JIMMY CARTER’S relationship with Massachusetts was complex. Just a week after his important victory in the 1976 New Hampshire primary, Carter would come in fourth in the Massachusetts primary.
But the state was a loyal Democratic stronghold, and after he secured the party nomination for president, Massachusetts delivered him a decisive victory in the general election. Massachusetts was also home to the speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, an instrumental figure in shepherding Carter’s legislative agenda through Congress.
Yet, the Bay State was the source of one of the toughest challenges of Carter’s political life: a bitter – and highly out of the ordinary — primary battle as he sought a second term against a formidable figure from a revered family in Democratic Party politics.
As Carter ramped up his reelection bid in 1980, Massachusetts’s senior senator, Ted Kennedy, launched a determined campaign to take the Democratic nomination, forcing Carter into a grueling contest that exposed divisions within their party. Kennedy’s challenge ultimately fell short, but the clash highlighted stark differences between the two men and their visions for their party and country. It was, to date, the last serious attempt to deny renomination to an incumbent Democratic president.
Carter’s already shaky reelection prospects were wounded further by the primary showdown, and he lost decisively in November to Ronald Reagan. Democrats would wait 12 years to win back the presidency.
As we consider the legacy of Jimmy Carter, who died one week ago at 100, it’s worth recalling that he and and his one-time Democratic opponent both did something nearly unheard of American politics following their face-off and the devastating loss each suffered that year: both got back up and went on to build enduring legacies of service, transforming setbacks into decades of meaningful work that shaped the nation and the world.
For Kennedy, the loss came at Carter’s hands in the bruising set of presidential primaries. The senator’s challenge to Carter was the culmination of long-standing policy disagreements with the White House as well as Carter’s well-known antipathy toward the left wing of the Democratic party. It didn’t help that the president eschewed opportunities to build bridges or even engage in the kind of convivial interpersonal politicking that could smooth over disagreements.
Carter’s approval rating with the public would sink to 28 percent the summer before Kennedy got into the race. Yet, the president would fight back hard, winning enough early primaries during the first months of 1980, benefitting from a slight rebound in his public approval. He would win renomination, but only after Kennedy brought the fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention in New York City, with his team trying to get Carter delegates released. It didn’t happen and Kennedy would go down to defeat.
He responded with one of the finest speeches in American political history, culminating with the stirring line, “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” They weren’t just words. For the next three decades after his crushing defeat at the hands of Carter, Kennedy did the work – on education, health care, help for the poor, and foreign policy, becoming in the process one of our greatest US senators.
It did not have to be that way. The scion of a wealthy family, who loved the ocean, Cape Cod, sailing and, bluntly, the good life, did not have to spend nearly 30 years doggedly working on arcane issues of health insurance, nutrition, and poverty. But he did, tirelessly and effectively.
And the man who beat him mirrored that ethos.
For Jimmy Carter, the work went on, ceaselessly, despite the battering he took at the hands of voters in his loss to Ronald Reagan. If Kennedy gave us a master class in how to take a loss and continue the public work undaunted, Carter showed us how to get knocked down, then spend the next 40 years as a private citizen, largely behind the scenes, making an enormous difference – for the better – for millions of people.
Carter’s presidency remains contentious: his handling of the energy crisis, the wisdom of the famous “malaise” speech, the sometimes self-righteous take on America’s materialism and lack of spirituality, and his handling of the Iranian hostage crisis. All contributed to his loss and continuing arguments over his short four years in office. What is beyond any argument is that Carter has shown us clearly what a post-presidency life can be at its most meaningful and effective.
Carter certainly didn’t opt for glamour or gold in the years after the White House. There’s little of either in carpentry, Sunday school teachings, or tackling a parasite known as the Guinea worm – but the scale of what he did, who he reached, and how many he helped is staggering.
Four years after losing the world’s top job, Carter learned about a small program that rehabbed or built housing and provided it to families who otherwise could not afford a home. Habitat for Humanity was a modest program when Carter passed by a building site in New York City and went in to ask what was happening. Over the ensuing decades he and wife Rosalynn helped the good work of Habitat to explode.
Starting with a few dozen volunteers, and wearing a hammer and pounding nails themselves, the Carters fixed up an apartment building that provided affordable homes to 19 families. Then they helped take Habitat to 14 different countries, with more than 100,000 volunteers, to create more than 4,300 affordable homes.
Hundreds of millions of Americans saw Jimmy Carter the president. But thousands sat in his class. For hundreds of Sundays over dozens of years, people came to a small church to listen as the former president taught Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.
And finally, there’s the Guinea worm. A drinking water parasite that causes illness and paralysis in more than 20 countries in Africa and Asia – a source of misery and pain for millions, most of them children – has been all but eradicated by the actions of one man.
President Carter’s philanthropic arm – the Carter Center – targeted eradication of Guinea worm disease six years after he left office, at a time when there were more than 3.5 million cases. It is an astonishing testament that today that number has been reduced by more than 99.99 percent. Simply put, his work has ended a scourge of the Third World.
With his White House dreams dashed, Ted Kennedy got back to work in Congress, and forged a legacy worthy of making him known as the “Lion of the Senate.” Following his reelection loss the same the year, Jimmy Carter amassed a record as impressive – without the benefit of any formal powers.
In 2002, more than two decades after leaving office, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee made clear that the award was not just for what Carter did in office — most notably, brokering the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt – but equally for his enormous body of work after leaving the White House, promoting conflict resolution and human rights on multiple continents, as well as fighting tropical diseases and bringing growth and progress to developing countries.
It is a model of public service we are not likely to see again.
Peter Ubertaccio is vice president for academic affairs at Stonehill College and a longtime political science professor and commentator.
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