Jimmy Carter: A mixed presidential legacy, a complicated man, but on balance a good one

Source: The Nation

As a dumb kid, I didn’t vote for Carter. I thought the idea of continuity was somehow important to maintaining stability in the U.S., despite how much I disliked Ford and his pardoning of one of the greatest crooks to hold office. I didn’t have much to on regarding Carter; he was  presented as the nice guy peanut farmer governor of Georgia and of whom I’d read nothing that mattered. 

However, if I had, I might have been blown away. He was an anti-segregationist, he provided equal state aid to schools regardless of rich or poor or rural or urban; he set up community centers for mentally disabled children, and increased educational opportunities for convicts. He had little time for the “professional politicians” and made appointments based on merit. He was, I think, the first Georgia governor to add Black state employees and apparently, really pissed off the KKK by installing portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., Lucy Craft Laney, and Henry McNeal Turner. 

Bear in mind that what I do remember hearing about him was negative. That he had co-sponsored an anti-bussing bill with George Wallace and that he reintroduced the death penalty to Georgia. As he said years later, he didn’t see the injustice of the death penalty at the time, but he came around later. I suspect he also regretted co-signing that bill.

It’s telling that even though he lost the bid for leading the National Governor’s Association, David Rockefeller through his support behind Carter for the Trilateral Commission, an NGO for growing closer cooperation between the US, Western Europe, and Japan. A year later, he was the chairman of both the DNC’s congressional and gubernatorial campaigns. (1)

So if I’d known this, how would this have mattered to the 18 year old me? Probably a fair amount, because I was while I was still listening to adults who I thought knew better than little old me, I would have been impressed by Carter’s accomplishments. Unfortunately, I was a bigger ignoramus at that age than I am now (or maybe about the same?); but I see how Jimmy Carter’s bonafides made him a player on the national scene among a party that was reasserting itself in the wake of GOP corruption. Also, and this is something I didn’t appreciate or understand then, though I would in another four years, Carter was relatable.

He genuinely knew how to talk to people, not at them. He was the original “politician I’d like to have a beer with” guy, decades before that was a factor in George W. Bush’s campaign. That he handily woo the 1976 presidential election was no doubt due to a perfect alignment of factors. Sure he was little known to most of the nation, but his accomplishments sold well enough to rally the majority of voters behind him who were tired after years of Vietnam, racial strife, and the aforementioned corruption in the highest office. Carter sounded and acted like a guy who would be there for the little guy.

For the most part, he was. He pardoned every Vietnam draft dodger, he established the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. He was the first sitting President to boost energy efficiency and acknowledge climate change (installing solar panels on the White House was a signature moment); he was the first sitting President to be officially pro-gay rights and openly opposed the Briggs Initiative which mandated that the firing of any gay or lesbian teacher in California public schools or any teacher who supported gay rights. He signed into law the Mental Health Systems Act. Never heard of it? Reagan repealed it upon taking office. It provided grants to community mental health centers. 

In terms fo foreign policy, the legacy of the Iran Hostage Crisis is often seen as tarnsishing his reputation, but the Crisis was resolved on his watch. Reagan took credit for it (the last hostage was released on January, 20, 1981, and Reagan took that as reason enough to claim it for his own; more below.) I actually have bigger issues with the part Carter played in the East Timor genocide carried out by Indonesia in which 200,000 people died. Before I turn to those, let’s look at his foreign policy acts.

He gave the Panama Canal back to Panama; he cut off foreign and military aid to Pinochet and Somoza and called out Pinochet for human rights violations; he signed off on the legislation that banned the CIA from assassinating foreign leaders; hew was the first sitting President to visit Africa; he signed onto the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) with Russia; And of course, facilitating the Camp Davie accords which lead to a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.

