Jimmy Carter Accomplished What No President Has Done Since John Quincy Adams
He redefined his legacy.
A FUNERAL SERVICE FOR JIMMY CARTER will be held this morning at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The 39th president of the United States, who died on December 29 at the age of 100, will be remembered less for the specifics of what he did during his time in the White House than for his long, loving marriage, his unwavering faith, and his dedication to public service. In the four decades since he left office, Carter succeeded in redefining his legacy, an incredible accomplishment achieved by only one other president—John Quincy Adams.
When Jimmy Carter left the White House, his presidency was characterized by soaring inflation, energy crises, and a botched hostage rescue in Iran. Many Americans viewed Carter as dour and unpatriotic, more prone to lecture about his fellow citizens’ shortcomings than defend the promise of America. Voters soundly rejected Carter’s realistic, if slightly gloomy, vision in favor of Ronald Reagan’s sunny promise to restore American swagger.
Since then, historians have pushed back on this overwhelmingly negative interpretation of Carter’s record, emphasizing his principled diplomacy, vital energy and environmental reforms, and civil rights record. But presidents find negative impressions hard to shake, which makes Carter’s post-presidential life even more remarkable. Few presidents have managed to write a new chapter in the history books that overshadows the bad taste they left behind.
In 1932, during the worst throes of the Great Depression, Americans rejected Herbert Hoover and cast their votes for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Over the next thirty years, Hoover founded scholarly centers, served on presidential commissions, wrote numerous books defending his conservative approach to the economy, and consulted with his successors. But no matter what Hoover did, Americans never stopped thinking of him as the president who did nothing to help struggling citizens during the worst depression the nation had ever seen.
In 1974, Richard Nixon left the White House under his own dark cloud, resigning to avoid impeachment and criminal charges for his role in the Watergate scandal. After leaving office, Nixon initially kept a low profile. At first, he avoided most public events, but regularly offered presidents foreign policy advice when asked. In 1990, he worked with the Nixon Foundation to open the Nixon Presidential Library and helped the staff to craft exhibits that emphasized the totality of his public service, not just its ignominious end. And he wrote nine books after leaving the presidency—two memoirs and several ruminations on power, foreign policy, and leadership. Yet in the public mind Nixon’s name still primarily brings to mind Watergate, scandal, corruption, and the fact that he remains the only president to have resigned.
ONLY ONE PRESIDENT OTHER THAN CARTER has managed to completely redefine himself after leaving office. In 1828, John Quincy Adams suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of his rival Andrew Jackson. Rather than spending his retirement years home in Quincy, Massachusetts brooding over his loss, Adams accepted a new position once his neighbors elected him to Congress. For the next seventeen years, he served as a stalwart abolitionist, fighting the powerful slave-owning faction in the South, opposing unconstitutional attempts to limit discussions of slavery, and representing the captured enslaved men before the Supreme Court in the Amistad case (famously depicted in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 movie by that name, where Adams is played by Anthony Hopkins). Today, JQA’s lifelong commitment to public service has largely obscured his time at the White House in the history books. Americans are now less likely to remember the ins and outs of JQA’s presidency than they are to know about his relationship with his famous father, his extraordinary diplomatic service and his tenure as secretary of state, his involvement in the Amistad case, his commendable service in the House of Representatives (he’s still the only president to have served in Congress after the presidency), and his dramatic death in the Capitol.
Carter followed a similar model. In his retirement, he founded the Carter Center, which promotes diplomatic conflict resolution, fosters free and fair elections, advocates for human rights, and supports the eradication of disease. Under Carter’s leadership, the center effectively ended Guinea worm disease and eliminated river blindness in many countries. Carter also worked to resolve conflicts in Haiti, Bosnia, Ethiopia, and more, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Closer to home, Carter helped rebuild communities destroyed by natural disasters, often picking up a hammer and nails to construct Habitat for Humanity homes. He remained very active in his church, teaching Sunday school well into his nineties. He largely abstained from domestic politics, conducted himself with grace and kindness, and lived his post-presidential life free of personal scandal.
Jimmy Carter redefined his legacy after his presidency. Other presidents, especially Hoover and Nixon, tried but failed to outrun or outwork their unhappy presidential legacies. Like John Quincy Adams before him, Carter will mostly be remembered for what came after his time in the White House rather than those four years in it—as he should be.
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