“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

The passing of former President Jimmy Carter last week was the loss of a “Great One,” a great politician, and even more importantly, a great humanitarian. The loss comes at a time at a time when the US sorely needs another great leader, but Carter is gone, and you have to wonder if there are any Great Ones left.

I fear there isn’t.

Certainly, the President-Elect, whose name I refuse to print, doesn’t qualify for the word “great” in any sense of the word unless that word is delusional.

On the other hand, Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his years of strategic diplomacy leading to the Oslo Accords which advanced the Middle East peace process long before the war raging in Gaz now. Carter’s accomplishment speaks for itself far better than any MAGA cap.

If Carter was president today, it’s unlikely millions would be dreading Inauguration Day Jan. 20 when this new president says he’s going to deport millions of starving immigrants and migrants and impose a 25% tariff on America’s major trading partners including Canada.

Carter didn’t resort to cheap rhetoric like “draining the swamp” to advance his political agenda.

He was more a humanitarian than a politician and saw the essential good in people rather than the bad. He rejected advancing his political agenda by authoritarian means which unfortunately is more the case today.  Carter was also an early environmentalist and had solar windows installed in the Whitehouse only to see Ronald Reagan quickly remove them when he assumed the presidency.

Despite being president for four years, Carter was a bit of an “outsider” in politics getting down on his hands and knees – often with his wife Rosalynn – to volunteer for social agencies like Habitat for Humanity building affordable housing for the poor and destitute around the globe.

An intensely religious man, Carter never mixed religion with politics as is the case so often today. He volunteered regularly as a Sunday School teacher in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, a rural hamlet where he began his career as a humble peanut farmer.

But it’s what Carter did after losing the presidency that was the real measure of the man, said George Washington University history professor Timothy Shenk. “It’s fair to say he had much more success after leaving the White House than he did inside of it.”

Isn’t that ironic? Despite his failure to save American lives during the Iran-Contra affair, it’s Carter’s decades of charitable work that largely dominate his historical legacy, Shenk said. He also believes Carter’s farsighted policies will lead to a reappraisal of his presidency.

“History will be much kinder to him,” he said. “If his positions had prevailed, the world would be a better place today.”

Farmer, preacher, politician and humanitarian, Carter was a good man to the core. He brought a moral compass to the affairs of the White House, something sadly lacking today. But most of all, he was a man of peace in a country often at war and now facing the possibility of a civil war as US politics become ever more polarized and dangerously divided.

Carter once said: “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.”

The world has lost a great humanitarian and politician. It has also lost a great man. No wonder he lived to be 100. May he rest in peace forever.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who strongly believes the world today needs another “Great One” like Jimmy Carter in these tumultuous times.

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