Jimmy Carter to Receive Tribute at Convention
Aug. 14 -- The party President Carter once called the “albatross around my head” is now, for the first time since he left the presidency, giving him a prime-time tribute during its national convention.
It was not long ago that invoking the name Jimmy Carter on the campaign trail was a political death wish for Democrats.
With the record inflation and the Iran hostage crisis that marked the end of his term still fresh in too many Americans’ mind, Democratic candidates, including Bill Clinton, largely steered clear of any association with the Georgia native’s years in office.
But since leaving the White House, Carter has redefined the role of an ex-president. The eight-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee has spent much of his time mediating disputes in Bosnia, Haiti and North Korea on behalf of the Carter Center in Atlanta, which he founded in 1981. Carter has traveled to Africa trying to bring health care to the poor and has promoted human rights elsewhere around the globe.
This work, along with his work for Habitat for Humanity, have made Carter the top-ranked living president in terms of moral authority, according to a recent C-SPAN survey of presidential leadership.
“The American people see him as someone with moral rectitude, with a folksy commonplace decency,” said biographer Douglas Brinkley, author of The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House. “Al Gore and [Sen. Joseph] Lieberman want to associate themselves with him right now. They want to reclaim the moral high ground. “
Carter the Moralist
Carter’s character has always been his strength.
Early on in his administration, human rights was introduced into foreign policy negotiations. He called it “the soul of foreign policy.”
In Warsaw in 1977, he spoke out for the rights of Eastern Europeans and denounced the trials of Soviet dissidents. He condemned racism in South Africa and endorsed black attempts to gain majority rule in Rhodesia.
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