Former President Jimmy Carter passed away at the age of 100 and left behind a legacy that will be argued amongst academia for years to come. On the one hand, he was a horrifically bad President, creating crisis after crisis during his tenure and leaving America far weaker than when he found it and the world far more dangerous than when he came into office. On the other hand, academics play for the Democrat team, so they’ll make excuses as to why Carter was great and his successor was awful. It won’t be hard to find parallels to today’s political dynamic.
In reality, there is no debate. Jimmy Carter’s legacy is one of deliberate retreat and cowardice, something only a Ronald Reagan-esque president could fix. Carter’s presidency was so horrific that The Simpsons, which is not exactly a bastion of right-wing comedy, said jokingly in 1993 that Carter was “history’s greatest monster.” After his presidency, Carter shopped around his failed foreign policy ideas for an additional 30 years before his ideological successor, Barack Obama, came around. Each of these ideas made the world worse, and they are still quite popular in today’s Democratic Party.
Carter got into office as a fluke, using the changes to the Democratic Primary process to grab the nomination and the unpopularity of Gerald Ford to squeak into the presidency. Remember, Richard Nixon was an incredibly popular president, winning 49 states in 1972. The Watergate scandal ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation, but that didn’t mean that the ideas of the Republican Party were unpopular. Carter reminded the nation how awful Democrats can govern, and he was rewarded with the greatest defeat for an incumbent president ever. Any historian who looks at Carter with rose-colored glasses is doing so in direct contradiction of the American people in 1980, who knew exactly what they were doing.
Carter’s four years in office are counted as some of the toughest in the 20th century – a century that included two World Wars and the Great Depression. It’s literally not possible to understate how awful he was. His term was marked by an economic debacle of historic proportions. Inflation under Carter wasn’t just high; it was a runaway train, hitting 13.5% by 1980, leading to a level of economic despair not seen before or since. The misery index, which sums up unemployment and inflation, reached a zenith under his watch, with Carter responding with what could only be described as a cocktail of misguided policies. His energy policy, famously encapsulated in the phrase “The Moral Equivalent of War,” was less a call to arms than a confession of his administration’s impotence in dealing with energy dependency and inflation.
In terms of foreign policy, Carter’s tenure was defined by its staggering naivete. The decision to hand over the Panama Canal was not just a surrender of strategic real estate but a symbol of American retreat from global leadership. The Iran Hostage Crisis exemplified his administration’s foreign policy failures, extending over 444 days, turning into a daily dose of national shame. His botched rescue attempt, Operation Eagle Claw, was a microcosm of his entire approach to international affairs – well-intentioned but disastrously executed. Carter’s focus on human rights came at the expense of strategic considerations, contributing to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the destabilization of the Middle East, ironically stripping tens of millions of human rights as they suffered under Islamist and Soviet regimes. His presidency was not merely a series of unfortunate events but a clear demonstration of how idealism, when divorced from reality, can lead to enduring national weakness.
Carter’s post-presidency is considered by many to be widely successful due to the Center he set up and their focus on fighting diseases around the world and pushing clean water supplies. The Carter Center did, in fact, accomplish far more than other post-presidential nonprofits, like the Clinton Foundation, which was primarily used as a money laundering operation for Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Of course, even without Carter’s direct involvement, the global fight against diseases like Guinea worm, river blindness, and trachoma, along with initiatives to improve water supplies, would have continued through the efforts of numerous other organizations, governments, and international health agencies. The World Health Organization (WHO), for instance, would have maintained its focus on these issues, possibly leading global eradication campaigns with different strategies or timelines. NGOs like Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and WaterAid, which have long been committed to similar causes, would have expanded their programs. Pharmaceutical companies might still have engaged in drug donation programs due to corporate social responsibility or public pressure, though perhaps not with the same breadth or efficiency. Additionally, the momentum for these causes might have been driven by other influential figures or coalitions, leveraging different funding models or partnerships. It’s debatable whether Carter started the parade or jumped in front of it and pretended like he was leading the whole time.
What is not debatable are his other activities post-presidency, the ones where he directly acted, and not through his Center. Carter used his status as a former president to undermine George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in Iraq and North Korea respectively, putting millions of lives in danger, decades after he was out of office.
In the lead-up to the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, Carter took actions that many viewed as overstepping. After Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, Carter initially engaged in typical public advocacy, writing op-eds and hosting conferences to promote peace talks over military action. However, when these efforts didn’t sway public or governmental opinion, he escalated his involvement.
According to Douglas Brinkley’s book, The Unfinished Presidency, Carter wrote letters to every leader on the UN Security Council and several other nations, urging them to engage in “good faith” negotiations with Saddam Hussein. More controversially, just days before the US-set deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, he advised Arab leaders to abandon support for US policy, suggesting they would find support elsewhere, notably from France and the Soviet Union. This move undermined US diplomacy and nearing the line of treason, as his actions put the active US military in the region in direct danger.
Carter’s freelance diplomacy didn’t stop with the Middle East. In 1994, amidst a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program, Carter, invited by Kim Il-sung, traveled to Pyongyang. Although he was supposed to act solely as an observer, he ended up negotiating directly, announcing a deal on CNN without prior consultation with the Clinton administration. This not only infuriated US officials but also complicated US policy, leading to a deal that was later seen as allowing North Korea time to further its nuclear program covertly. The world has been dealing with a nuclear-powered North Korea ever since.
All of that pales in comparison with Carter’s involvement in the Middle East. Carter mentored Yasser Arafat in how to speak to Western audiences, allowing Arafat to continue his reign of terror in Israel and his subjugation of Palestinians while having a friendly face to a gullible media. Carter embraced Hamas, literally. He was seen in 2009 hugging Ismail Haniyeh and claimed that Hamas was ready to make peace with Israel if only Israel wasn’t the obstacle to peace
Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” in 2007 was a one-sided diatribe against Israel and filled with factual inaccuracies. This publication led to significant backlash, including resignations from the Carter Center’s advisory board and criticism from scholars like Ken Stein, who had worked closely with Carter. The first draft of the book included a line that justified terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. “It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.” He later claimed that the line was a mistake, and his only real critics were just angry Jews.
Carter was as delusional as he was ineffective. He was convinced that if he had a second term, he would have brought peace to the Middle East because of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt that occurred in 1977, the first year of his presidency. But the peace accords between Israel and Egypt were fundamentally driven by the strategic interests of both nations, not the mediation of Jimmy Carter. Egypt, under Anwar Sadat, sought to regain control over the Sinai Peninsula and pivot away from reliance on Soviet aid, while Israel, led by Menachem Begin, aimed to secure a peaceful border and establish relations with a major Arab country. Both leaders had already initiated steps towards peace before Carter’s involvement, with Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977 being a pivotal moment.
As Philip Klein wrote for National Review, “He was convinced that, had he been reelected, he would have been able to build on the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt and resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians – even though there were significant differences between the two conflicts. In 2003, he boasted to The New York Times, “Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution.” It was quite a choice of words.” Carter’s ego would make Donald Trump blush.
The legacy of Jimmy Carter has been written and rewritten for 50 years. The fact is that Carter was easily the worst post-World War II president this country had, was kicked out of office after a single term in a landslide, and then spent the next 40 years wandering around messing things up for all of his successors. That’s his true legacy. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant of the facts or lying for political purposes. Or, as the old joke goes, the four parshiyos in the middle of Sefer VaYikra hold true: “M’tzora. Acharei Mos, K’doshim Emor.”
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.
By Moshe Hill
