Jimmy Carter 3.0: Building a Post-Presidential Legacy

Jimmy Carter 3.0: Building a Post-Presidential Legacy May 29, 2014

There was Jimmy Carter the president, Jimmy Carter the Habitat home builder and now what you might call Jimmy Carter 3.0: international advocate for women’s rights.

As he nears 90 and the twilight of his public career, scholars are taking yet another look at Carter, a Baptist Sunday school teacher who continues to find ways to use his four years in the Oval Office as a springboard for his faith-fueled passions.

In many ways, Carter appears to be seeking redemption for a presidency that is widely considered a failure, from the energy crisis to the Iranian hostages to his self-diagnosed “crisis of confidence” that overshadowed America in the late 1970s.

But ironically, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is now more free to pursue his global crusade than he ever was as president, says Randall Balmer, author of the new biography, “Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter.”

“Religion always functions best at the margins of society and not in the councils of power, and I think Jimmy Carter’s career illustrates that beautifully,” said Balmer, chair of Dartmouth College’s religion department and a noted scholar of American evangelicals.

“He doesn’t have to worry about getting the approval from Congress on an initiative in Africa on river blindness. He’s not tethered by political considerations any longer.”

Perhaps it’s the age of Obama that has prompted a reassessment in some quarters of the ex-president with the wide toothy grin, when progressive Democrats like Carter and Lyndon Johnson are cast in a softer, more sympathetic light. Or maybe it’s growing nostalgia for a distant era when politics seemed more decent, less dysfunctional. Or maybe it’s because Carter just won’t slow down, drawing praise for his humanitarian work even from his critics.

Whatever it is, the former peanut farmer is getting a second look — and drawing his own share of headlines.

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