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In September, Mike Dukakis, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Northeastern and Massachusetts’ longest serving governor, reflected on President Jimmy Carter’s life.
Jimmy Carter, who served as the 39th president of the United States, and whose global humanitarian work after office — many argue — made him one of America’s most-beloved former leaders, has died. He was 100.
Carter was the oldest and longest-living president in the nation’s history — a life that took him from a peanut farm in Plains, Georgia, to the highest peaks of political life, and subsequently across the globe during an extraordinary four-decades-long post-presidential career as a peacekeeper and humanitarian fiercely devoted to the struggle for human rights worldwide.
He had been in hospice for more than a year prior to his death — an extraordinarily lengthy stay under end-of-life care, experts said.
In September, Michael Dukakis, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Northeastern University and Massachusetts’ longest-serving governor, spoke to Northeastern Global News about Carter’s legacy and leadership.
Dukakis, who for the first two years of Carter’s presidency (1977-1981) was completing his first term as governor, says he had “a very solid relationship” with the former commander in chief — one that still stands out in memory.
“He was just a pleasure to work with, and I can’t emphasize that enough,” Dukakis says.
Dukakis recalls the national tumult out of which Carter emerged as an unlikely nominee for president — just a year after former President Richard Nixon resigned from office following the Watergate scandal.
Dukakis says Carter “pretty much came out of the blue” and was an “avatar of decency” whose sobering account of America’s problems won him a narrow majority in the 1976 presidential election.
“The thing that stood out to me was that here is the guy from the South, which at the time was pretty strongly conservative, who ended up being this remarkably progressive, decent, thoughtful figure in our party,” Dukakis says. “That was unusual.”
For many years, presidential historians considered Carter a below-par president who failed to deliver on a number of key reforms — health care, tax and welfare among them.
After he took office — defeating incumbent Gerald Ford, who inherited the presidency from Nixon — Carter faced a deeply cynical nation worn down by stagflation, an oil crisis, war in Afghanistan and the Iran hostage crisis.
But recent efforts on the part of journalists, filmmakers and climate activists to recast Carter’s legacy have shed new light on his diplomatic and environmental achievements — the historic Camp David Accords, normalizing relations with China and developing a forward-looking energy policy, among others.
And his humanitarian work has stood him apart from other ex-presidents, particularly his efforts with Habitat for Humanity at home and the Carter Center, which has helped almost completely eradicate guinea worm disease.
For 40 years, Carter took a week off his calendar to travel with his wife, Rosalynn, and Habitat for Humanity to build houses, according to Jonathan Alter, who wrote a biography of the former president. He traveled broadly, becoming something of a “freelance secretary of state,” and helping to negotiate a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as well as a peaceful outcome in Haiti.
As a result of his efforts, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
“He educated a lot of us — myself included — on how to be a very effective former president,” Dukakis says. “He never slowed down, never gave up, never retired, and I took a lot of that to heart.”
Dukakis, who won the Democratic nomination for president in 1988 but lost the election to George H. W. Bush, says he took inspiration from Carter’s “grace and humility in defeat.”
“I stayed in touch with him, since, after all, I managed to pick myself up after also being defeated, and was elected twice [as governor of Massachusetts] afterward,” Dukakis says.
The pair occasionally spoke throughout Carter’s post-presidency career.
“He had this remarkable ability to stay involved, to exercise real influence nationally and internationally, and to do so in a way in which I’m not sure any other president has done,” Dukakis says.
He adds: “I was very saddened when he did not win reelection because I thought he deserved it.”