So what went wrong or why is Carter’s presidency often regarded as a mediocrity at best and a failure at worst? At the very least, and this is stuck in my memory as the first time when I began to realize how little politics and economics effected each other. Inflation was high acorn the U.S. but it hit some areas harder than others. In 1977, I had traveled to California for a second and then out to the East Coast. The coasts were hit particularly hard, the East more than the West. Not so long afterward, the OPEC rigged oil crisis triggered the “gas wars” across the country, as seemingly unending lines snaked their ways around gas stations. As we’ve come to realize, inflation has less to do with who’s in office than exchange rates and movements on markets, both domestic and international. That said, any sitting President is going to get credit for bringing inflation down (or not; see also, Joseph Biden) or blame for when it rises (the present esteemed gentleman under discussion). 

The 1979 oil crisis was the result of the drop in oil production aft the Iranian Revolution. Crude oil prices surged over the year and in 1980, the Iraq-Iran War reduced production in both those countries, leading to recessions across the world. To be sure, OPEC didn’t rig the crisis, but it did result in record profits for most of its members. 

This, however, led to those gas station lines and Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech in which he encouraged citizens to do what they could to reduce energy usage. Now, in and of itself, at the remove of five decades, many of us are likely to agree this was a great idea. At the time, it read as an austerity measure. The optics, as pundits today might opine, didn’t look good. Then, in 1980, he issued the Carter Doctrine which stated that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States.” Carter also began deregulating the industry and reduced price controls that had been imposed by Nixon. Reagan would continue removing those controls completely. 

I mentioned above that inflation hit the country unequally in the 70s; so too, were the resulting profits that accrued from 79’s oil crisis. Oil-producing states like Texas, Alaska, Oklahoma, and Louisiana experienced population and economic booms when the price of crude oil increased between 1978 and 1980. Of course, the oil market was volatile through the 80s but the crisis was still laid at Carter’s doorstep. 

Another direct result of the Iranian Revolution, of course, was the hostage crisis. Two things came to my tiny mind when the Revolution happened. One was, Good! The Shah - a CIA-backed ruler - was deposed and Bad! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to visit Iran. I actually had a friend who was in Tehran shortly after the Revolution had quieted down and this confirmed my suspicion that mine might not be a welcome face. But back to Carter’s dilemma and legacy.

The dilemma is obvious; how to free 90 hostages taken at the US Embassy in Tehran by students demanding the extradition of the Shah back to Iran.(2) The Ayatollah Khomeini backed the students’ actions and the Iranian government cancelled military treaties with Bothe the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Doing so prevented military interference in Iran’s affairs from either state. After Khomeini  refused to meet with Carter’s diplomatic envoy, Carter orders Iranian assets in U. S, bans frozen. Khomeini releases all female prisoners, bringing the number down to 53. In December 1979, the United Nations Security Council passes a resolution calling for Iran to release the remaining hostages.

Tangentially, six American embassy employees who avoided capture and hid in the homes of Canadian Embassy officers, made it out of Iran thanks to a joint mission between the Canadian government and the CIA. 

By April, Carter cuts diplomatic ties with Iran, imposes sanctions, and expels all Iranian diplomats. One more hostage is released due to illness in July of 1980 and in that same month, the Shah dies of cancer. In September, the Ayatollah sets new terms; the return of the Shah’s wealth to Iran and unfreezing of Iranian assets. From November 1980 through January of 1981, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher works with mediators in Algeria to negotiate the hostages’ release. On January 19, 1981, the United States and Iran sign an agreement to release the hostages and unfreeze Iranian assets. 

On January 21, the remains 53 U.S. hostages are released and flown to Wiesbaden Air Base in Germany. No hostage lives were lost during the entire ordeal.

This last part is extremely important. It was emphatically the Carter Administration and not Reagan’s that managed and secured the release of the hostages, but let’s be honest. The press didn’t report it that way, and during the campaign, Ronald Reagan worked up his image of the tough-talking cowboy who wouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, regardless of the fact that he did; see also the Iran-Contra Affair. 

I think history has begun to exonerate Jimmy Carter for the blame he unfairly took for “bungling” the crisis He didn’t, obviously, but the lesson few have learned in the intervening 45 years is that electorates have always been subject to manipulation and history is rewritten by the victor. Coming after Carter, Reagan presages the arrival of Trump after Obama and again, Trump after Biden. The difference is that Obama was a two-term President and while I have extreme issues with many of his policies, he is a far more decent man than the President Elect. Biden, as well. 

