Jimmy Carter died in December of 2024 after months of hospice care in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. He was 100 years old and lived the longest life of any American president.

Carter was more highly regarded at the time of his death than when he lost his bid for reelection in 1980. He produced an exemplary post-presidency and is appreciated for the enormity of the tasks he took on in 1977. Carter became president just thirty months after President Nixon had left office in disgrace from the Watergate scandal. Carter faced serious challenges—the energy crisis, Soviet aggression, an Iranian revolution, and above all, a deep mistrust of leadership in the post-Watergate era.

Carter was hard working and conscientious. But he often seemed like a player out of position, a man more suited to be secretary of energy than president. Carter became president by narrowly defeating Gerald Ford, an uninspiring, unelected chief executive and heir to the worst presidential scandal in history. The nomination was Carter’s largely because in the decade before 1976, Democratic leadership in the nation had been decimated by scandal, the Vietnam War, and an assassination.

Jimmy Carter was a transitional president between the old liberal politics of the 1960s and an emerging conservative national consensus. Carter was successful largely because he was one of the first to discern the public's disaffection with traditional liberalism. He sought to portray himself as a new type of Democrat but failed to fundamentally change his party.

As president, Carter mediated disputes between other nations, most importantly in the Middle East—something every succeeding chief executive has emulated to varying degrees. His insistence on American leadership in the protection of human rights around the world helped to subvert the power of communist and other dictatorial regimes, and eventually led to the human rights initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s.

His stubborn independence, a great asset while climbing to the presidency, was in many ways his downfall once he attained the office. His reluctance to engage in a give and take with Congress; the ill-conceived boycott of the Olympic Games; his inability to use force effectively to resolve the crisis in Iran; his inability to build coalitions and to be flexible in dealings with friends and foes. These varied characteristics combined to brand him as ineffectual when he sought a second term in the White House.

With the passage of time, many of his presidential achievements have gained greater respect. Carter was progressive in his thinking and actions on energy and the environment. He was a moderate who tried to restrain growing government spending and deficits. He was an early advocate for allowing markets, rather than federal government regulators, to set prices and encourage innovations in transportation and other industries.

He began the military buildup that helped to defeat the Soviet Union and formally normalized relations with China. The peace agreement he negotiated between Egypt and Israel has lasted for decades and limited the scope and scale of continued conflict in the Middle East. The eventual resolution of the hostage crisis in Iran without the initiation of a wider war was seen by many in 1980 as evidence of American weakness. In a new century, after years of inconclusive fighting and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, avoiding a costly military conflict with Iran may now appear to be a wiser course of action.

Carter encountered many challenges during his years in the White House: massive public disaffection with government, economic disruptions at home and crisis situations abroad, a hostile post-Watergate press, and, by the end of his term, an election against a smooth, consummately telegenic candidate with an engaging conservative message.

In the twenty-four years between the elections of Richard Nixon in 1968 and Bill Clinton in 1992, there was only one Democratic Party candidate elected president—Jimmy Carter. Republicans won landslides before and after Carter’s narrow victory in 1976. His presidency was tumultuous but consequential and set the stage for a more centrist Democratic Party that would emerge in the 1990s and compete successfully in close elections in the new century.