that neither side attacked the other; Israel and Egypt would recognise each other's governments and sign a peace treaty; and Israel pledged to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace.

If the Camp David Accords were the highpoint of Carter’s presidency, the Iranian hostage crisis represented its nadir and was surely the major factor in Carter’s failure to secure re-election in 1980.

Carter was only 56 when he ceased to be president. Shortly after losing the presidential election, he told the White House press corps that he intended to emulate the retirement of Harry Truman and not to use his subsequent public life to enrich himself.

Whereas Truman spent his retirement reading, writing, lecturing and taking long brisk walks, Carter was far more pro-active.

In 1982 he and his wife Rosalynn founded the Carter Center, a non-governmental and non-profit organisation with a remit of advancing human rights and alleviating human suffering by improving the quality of life of people in more than 80 countries.

Until 2020, he and Rosalynn Carter volunteered one week a year for Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organisation that helps needy people in the United States and in other countries renovate and build homes for themselves.

On December 10 2002, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded him the Peace Prize ‘for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development’.

In 2009 the (London) Independent newspaper observed that ‘Carter is widely considered a better man than he was a president’. Certainly few, if any, US presidents have had a more productive or admirable post-presidential career.