【中美创新时报2024 年 12 月 29 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）美国第 39 任总统、诺贝尔和平奖获得者吉米·卡特于周日（29日）在佐治亚州普莱恩斯的家中去世。卡特先生是美国有史以来最年长的总统，享年 100 岁。《波士顿环球报》记者迈克尔·J·贝利柯蒂斯·威尔基对此作了下述长篇报道。
据他的儿子詹姆斯·E·卡特三世称，吉米·卡特在总统任期动荡的时期恢复了元气，成为世界领先的人权活动家之一，于周日在佐治亚州普莱恩斯的家中去世。卡特先生是美国有史以来最年长的总统，享年 100 岁。
尽管有严重的健康问题，卡特先生在 90 多岁时仍保持着严格的作息时间。在 2015 年的一次不遗余力的新闻发布会上，他说他的肝癌已经扩散到大脑。但他和他的医生设法控制住了癌症。卡特先生于 2023 年 2 月宣布，他已决定不再进行任何进一步的医疗干预，并进入了 Plains 的家庭临终关怀。
他结婚 77 年的妻子罗莎琳于 2023 年 11 月去世。
他的总统任期内有两次令人震惊的选举：1976 年，吉米·卡特在短短几个月内从默默无闻一跃成为白宫一员；四年后，他遭遇了自大萧条时期赫伯特·胡佛以来在任总统最严重的挫败。
在此期间，他的总统任期受到了两位数通货膨胀、螺旋式能源危机以及伊朗激进分子占领美国驻德黑兰大使馆后漫长而痛苦的人质折磨的冲击。
然而，令人惊讶的是，这位几乎没有外交政策经验的佐治亚州花生农民将以他在国外取得的成就而闻名，首先是在他的总统任期内，然后是卸任后四十年的特殊时期。他对人权的重视最终在世界各地民主的发展中产生了回报，特别是在拉丁美洲，正如他致力于确保中东和平所导致的理解，这些理解曾经是不可想象的，即使在今天看来，它们似乎是不切实际的。
卸任后，他在亚特兰大建立了卡特中心，开展一项全球使命，以消灭疾病、监督选举、谈判解决国际冲突，并帮助穷人养活自己。
即使到了 90 多岁，他仍然继续推动国外的公平选举，并成为人类家园的推动力，帮助世界各地的穷人建造和拥有自己的家园。
“他是这个国家最伟大的前总统，”莱斯大学的总统历史学家道格拉斯·布林克利在接受采访时说。“卡特所做的是，将人权作为美国的传统，不知疲倦地努力制止内战，释放政治犯，在世界各地推动农业发展……这真是太神奇了。”
在为前总统树立现代标准的过程中，卡特先生访问了 120 多个国家，执行了各种各样的任务，通常都有一个共同点。“我长期以来一直在解决的问题是富国和穷国之间的关系，”他在 1990 年的一次采访中说道。
这种兴趣是他担任总统期间的主旋律。它自然而然地源于他在佐治亚州西南部的根源，那里的农村贫困严重，种族歧视严重。
詹姆斯·厄尔·卡特二世于 1924 年 10 月 1 日出生在平原，这是一个人口不到 600 人的小村庄，他一生大部分时间都住在这里。
这位未来的总统来自一个多姿多彩的家庭，是农民厄尔·卡特和他的妻子的四个孩子之一，他的妻子是一名乡村护士，在他担任总统期间成为了一个被称为“莉莲小姐”的全国性人物。他的兄弟姐妹都是非正统的。一个姐姐露丝成为了一名福音传道者；另一个孩子格洛丽亚在平原过着波西米亚式的生活。弟弟比利是个无法抑制的精灵，他的滑稽动作偶尔让卡特先生感到尴尬。三个孩子都死于胰腺癌。
在晚年，他经常谈到自己在精神和道德方面受到了黑人佃农雷切尔·克拉克的深刻影响。
“雷切尔有女王的气质，”卡特先生在他的一本诗集中写道。
“我们是好朋友，”他在乔纳森·戴米的纪录片《平原人》中回忆道。他解释说，他的母亲经常每天工作 20 个小时，克拉克会带着这个小男孩去钓鱼，照顾花生和棉花作物，并在地上放一个托盘让他过夜。
“在很多方面，我对雷切尔·克拉克的了解比我母亲要多，”他说。
这个年轻人被任命进入海军学院，并于 1946 年毕业。然后，他与高中时的恋人罗莎琳·史密斯结婚，这段婚姻成为他职业生涯中不可或缺的一部分。
早期，他最大的愿望是成为海军作战部长。他成为了海军上将海曼·里科弗的门生，里科弗是一位要求严格、目光冷峻的军官，他开发了核潜艇计划。
但 1953 年，卡特的父亲去世，大儿子回到了平原——“尽管遭到妻子的强烈反对”，他写道——来管理家族的经济利益，这些利益几乎全部与花生有关。
近十年来，他一直以小镇农民和商人的身份辛勤工作。他曾在学校董事会和医院管理局任职，但他政治活动的推动力是他在狮子会中的领导地位。
1962 年，当佐治亚州被迫根据“一人一票”法令划分新的立法区时，他决定竞选州参议员。“驱使我的力量是一种有点天真的公共服务理念，”他在 30 年后撰写的《转折点》中写道，这是他对那次竞选的描述。
这是一次突然的政治入门。一名腐败官员代表卡特的对手填塞了选票，卡特拒绝接受自己以微弱劣势落败的现实。他一直战斗到选举结果被推翻，并在新的选举中获胜。这种不愿接受最初挫折和勇往直前的决心最终被认为是卡特的标志性品质。
卡特宣誓就职时年仅 38 岁。很少有美国政客能像他在接下来的几年里那样迅速崛起。
1966 年，这位虔诚的南方浸信会教徒竞选民主党州长提名失败后，成为了一名“重生”的基督徒。他说，这段经历让他产生了一种“内心的信念和保证”，将指导他的余生。
作为新发现的热情的一部分，他前往马萨诸塞州斯普林菲尔德，在一个讲西班牙语的社区挨家挨户“亲眼见证”耶稣。
1970 年，他当选为佐治亚州州长，争取种族隔离主义者的选票，然后在就职演说中宣布：“种族歧视的时代已经结束……”，震惊了该州的许多人。任何贫穷、农村、弱势或黑人都不应再承受被剥夺接受教育、工作或简单正义机会的额外负担。”
法律禁止他竞选连任，因此在任期结束前一个月，他开始了大胆的总统竞选。《亚特兰大宪法报》的头条写道：“吉米·卡特竞选什么？”
仅凭一个迷人的微笑、几名忠诚的助手和一本名为《为什么不是最好的？》的古怪自传，他就开始了不知疲倦的全国竞选。在其他民主党人宣布参选之前，他已经向 37 个州的选民群体发表了演讲。
“我们在新罕布什尔州敲开了 60,000 扇门，”他的儿子奇普告诉 PBS 的“美国体验”。 “那几乎是我们在整个州能找到的每个民主党家庭。”
在水门事件之后，候选人卡特表现出政治清白，他的承诺“我永远不会骗你”也得到了广泛认可。但在新鲜感的背后，卡特竞选团队却狡猾多端。在击败阿拉巴马州的乔治·C·华莱士后，他成为自由派阵营中领先的温和派，并在芝加哥市长理查德·J·戴利和南方领导人联盟等不同力量的帮助下获得了提名。
他选择明尼苏达州参议员沃尔特·F·蒙代尔作为竞选搭档。他们共同为副总统创造了一个积极分子的角色，成为以后政府的典范。
那年秋天，民主党面对的是实力减弱的现任总统福特，他在两年前理查德·尼克松辞职后接任。大选是双方犯错的一次尝试。据说卡特先生的婚姻是一夫一妻制的，他在一次臭名昭著的《花花公子》采访中描述了“我心中的欲望”；福特在一次辩论中淡化了苏联对东欧的控制。
