Jimmy Carter to Receive Tribute at Convention

Aug. 14, 2000 -- 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.

Some say it was his all-too-human approach to politics that turned many against him in the days immediately following his presidency.

“The Carter administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War,” former secretary of state Henry Kissinger said in 1980.

But his defenders point to his criticism of Russia’s internal policies as critical pressure points that helped bring an end to the Cold War.

Foreign Policy Disasters

Still, two major foreign policy disasters crystalized negative public opinion at the end of his presidency and helped hand Ronald Reagan a resounding victory.

In October 1979, Carter let the exiled Shah of Iran enter the United States for medical treatment. This decision had catastrophic consequences when, on November 4, Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. For more than 400 days, 52 Americans stationed in the embassy were held captive.

Despite frantic negotiations, the hostages were released on the final day of Carter’s presidency.

Afghanistan was another of his worst defeats.

In 1979, in response to the slaying of U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs in Kabul, President Carter cut off all but humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

Later that year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, marking the beginning of a futile, nine-year struggle to crush insurgents threatening the Soviet-backed regime of Babrak Karmal.

Carter struck back by withdrawing the SALT II nuclear arms limit treaty from Senate consideration, halting grain sales to the Soviet Union, urging a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow, and requesting a large increase in military spending.

Presidential Success

The most noticeable success of the Carter years was the landmark peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, drawn up at Camp David after 13 days of delicate negotiations.

The deal, established September 1978, resulted in a framework for peace in the Middle East that has served as a model in the last two decades.

“I think the international community saw him as a leader willing to tackle the hard foreign policy issues,” said Kenneth Stein, an Emory University professor who has written about peace in the Middle East.

Another of his boldest moves was the signing of the Panama Canal treaty, which returned the canal to Panama after more than 100 years.

The treaty was unpopular with Congress and his advisers told him to wait for a second term before taking action, Brinkley said. But Carter signed the treaty anyway, spending much of his political capital.

His Greatest Accomplishments

While his accomplishments during his presidency have recently been re-evaluated and re-examined, few question the success he has found since leaving Washington.

It has been in this role that he has gained the most respect worldwide.

“He was a man of integrity in the world of politics and that is hard to find indeed,” said Brinkley, who heads the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans.

In the recent Mexican elections, Carter was a revered and respected authority in what are believed to be Mexico’s cleanest election.

When Carter takes the stage in Los Angeles, it will be before a very different Democratic party than what it was when he left the White House.

When he became president in 1976, Carter was the first man from the Deep South elected president since Zachary Taylor in 1848, a fact that has drawn him closer to Vice President Gore.

Unlike his rocky relationship with the Clintons, Gore has always remained close to Carter and both families like each other.

Brinkley, who since writing his book on the president has spent much time with Carter, says the former president will campaign vigorously for the Democratic ticket.

“We are dealing with an extraordinary American figure who used the presidency as a stepping stone for greater accomplishments,” Brinkey said. “He didn’t know how to get legislation passed or how to make deals but he is one of the most remarkable political figures of our era.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.