Jimmy Carter: A moral compass for our times

My wife and I took our daughters to Disney World in 1997, and after doing so took a quick side trip into southern Georgia to visit the Andersonville Stockade where our Civil War ancestor was held in the rebel prison. We realized while there that Plains, Georgia, was only about 20 miles away, and so decided to make that quick trip to the retirement home of former President Jimmy Carter. 

We picked up a few small sacks of Carter peanuts and sat in the chairs of the classroom where the former president went to school.  We learned that Carter, a fundamentalist Baptist, would be teaching Sunday school the following morning. To make our return flight to Montana, though, we regretfully couldn’t stay in Plains for church. We missed meeting Carter and never had another opportunity to do so.   

After arriving home, I gave the Carter peanuts to some Democrat friends and was a little surprised by their mixed reactions.  Some considered him self-righteous and uncompromising. He was publicly lampooned by Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole as well as Democrat Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil. 

I didn’t disrespect Carter, but I didn’t vote for him. Then very much a Republican, I was a leader of the Ford forces at the Republican state convention in 1976 and went on to support Ronald Reagan in 1980. 

I took Carter at his word when he promised the American people that he would never lie to us, and I don’t think he ever intentionally did. That commends him to American memory, especially when compared to the incoming chief executive’s wanton carelessness with the truth.  

Certainly, Carter’s leadership in forging the Camp David Accords was a significant accomplishment, resulting in almost 50 years of relative peace in the Middle East.  Though he never received a Supreme Court appointment, he did appoint Ruth Bader Ginsberg to be a federal judge, and she was elevated from there to the Supreme Court by President Clinton. Carter created the Department of Energy in response to the 1970s energy crisis and the Department of Education to oversee making American education more competitive in world testing. 

But perhaps Carter’s most significant accomplishment was negotiating the treaties which gave Panama eventual control of the Panama Canal. Tension in the Canal Zone between Panamanians and U.S. occupiers had turned violent in the 1960’s.  To protect U.S. interests, support began to form around a new treaty focused on ensuring perpetual U.S. use of the canal rather than perpetual U.S. control of it, a position propounded to Carter by many experts including Henry Kissinger and the joint chiefs of staff. 

At the time, polls showed two-thirds of Americans opposed the new agreement that required a two-thirds majority in the Senate to pass. One senator who appeared to have nothing to lose by supporting the treaty was the newly appointed Sen. Paul Hatfield of Montana. Hatfield was being opposed in the Democratic primary by popular young Montana Congressman Max Baucus. Baucus appeared certain to win.  According to the explanation of Montana political insiders, and passed on to this day, Hatfield agreed to support the Canal Treaty, and Carter agreed to give Hatfield a life appointment as a Federal District Judge. With Hatfield voting “aye,” the treaty passed the crucial hurdle to ratification with only one vote to spare. 

Carter never visited Montana as president but did stop in Billings during his 1976 campaign and twice in his ex-presidency.  In 1981 he did some August fly fishing near Dillon, catching several nice trout. In May of 1986, Carter spoke to a large crowd at the University of Montana at the annual Mansfield lecture. Carter praised the former Montana senator and ambassador for his high ethics in public service. He went on to express his view that the United States can best implement our “highest ideals of justice, fairness and equity” by actively working for “peace, human rights, justice, international law and arms control.”  

In vintage Carter prose, the former president stressed that Americans must fulfill “our moral duties as human beings,” to “set moral personal goals, and examine [our] lives periodically to see how [we] have fared in meeting those goals.” 

Carter went on in his private life to exemplify that creed. We may have had greater presidents, but perhaps never one as good. At his passing, we might all do better to examine our own moral progress, a fitting resolution for the start of this New Year. 

Bob Brown is a former Montana secretary of state and state Senate president. He lives in Whitefish.