ph6 In the Presidents’ Club, Carter Was the Odd Man Out

Updated:2025-01-05 03:06    Views:55

When President Biden stopped by former President Jimmy Carter’s home in Plainsph6, Ga., in April 2021, it was more than just a show of respect from one commander in chief to another. It was the first time in the 40 years since Mr. Carter left the White House that any of his seven successors had visited him in his hometown.

Mr. Carter had a hot-and-cold relationship with the fellow members of the exclusive club of presidents — more cold than hot, in fact. From his re-election defeat in 1980 until his death on Sunday, he was the odd man out, distant from the Republicans and Democrats who followed him and often getting on their nerves because of his outspokenness.

He did not join his fellow presidents on the high-dollar speaking circuit, nor did he team up for many joint humanitarian missions. He was rarely consulted by incumbents except when he forced his way into some issue and made himself hard to ignore. When all of the living presidents gathered to welcome Barack Obama to the White House in 2009, Mr. Carter was the one standing slightly off to the side, removed from his chummy peers physically and metaphorically.

To many of his successors, he was a thorn in their side, always doing his own thing even if it conflicted with official foreign policy. What he considered principled, they considered sanctimonious. While other former presidents generally held their tongues out of deference to the current occupant of the Oval Office, Mr. Carter rarely stood on ceremony.

“I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents,” he said in 2010.

zenith slotsImageMr. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo in 2002.Credit...Arash Nejad/Agence France-Presse

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The safety board said it had been notified that more than 350 of the defective parts were delivered to Boeing, but it was not immediately clear how many planes with the affected component might be in service. The Federal Aviation Administration said it believed United was the only U.S. operator that had the faulty parts, and United said it had removed the components from its nine affected planes.

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