最后，卡特先生横扫了旧邦联的大部分地区，获得了 297 张选举人票，福特获得了 240 张，成为内战以来第一位来自美国南部的总统。
他的政府给白宫带来了新的视角。在他的就职演说中，他提出了民粹主义的主题，表达了他为“消除地球上所有核武器”而努力的愿望，并宣称“我们对人权的承诺必须是绝对的”。然后，他打破传统，与妻子、四个孩子和孙辈一起步行走过游行路线。
卡特上任第一天就兑现了竞选承诺，赦免了那些在越南战争期间逃避征兵的人，试图为这场痛苦的冲突画上最后的句号。
卡特在接下来的四年里取得了几项重大成就。然而，他似乎被第一次竞选时所表现出的天真所困扰，他的政府也因此土崩瓦解。卡特身边有许多佐治亚人。但他们来到华盛顿时，明显心怀不满，好像他们会清除政府中的腐败和官僚低效。
华盛顿当局准备让新来者感到羞愧。麻烦很快就来了。卡特是一个不妥协的人物——在处理问题时有点像技术官僚——他很难与本党控制的国会打交道。
在执政的最初几周，卡特先生试图削减一些水利项目的资金，而这些项目是国会议员们引以为豪的。他还因不愿在问题上让步而疏远了议员们。
“谈到华盛顿特区的政治，他从来没有真正理解这个系统是如何运作的。尽管这不符合吉米·卡特的性格，但他也不想了解它，”时任众议院议长的马萨诸塞州著名议员托马斯“蒂普”奥尼尔在他的回忆录中写道。
“有一次，波士顿市申请政府拨款修建一些道路，我打电话给卡特的人，试图加快进度。然而，他们不但没有帮助我，反而尽一切可能阻挠我。”
马克·哈特菲尔德是前俄勒冈州共和党参议员，也是卡特的朋友。他告诉布林克利，华盛顿州的亨利·“斯库普”·杰克逊和马萨诸塞州的爱德华·肯尼迪等民主党参议员在与总统会面后都会“咬牙切齿”，对总统“居高临下地对他们讲话”感到愤怒。
“卡特比国会中的大多数民主党人聪明得多——他让他们知道这一点，”哈特菲尔德说。
卡特在执政的第一年就成功创建了能源部，他敦促公众调低恒温器。但当他在电视讲话中穿着开襟毛衣呼吁节约能源时，却遭到了嘲笑。
由于与国会的问题，卡特在国内的成就有限。然而，他的个人干预推动了今天产生影响的进步。
“我们有史以来第一次资助家庭暴力中心，”民权律师玛格丽特·麦肯纳 (Margaret McKenna) 在接受采访时表示，她曾担任卡特的白宫副法律顾问，之后领导莱斯利大学和萨福克大学。“这是第一次，女性在各个地方都有发言权。她们终于有了发言权，这产生了影响。”
麦肯纳说，在他担任总统之前，美国历史上有八名女性被任命为联邦法官；在他担任总统的四年里，他任命了 41 名女性。
之所以发生这种情况，是因为总统与美国律师协会 (American Bar Association) 发生冲突，该协会在审查候选人时更倾向于让有司法经验的资深白人男性担任评估角色。“他与美国律师协会进行了交谈，基本上说，要么你拓宽对优秀联邦法官的看法，要么我们不会把他们的名字发给你，”麦肯纳说。
“就在那时，世界发生了变化。他们不会支持露丝·巴德·金斯伯格（卡特先生于 1980 年提名她为美国上诉法院法官）。他们看不起我们的提名，因为这些白人男性看起来与他们不一样。总统冒着生命危险这样做。”
《异类：吉米·卡特未完成的总统任期》一书的作者凯·伯德说，他还因几项放松管制的努力而受到赞誉，这些努力使能源更加独立，为航空乘客提供了更多选择和更低的价格，并促进了精酿啤酒和啤酒屋的普及。自禁酒令以来，啤酒行业一直受到严格控制，小型酿酒商被拒之门外。
在外交政策方面，卡特先生立即给人留下了深刻的印象。在他任职的第二年，他完成了尼克松开始的一项进程：与中国关系正常化。经过参议院的长期斗争，他还赢得了一项条约的批准，该条约将美国放弃对巴拿马运河的控制权。
尽管卡特先生热切呼吁撤出驻扎在偏远基地的美军，特别是在韩国，但他因加强和现代化军队、采用激光炸弹和隐形战机等新兴技术而受到赞誉。
1978 年秋，他达成了最令人难忘的协议。为了使阿拉伯人和以色列人团结起来，卡特先生大胆邀请埃及总统安瓦尔·萨达特和以色列总理梅纳赫姆·贝京到马里兰州戴维营的总统度假胜地举行一次非正式的私人会议。会议持续了 13 天。
卡特先生已成为该地区的专家，阅读《古兰经》和《摩西五经》的译本，并跪在地上研究中东地图。凭借坚定不移的决心，他说服两个敌人达成了一项历史性协议。
卡特先生需要前往耶路撒冷和开罗才能达成协议。但萨达特和贝京于次年春天返回华盛顿，在白宫草坪上签署了一项条约。这是犹太国家与阿拉伯邻国签署的第一项此类协议。
贝京在与萨达特举行的新闻发布会上谈到卡特时说：“他比我们的祖先在埃及建造金字塔时更加努力。”
1979 年晚些时候，卡特似乎又取得了一次胜利，他在维也纳会见了苏联领导人列昂尼德·勃列日涅夫，签署了第二阶段战略武器限制协议。
维也纳峰会后数周，卡特的总统任期开始瓦解。
在汽车排长队等待汽油供应减少的背景下，卡特隐居在戴维营，考虑他剩余任期的路线。在民意调查结果不佳的刺激下，他发表了电视讲话，承认了一些失误，并谈到了他认为国家存在的“信心危机”。
随着总统的颓势，肯尼迪于 1979 年底站出来挑战他，争取下一届民主党提名。
在卡特先生任期的第三年结束之前，全球发生的两件事动摇了他的政府。
伊朗革命政府的势力帮助学生占领了美国驻德黑兰大使馆，并扣押了 52 名人质 444 天，直到卡特先生卸任。“扣押美国人质给我自己的生活和美国人民蒙上了一层阴影，”卡特先生在回忆录《坚守信念》中写道。
1980 年春天，救援任务以美国直升机在伊朗沙漠中坠毁而告终，危机进一步加剧。国务卿赛勒斯·万斯曾多次与卡特先生的国家安全顾问兹比格涅夫·布热津斯基发生冲突，他反对军事行动并辞职。
苏联入侵阿富汗使卡特先生的问题更加严重，这一行为破坏了武器条约的批准，并促使卡特先生实施粮食禁运，并下令美国运动员抵制 1980 年莫斯科奥运会。
美国人对卡特先生的支持率跌至 25%，低于声名狼藉的尼克松的任何支持率。
“他们曾经爱他，他的虔诚、他的朴实和他那种道德上的善良，现在却被他们视为软弱和道德优越感，”卡特的演讲撰稿人亨德里克·赫茨伯格在接受 PBS 的《美国经验》采访时说。“他们就是受不了他。”
尽管麻烦不断，卡特还是在初选中成功抵挡住了肯尼迪的挑战。但他在民意调查中发现自己落后共和党候选人罗纳德·里根 20 个百分点。
民主党内部四分五裂，士气低落。卡特一蹶不振。
他在 20 世纪最接近的总统选举之一后入主白宫。他以压倒性优势离开。民主党 28 年来首次失去对参议院的控制权。
“几天后，我将辞去公职，再次承担起我们民主国家中唯一高于总统的头衔：公民，”卡特在告别演讲中说道，他以不同寻常的丰富和激昂的言辞呼吁为世界各个角落的人权而战，并坚决保护陆地、海洋和空中。
从许多方面来看，那次演讲最终将成为他离开白宫后生活的蓝图。
他回到了平原的家中，面对着“一种全新的、不想要的、可能空虚的生活”。
