- Title: A mixed legacy for President Jimmy Carter
- Date: 3rd March 2023
- Summary: ATLANTA, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES (MARCH 3, 2023) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) POLITICAL SCIENTIST DR. PATRICK ALLITT, OF EMORY UNIVERSITY, saying: "He's been an outstanding post-President, probably one of the two greatest in American history, the only other one who ranks beside his is John Quincy Adams who left the White House way back in 1829 when he was still a relativ
- Embargoed: 17th March 2023 22:19
- Keywords: Carter Iran President Jimmy Carter Vietnam Watergate hostages post presidency
- Location: VARIOUS
- City: VARIOUS
- Country: US
- Topics: North America,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA00B469903032023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Jimmy Carter, the earnest Georgia peanut farmer who as U.S. president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis, came into office as the United States was coping with the aftermath of Watergate and the Vietnam war.
"I think his most important role was a symbolic one of cleansing the collective dirt and cynicism of Watergate and Vietnam, and in that respect, I think he is a fairly luminous figure." said Dr. Patrick Allitt of Emory University
In recent years, the Georgia native suffered from several health issues including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain, although he had initially responded well to treatment.
Carter decided to receive hospice care and "spend his remaining time at home with his family" instead of undergoing additional medical intervention, the Carter Center said on February 18.
Carter, who lived longer than any other president in U.S. history, was a Democrat who served in the White House from January 1977 to January 1981. Carter also lived longer after his term in office than any other occupant of the Oval Office, earning a reputation as a better former president than he was a president - a status he acknowledged.
Carter left office profoundly unpopular but worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his "untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
Carter defeated the Republican incumbent Gerald Ford in the 1976 election to become the 39th U.S. president but lost in an electoral landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980 after a single term in office widely considered a failure.
Carter, a former Georgia governor, came to the White House as a Washington outsider promising honesty in the aftermath of the Watergate political corruption scandal that forced Republican President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974, elevating his vice president, Gerald Ford, to the presidency.
The Iran hostage crisis shrouded his presidency. Iranian revolutionaries seized American diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 hostages for 444 days before finally freeing them the day Carter left office. Carter came off looking feeble after a military rescue mission he ordered in 1980 ended in failure with eight U.S. troops dying in an aircraft mishap.
After his presidency, Carter returned to his peanut farm in Plains, Georgia, and succeeded in remaking his image. He created the Carter Center to carry out his humanitarian efforts.
Carter continued teaching Sunday school into his 90s at the small red-brick Maranatha B
"I've had a wonderful life," Carter told reporters in Atlanta in 2015. "I've had thousands of friends. And I've had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence."
(Production: Deborah Lutterbeck) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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