A Full Life: Reflections at 90

by Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was born on October 1, 1924 and was elected the 39th president of the United States in 1976. The world has changed a lot in the 100 years since Carter grew up in the segregated south. At the same time, many of the issues he writes about sound quite familiar, such as inflation, contested elections, and conflict in the Middle East.

I was surprised by Carter’s emphasis on fiscal discipline—something we haven’t seen in recent administrations. (At the end of the Carter administration, the national debt to GDP ratio was 32%. In 2022 it was 123%.) What also stands out is Carter’s cooperative relationships with presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, in stark contrast to more recent polarization.

GROWING UP ON THE FARM. “My boyhood home in Archery [Georgia] was a Sears, Roebuck house that had been built six years before our family occupied it. At that time the Sears catalog offered homes of several sizes, with three basic options: (1) all the components of a complete house and the tools needed to construct it, loaded into a single railroad boxcar with plans and instructions; (2) everything needed for a house except the lumber; and (3) just the plans and instructions, practically free but requiring doors, windows, hardware, and other parts that were sold by Sears. We learned that our home was one of the second options, since genetic testing showed that its wooden frame and siding had come from trees harvested on the farm.”

“There was no running water, electricity, or insulation, and the only heat sources besides the kitchen stove were some open fireplaces, all fueled by wood and used just when badly needed.”

Carter would walk to town and sell boiled peanuts. “I kept a careful notebook record of my sales and deposited earnings in my uncle Alton Carter’s mercantile store, which served as the town’s bank.”

NAVY YEARS. Carter married Rosalynn after graduating from the Naval Academy. After serving two years on the battleship USS Wyoming, “I had the option of being assigned to another surface ship or applying for one of the three more special careers: intelligence, the naval air force, or submarines.” He became a submariner.

“These submarines were propelled on the surface with a top speed of about 15 knots by diesel engines, and by 252 batteries while submerged. The batteries had to be charged while on the surface.” To avoid detection, they generally surfaced at night and were underwater during the day.

He describes two near-death experiences while standing watch on the bridge. In the first instance he was carried away from the vessel by a large wave. “If we had been traveling just a few degrees at an angle to the waves, I would have been lost at sea.” In the second instance, they were in Puget Sound during a heavy fog. “The lookout reported that a large ship was approaching quite close… I quickly realized they were preparing to drop their huge anchor, believing they were in the middle of the channel. Finally, with the anchor visible just above my head and our ship, I heard the command, ‘Prepare to let go the anchor!’ Desperate, I strained my voice to the utmost and was relieved to hear, ‘Wait, I think there is someone down there.’ I was blinded by a spotlight, and the large ship backed its engines. The crisis was over.”

Carter recalls his submarine’s tour of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tsingtao. “It was obvious to us when we arrived that the Nationalists had already lost the war, having been driven from most of China but being permitted to remain in a few seaports along the eastern shore… Because of the ongoing conflict and uncertainty of its outcome, we always tied up at the pier heading out to sea and kept a substantial part of the crew on board for a rapid departure.”

“This visit aroused my special interest in China and its history, and I was intrigued when, just a few months later, the Nationalists were forced to evacuate to Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China was formed on October 1, 1949—my 25th birthday. After that, I monitored quite closely the events in China and Taiwan.”

“After serving on the K-1 for two years, I learned about the planned construction of two submarines that would be propelled by nuclear power.” Carter was selected by Captain Rickover to lead the precommissioning of a nuclear submarine.

Carter left the Navy and returned to Plains, Georgia following the death of his father in 1953.

DESEGREGATION IN THE SOUTH. “During the time I served on the Sumpter County Board of Education, the schools in Georgia were still racially segregated… The school superintendent informed us that there were 26 schools for black children, the large number necessary because buses were exclusively for white students and classes had to be within walking distance of black children’s homes.”

“Although the school integration decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education [1954] came the year after we returned home, ‘separate but equal’ was not challenged or changed in our community. Having witnessed President Truman’s end of segregation in the military, Rosalynn and I supported in a relatively unobtrusive way the evolutionary process of ending the more oppressive elements of racial distinctions in our community.”

Not everyone shared this view. “One morning when I drove into the only service station in town, the owner refused to put gasoline in my pickup truck.”

“I briefly considered leaving Plains… and accepting one of the many offers I had received from shipbuilders that would have utilized my knowledge of nuclear power and my top secret security clearance, but the economic pressures dissipated as we capitalized on the wide geographical area now covered by our seed peanut sales and other business contacts. These racial struggles now seem like ancient history.”