他的朋友和家人认为，他回归朴素的生活——自己做家具、自己做果酱、教圣经课、在教堂修剪草坪——是他重新充电的功夫。
他将继续在余生中享受这些琐事。
前参谋长汉密尔顿·乔丹曾称他的老板是“世界上最失败的人”，但所有认识他的人都承认他顽强的恢复能力。这种复苏始于他为总统图书馆制定的计划。
他不屑于建造博物馆的想法，“一座属于自己的纪念碑”。相反，他想要一个充满活力、具有前瞻性的行动中心，一个能够提供空间、工具和专业知识的工作室，以帮助科学专家和政治领导人消除饥饿、根除古老的祸害并促进和平。
1986 年，卡特中心在埃默里大学占地 35 英亩，靠近亚特兰大的总统图书馆。
“当他建立卡特中心时，他与我分享了他的愿景，我想，哦不，那太宏伟了，”埃默里大学前校长詹姆斯·莱尼告诉 PBS。“坦率地说，我为他感到尴尬。他正处于人气的最低点。”
然而，到 1986 年，卡特先生的形象开始发生变化。他在国外宣传所有自由人的责任，帮助那些被贫困、迫害或疾病束缚的人，显然，在美国以外，他是最受尊敬的美国人之一。
在国内，他与 Habitat for Humanity（一个在平原附近成立的相对较新的组织）的亲力亲为赢得了人们的钦佩。在以“贪婪是好事”的座右铭闻名的十年里，许多人发现，一位前总统拒绝六位数的演讲费，而是在尘土和废墟中努力帮助某人建立新生活，这令人信服。
Habitat for Humanity 将为卡特先生提供一个在国内推广民主和人权的立足点。
他还与国际特赦组织密切合作，利用该组织的名单努力释放政治犯。他的大部分影响力源于他担任总统期间。
“吉米·卡特政府为阿根廷人权事业做出的贡献比任何其他团体都要多，”《布宜诺斯艾利斯先驱报》在 1984 年卡特访问阿根廷期间发表的一篇社论中写道。
秘鲁、巴西和巴拿马的活动人士也表达了同样的信念。
曾任乔治·W·布什和奥巴马总统政府国防部长的罗伯特·盖茨认为卡特对人权的重视促成了苏联的解体。
盖茨在《从阴影中走出来：五位总统的终极内幕故事以及他们如何赢得冷战》一书中写道：“他是冷战期间第一位公开并持续挑战苏联统治合法性的总统。”“卡特的人权政策……通过无数苏联和东欧异见人士和未来民主领袖的证词，挑战了苏联政府的道德权威，并给予那些抵制该政府的人美国制裁和支持。”
根据布林克利在其著作《未完成的总统任期》中的说法，从 1981 年到 1997 年，公民卡特直接负责释放大约 50,000 名政治犯，其中一些面临酷刑或死亡。他会在访问期间直接向领导人提出监禁问题，或者从平原地区发起电话和信件攻击。
“令人惊讶的是，有这么多领导人宁愿释放即将被处决的人，也不愿被谴责为侵犯人权者，”卡特先生说。
他的承诺包括谈判释放艾贾隆·马利·戈麦斯（Aijalon Mahli Gomes）并护送他回国，2010 年，这名波士顿男子被朝鲜监禁。
在 20 世纪 80 年代末，卡特先生还成为世界上最受认可的公平选举倡导者。他谴责曼努埃尔·诺列加将军试图在 1989 年窃取巴拿马总统选举，将其亲手挑选的候选人推向选举，这促使这位独裁者垮台。
在尼加拉瓜，他因在社会主义桑地诺政府的支持下组织了 1990 年的自由选举而受到赞誉，然后说服该党领袖丹尼尔·奥尔特加在其团体以惊人的失败告终后放弃权力。
“我从未见过如此巧妙的外交努力，也从未见过将彻底的失败转化为如此戏剧性的成功，”里根政府前副国务卿约翰·怀特黑德在写给卡特先生的信中说道。 “这是一场精湛的表演。”
经过数十年的虚假选举和强人策略，民主精神开始在拉丁美洲体现。
在接下来的四分之一世纪里，卡特先生和他的中心总共监测了 38 个国家的约 100 场选举。南非民权活动家德斯蒙德·图图牧师 1995 年告诉布林克利：“说到选举，卡特的声音是世界上最受关注的声音。”
虽然卡特先生因其在帮助新兴民主国家方面所发挥的作用而获得了普遍赞誉，但他作为和平缔造者的角色更加复杂。
在卡特中心，他看到了利用面对面、个人、不屈不挠的外交方式来达成戴维营协议的渠道。他将尝试在三十年内将这种方法应用到五大洲。
“卡特对和平有着深刻的、几乎是天生的承诺。 “这种性格根深蒂固，”后来成为驻韩国大使的莱尼说，“他真的相信西奥多·罗斯福的名言，即一个人应该小心谨慎地走路，手上拿着大棒。但不要害怕走进狮子窝。他做到了。他已经多次做到了。”
然而，在这样做的过程中，卡特先生经常与朝鲜的金日成、古巴的菲德尔·卡斯特罗或海地曾经的军事独裁者拉乌尔·塞德拉斯等国务院贱民打交道——有时还会赞扬他们。
“我确实不得不与一些非常令人讨厌的人打交道，因为他们通常是制造问题的人，也是唯一能解决问题的人，”卡特先生在获得和平奖后告诉 CNN。
也许卡特先生最扣人心弦、最危险的和平使命是 1994 年他在海地的最后时刻的策略。塞德拉斯拒绝将权力移交给流亡的民选总统让·贝特朗-阿里斯蒂德。在联合国的支持下，美国准备入侵这个加勒比海岛国，并在 9 月 19 日之前推翻军政府。第 82 空降师为第一波攻击做准备时，外交使团也匆匆组建起来。
卡特先生与前参谋长联席会议主席科林·鲍威尔和民主党参议员萨姆·努恩抵达太子港，进行了一系列激烈、混乱但最终取得成功的马拉松式会谈。这些伞兵从三个美国基地起飞，奉命入侵，却作为解放者降落在海地。
尽管他取得了成功，但国务院的许多人都认为他是个爱管闲事的人，是个破坏和平的不守规矩的人，他经常无情地嘲笑国务院。
对布林克利来说，他更像是“一个和平暴君……一个狮心王理查德的反战十字军”，他写道。
他最大的愿望——建立包括巴勒斯坦国在内的全面持久的中东和平——却未能实现。他把崇高的道德目标与标志性的毅力和对细节的关注结合起来，经常前往该地区，但无济于事。
在一次旅行中，这位前总统拜访了萨达特的家人。在端上一顿传统餐点后，这位埃及领导人的遗孀杰汉·萨达特站起来，清了清嗓子，读了她丈夫在被暗杀前不久写的一封私人便条：
“吉米·卡特是我在这个世界上最好的朋友。他是我认识的最正直的人。他才华横溢，虔诚虔诚，他拥有所有奇妙的品质，这些品质使他无法应付那些统治世界的恶棍。”
卡特先生回答说：“好吧，也许……但我永远不会改变。”
与他的和平使命相比，卡特先生与非洲农民合作以提高生产力并与世界各地的医生合作消灭疾病，这或许没有引起太多争议，但意义更为重大。
卡特中心旗下的一个组织 Global 2000 直接与农民合作，为他们提供工具、种子和知识，以提高产量。卡特先生的计划直接将加纳从 20 世纪 80 年代的经济困境转变为地区粮仓，加速了该国走向民主的进程。
1993 年，Global 2000 开始帮助埃塞俄比亚，当时该国仍在从毁灭性的干旱和内战中恢复过来。参与的农民向卡特先生报告说，采用新技术后，他们的粮食产量增加了 400%；全国的粮食产量在短短四年内翻了一番。到那时，该国正在向有需要的邻国运送剩余粮食。
