How will Jimmy Carter be remembered?

At age 100, former President Jimmy Carter died on Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024. Last year, a group of 538ers chatted about the legacy of his presidency — and his post-presidency, which lasted nearly 44 years.

Welcome to 538's politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-Deveaux, senior editor emerita): Even though he served only one term, Carter left his stamp on American politics during his presidency. He was the first surprise winner in the Iowa caucuses, which turned him from a hometown joke into a potential presidential nominee. His frank discussion of his Southern Baptist faith helped create an opening for evangelicals to get involved in politics — even if they ended up forming the bedrock of the other party's base. And his approach to environmental issues — while it may have doomed his presidency — was forward-looking, particularly his focus on renewable energy and reducing Americans' dependence on foreign oil.

But talking only about Carter's presidency would be a mistake. He got more popular after leaving the White House. In December 1980, about a month before he began his long career as an ex-president, his approval rating was 34 percent, down from a high of 75 percent, in 1977. By 2018, the share of Americans who approved of how he handled his job as president had risen to 55 percent, according to Gallup. That doesn't mean he's necessarily among Americans' favorite presidents — a separate Gallup poll, in 2021, found that only 27 percent of Americans think that he was an outstanding or above-average president. But Carter's decades of humanitarian work, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, almost certainly burnished his image for many Americans.

We'll dive into whether he had a greater impact as a president or ex-president, but let's start at the beginning. What were the highlights of Carter's 1976 presidential campaign and his presidency?

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, senior elections analyst): Carter's 1976 campaign stands out for its lasting impact on how our presidential nomination system works. His outsider effort largely focused on Iowa while also encouraging media coverage of his candidacy. Though Iowa had led off the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination race, it was the 1976 campaign that made it Iowa as we know it now. Carter's team looked to take advantage of the still-new presidential nomination system by building on momentum in the early contests. A one-term governor from Georgia whom hardly anyone had heard of set up shop in Iowa and built on-the-ground support there. His campaign savvily took advantage of opportunities to make national media notice him in the lead up to the 1976 caucuses, so reporters started focusing on him.

He also benefited in that his down-home personality and style differed from many other politicians, which, in the wake of Watergate and cynicism about Washington, seemed like a breath of fresh air. Carter ended up winning the most support at the caucuses (although technically "Uncommitted" finished first), which launched his campaign to its eventual victory, as he then narrowly won the New Hampshire primary and continued on from there. He was no longer "Jimmy Who?"

julia_azari (Julia Azari, professor of political science at Marquette University and 538 contributor): I've written a bit about Carter's role in what I've called "re-imagining the presidency." He was the first president elected after Watergate, and one of the things he tried to do was bring the presidency down a notch after all the anxiety about how powerful and closed off the office had become. Carter and his advisors thought about making it more accessible and low-key. In his inaugural parade, he walked outside the motorcade. He wore blue jeans on the campaign trail (and in the White House) and tried to reorganize his main advisors in a less hierarchical way, without a chief of staff at first. (Though he wasn't the first to do that, he is currently the most recent to embrace this approach to White House staffing.)

geoffrey.skelley: Carter's approach became one other politicians copied in their own presidential bids. For instance, George H.W. Bush essentially tried to mimic Carter's 1976 approach four years later, in 1980, and ended up winning the GOP caucuses there. In 1984, Gary Hart's campaign focused mightily on Iowa and managed to beat expectations there, which helped make him Walter Mondale's main opponent in the 1984 Democratic primary. While media and politics have since changed in many ways, the importance of the early contests and well-managed efforts by lower-tier candidates to attract attention is something we see over and over again.

ameliatd: So it sounds like his attempt to be more casual worked in the nomination process … but was it as successful when he got to the White House?

julia_azari: In trying to make things lower key, Carter overcompensated and often looked weak. I think this meant that his presidency was just as often a blueprint for later presidents about what not to do, which is a significant and overlooked impact.

Monica Potts (Monica Potts, senior politics reporter): Julia, I agree that later politicians, especially Democrats, mostly looked at Carter as a cautionary tale and tried to avoid some of the things he did, especially the way he approached the office.

ameliatd: What were some other cautionary tales of Carter's presidency?

Monica Potts: I do think his energy policy was really important and has had lasting effects. One of Carter's big points about energy was conservation. His speeches basically amounted to: We're all going to have to use less energy, and it might mean making a few sacrifices, but it'll be OK. It was very honest, and in hindsight, with climate change now a more prominent concern, it's mostly been vindicated as a point of view.

