In Memoriam: Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024
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Former President Jimmy Carter has died at his home in Plains, Georgia. He was 100 years old, a modest man with an unforgettable ear-to-ear grin. Carter was the country's 39th president, serving only one term from 1977 to 1981. His years in the White House were difficult. He faced enormous problems at home and abroad and struggled to prove that he was a strong and capable leader. But once he left office, Carter became an almost unstoppable force for peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts. In this special episode of Up First, we consider the legacy of the man widely called "America's greatest former president."
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Former President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. Carter served one term in the White House from 1977 to 1981. It was a troubled time when the nation faced high inflation and energy shortages. And Carter struggled over his four years to portray himself as an effective leader. But perhaps his greatest contributions came after he left office. In fact, Jimmy Carter has been praised as the nation's greatest former president. I'm Rachel Martin, and you're listening to a special edition of Up First. Today, we're remembering the life of former President Jimmy Carter. And here to talk through Carter's legacy is NPR's senior political correspondent Don Gagne. Hey, Don. Hi there. So let's begin our conversation way back in 1976. These were the last few months of the presidential campaign season. America was celebrating, right? It was the bicentennial, although the country was still reeling from the Vietnam War. You had these countervailing things, right? All the positive nature of the bicentennial. But the Vietnam War had just wound down literally in the previous year. On top of all of that, the country was in the midst of an energy crisis. There was lots of cynicism among the American people. To take you back to those days, President Gerald Ford was an incumbent running for a full term in office. Recall that he'd inherited the presidency two years earlier. In 1974, when a disgraced Richard Nixon resigned from office, as the Watergate scandal just closed in around him. Right. And then amid all of that, there's this Southerner running on the Democratic ticket, which in and of itself was a big deal. Jimmy Carter, where did he come from? What was his political genesis? Boy, it's an understatement to say he was a relative unknown, right? He was from Plains, Georgia. Population 236 back in the 1970s. He had been a state senator. He had been recently governor of Georgia. He was a former peanut farmer. So I found this great tape from December of 1973 when I was working on an obit about Carter. And the tape kind of highlights how unknown he really was. Here I am introducing that tape in that obit. He was hardly a household name. In fact, as his time in the State House wound down, he popped up on the TV game show What's My Line? Would our first challenger enter and sign in, please? On the show, a panel of celebrities tries to guess the profession of the mystery person sitting right in front of them. So there is Governor Carter on the set, smiling that famous Jimmy Carter smile. And the panelists have no idea who he is. And let's begin the questioning with Arlene Francis. Is it a service that has to do with the women? Yes, certainly. Not enough. So what you hear, Rachel, are these celebrity panelists asking Jimmy Carter what he does for a living and trying to figure out. And they go on and on with different questions to him trying to figure out what his profession is. Again, they had no clue who this guy was. Which is sort of interesting because Jimmy Carter's humility was something that also just kind of set him apart.
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