很快，非洲和拉丁美洲的发展中国家开始寻求全球 2000 强，决心实现自己的绿色革命；在这些国家的农村，人们将卡特先生的名字刻在桥梁、广场和街道、学校和医院的名字上。农民们给自己的孩子取名为吉米·卡特。
卡特中心还因几乎消灭了麦地那龙线虫病而广受赞誉，麦地那龙线虫病是一种极其可怕的祸害。1989 年，当该中心开始开展教育和分发水过滤系统的工作时，报告了近 90 万例病例。据该中心称，这一数字已减少到每年几例。
卡特先生的工作还为根除厄瓜多尔和哥伦比亚的河盲症开辟了道路，这种疾病可能会导致整个村庄残疾。
在他的许多努力中，卡特先生都与威廉·福吉的才华相联系，后者曾领导了一项成功的消灭天花的努力。
“与吉米·卡特合作最令人兴奋的地方在于你永远不知道会产生怎样的连锁反应，”福格说道。
题图：吉米·卡特总统在 1978 年左右访问新英格兰时挥手致意。杰瑞·基恩/自由撰稿人/波士顿环球报
附原英文报道：
Jimmy Carter, 39th president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, dies at 100
By Michael J. Bailey and Curtis Wilkie Globe Staff and Globe correspondent,Updated December 29, 2024
President Jimmy Carter waved during a visit to New England circa 1978.Jerry Keane/Freelance/The Boston Globe
Jimmy Carter, who rebounded from a single, turbulent term as president to construct a legacy as one of the world’s leading human rights activists, died Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga., according to his son James E. Carter III. The oldest living US president ever, Mr. Carter was 100.
Mr. Carter had maintained a rigorous schedule into his 90s despite significant health problems. In an unsparingly detailed news conference in 2015, he said cancer in his liver had spread to his brain. Yet he and his doctors had managed to keep the cancer at bay. Mr. Carter announced in February of 2023 he had decided against any further medical intervention and entered home hospice care in Plains.
His wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, died in November, 2023.
His presidential term was bracketed by two stunning elections: In 1976, Jimmy Carter rocketed from obscurity to the White House in a few short months; four years later, he suffered the worst drubbing by an incumbent since Herbert Hoover during the depths of the Depression.
In the intervening years, his presidency was buffeted by double-digit inflation, a spiraling energy crisis, and a long and agonizing hostage ordeal after Iranian radicals seized the US Embassy in Tehran.
Yet, remarkably, the Georgia peanut farmer with little foreign policy experience would become best known for his achievements abroad, first in his presidency and then in four exceptional decades after leaving office. His emphasis on human rights eventually paid dividends in the development of democracies around the world, particularly in Latin America, just as his dedication to securing a Middle East peace led to understandings that once were unthinkable, even if today they seem quixotic.
After leaving office, he established the Carter Center in Atlanta to conduct a global mission to eradicate diseases, monitor elections, negotiate resolutions for international conflicts, and help the poor feed themselves.
Even into his mid-90s, he continued to push for fair elections abroad and to be a driving force behind Habitat for Humanity, which helps the needy around the world build and own their homes.
