Former US president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, who died yesterday at the age of 100, occupied a special place in the American political landscape, darkened by the crisis with the American hostages in Iran, which marked the end of his only term.
After in 1981 He ceded power after his heavy defeat in the US elections by Republican Ronald Reagan. Democrat Carter, often ridiculed for his mistakes and for his great naivety, as his many critics would say, was long a pariah in his own party, which made him a target for cartoonists.
More than three decades after his departure from the White House, however, a more nuanced image of Carter is gradually emerging. This was due to his unanimously recognized work as a former president, as well as the reappraisal of some of his achievements during the difficult period during which he governed, first of all the peace agreements between Israel and Egypt.
Representative of a new generation of American men from the South, more tolerant and more progressive on racial issues, Jimmy Carter will also be remembered as the American president who placed the defense of human rights at the center of his diplomacy.
This devout Baptist with an atypical career - from naval officer to businessman, and from owner of a family peanut farm to president - took the presidency in an America still marked by the “Watergate“ affair, which forced President Nixon to resign.
“I am a Southerner and an American“, says Carter, who is almost unknown on the national political scene when he entered the Democratic primary for the 1976 presidential election.
His inauguration was quite promising for the Democratic camp, which controlled Congress and the White House for the first time since 1968.
The first two years started well, with Carter's popularity ratings higher than those of Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama at the same stage in their mandates. He convinced the Senate to ratify the Panama Canal treaties in 1978 and strengthened the United States' position on the international stage.
However, the euphoria gradually subsided and mistakes took over against the backdrop of the second oil crisis in 1979. A snapshot from these “Carter years“ will live on in the memory: the long lines of drivers rushing across the country to fill up with gas, fearing shortages.
In July 1979, Jimmy Carter gave a live televised address that his opponents called a "speech of weakness" and that they said summed up the essential traits of a naive, pessimistic, and weak man.
In a single address, he quoted at length some of the criticisms leveled at him for his lack of leadership or vision. Taking the energy crisis as his starting point, he broadened his remarks to mention an "almost invisible threat" to American democracy: the "crisis of confidence." "The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are everywhere," he says in a particularly somber tone.
The end of his term was overshadowed by the Iranian nightmare: for 444 days, some fifty Americans were held captive after radical Islamists stormed the US embassy in Tehran.
In April 1980, a military helicopter operation to free them ended in complete failure. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, the day of the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.
After the defeat, his own party wanted to forget those difficult years. Carter's presidency was followed by three terms of Republican rule (Ronald Reagan, then George H.W. Bush). To this day, few Democratic leaders mention his legacy.
In his balanced biography of Jimmy Carter, historian Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University, highlights all the "extraordinarily difficult" circumstances Carter faced that would have put "any president" in a difficult position.
But he also highlights the difficulties this "political novice" had in adjusting to power. For the 39th president of the United States, "being an outsider in Washington proved to be both a blessing and a curse, an opportunity and a burden," he writes.
Derided for his indecisiveness in the White House, Jimmy Carter proved to be strong in his ability to step into his new role after leaving the US capital. So much so that he, with his wide, infectious smile, is often called, not without irony, the “best former president“ in US history.
When he left office in January 1981 at the age of 56, Carter, a passionate defender of democracy and social justice, began a new chapter in his life with unadulterated energy.
At the head of the “Carter Center“ he created in Atlanta, he observed dozens of elections around the world. A tireless traveler, he could be seen everywhere: in Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua and East Timor. In Haiti, Cyprus, and North Korea, he offered his services in good faith and was a tireless enthusiast, even if the results were sometimes controversial.
In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "decades of tireless efforts to promote the peaceful resolution of international conflicts and to advance democracy and human rights."
In August 2015 Jimmy Carter begins radiation therapy to treat brain tumors.
On this occasion, he summed up his extraordinary career in simple words: “The presidency was, of course, the pinnacle of my political career [...], but my life after leaving the White House was more fulfilling on a personal level“.
During a celebration in early November at his Baptist church in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he was born and lived most of his life, he recalled the episode with great calm and a little humor.
“I thought, of course, that I was going to die very quickly. I prayed. I didn't ask God to let me live longer, but I asked Him to give me a dignified demeanor in the face of death. And I realized that I was completely humble in the face of death“.
Translated from French: Alexey Margoevsky, BTA