Remembering Jimmy Carter

The West Virginia Weakly guest essay for January 9, 2025

The following is a guest essay written by Martinsburg resident Ray Smock, who originally published it on Facebook last week following the death of former President Jimmy Carter at the age of 100.

I got in touch with Smock after I read it and he gave the WV Weakly permission to republish it.

We decided to pass it along to you today because President Biden has declared January 9, 2025 a National Day of Mourning. And Carter’s state funeral is being held today at Washington National Cathedral.

Smock is the director emeritus of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University, and notably served as the Historian of the United States House of Representatives under three separate Speakers.

Senator Robert C. Byrd with President Carter at the White House. Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education, Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

Remembering Jimmy Carter by Ray Smock

In 1985 I attended a fundraising auction for the Democratic Party, where the auctioneer was none other than Jane Fonda. I made the mistake of sitting in the front row. One of the objects auctioned that night was a gunny sack from Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm. This was just four years after Carter left the White House.

The bidding started at $25 and was languishing by the time it reached $100. It was at that moment that Jane Fonda looked me directly in the eye and asked me to go higher. How could I resist. I got that burlap sack for $175. I had it framed, and it hung on the wall of my study for a decade.

At the time of the auction, I was serving as the Historian of the House of Representatives. I worked for three House Speakers, Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts, Jim Wright of Texas, and Tom Foley of Washington state, all of whom had interacted in significant ways with President Carter and his administration. And years later in my career, I would direct the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education, where we have Senator Byrd’s papers, including extensive records of his many major interactions with President Carter.

President Carter’s presidency corresponded with Senator Byrd’s rise to Majority Leader of the Senate. While Carter and Byrd got off to a cool start, before long they became a remarkable duo, especially in the realm of foreign relations. President Carter sent Senator Byrd as an international emissary on key missions to the world’s hot spots.

Byrd was in Iran on behalf of the president, meeting with the Shah of Iran, shortly before the Iranian Revolution. Byrd went to Russia, China, and other places representing Carter. Their greatest collaboration, however, which stands as a legacy to both men was their work on new treaties regarding the Panama Canal.

On the president’s behalf, Senator Byrd visited Panama, studied the issue thoroughly, and masterfully led two treaties through the Senate. Carter was impatient with Senator Byrd who held up the treaties for months, and did not bring them to a vote until the treaties were assured to pass.

I attended Jimmy Carter’s inauguration and was standing along Pennsylvania Avenue when he and his wife Rosalynn got out of the presidential limousine and strolled together down the street waving at all of us. I first heard about Jimmy Carter in 1973, when he was governor of Georgia. One of my fellow graduate students at the University of Maryland, David Goldfield, who would go on to become one of the great scholars of the American South, told us that Jimmy Carter was going to be our next president. None of the rest of us were impressed at the time.

Carter’s presidential campaign was about the issues of the day, as are all such campaigns, but his was also a moral crusade for better government. The nation was tired of Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal that led to him being the only president to resign to avoid certain impeachment. Jimmy Carter, the Sunday School teaching, Born Again Christian, seemed a good antidote to the Nixon corruption. I was happy to cast my vote for him. Not being the religious sort myself, I really appreciated that Carter clearly understood that Church and State were separate spheres and should stay that way. Carter brought his Christian values with him to the White House without bringing the entire evangelical political world with him.

I met President Carter only once, almost a decade after his presidency, in 1990, when he was a young man of 66. He was in Philadelphia to accept the Liberty Medal. My wife Phyllis and I were in a small reception area where he was to give a press conference. We saw his trademark graciousness and his unassuming friendliness. He put on no air of presidential authority. He listened and looked directly at the person he was talking to. We had about five minutes of his attention and we talked about Independence Park, where so much of our history had been written.

He smiled when I told him my first boss on the Hill was Tip O’Neill but said nothing to hint at their stormy relationship. But I had heard stories from Speaker O’Neill of how difficult the transition to Carter was, even for members of his own party. Carter and his team swept into town as the good guys, not corrupted by Washington or the stain of Richard Nixon. Carter brought much of his staff from his days as governor of Georgia. It was some of Carter’s staff that irked Tip. Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s Chief of Staff, and Tip did not get along. Tip told me that Carter forgot Congress was a separate and co-equal branch of government. Privately, Tip referred to Jordan as “Hanibal Jerkin.”

During the mid-1970s, when Carter was president, the nation experienced major energy and financial crises, with gas prices soaring, and inflation so high that home mortgages were almost 19% when Carter left office in January 1981.

Carter was a one term president largely because of the economy, but also because a new political force was on the rise with the name of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s main question to the American people was “Are you better off now that you were four years ago?” Aside from soaring inflation, Carter was blamed for not recovering 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days during the Iranian Revolution.

A military attempt to free the hostages, ordered by President Carter, ended up in a disaster that killed eight American soldiers. During the Christmas season of 1980, while the hostages were in captivity, Carter ordered the lights to be turned off on the National Christmas Tree. I remember thinking this was a bad idea. I thought at the time that he should have said that we would keep the lights on until the hostages were free. Carter added gloom in this case, instead of hope.

He did negotiate the release of the hostages, but not until January 19, 1981, his last full day as president. Delays in releasing the hostages meant the news of their freedom came during Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.

I was there at the inauguration when joyful words spread through the crowd that the hostages were freed. I wrote in my journal that the weather was mild and overcast at the time of the inauguration. But when word came of the freed hostages, the sun actually came out as if this was a Hollywood ending. Carter did the work, but the timing meant Reagan got the credit.

All of us know about Jimmy Carter’s post presidency. For the past forty years he has been an international humanitarian living out his firm belief in Christian charity by helping the poor. He was the best of us. He was a public servant. He was a decent, moral man.

He put solar panels on the White House when scientists were beginning to warn us about global warming and the need to free ourselves of fossil fuels. Ronald Reagan had the panels removed.

Ray Smock is the director emeritus of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University, and formerly the Historian of the United States House of Representatives (1983–1995)