This week we are all joined in the death watch for former President Jimmy Carter. The pundits are crafting their tributes, the politicians are weighing in with their usual, and the family no doubt are sitting by the bedside.
So many of the tributes to Mr. Jimmy, as he's called in Plains, describe him as a good man, too honest or too much a technocrat to be a good President. They often resort to the backhanded compliment as the "best former President ever," pointing to his work for Habitat for Humanity or the Carter Center or to eradicate the scourge of the Guinea worm. Reviews of his presidency are couched in terms that focus on his unpopularity, his failure to inspire, his lopsided loss in the 1980 election.
Yet when one looks at a list of accomplishments while in office, for only one term, one finds a substantial body of work, including a number of initiatives that have had great influence on the nation and the world.
- President Carter gets blasted for inflation, but zero credit for appointing Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve, perhaps the single most important step to end the inflation that brushed aside Nixon's wage-price controls and scoffed at Ford's WIN buttons.
- He is vilified for allowing our embassy staff in Tehran to be taken hostage, and mocked for the failed hostage attempt. Meanwhile the tough Ronald Reagan is rarely criticized for the bombing of the Marine barracks at Beirut Airport on October 23, 1983, killing 241 Americans.
- His aggressive push to ratify the Panama Canal treaty was widely panned as surrendering a vital strategic interest, and has even been cited as the cause of the rise of the criminal tyrant Noriega to power in Panama. Yet none of the doomsday scenarios the critics predicted ever came about.
- He was widely mocked for his sweater speech, urging Americans to adjust their thermostats to save energy. Four decades later, we see missed opportunities for global leadership in the 21st-century energy transition, a transition which Engineer Carter foresaw with amazing clarity.
- The Camp David treaty between Israel and Egypt remains an anchor of stability in a volatile Middle East.
- Carter's deregulation of trucking and airlines revolutionized transportation in the United States.
- The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) was landmark legislation that preserved more wilderness than any single action in the history of the nation.
- His amnesty for those who evaded the Vietnam era draft turned another page on a dark part of America's history, helping to heal many wounds.