“He is the greatest former president this country has produced,’’ presidential historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University said in an interview. “What Carter did opening up human rights as an American tradition, working tirelessly to stop civil wars, getting political prisoners released, jump-starting agriculture around the world . . . it’s amazing.’’
In setting a modern standard for former presidents, Mr. Carter visited more than 120 countries, on a variety of missions, often with a common denominator. “The problem I’ve long addressed is the relationship between the rich and the poor world,” he said in a 1990 interview.
This interest was a leitmotif of his presidency. It grew naturally from his roots in southwest Georgia, a setting of severe rural poverty and racial discrimination.
James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, a hamlet with fewer than 600 inhabitants that he kept as his home for most of his life.
The future president was a member of a colorful family, one of four children of Earl Carter, a farmer, and his wife, a country nurse who became a national character known as “Miss Lillian” during his presidency. His siblings were unorthodox. One sister, Ruth, became an evangelist; another, Gloria, cultivated a Bohemian lifestyle in Plains. A younger brother, Billy, was an irrepressible spirit whose antics occasionally embarrassed Mr. Carter. All three would die of pancreatic cancer.
In later life, he would often talk about how, in profoundly spiritual and moral ways, he was influenced by a Black sharecropper, Rachel Clark.
“Rachel had the aura of a queen,” Mr. Carter wrote in a book of his poems.
“We were buddies, friends,’’ he recalled in “Man from Plains,” a documentary by Jonathan Demme. He explained that his mother often was at work 20 hours a day and Clark would take the young boy fishing, tend crops of peanuts and cotton with him, and set a pallet on the floor for him to sleep over.
“I knew Rachel Clark in many ways better than my mother,” he said.
The youth won an appointment to the Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. He then married his high school sweetheart, Rosalynn Smith, creating a union that became an essential part of his career.
Early on, his highest ambition was to become chief of naval operations for the Navy. He became a protege of Admiral Hyman Rickover, a demanding, flinty-eyed officer who developed the nuclear submarine program.
But in 1953 Mr. Carter’s father died and the oldest son returned to Plains — “over the almost violent opposition of my wife,” he wrote — to manage the family’s financial interests, which dealt almost exclusively with peanuts.
For nearly a decade, he labored as a small-town farmer and businessman. He served on the school board and a hospital authority, but the propellant for his political activity was his leadership in the Lions Club.
