Jimmy Carter’s long post-White House life has allowed him to rebuild his legacy from an unpopular president to a charitable humanitarian, historians said.
Although Jimmy Carter left the White House in one of the biggest landslides of the modern American era, tributes poured onto social media moments after the Carter Center announced that he would receive hospice care. The oldest-living former president elicited praise often reserved for public figures who have already died, but the attention focused more on what he did after his presidency than during it.
Carter, 98, is not the first president to be memorialized while still alive, but the evolution of his legacy is unusual because he had such a long period between the end of his unpopular presidency and Saturday’s announcement that he would end several hospital stays and spend his final days at his Plains, Ga., home.
“Between the time he left office and entered hospice care, he got to sit back and enjoy the adulation of a grateful nation,” said Jeffrey A. Engel, the director for the presidential history center at Southern Methodist University.
Historians said Carter, a Democrat, was unique because he had the most time of any man who led the United States. (His 42-plus years are more than a decade longer than Herbert Hoover’s post-presidency.) And he built his image from extreme unpopularity into a legacy that includes a Nobel Peace Prize and a dedication to charitable work.
In 1980, Carter ran for reelection amid high prices of gasoline and other consumer goods and the Iran hostage crisis, biographer Jonathan Alter wrote. Ronald Reagan defeated him in 44 states, ensuring that Carter would be the first elected president to be refused a second term since 1932.
The rehabilitation of Carter’s political and public image began later.
“The passage of time smoothed out the rough edges of his political career,” said Engel. “If Carter had died in 1982, there would be less adulations than he is receiving right now.