“Throughout the 1960s, however, public school integration remained a demagogic issue among political candidates in Georgia, and Plains High School, like most others, did not enroll its first black students until 1967.”

“Because of President Lyndon Johnson’s successful promotion of civil rights, he was very unpopular in the Deep South… A number of Georgia’s officeholders defected from the Democratic Party and became Republicans. It would be many years before the Republican Party became dominant, but this was the beginning.”

“The eleven other deacons decided, over my objection, to establish a policy that black worshippers could not enter Plains Baptist Church. Like all important decisions of Baptist organizations, the issue had to be determined by a vote of the entire church membership… Only about 40 members normally attended a church service, but about 200 were present for this debate and decision… 6 people, including 5 in our family, voted against the recommendation of the deacons, 50 voted aye, and all the others abstained! That afternoon, many church members called to say that they agreed with me but didn’t want to aggravate other members of their families or alienate their customers.”

STATE SENATE. “I decided to run for office in 1962, after the Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Carr that all votes had to be weighted as equally as possible. This resulted in the termination of Georgia’s ‘county unit’ system, where some rural votes equaled one hundred votes in urban areas.”

“On Election Day I was rushing from one polling place to another when I called in to Rosalynn and she informed me that a cousin of hers had reported a serious problem in Georgetown, the county seat of Quitman County, one of the smallest in Georgia. We asked John Pope, a friend of ours, to go to the courthouse and represent me. When he arrived, he was dismayed to see the local political boss, Joe Hurst, ostentatiously helping my opponent. He was requiring all voters to mark their ballots on a table in front of him and telling them to vote for Homer Moore. The ballots were then dropped through a large hole in a pasteboard box, and John watched Hurst reach into the box several times, remove some ballots, and discard them.”

“I was ahead by 75 votes when the returns were received from the other six counties, but in Quitman County the vote was 360 to 136 for my opponent, although only 333 had voted… The state Democratic Convention was meeting in Macon that same week, and I went there to register my complaint, which was ignored.”  Carter contested the election and was eventually seated as a state Senator. I imagine this experience motivated his later work monitoring elections around the world with the Carter Center.

ROSALYNN. “I needed someone to run the office while I was away, and Rosalynn offered to help me. She studied a book on accounting, and she and our boys began working at the warehouse in the afternoons… [She] proved to be an invaluable partner in managing Carter’s Warehouse, with hundreds of decisions to be made every week concerning our multiple customers and their reliability in repaying the accumulated debts as they bought seed, fertilizer, pesticides, and feed for animals. She also kept the books for our purchases and sales, and was able to ascertain which of our many enterprises were profitable or losing money and what might be done to improve their performance. I became heavily reliant on her judgment and learned to consult her routinely.”

“We became real partners in every aspect of our lives—but still managed to give each other plenty of space to do our own things.”

GOVERNOR. “A man named David Rabhan owned a twin-engine Cessna airplane and volunteered to fly me around the state. He had a wide range of friends among black leaders, including Martin Luther King, Sr., and arranged for me to meet with them and speak in their churches.”

“He had helped me very generously, and I asked David what I might do to repay him. He asked if I had a paper and pencil, and I found an aviator’s map of Georgia with some blank space on it. He dictated, ‘The time for racial discrimination is over in Georgia,’ and said, ‘This is what I want you to say when you are inaugurated.’ …A drawing of me was on the cover of Time magazine with the headline ‘Dixie whistles a different tune.’”

“We were able before I left office to reduce more than 300 state agencies and departments to 22, and to consolidate almost 20 issuers of bonds to just one.”

LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

PRESS. “A scholarly analysis of presidential news coverage revealed that, overall, I had negative coverage in 46 of the 48 months that I served—the only exception being the first two months, including when my family and I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

ENERGY POLICY. “The most far-reaching and controversial domestic issue I addressed as president was a comprehensive energy policy. Overdependence on foreign oil had plagued our nation for many years… I decided that 95% of the offshore areas in Alaska would be open for oil exploration, but we left intact a prohibition against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

“Despite the financial loss and frightful scare of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979, there were no injuries… I was familiar with the technology and could understand the briefings and make reasonable decisions. The coolant system had failed because of human error, and the reactor core melted, causing the overheating of cooling water and a buildup of high-pressure steam in the reactor container. Radioactive gases were within the steam that had to be released into the atmosphere to reduce pressure. All this was done under carefully controlled conditions… Although the governor and scientific experts explained the facts, The Washington Post and a few other news media presented the situation as horrific, a threat to the lives and safety of millions of people. I called the Post executives to correct the mistake, but they were undeterred in their crusade to frighten as many people as possible. Rosalynn and I decided to go to the site personally; there we received a briefing and then we went into the plant’s control room adjacent to the reactor, with the highest possible live media coverage. This calmed most of the public fear.”