In 1962, when Georgia was forced to draw new legislative districts under a “one man, one vote” decree, he decided to run for the state Senate. “The force driving me was a somewhat naive concept of public service,” he wrote 30 years later in “Turning Point,” his account of that campaign.
It was an abrupt introduction to politics. A corrupt official stuffed the ballot box on behalf of Mr. Carter’s opponent and Mr. Carter refused to accept his narrow defeat. He fought until the results were overturned and prevailed in a new election. Such unwillingness to accept an initial setback and fierceness going forward would eventually become recognized as defining qualities.
He was 38 when he was sworn into office. Few US politicians have risen as quickly as Mr. Carter did in the ensuing years.
After running unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966, the devout Southern Baptist became a “born-again” Christian. He said the experience produced an “inner conviction and assurance” that would guide him the rest of his life.
As part of his new-found zeal, he traveled to Springfield, Mass., going door-to-door as a “personal witness” to Jesus in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
He was elected governor in Georgia in 1970, courting the votes of segregationists, then stunning many in the state by announcing in his inaugural address: “The time for racial discrimination is over. . . . No poor, rural, weak, or Black person should ever again have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job, or simple justice.”
He was precluded by law from running for reelection, so a month before his term ended he launched his audacious quest for president. “Jimmy Carter’s running for what?” a headline in the Atlanta Constitution said.
Armed only with an overpowering smile, a few loyal aides, and a quirky autobiography called “Why Not The Best?” he set out on a tireless, cross-country campaign. Before any other Democrat had announced their candidacy, he had given speeches to groups of voters in 37 states.
“We knocked on 60,000 doors in New Hampshire,” his son Chip told PBS’s “American Experience.” “That was probably almost every Democrat household that we could identify in the whole state.”
Operating in the aftermath of Watergate, candidate Carter offered an appearance of political innocence and his promise that “I’ll never lie to you” caught hold. But behind the facade of freshness, there was a cunning in the Carter campaign. After routing George C. Wallace of Alabama, he emerged as the leading moderate against a splintered field of liberals, and he clinched the nomination with the help of such disparate forces as Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago and a coalition of Southern leaders.
He chose Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate. Together, they would create an activist role for a vice president that served as a model for following administrations.
That fall, the Democrats faced a weakened incumbent, President Ford, who had taken over two years earlier, after Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency. The general election was an exercise in blunders by both sides. Mr. Carter, who, by all accounts, had a monogamous marriage, described the “lust in my heart” in a notorious Playboy interview; Ford, during a debate, minimized the Soviet hold over Eastern Europe.
In the end, Mr. Carter swept most of the old Confederacy on his way to capturing 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 240, becoming the first president from the Deep South since the Civil War.
His administration brought a new perspective to the White House. In his inaugural address, he struck populist themes, expressed his desire to work for “the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this earth,” and declared that “our commitment to human rights must be absolute.” Then he broke from tradition by walking — with his wife, four children, and grandchildren — the length of the parade route.
On his first day in office, Mr. Carter fulfilled a campaign promise, granting amnesty to those who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War, an attempt to put a final exclamation point to the torturous conflict.
Mr. Carter made several significant achievements over the next four years. Yet he seemed plagued by the same naivete that had been noted in his very first campaign, and his administration unraveled. Mr. Carter had surrounded himself with a number of Georgians. But they came to Washington with a discernible chip on their shoulder, as though they would cleanse the government stables of corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency.
The Washington establishment was prepared to humble the newcomers. Trouble came quickly. An uncompromising figure — and something of a technocrat in his approach to problems — Mr. Carter had difficulty dealing with a Congress controlled by his own party.
In his first weeks, Mr. Carter attempted to cut funds for a number of water projects that were the pride of powerful congressmen. He also alienated lawmakers with his reluctance to yield on issues.
“When it came to the politics of Washington, D.C., he never really understood how the system worked. And although this was out of character for Jimmy Carter, he didn’t want to learn about it, either,” the iconic Massachusetts lawmaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, who was then House speaker, wrote in his memoirs.
“Once, when the City of Boston applied for a government grant for some roads, I called the Carter people to try to speed it along. Instead of assisting me, however, they did everything possible to block my way.”
Mark Hatfield, a former Oregon Republican senator and friend of Mr. Carter’s, told Brinkley that such Democratic senators as Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington and Edward M Kennedy of Massachusetts were known to “grind their teeth” after meeting with the president, livid that he “talked down to them.”
“Carter was so much smarter than most of the Democrats in Congress — and he let them know it,” Hatfield said.
Mr. Carter succeeded in his first year in creating a Department of Energy, hectoring the public to turn down the thermostat. But when he wore a cardigan sweater in a televised address to appeal for energy conservation, he was mocked.
With his problems with Congress, Mr. Carter’s domestic accomplishments were limited. Yet, his personal intervention set in motion advances that resonate today.
“We funded domestic violence centers, first time ever,” said Margaret McKenna, a civil rights lawyer who served as Mr. Carter’s deputy White House counsel before leading Lesley and Suffolk universities, in an interview. “There were women at the table everywhere, for the first time. They finally had a voice and it made a difference.”
Before his presidency, eight women had been appointed to federal judgeships in the history of the nation; in his four years, he appointed 41, McKenna said.
That only happened because the president confronted the American Bar Association, which favored established white males with judicial experience in their evaluation role in vetting candidates. “He talked to the ABA and basically said either you broaden your view of what makes a good federal judge or we’re not going to send their names to you,” McKenna said.
“And that’s when the world changed. They would not have supported Ruth Bader Ginsburg (whom Mr. Carter nominated for the US Court of Appeals in 1980). They were looking down their noses at our (nominations), because they didn’t look like them, these white males. The president put himself on the line to do that.”
He also is credited with several deregulation efforts that led to more energy independence, more choices and lower prices for airline passengers, and the proliferation of craft beers and brewpubs, said Kai Bird, who wrote “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.” The beer industry had been tightly controlled since prohibition, shutting out small brewers.
