Last week, I spent a couple of days in Atlanta with dear friends. Having just taught a course on American History since 1960, I was curious to visit the Carter Center, founded to house Jimmy Carter’s papers and record the major events of his one-term presidency. It was only the second such presidential museum I’d seen, and the only one detailing a contemporary presidency (the other being the stunning Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL), so I was curious to see ‘how it was done’.
The Carter Center is much more than a presidential museum, or even a library. The 39th President himself insisted that it predominantly be a place for forging the reconciliation and peace he longed to achieve while in office. It retains that role today, a beautiful, contemplative space in the midst of the city for dialogue and the resolution of dispute. And what struck me most about the museum was not so much its record of Carter’s time in office, about which debate will continue between historians and political scholars, but of the President’s life since leaving the White House.
In the last 31 years, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have tirelessly done simple things to find answers to global problems once thought insoluble. Through the Carter Center and because of their global vision, diseases such as malaria, guinea worm and river blindness have been tackled head-on, to great effect. Countries struggling to embrace democracy – and those struggling to prevent them doing so – have been overseen and scrutinized to ensure fairness and equality. Resources have been offered to communities seeking a way out of endemic poverty. Nations and communities have been encouraged to seek the mutual understanding that for decades have eluded them. But for the status they afford the Carters in this endeavor, the White House years are almost unimportant, compared to this extraordinary ongoing achievement.
In many cases, the work has been simple, but simply ignored or spurned by others. The Carters have mobilized an effort and lent it their energy and support. Awarding them the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Bill Clinton movingly – and simply – said that they have done more good to more people than any other couple on earth. Not bad, for peanut farmers from south Georgia. Though I shall never have the weight of the presidency behind me, I did emerge from the Center’s landscaped lawns and elegant fountains re-inspired that one simple, focussed, committed life can make a world of difference.
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