Former United States President Jimmy Carter has turned 100, with praise pouring in for the peanut farmer whose post-presidential career resonated far beyond his short time in office.
Carter marked his birthday on Tuesday from his birthplace of Plains, Georgia, where he entered hospice care in his modest home last year.
He is both the oldest living president and the longest living president in US history, with an outsized legacy defined by his human rights and humanitarian work after a presidency during which he was heavily criticised.
“I think he has a complicated legacy but it really boils down, to me and I think, for him, that he lived out his faith and the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself in a way that made him respect people,” Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, told the local 11Alive news station ahead of the ex-president’s birthday.
“And he used that respect to tell the truth. He used that respect to promote human rights,” he said. “He used that respect to work with the least of these, all over the world in a way that gave him partners in the poorest places in the world to do remarkable things.”
While Carter did not attend any events for his birthday, it was marked in September by a concert in Atlanta, Georgia, where several former US presidents sent video messages praising Carter’s life’s work. A recording of the concert is set to air in the US on Tuesday night.
A year after leaving the presidency, Carter launched the Carter Center charity, which has led an array of global programmes. Those include overseeing election integrity around the world, promoting human rights and strengthening public health.
The charity’s efforts helped to lead to the near-total eradication of Guinea worm across the globe. Carter also remained active with Habitat for Humanity, a global home-building organisation, well into his 90s.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for “undertaking peace negotiations, campaigning for human rights and working for social welfare”.
‘Universal silence’ on Israel
Carter’s post-presidential legacy has largely stood out due to his willingness to break from political establishment norms in the US.
In 2006, he became the rare political figure – let alone a former president – to question Israel’s policies in occupied Palestinian territory.
He condemned “almost a universal silence concerning anything that might be critical of current policies of the Israeli government”.
He also described the system of control in the occupied territory as “apartheid”, a stance that has since been adopted by some human rights organisations.
In 2009, he said that Palestinians in Gaza were “treated more like animals than human beings”.
His position helped to pave the way for criticism of Israeli policies within mainstream US politics, despite deeply entrenched support for Washington’s “ironclad” ally among the US political class.
His words also helped to lay the groundwork for the growing number of US lawmakers who have called on the administration of President Joe Biden to stop the transfer of weapons to Israel amid the war in Gaza, in which more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023.
Biden was among those praising Carter in the days before his landmark birthday.
In a video address aired on the CBS broadcaster’s Sunday Morning program, Biden praised the “moral clarity you showed throughout your career”.
“You’re a voice of courage, conviction, compassion, and most of all, a beloved friend of [First Lady] Jill and me and our family,” Biden said.
He added that this was the first birthday since Carter’s wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, died in November 2023.
Peanut farmer to surprise president
Born in 1924, Carter grew up supporting his father’s peanut farming business, which he took over after serving in the US Navy. He became a Democratic activist amid the civil rights movement, before becoming a state senator and eventually the governor of Georgia.
Virtually unknown on the national stage, he saw a surprise surge in the Democratic presidential primary ahead of the 1976 election and went on to defeat Republican President Gerald Ford.
However, his only term in office was marked by a flagging economy dogged by high inflation and unemployment. His effort to pivot US energy consumption to renewable sources failed to take off in the US Congress.
Foreign policy was more of a mixed bag. Carter helped to establish diplomatic relations with China, broker a limit on nuclear weapons with then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and strike a treaty that brought the Panama Canal under local control.
He also oversaw talks between then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, which saw the two countries establish full diplomatic and economic relations – in exchange for Israel returning part of the Sinai Peninsula – as part of the Camp David accords.
But the 1979 storming of the US Embassy in Tehran, which saw 52 US citizens taken hostage, represented a major hit to Carter’s already tepid approval ratings. They were further damaged by a botched 1980 rescue attempt. Soon after, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide victory.
In later life, Carter, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, remained active in Democratic politics, rallying voters and providing advice to candidates. His re-emergence during the 2020 presidential election season was dubbed the “Jimmy Carter Renaissance” by some.
His family has said he has expressed hope that he will live to see the upcoming election on November 5. He hopes to vote for Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.
