Jimmy Carter the ‘nice guy’ who did right

Even as tributes poured in for Jimmy Carter – the former US president who died aged 100 – the critics were also lining up to describe him as one of the most ineffectual heads of state in American history.

His only term as president, from 1977 to 1981, was characterised by domestic setbacks – like the disastrous failure to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980 and an oil crisis which saw Americans queuing to buy fuel for their cars.

His crowning diplomatic global achievement, though, was the 1978 Camp David Accords, signed by Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, which ultimately led to a peace treaty the following year.

In his “retirement” – promoting human rights and justice, mediating conflicts and monitoring elections around the world, as well as leading humanitarian campaigns to improve the lives of the poor – he came to shine.

He was, in all this, a man of high morals, driven by his unshakeable Christian faith that all people are created equal. In the end, though, he was an anachronism in the dog-eat-dog world of US politics – a “nice guy” determined to do the right thing, not only for Americans, but for the rest of the world.

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