America Needs More Jimmy Carters

There’s no predicting history’s verdict. Up to now, Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at age 100 in Plains, Ga., has been judged to be a middle-of-the-pack president, his one term in office remembered for circumstances and events that simply overwhelmed him: the seizure in Iran of 52 American hostages, the bungled attempt to rescue them, the gasoline lines, inflation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Yet he is also considered one of America’s greatest ex-presidents, for using the residual star power of his office to help his successors and his country as a peacemaker, backstage diplomat, human rights champion, monitor of free elections and advocate for the homeless while finding time to write poetry and, by his own example, providing the best possible case for traditional religious values.

In 2002, having been nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Carter finally won it for his “vital contribution” to the Camp David agreement, which set the stage for peace between Israel and Egypt, as well as for his commitment to human rights, his work fighting tropical diseases and for furthering democracy everywhere.

His life offers countless lessons for leaders everywhere.

Mr. Carter came to the presidency owing little to anyone, including his own party. Assembling a formidable coalition of small-town and rural voters, white blue-collar voters and African Americans, he surprised everyone in America — except perhaps himself and his wife, Rosalynn — when he beat Gerald Ford in the 1976 election.

In retrospect, he could not have run at a more auspicious moment. The previous decade had been brutal for the United States. One president, Lyndon Johnson, chose not to seek another term because of rising public anger at an unwinnable war in Vietnam. Another, Richard Nixon, resigned to avoid impeachment. Assassinations claimed the lives of yet another Kennedy, Bobby, and the nation’s premier civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. The war ended in humiliating failure.

Then along came this born-again farmer-businessman from Georgia with a record of service in the Navy. He was a disciplined man of integrity and rock-solid values whose vision was to restore honor to government and, thus, change the mood of the capital and the country.

“Trust me,” Mr. Carter said again and again on the campaign trail. “I will never lie to you.” His opponent, the incumbent president, Gerald Ford, was an honorable man, but had few defenses. The burden of the multiple duplicities and corruption of Mr. Ford’s predecessors was simply too heavy.