“Pressure in the reactor was soon returned to normal levels, and I appointed a panel of experts, on which Admiral Rickover helped, to put in place some safety measures patterned after those he maintained in navy ships. The Nuclear Regulatory Agency made them mandatory for all power companies that operated reactors in America… I remain convinced of the efficacy of nuclear power generation.”

COLD WAR. “Most Soviet long-range missiles were located in silos, and we had the ability to detect their launch almost immediately. Their flight to Washington would take less than 30 minutes and could not be intercepted… The multiple warheads from one submarine could destroy every Soviet city with a population of 100,000 or more.”

DEFENSE SPENDING. “During the 1976 campaign, both Jerry Ford and I had known whichever of us was elected would have to decide whether to build the proposed B-1 bomber… Secretary Harold Brown, the joint chiefs, and I eventually decided that the extremely expensive new bombers would not be worth the cost and that our defense needs could be met for another 15 or 20 years by the existing B-52s and other smaller planes, combined with the new and extremely accurate cruise missiles, which could be launched from land, submarines, surface ships, and airplanes. What we couldn’t reveal at the time was the top secret development of ‘stealth’ technology that would make our planes invisible to radar. This would be incorporated into fighter planes and the B-2 bombers a few years later. House and Senate leaders supported my decision, but defense contractors were disappointed.”

“When Reagan came into office, he got approval to build 100 unnecessary B-1s, which cost about $200 million each. Although B-1s have been used in combat on rare occasions, upgraded B-52s are now expected to continue in service until 2040 and the B-2 until 2058. Making such long-term decisions about very costly military items is always a difficult task for presidents, especially when manufacturing jobs are carefully located or promised for constituents of powerful legislators.”

CUTTING WASTE. “Perhaps the most persistent altercation I had with Congress involved water projects. All over America young members of Congress would propose damming up a free-flowing river in their districts and the Army Corps of Engineers would supposedly assess the benefits and costs… As the congressmen gained seniority, their projects would rise on the priority list and eventually be approved automatically as a courtesy from their peers, with all the funding coming from the federal government. Many of our wild rivers and streams are dammed unnecessarily. The Corps of Engineers was complicit in this ongoing scheme because this process had become one of the prime reasons for their popularity with appropriations committees… What a waste of funds many of them were.”

“As president, I decided to give closer scrutiny to each proposed project and to veto those where costs would actually exceed benefits. This decision caused a continuing furor, and every possible pressure was exerted by committee chairmen, prominent Americans, and my own staff members to change my policy, but I persisted… Congress finally agreed with me, tightening the criteria and requiring some state and local financial contribution to the cost of approved projects.” This skin in the game requirement reduced the incentive for frivolous projects.

NASA. “I am not in favor of the most costly space projects, such as sending astronauts to Mars, to the moon again, or to other heavenly bodies. Unmanned vehicles with scientific instruments and robotic probes can accomplish the same goals, and many others beyond the reach of humans.”

DEREGULATION. “As governor I had seen how costly and unnecessary were some of the federal regulatory agencies whose purpose over several decades had changed from protecting consumers to defending monopolies and restricting competition in the marketplace… This economic blight extended over railroads, electric power, oil and gas, bus lines, trucking firms, airlines, banks, insurance companies, and even television, telecommunications, and radio networks. For instance, each airline had its own exclusive and protected routes, and if large pay increases or other costs were implemented, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) would routinely pass the added costs on to passengers and prohibit competition.”

“I began to study these industries more closely, working with interested members of Congress, my cabinet officers, and Alfred Kahn, a remarkable economist. He came to serve on the Civil Aeronautics Board and later helped as my ‘inflation czar.’ When we implemented his ideas about aviation, the CAB ceased to exist. In effect, we were able to deregulate all the industries I’ve named and permit competition in each commercial area, while preserving the safety of consumers and protecting them from abusive business practices, especially by large banks.”

