From scorn to respect, Carter’s legacy evolved after his presidency

President Jimmy Carter delivers an emotional address after losing the 1980 presidential election as his wife Rosalynn looks on in Plains, Ga., on Nov. 4, 1980. The 39th president left the White House with his popularity in tatters. But four decades later, he is judged more kindly, in part for what he did after leaving office. (D. Gorton/The New York Times)

By Peter Baker

Jimmy Carter left office in 1981 as one of the most unpopular presidents in modern times, defeated for reelection and seemingly doomed to be remembered by posterity as a failed commander in chief with little to show for his four years in office.

“History will treat him more kindly than the American people did on Nov. 4,” Clark Clifford, the longtime consigliere of presidents and one of the capital’s so-called wise men, pronounced at the time. Then, having softened the blow, he added the shiv: “But there was nothing epochal about his presidency, nothing really remarkable.”

By the time Carter died Sunday more than 40 years later, though, the first part of Clifford’s judgment appeared more salient. While not epochal, Carter’s presidency is now treated more kindly by many historians, a reassessment fueled not just by what he did in office but what he did after leaving office. Carter is still held out as a totem of failure by Republicans, still an attack line against Democrats such as President Joe Biden. But the passions of the 1970s have cooled, and the 39th president’s reputation has been helped to some extent by the travails of those who followed him in the Oval Office.

Carter has not climbed the ranks into the pantheon of great presidents by any means, but he is no longer consigned near the bottom of the heap either. In surveys of historians by Siena College, Carter rose from 33rd place in 1982 shortly after he left the White House to 24th place in 2022. With a half-dozen more presidents now included in the assessments, that means Carter, who was judged better than just six other presidents four decades ago, is deemed above 21 other presidents today.

“Most citizens will concede that he had an admirable post-presidential life filled with good works, but they quickly add that his presidency was a failure,” said Kai Bird, author of “The Outlier,” a fresh look at Carter’s presidency published in 2021. “Historians in recent years would disagree. His presidency was in fact quite consequential.”

Carter brokered peace at Camp David between Israel and Egypt, established formal diplomatic relations with China and won ratification of the treaties turning over control of the Panama Canal to Panama. He tried to move the country beyond the traumas of the previous decade, pardoning Vietnam War draft dodgers and ushering in post-Watergate reforms.

He created the departments of education and energy and tackled energy policy in a way that foreshadowed some issues with fossil fuel and climate change now dominating national discussion. He appointed Paul Volcker, the Federal Reserve chair who ultimately tamed inflation, and began the deregulation of industries and military buildup that later defined Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

None of that, of course, overshadows the setbacks of his tenure — the economic tumult, the gas lines, the so-called malaise that he diagnosed in American society or of course the Iran hostage crisis that dominated the final 444 days of his presidency. He was for years a punchline on late-night television and a pariah at Democratic conventions, the model Democratic successors hoped to avoid.

But a slew of recent books and movies have offered a more complex picture to a new generation with no firsthand memory of that era, including Kai’s account, Jonathan Alter’s “His Very Best” in 2020, and “President Carter,” the 2018 book by Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s former domestic policy adviser. Coinciding with those volumes were a pair of films, “Carterland,” released in 2021 by Will and Jim Pattiz, two young directors born a decade after Carter’s presidency, and “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President,” Mary Wharton’s entertaining documentary that aired in 2020 looking at his relationship with musicians like Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers.

Amid that reassessment, the public has taken a more generous attitude as well. In a Gallup poll last year, 57% of Americans said they approved of the way Carter handled his presidency, compared with 36% who disapproved. That ranked him roughly even with Bill Clinton (58%) and George W. Bush (57%), and ahead of Donald Trump (46%).

Historical revisionism involving former presidents is common, of course. Dwight Eisenhower was often dismissed as an amiable but lazy golf player until Fred Greenstein’s 1982 book “The Hidden-Hand Presidency” depicted a craftier player pulling strings behind the scenes. Likewise, Harry Truman left office deeply unpopular only to be rehabilitated by David McCullough’s magisterial 1992 biography, much as Ron Chernow reshaped thinking about Ulysses Grant with his 2017 biography.

By contrast, once-iconic U.S. presidents have lost their luster in recent years. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, the revered early titans of the Democratic Party, have fallen in grace as more attention has focused on their status as slave owners. Woodrow Wilson, the longtime hero of progressive idealists, is increasingly remembered for his support of segregation and suppression of dissent, as illustrated in Adam Hochschild’s 2022 book, “American Midnight.”

Funerals are often a time for sanding off the harsher edges of presidential legacies. By the time Gerald Ford died in 2006, many critics had changed their minds about him, agreeing that he was right after all to pardon Richard Nixon to move the country past Watergate. When George H.W. Bush died, many called him perhaps the most successful one-term president for his leadership at the end of the Cold War.

Most striking perhaps was Nixon, who spent the 20 years after being driven from office laboring to restore his legacy with a series of foreign policy books reminding the world of his diplomatic achievements. When he died in 1994, he was granted a form of absolution at his funeral by none other than Clinton, a Democrat whose wife had worked on the House committee investigating Watergate. “May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close,” Clinton declared.

Trump has also helped some presidents. Reagan and the younger Bush, both loathed by liberals for years, have often been cited more approvingly by Democrats than Republicans in recent years as contrasts to Trump.

Carter, who died at 100, had more time to reshape public perception than any of his predecessors, living longer than every former president in American history. His post-presidential work on human rights, conflict resolution, election monitoring and disease control, plus the houses he built for Habitat for Humanity, reminded Americans of what they admired about him rather than what they did not.

“Jimmy Carter ran for president as an outsider, and when he left the office, he returned to that same status,” said Lawrence Wright, author of “Thirteen Days in September,” about the Camp David accords. “He lived simply, in his home in Plains, Georgia, and teaching Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church. His long record of public engagement has encouraged a much more favorable view of his presidency.”