Jimmy Carter's Crowning Achievement

Early generations of Americans were commonly captivated by the manner and meaning of their Presidents’ deaths. This tradition was rooted in more than morbid fascination – a mysterious mix of popular culture, national identity, and presidential mortality was present from the origins of the Republic.  

In the aftermath of George Washington's death on December 14, 1799, Americans memorialized their fallen hero with an outpouring of sentiment in memorial sermons, commemorative portraits and memorabilia, children’s books and more.  

When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826 – 50 years to the day from their signing of the Declaration of Independence – preachers and newspaper editors across the nation proclaimed it a divinely orchestrated farewell to the nation's founding generation.  

And the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, quickly came to be interpreted as an other-worldly ratification of the end of the Civil War.

But the once vibrant tradition of seeking meaning from a President's death largely dissipated across the course of the twentieth century. Advances in modern medicine caused custody of the dying to be transferred from religious to medical professionals. Deaths of Presidents, like the deaths of ordinary citizens, came to be considered "health events," and as such became shrouded in privacy, rather than mystery. Conforming to the culture, Presidents chose to prevent their physical demise from becoming the subject of public attention and speculation.

Jimmy Carter bucked this tradition in 2015, when he afforded the public a surprisingly transparent account of his battle with cancer. In August of that year, he announced that a melanoma first identified in his liver had spread to his brain and, in all probability, to other parts of his body. In December, he reported that treatments had rendered his body, for the moment, “cancer-free.” His humor, grace and calm assurance through it all were utterly convincing, as they were again in February 2023, when he asked his family to announce that he would be entering hospice. Through it all, Carter declared himself “completely at ease” and “ready for anything.” 

Only time will tell whether what Lincoln called "the mystic chords of memory" will attach any enduring meaning to the death of Jimmy Carter. Surely, and rightly, he will be remembered for the peace-making work of his internationally acclaimed Carter Center, for his volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity, and for his weekly ritual of teaching Bible Study at his little church in Plains, Georgia. Given the timing of his death, just a few weeks before the inauguration of Donald Trump, he is also likely to be remembered as a symbol of a bygone era in American politics when a humble and pious man could still win the Oval Office. 

For my part, I’m hoping the dignified elegance with which President Carter approached his own mortality will be recognized as among his many enduring gifts.  As a culture we continue to struggle with how to prepare ourselves for death.  Advances in medicine continue to lengthen our lifespans, but also to prolong our dying, often unnecessarily.  

But Jimmy Carter lived to 100 without seeking to prolong his life through extraordinary medical interventions. All the way back in 2015, he described himself as “looking forward to a new adventure.”  

The notion that the death of a President could teach us something important about life is largely alien to the contemporary American mind.  That a former President might die a noble death, and that we might come to be the better for it, will strike some as either morbid, or pathetic, or a combination of the two.   

But we are indebted to Jimmy Carter for allowing us to accompany him as he engaged in the disciplined, soul-stirring work our forebears called “preparing to meet your maker."  In Jimmy Carter’s self-assured dying, there is a lesson for us all.