But Carter is who I want to stay with here because his legacy, while uneven, is for the most part far better and even enlightened and forward thinking than many of his successors. However, before I leave his Presidency years, there is the matter of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor. 

It’s a fairly complicated tale of colonization, civil war, and invasion under the pretext of liberation that resulted In 200,000 deaths. After the Portuguese were driven from East Timor, among the last of the territories under colonial rule, the Indonesian hardliners and military saw an opportunity to “annex” East Timor. Oh. I failed to minion that the government of East Timor was the left-wing Fretilin that Indonesia feared (or claimed they feared) would lead to creating a communist state right there on Indonesia’s border. The U.S. interest lied containing the creation of any such state to control the waters in the area as intentional threats to Western naval power. Did I mention that there were also alleged high estimates of oil to be found under the Timor Sea? No? Well, the additional tragedy is that the estimates later proved to be “largely mistaken”. Lastly, and most significantly, Indonesia was being courted as Southeast Asia’s major military ally. (3)

The invasion itself began during the Ford administration and little was said about Indonesia but NSA documents released in 2001 show that the administration was taking a hands-off stance on any action by the Suharto administration regarding invasion. The real green light was the U.S. arming of the Indonesia forces. Then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was worried that the arms deals made would be exposed to public scrutiny and advised Suharto to wait until Ford returned from his East Asian junket to contain the information and control the narrative. Kissinger to Suharto: “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly. “

The U.S continued supplying arms to Indonesia and this was accelerated under Carter’s watch. Now it gets really cruddy. In the late seventies, testifying before Congress, Deputy Legal Advisor of the US State Department George Aldrich said that “we did not really for Indonesia know much” and that “maybe we did not want to know very much but I gather that for a time we did not know.” David T. Kenney the Country Officer for Indonesia In the US State Department testified that one of the purposes for the arms deals was to keep Timor “peaceful.“

Did Carter feel that this was morally acceptable? Or was he simply naive? Or, worse case, he knew and fell in line with the old saw of protection U.S. interests? Well, it seems there’s a little of all in this.

Carter told Amy Goodman from NPR that while he “had a policy…of not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region of the world”, he was “not…as thoroughly briefed about what was going on in East Timor as [he] should have been.” Admittedly, as he told Goodman, the Carter Center made Indonesia one of its principle areas of interest, but - and to Goodman’s credit, she pressed him on this - how can a President be “so isolated" to say he wished he’d known then what he knew now. To either his credit and candor or his denial of the results of his actions, he affirmed that any given President is so assailed with crises on a daily basis that prioritization is an unwieldy process such that ?there are so many different things that the President has to do that are pressing and crisis that you can’t really expect any president, including me or my predecessors or successors, to know the details of things like East Timor. I wish I had, but I didn’t.”(4)

On the one hand, he speaks from experience; on the other, I can’t help but think that he could have extended a Carter Doctrine to pursue diplomatic means to staunch that crisis before it continued all the way through the Clinton Administration. The fact remains that Indonesia was/is a strategically located nation and has proved to be a cash cow. That said, while I don’t want to give anyone.a free pass on hundreds of thousands of lives exterminated for expansionist ends on the parts of invaders, whether it’s Indonesia, or China, or the U.S., I tend to believe Carter more than not. 

However, there’s one more black eye that is much harder to deal with; the Carter Administration’s support of the South Korean military’s crackdown of the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, during which “students and ordinary citizens protesting a military coup by a renegade general were attacked by airborne special forces with a viciousness and cruelty that Koreans had not experienced since the darkest days of the Korean War.” The death toll officially is 165, but many believe that more act 300 were killed with more unaccounted for. Soutn Korea would become a democracy seven years later and the Gwangju Uprising remains the first shot fired in the movement toward that moment.