But you don't hear politicians talking about making sacrifices and conserving energy in that way anymore. We saw it when gas prices soared to record heights in 2022: I don't know of a politician who said, "Everyone should drive a little bit less." Now, looking back, it's astounding to think of how emphasizing energy conservation as a national policy might have made a difference in the future we're looking at now.

julia_azari: Yeah, I think the overall legacy is complicated. At the time, he did things that sort of undermined the scope of what he was suggesting, like the energy policy points Monica made. Wearing cardigans on TV to demonstrate turning down the thermostat, for example.

The great irony of Carter as a cautionary tale is that the thing that probably weakened his presidency the most — being an outsider who was often undermined by his own party — was the thing that stuck. Since then, it's been more common than not for a successful presidential campaign to involve some running against Washington — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all did this. Being a governor with limited D.C. experience was seen as an advantage, not a drawback.

geoffrey.skelley: Exactly, Julia. Since Carter was an outsider who many in his party weren't that familiar with, he struggled with relationships on Capitol Hill, including breaks with key leaders like then-Speaker Tip O'Neill, a fellow Democrat. These strained relations made it tougher for Carter to pass consumer protection and tax proposals that were part of his administration's goals.

julia_azari: Yes, and he attacked local spending projects that were priorities for them. Another element of the cautionary tale is that no one likes a reformer all that much. Like, you can run against Washington, but once you're there, Washington expects you to play the game. And Carter's moralizing was not well-received, whether he was asking people to make sacrifices or trying to diagnose the nation's problems, later on, in the now-infamous "crisis of confidence" speech.

ameliatd: OK, I'm starting to get a sense of why Carter was a one-term president. He also ran into some fairly significant political headwinds, though, right? A tanking economy and the Iran hostage crisis, for instance. Is there an argument that he was dealt a particularly bad hand?

geoffrey.skelley: The double-whammy of the Iran hostage crisis and the economic recession of 1980 are probably two of the worst punches a president seeking reelection has ever taken — outside of Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. The economy shrank by about 8 percent in the second quarter of 1980, the lowest mark between 1958 (a notoriously bad midterm for the GOP, which held the White House) and the 2008 financial crisis.

Monica Potts: I think he was unlucky, but I also think Carter wasn't the best at handling crises. The missteps of the Carter presidency were often communication problems. He didn't like giving speeches and maybe wasn't good at them, and so what he was doing and his intent in doing it wasn't communicated that well with people. But that can frame the way people see things. Being good at politics is important!

julia_azari: I would argue that the biggest problem with Carter not being good at politics was how he sort of ran against his own party but also didn't build any other kind of coalition, either. Carter was good at other aspects of politics, and he was even pretty popular when he started out. The economy and the hostage crisis definitely did not help his reelection chances, though.

geoffrey.skelley: To Julia's point, running against his own party helped produce the most significant primary challenge a sitting president has faced in modern times: Carter had to take on Ted Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination race. Key forces in and around the Democratic Party, such as labor unions and civil rights groups, didn't like Carter and rallied to Kennedy. Carter held on but won only 51 percent of the overall primary vote to Kennedy's 37 percent — not exactly a glowing result for an incumbent among supposedly his own voters.

Monica Potts: Speaking of the economy, I do think we have a leftover sense from the Carter administration that the economy is all or most of what people care about. The memory of how inflation helped sink Carter's chances at a second term has given us some version of "[it's] the economy, stupid" in almost every election since, leading to some other important issues being downplayed — like in 2022, when inflation led a lot of coverage leading up to the November elections, but abortion rights ended up arguably being a bigger motivating issue.

But inflation by the end of Carter's presidency was extremely high. It's a stark contrast to Biden, whose reputation has also suffered from people's perceptions of a poor economy.

julia_azari: One of the major debates about the 1980 election is how much it was just a reaction to these major problems, and how much it was a national shift toward Reagan's brand of religious conservatism and rhetoric about the size of government. And in some ways, Carter helped these things enter politics. His approach to religion was a bit different than the religious right, but he was talking about welfare reform and scaling back government waste.

ameliatd: OK, I know I'm here to ask questions, but you said "the religious right," Julia, so I have to jump in. Carter's approach to religion was really interesting. Some evangelicals were excited when he ran in 1976 — it's part of what brought them into national politics after five decades staying outside it. But his stances on issues like church-state separation became a dealbreaker, and that's a big reason why evangelicals ended up in Reagan's camp. Carter was an evangelical, but he didn't say the things evangelicals wanted to hear; Reagan explicitly courted them and won them over.

Back to questions! It sounds like one major legacy of Carter's presidency was a series of lessons about what not to do. Did he have any notable successes?

julia_azari: When you look at it now, Carter's was actually a pretty legislatively productive presidency. In addition to the energy bill that Monica mentioned, Carter eventually signed a modified employment bill championed by the liberals in his party, and established the Department of Education. He also was a champion of transportation deregulation, which is not always seen in the greatest light now.