TED KENNEDY. Senator Kennedy “became one of my most persistent opponents, seemingly determined to minimize my achievements… The most memorable occasion of Kennedy’s opposition to my proposals came in 1979, concerning our national health plan… Except for Kennedy, we had full support from chairmen of the six key committees in the House and Senate, and all six had been involved in its preparation… Senator Kennedy had his own preferred plan, which was so expensive that there was no prospect of congressional support, but his committee members participated with us until the week of the announcement, when he decided to opposed the legislation. Kennedy’s opposition to our plan proved fatal.”

“I turned more and more to moderate Republicans… when my commitments were compatible with theirs. These included streamlining the government bureaucracy, tightening control over intelligence agencies, instituting zero-based budgeting, initiating free trade agreements, and cutting back on unnecessary weapons systems.”

LATIN AMERICA. “One of my primary concerns was with the military dictators in Latin America… For generations, the official U.S. policy had been to support these regimes against any threat from their own citizens, who were branded automatically as Communists… When I became president, military juntas ruled in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay…. We refused requests from dictators to defend their regimes from armed revolutionaries… Within 10 years all the Latin American countries I named here had become democracies, and The Carter Center had observed early elections in Panama, Nicaragua, Peru, Haiti, and Paraguay.”

Other topics from Carter’s presidency include: the Camp David peace negotiations, the Maine Indians lawsuit, the neutron bomb, the loan to New York City, the loan to Chrysler Corporation, the Panama Canal, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the hostage crisis in Iran, the creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and Cuba.

INTELLIGENCE. Carter expresses dismay at the expansion of surveillance since 9/11. “It is now permissible to collect information about every phone call made, every letter posted, and every e-mail exchanged between American citizens. The FISA judges “rarely if ever decline a request submitted by the intelligence agencies. The senior judge can issue approvals or directives without informing the other 10 judges.”

“According to an exhaustive Washington Post investigation published in 2010, there are more than 3,000 government organizations and private companies in about 10,000 locations working on homeland security and intelligence, with an estimated 854,000 people holding top secret clearance! And this largely uncoordinated array is still growing.”

RELATIONS WITH OTHER U.S. PRESIDENTS. “I knew President Ford to be a formidable political adversary…  exceptionally knowledgeable about congressional affairs, and a completely honorable and dedicated public servant… He and I had an agreement that he would spend some time with me in the Oval Office whenever he was near Washington… Historians commented that the relationship between Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter was closer than any other presidents, at least in recent history.”

“Unfortunately, my relationship with President Ronald Reagan was strained, and on several early trips abroad during his administration I learned that the U.S. ambassadors had been instructed not to give me any assistance or even to acknowledge my presence.”

“My best and most enjoyable experience with presidents was with George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker. Throughout their term in office, they used the resources of our Center as fully as possible, encouraged our involvement in politically sensitive areas, and even sent a plane to bring me directly to the White House for a report after some of my foreign visits.”

“George W. Bush… The new president Bush asked if there was anything he could do for me, and I made my only request of him: that he attempt to complete the peace agreement between North and South Sudan, on which our Center had been working for many years but which had been blocked by previous White House policies. He agreed and kept his promise… Once President Bush invited me to the White House for a full report to him and his national security adviser after I visited Cuba.”

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY. “For 31 years, Rosalynn and I have led groups of volunteers for a full week of hard work, building and renovating homes for poor families who have never had a decent place to live.” The recipients have skin in the game: “The families are required to pay full price for the houses over a period of twenty years, with no interest charges, and payments are invariably less than rental charges in the same general neighborhoods. The families are also expected to put in several hundred hours of labor on their own or neighbors’ homes… Our general policy is to alternate annual work projects between the United States and foreign countries.”

THE CARTER CENTER. “I was not interested in just building a museum or storing my White House records and memorabilia; I wanted a place where we could work… Working with Emory, we established The Carter Center legally in 1982… We now have an annual cash budget of about $100 million with an equal amount of in-kind contributions of medicines and other supplies that are distributed in our health programs, primarily in Africa and Latin America.”

“The primary work of The Carter Center has shifted over the years from peace negotiations to controlling and eliminating tropical diseases and monitoring troubled elections.”

“We concentrate on malaria plus five ‘neglected tropical diseases’ that are no longer known in the moderately developed world but still afflict hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Latin America: onchocerciasis (river blindness), schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis), trachoma, and dracunculiasis (guinea worm).”