In foreign policy, Mr. Carter made an immediate impression. In his second year, he completed a process begun by Nixon: the normalization of relations with China. He also won ratification of a treaty to relinquish US control of the Panama Canal after a protracted battle in the Senate.
Even though Mr. Carter fervently called for the withdrawal of American troops in far-flung bases, particularly in South Korea, he was credited with strengthening and modernizing the military, embracing such emerging technologies as laser-targeted bombs and stealth jets.
In the fall of 1978, he forged his most memorable agreement. In a daring effort to bring Arabs and Israelis together, Mr. Carter invited Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., for an unstructured private conference. It would last 13 days.
Mr. Carter had become a specialist on the region, reading translations of the Quran and Torah and studying Middle East maps on his hands and knees. Through a steely, unwavering determination, he persuaded the two enemies toward a historic accord.
It would take a trip by Mr. Carter to Jerusalem and Cairo to seal the agreement. But Sadat and Begin returned to Washington the next spring to sign a treaty on the White House lawn. It was the first such accord between the Jewish state and any of its Arab neighbors.
“He worked harder than our forefathers did in Egypt building the pyramids,” Begin said of Mr. Carter at a news conference with Sadat.
Mr. Carter appeared to move on to another triumph later in 1979, when he met in Vienna with Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, to sign SALT II — a strategic arms limitation agreement.
Within weeks of the Vienna summit, Mr. Carter’s presidency began to fall apart.
Against a backdrop of long lines of automobiles waiting for dwindling supplies of gasoline, Mr. Carter secluded himself at Camp David to consider his course for the remainder of his term. Prodded by gloomy polls, he delivered a television address in which he admitted some failures while addressing a “crisis of confidence” that he perceived in the nation.
With the president foundering, Kennedy rose in late 1979 to challenge him for the next Democratic nomination.
Before Mr. Carter’s third year in office would end, two events across the globe would shake his administration.
Forces in the revolutionary government in Iran helped students seize the US Embassy in Tehran and held 52 hostages for 444 days, until the hour that Mr. Carter left office. “The holding of the American hostages had cast a pall over my own life and over the American people,” Mr. Carter wrote in his memoirs, “Keeping Faith.”
The crisis was compounded when a rescue mission ended in a disastrous crash of US helicopters in an Iranian desert in the spring of 1980. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had clashed repeatedly with Mr. Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, opposed the military operation and resigned.
Mr. Carter’s problems were intensified by the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, an act that scuttled ratification of the arms treaty and provoked Mr. Carter to impose a grain embargo and to order a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics by US athletes.
Americans’ approval rating for Mr. Carter tumbled to 25 percent, lower than any ratings for the disgraced Nixon.
“The things that they had once loved about him, his piety and his simplicity and his kind of moral goodness, they now despised as weakness and moral superiority,” Hendrik Hertzberg, a speechwriter for Mr. Carter, told PBS’ “The American Experience.” “They just couldn’t stand him.”
Despite a spreading tableau of troubles, Mr. Carter succeeded in fending off a challenge by Kennedy in the primaries. But he found himself 20 percentage points behind in the polls against the Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan.
The Democrats were divided and dispirited. Mr. Carter would not recover.
He had entered the White House after one of the closest presidential elections in the 20th century. He left in an electoral landslide. The Democrats lost control of the Senate for the first time in 28 years.
“In a few days, I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to president: the title of citizen,” Mr. Carter said in a farewell address that, in uncharacteristically rich and soaring rhetoric, called for fighting for human rights in all corners of the world and fiercely protecting the land, seas, and air.
In many ways, that speech would eventually serve as a blueprint for his post-White House life.
He returned to his home in Plains, facing, he would write, “an altogether new, unwanted, and potentially empty life.”
His friends and family credit his return to an unadorned life — making his own furniture, canning his own jams, teaching Scripture classes, and mowing the lawn at his church — with recharging his batteries.
He would continue to relish these chores the rest of his life.
Former chief of staff Hamilton Jordan once called his boss “the world’s worst loser,” but all who knew him recognized his tenacity in rebounding. That resurgence started with plans for his presidential library.
He disdained the thought of building a museum, “a monument to myself.” Instead, he wanted a vibrant, forward-looking center of action, a workshop of sorts that would provide the space, tools, and expertise to help scientific experts and political leaders end hunger, eradicate ancient scourges, and foster peace.
In 1986, the Carter Center was opened on 35 acres at Emory University and near his presidential library in Atlanta.
“When he set up the Carter Center, he shared with me his vision and I thought, oh no, that, that’s so grandiose,” James Laney, former president of Emory, told PBS. “Frankly, I was embarrassed for him. He was at the nadir of popularity.”
By 1986, however, the image of Mr. Carter had begun to change. On his travels abroad promoting the responsibilities of all free people to help those shackled by poverty or persecution or disease, it became evident that outside of the United States, he was one of the most revered Americans.
At home, his hands-on work with Habitat for Humanity, a relatively new organization that was founded near Plains, won admiration. In a decade that would become known for the motto “Greed is Good,” many found it compelling that a former president would reject six-figure speaking fees and instead hammer away in the dust and debris to help build a new life for someone.
Habitat for Humanity would provide Mr. Carter an in-country beachhead for his work promoting democracy and human rights.
He also worked closely with Amnesty International, using a list from the group in his efforts to free political prisoners. Much of his influence stemmed from his time as president.
“It was Jimmy Carter’s government that did more than any other group of people anywhere for the cause of human rights in Argentina,” the Buenos Aires Herald wrote in an editorial during a visit by Mr. Carter in 1984.
Activists in Peru, Brazil, and Panama echoed that conviction.
Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, credited Mr. Carter’s emphasis on human rights for contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“He was the first president during the Cold War to challenge publicly and consistently the legitimacy of Soviet rule at home,” Gates wrote in “From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War.” “Carter’s human rights policy . . . by the testimony of countless Soviet and East European dissidents and future democratic leaders challenged the moral authority of the Soviet government and gave American sanction and support to those resisting that government.”
