Jimmy Carter, former US president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has died at the age of 100

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jimmy Carter, the earnest Georgia peanut farmer who as U.S. president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, has died in his the house. in Plains, Ga. on Sunday. He was 100.

U.S. President Joe Biden ordered Jan. 9 to be a national day of mourning for Carter across the United States, the White House said in a statement.

“I urge the American people to gather in their places of worship that day to honor the memory of President James Earl Carter,” Biden said.

Carter, a Democrat, became president in January 1977 after defeating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford (NYSE: ) in the 1976 election. His one term as president was marked by the highlights of the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, which brought some stability to the Middle East.

But it was also dogged by an economic recession, lingering unpopularity and the Iran hostage crisis that consumed his last 444 days in office. Carter ran for re-election in 1980, but was swept from office in a landslide when voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, a former actor and California governor.

Carter lived longer than any American president and earned a reputation as a dedicated humanitarian after leaving the White House. He was widely regarded as a better ex-president than he was – and he readily acknowledged that status.

World leaders and former US presidents have paid tribute to a man they praised as compassionate, humble and committed to peace in the Middle East.

“His significant role in reaching a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel will go down in history,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in a post on X.

The Carter Center said public ceremonies will be held in Atlanta and Washington. A private burial will follow these events in Plains.

According to the center, the final arrangement of the former president's state funeral is still pending.

In recent years, Carter has had several health problems, including melanoma that has spread to his liver and brain. Carter opted for hospice care in February 2023 rather than undergo further medical intervention. His wife Rosalynn Carter died on November 19, 2023, aged 96. He looked frail as he attended her memorial service and funeral in a wheelchair.

Carter left office deeply unpopular, but worked vigorously on humanitarian issues for decades. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his “tireless efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, promote democracy and human rights, and promote economic and social development.”

On Monday, the body that awards the Nobel Peace Prize reiterated its praise for Carter's (NYSE: ) work.

“The committee was pleased to congratulate him on his 100th anniversary this autumn and said that we will be commemorating his work for peace, democracy and human rights for another 100 years or more,” he said.

Carter was a centrist as governor of Georgia with populist tendencies when he moved into the White House as the 39th President of the United States. He was a Washington outsider at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal, which led Republican Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency in 1974 and promoted Ford to vice president.

“I'm Jimmy Carter and I'm running for president. I'll never lie to you,” Carter promised, grinning from ear to ear.

Asked to assess his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary, “The biggest failure we've had has been a political failure. I've never been able to convince the American people that I'm a strong, strong leader.”

Despite his difficulties in office, Carter had few rivals for achievements as a former president. He gained worldwide recognition as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised, and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, earning him the respect that had eluded him in the White House.

Carter won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election monitoring delegations to polling stations around the world.

A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since he was a teenager, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency and was open about his religious beliefs. In his inaugural parade in 1977, he also sought some of the pomp of an increasingly imperial presidency—rather than riding in a limousine, he walked.

The Middle East was the focus of Carter's foreign policy. The 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David Accords, ended the state of war between the two neighbors.

Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, for talks. Later, when the deals appeared to be collapsing, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy.

The treaty stipulated Israel's withdrawal from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

By the 1980 election, the main issues were double-digit inflation, interest rates in excess of 20% and skyrocketing gas prices, as well as the Iran hostage crisis, which brought humiliation to America. These problems marred Carter's presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term.

THE CRISIS OF ANNUALITY

On November 4, 1979, revolutionaries loyal to Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the American embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans present, and demanded the return of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was being supported by the United States and was being treated in American hospitals.

The American public initially rallied behind Carter. However, his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, with eight American soldiers killed in a plane crash in the Iranian desert.

In Carter's final humiliation, Iran held 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan was sworn in to replace Carter on January 20, 1981, and then released the planes carrying them.

In another crisis, Carter protested the former Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also asked the US Senate to delay consideration of a major nuclear arms deal with Moscow.

The Soviets remained unaffected in Afghanistan for ten years.

Carter narrowly won Senate approval in 1978 for a treaty to bring the Panama Canal under Panamanian control despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also completed negotiations on full US ties with China.

Carter created two new US cabinet departments – Education and Energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America's “energy crisis” was the “moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace protection. “Ours is the most wasteful nation in the world,” he told Americans in 1977.

In 1979, Carter addressed the nation in what became known as his “malaise,” although he never used the word.

“After listening to the American people, I was reminded again that no piece of legislation in the world can fix what is wrong with America,” he said in a televised address.

“The threat is almost invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that will strike at the very heart, soul and spirit of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future threatens to destroy the social and political fabric of America.”

As president, Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his drunken younger brother, Billy Carter, who boasted, “I got a red neck, white socks and Blue Ribbon beer.”

'THERE YOU GO AGAIN'

Jimmy Carter resisted the challenge of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980, but was politically weakened heading into his general election battle against a spirited Republican opponent.

Reagan, a conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during his debates before the November 1980 election.

Reagan dismissively told Carter, “There you go again,” when the Republican challenger felt the president misrepresented Reagan's views during one debate.

Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who won 44 of the 50 states and amassed an Electoral College landslide.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and a businessman. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to run the family peanut business.

He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, calling the union “the most important thing in my life.” They had three sons and a daughter.

Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator, and the governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. In 1976, he sought the Democratic presidential nomination, defeating his rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election.

With Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate and during one of their debates, Carter received an endorsement from the great Ford. Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe and there never will be under Ford” despite decades of such domination.

Carter outpolled Ford, even though Ford actually won more states—27 to Carter's 23.

Not all of Carter's post-presidential work has been acclaimed. Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George HW Bush, both Republicans, were said to be unhappy with Carter's freewheeling diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.

In 2004, Carter called the Iraq war launched in 2003 by the younger Bush one of the “grossest and most devastating mistakes our nation has ever made.” He called the George W. Bush administration “the worst in history” and said Vice President Dick Cheney was “a disaster for our country.”

In 2019, Carter questioned the legitimacy of Republican Donald Trump as president, saying he “was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump responded by calling Carter a “terrible president.”

Carter also made trips to communist North Korea. A visit in 1994 defused the nuclear crisis when President Kim Il-sung agreed to freeze his nuclear program in exchange for resuming dialogue with the United States. This led to a deal in which North Korea promised not to restart its nuclear reactor or reprocess the plant's spent fuel in exchange for aid.

But Carter angered the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton when he announced the deal with the North Korean leader without first vetting it in Washington.

In 2010, Carter won the release of an American sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korea.

Carter has written more than two dozen books, ranging from presidential memoirs to children's books and poetry, as well as works on religious faith and diplomacy. His book “Faith: A Journey for All” was published in 2018.

(Reporting and writing by Will Dunham; Additional reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Bill Trott, Diane Craft, Lisa Shumaker, Don Durfee and Michael Perry)