Jimmy Carter, America's 39th president, died Sunday. Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, served one term as governor of Georgia, and was the oldest former president in American history—he turned 100 three months ago. As The New York Times notes, Carter "outlived not only his wife but his vice president, most of his cabinet, key aides and allies as well as the Republican president he defeated and the Republican challenger who later defeated him."
Carter is not typically remembered as a successful president. For Republicans in particular, he's long been a useful punching bag—a liberal foil to the conservative greatness of the Reagan mythos. He's remembered for bad economic times, for the Iranian hostage crisis, and as an almost accidental president from a time when the Democratic Party couldn't figure out what it wanted and the Republican Party was still suffering its Nixon hangover.