Monica Potts: I've seen historians argue recently that Carter's international focus on human rights really helped end the Cold War era. Also, at home, he does have an environmental legacy, creating the Department of Energy to implement his energy plan, and signing lots of conservation bills that protected wilderness and increased the size of the National Park System.

geoffrey.skelley: Yes, Monica, despite Carter's down-home image, he proved to be rather successful in diplomatic efforts (depending on how you categorize the hostage crisis). Against a great deal of domestic opposition, he managed to put together a treaty in 1978 to turn over the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. This was important for a couple reasons. First, the historical basis for the U.S. having the canal in Panama was built on having supported Panama's independence movement as well as on a questionable treaty in the early 20th century. And more broadly, giving Panama the canal on its own territory helped the U.S. counter some of the criticisms it faced from the Soviet Union for behaving in an imperialist fashion.

Perhaps even more importantly, he helped negotiate the Camp David Accords in 1978, which produced a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. As we still see plenty of conflict in the Middle East today, the impact of that agreement may be underestimated. But it marked the first peace agreement between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors. In the 30 years before the accord, Israel and Egypt fought each other multiple times, including the initial conflict that made Israel a nation in 1948. Since the accords, Egypt and Israel have not waged war against each other.

julia_azari: As far as legacy goes, you also see echoes of Carter's efforts to bring a more morally oriented, reform-oriented and informal approach to the presidency. Maybe a bit in the Obama years — Carter talked in the 1976 campaign about "a government as good as its people," and Obama riffed on this theme early on by talking about polarization as something that happens "in Washington" and was unworthy of the goodness of the American people. Other presidents, especially Obama, have also tangled with the ceremony and imagery of the presidency and how it fits our politics and culture. We don't have a monarchy, so the president is just like any other citizen — except, of course, they're not at all. That's a tension and contradiction that's still there. For Carter, it might have just been the wrong time, and his approach might have worked later on.

ameliatd: OK, so we've talked a lot about the successes and failures of Carter's presidency. But he spent only four years as president — and after he left office in 1981, he did a lot of other things! What were the highlights of Carter's life in the four-plus decades since he left the White House?

julia_azari: Well, I have this memory of him from a few years ago building a Habitat for Humanity house at, like, age 95 while I was trying to convince myself to do my dishes and finish writing a review. The Carter Center, the nonprofit founded by Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, after he left office, has also been involved in all sorts of global humanitarian issues, from disease eradication to democracy promotion.

Monica Potts: The Carter Center has been a leader in the eradication of disease around the globe — especially diseases that affected those in poverty but were otherwise curable or preventable. That and so much else has really set the tone, I think, for how people think former presidents should use their power and their platform — they should continue to be of service. That seems to be a major shift from previous former presidents. A lot of his approval post-presidency comes from that, undoubtedly.

geoffrey.skelley: The Clinton Foundation seems to be modeled in some ways on the Carter Center in having an active post-presidency focused on various challenges, like health care and climate change.

Monica Potts: Yeah, it definitely helped set the model for the Clinton Foundation, although — fairly or not! — Americans are suspicious of the money and power that the Clinton Foundation has. I think Carter's work helped solidify a feeling people already had of him, that he was a fundamentally moral person.

julia_azari: So, not to be a downer here, but I think this also became sort of a depressing thing people think about the presidency: that you can be a good person and humanitarian but that might not be compatible with being a strong leader. Maybe that's true, but I think maybe Americans were a little quick to accept it.

Monica Potts: Yes, Julia, I agree! I wonder if there will be a path to reconsidering that conventional wisdom when people are contemplating Carter's legacy.

ameliatd: So was Carter a more successful president or ex-president? (Or is it an unfair question?)

julia_azari: Yeah, I'm not totally sure it's a fair question. You don't have to do anything good with an ex-presidency, but you have a lot of contacts and name recognition and way fewer constraints. Presidents get blamed, fairly or not, for all sorts of external problems.

Monica Potts: Yes, everything Carter did after his presidency was a bonus.

geoffrey.skelley: Carter did a lot in his post-presidency, but he also had the most time for it: over 40 years, longer than any other ex-president. Second to him was Hoover, who lived another 31 years and remained active in politics and government himself. But regardless of your opinion of Carter as a president, activist or leader, no one could say he didn't live an incredibly full life — about the fullest imaginable.

julia_azari: Last thoughts on Carter — he served at a pivotal time for the American presidency, and reaction to him shaped how later presidents would think about projecting strength. But I think as we contemplate his full legacy, there's room to think about how our post-Carter path could have been different.

I don't think it was a foregone conclusion that talking about making sacrifices or our struggles as a nation had to be bad politics all the time, or that Carter's low-key style and humility had to be the same thing as weakness. And, as Geoffrey said, not following his environmental approach I think will go down as a historical regret.