"The post-presidency of Jimmy Carter is unique in many ways. Largely unwritten are accounts of the cutting-edge programs created at the Carter Center," said Richard Joseph, political science professor emeritus at Northwestern University.
Professors from history, journalism and political science offer political, historical and personal assessments of Jimmy Carter.
An unknown outsider
Said historian Michael Allen: "His presidency will be remembered by most as a disappointment. It is his post-presidential career as a diplomat, a pro-democracy crusader, and anti-poverty home builder, along with his personal decency and public morality, that Americans will recall more fondly.
"Jimmy Carter was a good man but, an ineffective president who faced the difficult task of leading a nation that was uncertain what it wanted in a president and which direction it wanted to go. In the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam War, Americans elected him because he was an unknown outsider uncorrupted by Washington's power politics. Then they blamed him when those very attributes left him unable to steer the nation and world through the material and spiritual challenges that plagued his presidency. Compared to his immediate predecessors and successors, he did little harm. But he arguably did too little good, thus further eroding faith in democratic self-governance in ways that would have lasting, largely negative consequences."
