Jimmy Carter was a man of the people

Sometimes fate serves up a contrast to help us understand something more clearly. At a moment when a man obsessed with retribution, disruption and surrounding himself with the trappings of wealth is about to enter the White House, eulogies spotlighting the humility, simplicity and selflessness of President Jimmy Carter can’t help but feel like what young folks might call a subtweet or a stitch.

As the tributes pour in for Carter, we are going to hear certain words over and over again: Decency. Fidelity. Humanity. Also on repeat will be some of the statements that defined his candidacy and his single term in office. When he threw his hat in the ring to run in the 1976 presidential campaign, he reminded the nation that “we need a government as good as its people,” and as president pledged: “I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the trust of those who have confidence in me.”

When an American president dies, the world takes measure of that leader’s life and, in Jimmy Carter’s case, the moral compass that he followed in his century here on earth strikes a powerful contrasting chord to the incoming president, in part, because of his humility and quiet grace and, in part, because the arc of his life stands in such stark contradiction to the brand of strong-armed, pugilistic leadership the nation has just embraced.

There was a gentleness about Jimmy Carter that is celebrated now, but we should be honest in noting that his soft-spoken gentility was not given the same sunny reception when his presidency was rocked by a failing economy, the Iran hostage crisis and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan who brought Hollywood glitz and a sheen of matinee cowboy confidence to Washington.

Carter, defeated, returned to Georgia but found a greater victory by using his time, access and status as a member of the U.S. presidents’ club to let his light shine on projects and problems and people in need of a champion.

There is an adage among those who work for nongovernmental organizations, otherwise known as NGOs. It goes something like this: You don’t have to be in Washington, D.C., to be effective. But you will never be truly effective if you don’t get outside of Washington, D.C. Jimmy Carter’s life proves that point. He understood the concepts of proximity and power in a unique way.

For many ambitious people, obtaining and holding onto power are about being in proximity to those who have clout, influence, resources or wealth.

James Earl Carter grew up with his hands in the dirt and found ways to remain rooted in the Georgia soil of his youth, even as he ascended to the highest heights of political power. His feet may have been beneath a desk in the Oval Office or on some tarmac in Africa or some summit in South America or behind a lectern on Capitol Hill, but the simple rhythms and sturdy traditions of rural Georgia seemed to occupy a kind of geography of Carter's mind.

That shaped his decisions in office as governor and eventually as president. It was the compass that guided his post-presidency life. He left Georgia to live in Washington and travel the world over — but Georgia never left him. The experiences in the deeply rural, mostly Black hamlet of Archery (down the red-clay road from Plains) where his family grew cotton, corn, sugarcane and, most famously, peanuts were both a guiding and a magnetic force field throughout his long life.

Raised in a house that didn’t get running water until he was 11 and electricity until he was 14, Carter was in proximity to poverty. To nature. To Black people. (The Carters were the village’s only white people.) To a world in which lines around race, class and gender were starkly drawn because of segregation and Dixie tradition.  But those racial delineations were also blurry around the edges because farming is a team sport in which people who live close to the land depend on one another when the storms, the pests, the health of livestock and the viability of the land itself are unpredictable.

All of that was reflected in the decisions Carter made in office. He set the standard for national disaster response by creating the Federal Emergency Management Agency through executive order. He created the Department of Education and the Department of Energy and installed 32 thermal solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1979.

As governor of Georgia, he created unprecedented diversity in his hiring and appointments. Only three Black people served on Georgia state boards when he was elected governor. By the time he left, 40% of people in the state’s most influential positions were Black.  As president, he installed a record number of women and people of color to the federal bench as part of the 262 life-tenured judges he appointed during his term. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg was among that number.

There are many things that are impressive about Jimmy Carter: 39th president. Nobel Peace Prize winner. He served with distinction in the Navy. Did graduate work in nuclear physics. Was a master carpenter. Authored almost three dozen books.

However, the thing that I find most impressive on that sparkling résumé is that he took time to teach Sunday school year after year, even ducking back to Georgia to teach when he was living in the White House. Yes, his persistence at teaching was a demonstration of his Baptist faith, but it also revealed his determination to remain close to the people he served throughout his life.

There it is again. The importance of proximity even for a man who was elected to a position that placed him inside the equivalent of a gilded cage. A president elected to serve the people is traditionally cloistered from the public. The bubble is most tightly sealed when the president is serving a term, but even after leaving the White House, the cordon around the president is tight. 

Jimmy Carter managed to break through that, by traveling the world on various humanitarian projects, by helping to build more than 4,400 homes volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, by driving his security detail crazy when he stopped to shake every single hand on commercial Delta flights and by regularly dispensing wisdom to his Sunday School students from the front of Maranatha Baptist Church. Videos show that he was more hunched and certainly more gray in recent years, but until he was no longer able, he still showed up when his schedule allowed.

 “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something,” Carter once said. “I’m free to choose that something. My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can for as long as I can.”

Carter lived a life that was the embodiment of the idea of lifting as you climb. He never forgot where he came from. Following his final funeral ceremony in Washington on Thursday, he will make a final trip to Georgia, where he will be forever in proximity to the land of his youth, and also to Rosalynn Smith Carter, the love of his life.