OPINION: What Would Jimmy Carter Do?

Jimmy Carter’s death on December 29, 2024, swept back 30-year-old memories of working alongside the former President and his wife, Rosalynn, on a group house build.

In July of 1994, Habitat for Humanity set up camp in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. The global nonprofit housing organization builds affordable homes in all 50 states and around the world.

For this project, 1,400 volunteers descended on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation with the ambitious plan of building 30 houses in five days.  

A minor cog with no construction experience, I was there as part of a New York-based magazine company that sponsored one of the houses. In fact, the Carters worked on House #1 and we were placed next door in House #2.

Everyone slept in tents, rose at dawn, gorged on a hot breakfast then went straight to work sites. Hammering nails on House #2, I stopped and gawked a few times as the President, wearing a dusty baseball cap and a bandana tied around his neck, entered House #1. You could easily see the Carters worked as hard as anybody.

Sometime midweek, Jimmy made an appearance at House #2. Work stopped. He stood in the center of what would become a living room and addressed our group.

“We appreciate your work,” he began, showing off his Georgia peanut farmer’s smile. Then he got serious. This house is way behind schedule, he explained. Something about the drywallers needing to come in tonight and we weren’t ready for that. To get up to speed, Carter told us we were going to work through dinner, which would be brought out to the house for us.

Before he left, Carter flashed that smile one more time. “I know you can catch up,” he said as he left to go back to work on House #1.     

Our stomachs growled but nobody complained. As Carter willed, the work got done. We caught up, and by the end of the week we watched as 30 families, most who helped with construction efforts, took possession of a new set of house keys handed over by Carter.

He lived to be 100. Carter’s body will be flown to Washington D.C. on January 7, 2025, where he will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for two days. Services will be held at Washington National Cathedral on January 9.

It’s been chronicled by historians that a reason Carter may have only served one term was his propensity to be forthright and honest. Sad, if true.

The Sun ran a story about ties the former President had to San Diego. Among those connections: he threw out the very first pitch at downtown’s Petco Park; and he has a suite named after him at the Omni San Diego Hotel. He was a well-rounded individual. At the age of 71 he still had the hand-eye coordination to make a one-handed catch of a foul ball at an Atlanta Braves-San Diego Padres baseball game.

After leaving office, Carter stayed amazingly active. He participated in global affairs. He created The Carter Center and won a Pulitzer Prize for promoting human rights. And he was a leading figure in Habitat, which today has built or repaired more than one million homes.

It’s fitting to put Carter’s one-term Presidency, and his four-decades of activism as an ex-President (including his Habitat work), into context. On all fronts, Carter eschewed pretense. He said what he meant and walked his talk – an anomaly in politics then and especially now. 

It’s been chronicled by historians that a reason Carter may have only served one term was his propensity to be forthright and honest. Sad, if true.

After he was elected in 1976, the country faced inflation, high unemployment, soaring gas prices and a 444-day crisis with Americans held hostage by Iran.

In what was dubbed his 1979 “Malaise” speech, Carter addressed the country with plainspoken candor about our national problems. He took responsibility and asked the nation to do its part, too. That seems to have backfired.

Carter never mastered the circular politi-speak practiced by most officeholders. He lost the Presidency in 1980 to Ronald Reagan, who had said of Carter’s speech: “…people who talk about an age of limits are really talking about their own limitations, not America’s.”  

In the ongoing practice of politi-speak, a candidate or office holder is never wrong, never did anything wrong in the past, and based on learned experience, is going to fix any issue attracting negative perception in the very near future.

Look at one of a million current-day examples: San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s handling of his oft-stated number-one priority – homelessness. Shelters are going offline but we’re told there’ll be a mega-shelter that will absorb 1,000 people living on the street. And even though it’s taking more than six months to haggle with the proposed shelter site’s property owner, the city is working hard to negotiate the best deal for the people of San Diego.

That’s not the runaround you’d hear from Jimmy Carter. The devil is in the details, but you can bet if this were in Carter’s hands nobody would get dinner until there was a plan in place to get shelter over every head. Pronto. Polls and political winds be damned.  SDSun