From 1981 to 1997, citizen Carter was directly responsible for the release of about 50,000 political prisoners, some facing torture or death, according to Brinkley in his book “The Unfinished Presidency.” He would raise the imprisonments directly with leaders during his visits or engage in a fusillade of calls and letters from Plains.
“It’s amazing how many leaders will release someone about to be executed rather than be condemned as a human rights violator,” Mr. Carter said.
His commitment included negotiating the freedom of — and escorting home — Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a Boston man imprisoned in North Korea in 2010.
During the late 1980s, Mr. Carter also became the world’s most recognized champion of fair elections. His condemnation of General Manuel Noriega’s attempt to steal the Panamanian presidential election for his handpicked candidate in 1989 helped set in motion that dictator’s downfall.
In Nicaragua, he was credited with organizing a free election in 1990 under the auspices of the socialist Sandinista government, then persuading that party’s leader, Daniel Ortega, to give up power after his group was defeated in a stunning upset.
“I have never seen anywhere such a skillful diplomatic effort, or one that turned an utter failure into such a dramatic success,” John Whitehead, former deputy secretary of state in the Reagan administration, wrote to Mr. Carter. “It was a masterful performance.”
After decades of sham elections and strongmen tactics, the spirit of democracy began to become incarnate in Latin America.
In all, Mr. Carter and his center monitored about 100 elections in 38 countries over the next quarter-century. “When it comes to elections, Carter’s is the most-listened to voice in the world,” the Rev. Desmond Tutu, the South African civil rights activist, told Brinkley in 1995.
While Mr. Carter garnered universal praise for his roles in helping fitfully emerging democracies, his role as peacemaker was more complicated.
In the Carter Center, he saw the conduit for leveraging the kind of face-to-face, personal, unyielding style of diplomacy used to deliver the Camp David Accords. He would attempt to apply that approach on five continents over three decades.
“Carter has a profound, almost innate commitment to peace. It’s in his bones,” said Laney, who later became ambassador to South Korea. “He really believes Theodore Roosevelt’s adage that one should walk softly and carry a big stick. But don’t be afraid to walk into the lion’s den. And he does that. He’s done it repeatedly.”
Yet in doing so, Mr. Carter would often engage — and occasionally praise — such State Department pariahs as Kim Il Sung of North Korea, Fidel Castro of Cuba, or Raoul Cedras, the onetime military dictator of Haiti.
“I do have to deal with some very unsavory people, because they’re generally the ones who cause the problems, and they’re the only ones who can resolve them,” Mr. Carter told CNN after receiving the peace prize.
Perhaps the most gripping and perilous peace mission for Mr. Carter was his late-minute gambit in Haiti in 1994. Cedras refused to give up power to the democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand-Aristide, who was in exile. The United States, with support from the United Nations, prepared to invade the Caribbean island and remove the military junta by Sept. 19. A diplomatic mission was cobbled together as the 82nd Airborne prepared for the first wave of attack.
Mr. Carter, with former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell and Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, arrived in Port-Au-Prince and held a whipsaw series of marathon talks that were intense, chaotic, and ultimately successful. The paratroopers who took off from three US bases with orders for an invasion instead landed in Haiti as liberators.
Despite his successes, he was viewed by many in the State Department, which he often ridiculed mercilessly, as a meddler, a loose cannon for peace.
To Brinkley, he was more “a tyrant for peace …. a Richard the Lion-Hearted crusading against war,” he wrote.
His greatest ambition — to build a comprehensive and lasting Middle East peace that included a Palestinian state — eluded him. Combining a high moral purpose with his trademark stamina and attention to detail, he traveled to the region frequently, to no avail.
On one of his trips, the former president visited the family of Sadat. After serving a traditional meal, Jehan Sadat, the Egyptian leader’s widow, stood up, cleared her throat, and read a private note written by her husband shortly before he was assassinated:
“Jimmy Carter is my very best friend on earth. He is the most honorable man I know. Brilliant and deeply religious, he has all the marvelous attributes that made him inept in dealing with the scoundrels who run the world.”
Mr. Carter responded: “Well, maybe . . . but I’ll never change.”
Less controversial than his peace missions, and perhaps more consequential, was Mr. Carter’s work with farmers in Africa to boost their productivity and with doctors around the world to wipe out diseases.
Global 2000, a group under the umbrella of the Carter Center, worked with farmers directly, giving them the tools, seeds, and knowledge to boost their yields. Mr. Carter’s program was directly credited with transforming Ghana from an economic basket case in the 1980s to a regional breadbasket, accelerating the nation’s push toward democracy.
In 1993, Global 2000 began helping Ethiopia, which was still recovering from a devastating drought and civil war. Participating farmers reported to Mr. Carter that their grain yields had increased 400 percent with the new techniques; nationwide, production doubled in only four years. By then, the nation was sending surplus grain to needy neighbors.
Soon, developing nations in Africa and Latin American were seeking out Global 2000, intent on reaping their own green revolution; across farming villages in these nations, Mr. Carter is memorialized on the names of bridges, squares and streets, schools, and hospitals. Farmers named their children Jimmy Carter.
The Carter Center is also widely credited with nearly stamping out guinea worm disease, a brutally disfiguring scourge. Nearly 900,000 cases were reported in 1989, when the center began its work of education and distribution of water filtration systems. According to the center, the number has been cut to a handful of cases a year.
Mr. Carter’s work also led the way to the eradication of river blindness, a disorder that could disable entire villages, in Ecuador and Colombia.
For many of his endeavors, Mr. Carter engaged the talents of William Foege, who had led a successful effort to rid the world of smallpox.
“What is so exhilarating about working with Jimmy Carter is that you never know where the ripple stops,” Foege said.
