By Peter Baker
When President Joe Biden spoke publicly to honor former President Jimmy Carter, he sounded as though he were reflecting on his own final days in office.
“In today’s world, some view Jimmy Carter as a figure from a past age — characterized by honesty and integrity, faith and modesty,” Biden remarked after interrupting his Caribbean vacation due to Carter’s passing. “It mattered. But I don’t think it’s a bygone era.”
Biden, too, has been perceived as a relic of a past time, an old-fashioned politician navigating a modern landscape, an octogenarian president adhering to rules he learned in the 1970s during his Senate tenure while Carter occupied the presidency, rules ill-suited for today’s rapid-fire political environment. From this perspective, he appears to be out of sync — belonging to Carter’s era.
As he stated, Biden does not accept this characterization and contends that “the fundamental human values” from his generation remain relevant. However, when discussing Carter’s “honesty and integrity,” he made it clear he was contrasting those qualities with those of his predecessor and imminent successor, Donald Trump, who is the first former president to be convicted of felony offenses and found liable for sexual misconduct and business fraud.
The timing of Carter’s passing during Biden’s presidency evokes a sense of familiarity: once again a one-term Democratic president whose hopes for reelection were hindered by inflation and difficulties securing the release of hostages from the Middle East prior to leaving office.
Moreover, the influential players in the region who could facilitate the hostages’ release might be monitoring the situation in Washington and waiting for the outgoing president’s time to expire, possibly stalling any agreements until the next president is inaugurated, mirroring events that occurred in 1981 when Carter handed power to Ronald Reagan.
“The similarities are striking,” Richard Moe, former chief of staff to Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, commented Monday. “And I think there’s truth to this.”
Of course, Biden and Carter differ in numerous ways, and the conditions surrounding their exits from the White House present significant contrasts, particularly since Carter departed at the age of 56, while Biden, at 82, is leaving under a cloud of uncertainty regarding his ability to have remained in office for another four years.
Nonetheless, they share a long history. “I’ve been close with Jimmy Carter for over 50 years,” Biden remarked Sunday evening.
Biden was the first Democratic senator to back Carter’s uphill 1976 presidential campaign, and 45 years later, he became the first sitting president to visit Carter at his home in Plains, Georgia, in 2021. They both perceived themselves as straightforward individuals in a world full of tacticians, and they initially established themselves as moderate Democrats before leaning more to the left as they aged.
“They truly had a bond,” remarked Gerald Rafshoon, who served as Carter’s White House communications director.
Yet, the nostalgia surrounding today’s events can overshadow the more complicated reality of the past. Despite Biden’s admiration for Carter, there were moments of friction between them historically. In his 2007 memoir titled “Promises to Keep,” Biden shared his regret over backing Carter.
“Jimmy Carter was a man of integrity and principles, but it wasn’t sufficient,” he reflected. Recalling a dispute involving Carter and European allies, Biden noted, “That’s when I first understood that on-the-job training for a president can be quite perilous.”
When Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts initiated a Democratic primary challenge against Carter, Biden remembered a group of political advisors encouraging him to enter the race as a compromise candidate. “They claimed I could be the unifying nominee,” he recounted. However, he was only 37 years old at the time and chose to refrain from participating.
In numerous respects, Biden and Carter represent a study in contrasts. Unlike Carter, a quintessential outsider from Georgia who entered the political scene only to become president, Biden has been entrenched in Washington for over fifty years.
Regardless, it’s evident that Biden absorbed several lessons from Carter’s experiences.
Regarding the hostages, for instance, Carter emphasized the significance of his standoff with Iran, where 52 Americans were held for 444 days — to the extent that he initially refrained from campaigning for reelection and prioritized the crisis above all else in his administration.
In contrast, Biden has endeavored to facilitate the release of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas in the Gaza Strip; however, only a handful of them are American, and he has not allowed it to overshadow his presidency.
Nevertheless, former aides to Carter, like Stuart E. Eizenstat, acknowledge the historical resonance. Eizenstat, who was Carter’s White House domestic policy adviser and later authored a respected account of Carter’s presidency, identified three elements that led to Carter’s downfall in 1980, which he termed “the three I’s”: intraparty conflicts, inflation, and the Iran hostage crisis.
Although both presidents oversaw considerable job growth, inflation was a significant burden. It was substantially worse during Carter’s tenure, reaching over 14% in the election year of 1980, compared to 2.7% last month. “We would have been ecstatic with a 3% inflation rate,” Eizenstat remarked.
Yet, inflation spiked to 9% earlier during Biden’s administration, shocking many Americans with little knowledge of the Carter and early Reagan periods. Ongoing repercussions have undermined Biden’s approval ratings, as grocery prices have not significantly decreased, even though the growth rate has returned to normal.
Then there’s Iran. While the hostage situation that began in November 1979 and lingered beyond the 1980 election proved politically devastating for Carter, the broader turmoil of today’s Middle Eastern conflict and its effects in the United States have similarly diminished perceptions of Biden’s leadership.
The encouraging aspect for Biden is that Carter’s experiences imply another lesson. Though Carter was once regarded as a president who failed, his standing among historians and average citizens has significantly improved over time, with 57% of Americans now expressing approval of his presidency, as indicated by a Gallup poll conducted last year.
On the other hand, it should be noted that it took Carter more than forty years to reach that status. Leaving office while still relatively young, Carter had an entire subsequent lifetime to regain public trust, a journey bolstered by his extensive humanitarian efforts and diplomatic engagements, which led to him receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Biden, being the oldest individual to occupy the presidency, inherently possesses a shorter timeframe to enhance his legacy.
“Carter’s lengthy post-presidency gave him the chance to do that, which unfortunately Joe will not have,” Eizenstat commented about his former boss. “Nonetheless, I genuinely believe history will be much more forgiving to Biden, much like it has been for Carter, because he achieved so much.”
Therefore, when Biden states, as he did Sunday evening, that “we’d all benefit from attempting to embody a bit more of what Jimmy Carter represented,” his supporters hope that sentiment extends to the current president as well.
