February 20, 2023 (Presidents Day)

I suppose that everyone who has served as the US President, with one notable exception (a galling disclaimer that is now a permanent part of our presidential history), has entered office imagining that they would leave the Whitehouse having moved the country forward in some important way. Some significant goal should have been achieved, or some monumental milestone reached from which we would never retreat. Perhaps some—perhaps many—have managed to do it. Yet even with the most clearly defined platform, success or failure as a president is historically hard to judge in the moment. The resistance to any one person’s policy goals is always so stiff. In truth, it takes the effort of legions of people to move legislation, and a generation or more living with it to truly gauge its success. This is the nature of government, and in a democracy it’s an especially slow and difficult thing to assign credit or blame to any one individual.

That’s why we so often only recognize the heroes or villains who sit in the Oval Office long after they have gone. It may only be when a former president passes that we are prompted, as a people, to reassess their legacy and, hopefully, see it more honestly. When we do, we will learn something about ourselves and the way our country has evolved.

Thankfully, President James Earl Carter, Jr. (“Jimmy”) is still with us, at least for a little longer. The news of his hospice care tells us that it is time for us to look back at a president who was judged at the time by some to be a failure, but whose legacy will likely look very different now.

President Carter was elected in 1976 in the first presidential election since our first presidential resignation. The twin scandals of Watergate and the Agnew vice-presidency had seemingly rocked the foundation of our republic. Many had feared that we might find the constitution unable to protect us. Many of us were just realizing that “the consent of the governed” also meant that a constitution is not worth the paper it’s printed on unless everyone agrees to honor it—especially the most powerful among us. We wanted and needed to elect a fundamentally honest and forthright person as our leader, and we chose Jimmy Carter.

Carter was not perfect. Like any other human, he made political mistakes and tactical errors. The complexity of the job makes it impossible to get it right much of the time. Like the American people always do, we carped and kvetched when things seemed to be going wrong, and we blamed the guy at the top—when it was his fault and when it wasn’t.

What we can now see through the lens of history is that we got what we voted for in 1976. Jimmy Carter was exactly who he said he was—even better, actually. As an electorate, we were just wise enough to know that we needed a restoration of our faith in the fundamental goodness of our society. While he certainly couldn’t please everyone with his policies as president, we have never had to doubt the decency of the person. Since leaving office, he has shown us by brilliant example time and again how much good a human being can do in the world. What more can or should we ask of our leaders?