“We are treating about 35 million people every year. Over half of these are now for river blindness, and so far we have been able to eliminate this disease in four… countries in Latin America and to demonstrate in Uganda and Sudan that the same goal can be reached in Africa. In 1986 there were an estimated 3.5 million cases of guinea worm in about 26,000 villages in 20 countries. In the entire world we had fewer than 130 cases in 2014.”

“Rosalynn has been a full partner with me in establishing and governing The Carter Center… She has maintained a commitment to mental health for more than 45 years, including a superb program at The Carter Center after our time in the White House.”

CHARACTER. “I learned some profound and lasting lessons… which can best be encapsulated by advice given to us as schoolchildren by our teacher Miss Julia Coleman. She would say, ‘You must accommodate changing times but cling to unchanging principles.’ (I quoted her when I was inaugurated as president and when I received the Nobel Peace Prize.) I have tried, at least most of the time, to set high objectives, to accept failures and disappointments with relative equanimity, to acknowledge and try to correct my mistakes and weaknesses, and then to set different and sometimes higher goals for the future. I seek as much help and advice as possible, and if these ambitions are worthwhile and seem to be justified, I just do my best and don’t fear the potential adverse consequences.”

Carter, Jimmy. A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016. Buy from Amazon.com

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Jimmy Carter has also written 28 other books:

Children’s Book

Historical Novel

  • The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War (2003) “I had always been concerned about the lack of texts or historical novels that presented a balanced and accurate account of major military actions during the Revolutionary War. Knowing of my own ancestors’ histories, I did extensive research for seven years, using personal accounts of participants in the American and British military forces. This was in pre-Google years, and I sometimes had dozens of library books on my shelf at a time. Readers of The Hornet’s Nest from around the world have let me know they have been surprised and pleased at this view from the Southland, where almost all of the major battles were fought.”

Poetry

Personal Life

  • A Remarkable Mother (2008) “a book about my mother, who was a registered nurse, a dedicated political activist, and a Peace Corps volunteer in India at the age of seventy.”
  • Sharing Good Times (2004) “Many people asked if Rosalynn and I worked all the time or if we ever had time for fun and relaxation… I described the many things we have taken up together for the first time at a relatively advanced age, including downhill skiing, mountain climbing, bird watching, and fly-fishing in many countries.”
  • Christmas in Plains: Memories, illustrated by Amy Carter (2001)
  • An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood (2001). Finalist for Pulitzer Prize in 2002.
  • The Virtues of Aging (1998) “Some jokesters commented that it would be the shortest book ever written. Describing how much unprecedented freedom we have to undertake new projects after we no longer have to meet a regular work schedule.”
  • An Outdoor Journal: Adventures and Reflections (1998)
  • Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life, with Rosalynn Carter (1984) “focusing on personal health, and how the major determining factor was often a person’s own personal habits”

Politics and World Affairs

  • A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power (2014) “We have held two Human Rights Defenders Forums on the subject at The Carter Center, and a third will take place before this book is released. In my book I described in some detail the horrendous abuse of women and girls that is occurring in almost every nation and made 23 recommendations of action that can be taken to alleviate this abuse.”
  • White House Diary (2010) “I complied a fairly complete volume of highly personal comments from the day-to-day diary I kept while serving as president… It included many observations that had been too sensitive or personal to include in Keeping the Faith several decades earlier.”
  • We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land (2009)
  • Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope (2007) about the work of The Carter Center.
  • Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (2006)
  • Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (2005) “to express my views on unnecessary wars, derogation of women and girls, excessive incarceration and the death penalty, unwarranted intrusion on citizen’s privacy, the rise of fundamentalism in government, and the intrusion of religion and excessive money into politics.”
  • The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (2002)
  • Talking Peace: A Vision for the Next Generation (1992)
  • Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age (1992) “my first political venture, when an election was stolen from me by a dishonest official who stuffed the ballot box, voted dead people, and browbeat other local officials.”
  • The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East (1985)
  • Negotiation: The Alternative to Hostility (1984)
  • Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (1982)
  • A Government as Good as Its People (1977) 62 speeches and other public statements.
  • Why Not the Best? (1975) for use in presidential campaign.

Religious Beliefs

Biographies of Jimmy Carter

  • Jimmy Carter: 99 Remarkable Tales From 99 Extraordinary Years by Anthony Dobbs (2023)
  • His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life by Jonathan Alter (2021)
  • The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter by Kai Bird (2021)
  • President Carter: The White House Years by Stuart E. Eizenstat with foreword by Madeleine Albright (2020)

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