Here’s where playing Machiavelli with people’s lives results, once again, in abject strategic failure, but more importantly, moral failure.The Carter administration “played an essential role in Gwangju by helping the coup leader, Lt. General Chun Doo-hwan, crush the uprising.” The Nation reported on a high-level White House meeting that “Carter’s national security team approved the use of force to retake the city and agreed to provide short-tem support to Chun if he agreed to long-term political change (that didn’t happen until he was forced out massive protests in 1987).”(5)

This was all while the Iran Hostage situation was also front-burner material. It was later discovered that direct US military intervention was on the table, as well. The Nation article points out that Carter never addressed this after leaving office, except for on a CNN interview on June 1, 1980, when he was asked about the incompatibility between human rights and national security. Carter maintained “[T]here is no incompatibility.” The situation in South Korea was one where “the maintenance of a nation’s security from Communist subversion or aggression is a prerequisite to the honoring of human rights and the establishment of democratic processes.” The rest of the article is a damning and disheartening report on how not only misguided the Carter Administration’s involvement was but how damnable and shameful the aftermath proved to be. To date, the U.S. has never apologized for its support of the regime or for the lives lost.

I came to praise Carter, not to bury him. But in praising a man for a life given in serving his country, we cannot gloss over the tragic errors that hobble full-throated paeans. My larger point is that no one is above criticism nor is anyone a perfect moral exemplar. However, there are some who come close and I believe that Jimmy Carter tried his damnedest, knowing full well that he had fallen far short of the mark while in office. I don’t necessarily believe that he took these failures lightly but I wonder if they helped inspire or goad him into becoming the man he was once he left office. 

Does his work for human rights absolve him from blunders which cost many, many lives? No matter how much I wish that could be so, no. Such absolution cannot exist or every murder is justified. However, the work he has done for peace in his post-administration years shows that a person can still contribute and in his case, greatly, to attempting to right the wrongs we incur on a daily basis.

This is where Jimmy Carter stands out as a human being, even as a great one despite - or perhaps, because of - these deep flaws. He shows us how important it is to at least make the effort to improve the lives of others, and by lifting others up, perhaps even, raise ourselves up to a higher way of being in the world.

We can’t wash the blood of history from off our collective flesh, but we can live in ways such that those who have historically been the victims of that blood-letting are minimized. I would not presume to think or speak for a man who - although it may not seem like it here I respect and admire deeply and now miss deeply, but I think he might concur somewhat.

In any case, the man earned his rest. The greater tragedy is that we are not likely to see his ilk in the Executive Office anytime soon. But I don’t want to end on that note. I’d rather President Carter have the last word.

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try and make a difference.”(6)

Sources

Note: I used Wikipedia as I usually do for its sources and references and drilled down on those throughout to make sure that at the very least, I concurred with the entry. 

1. The Associated Press. “Significant milestones in life and career of Jimmy Carter.” https://apnews.com/article/jimmy-carter-life-career-timeline-38b962a71cb8c05e1f7dba3b0873ebc7. Retrieved December 30, 2024 and Wikipedia. “Jimmy Carter”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter. Retrieved December 30, 2024.
2. CNN Editorial Research. “Iran Hostage Crisis Fast Facts.” https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/middleeast/iran-hostage-crisis-fast-facts/index.html. October 17, 2024. Retrieved December 30, 2024.
3. Wikipedia. “Indonesian Invasion of East Timor.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_invasion_of_East_Timor. Retrieved December 30, 2024.
4. ETAN.org. “Subject: DN: Carter on East Timor.” https://www.etan.org/et2007/september/15/10dn.htm. Retrieved December 30, 2024.
5. Shorrock, Tim and Injeong, Kim. “2 Days in May That Shattered South Korean Democracy.” The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/two-days-in-may-that-shattered-korean-democracy/.  May 28, 2020. Retrieved December 30, 2024. 
6. Clark, B.T. “In His Own Words: 12 Quotes by Jimmy Carter.” The Georgia Sun. https://thegeorgiasun.com/georgia-people/in-his-own-words-12-quotes-by-jimmy-carter/. December 29, 2024. Retrieved December 30, 2024.