I was yet to be born when, on a brisk, sunny January afternoon in 1977, a peanut farmer from Georgia pledged to defend the constitution of the United States. That peanut farmer, James Earl Carter, Jr., spent the next four years as our president — and then the next 44, as a citizen — waging a crusade of decency, putting his everything into reminding the world of its common humanity. 

Untainted by the duplicity and moral decay of the Richard Nixon years — the Vietnam War, the Watergate break-in, the War on Drugs, the Pentagon Papers scandal — Carter brought something to the Oval Office that the American people had nearly forgotten about: honesty.

I was not around when he led this country, but I am very much around now that he has died and the reappraisals are flooding in. The Jimmy Carter I read about in the stream of obituaries over the last two weeks was not the Jimmy Carter I had learned about in school — the one-term president, the failure. I expected a final coup de grâce of Carter by the Fourth Estate after years and years of critical coverage — Poor, foolish Jimmy Carter bites the dust. “Jimmy Carter’s Good Intentions Weren’t Enough.” “The thing that defines Jimmy Carter is naiveté.” I expected a fast and furious media fusillade that would pick apart the old man’s crooked smile and simple sympathy without mercy.

I was 14 years old when I first learned about our 39th president. My class touched on all the usual stuff, all the major Carter presidency milestones — the Camp David Accords, the second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement (SALT II), the Panama Canal Treaty, and so on. And then we got to the infamous, larger-than-life “malaise” speech — so named after a word which, in fact, he never even used. What I remember most from that lesson — and from that whole unit — was how misguided Carter supposedly was. We were taught not that he wanted the best for the American people, but that he was an inefficacious pessimist. Sure, he championed human rights, but who cares — he blamed us! Idealistic fool. 

This verdict had never sat right with me. In my view, idealism is something to be esteemed, not condemned. So when the majority of the media met Carter’s passing with an almost reverential remembrance of his virtuosity and humanitarian work — rather than more scorn and cynicism — I felt a little hope.

Carter’s legacy shows us that things can still be different

Eight years and counting of Donald Trump and his entourage have hardened us and conditioned us to the pragmatic, to grim realism. Fight back in the small ways that work. Take little steps. Stick with the feasible. The fewer aspirations we have, the less he can take away from us. And the failure of Vice President Kamala Harris’ hopeful campaign felt like a death blow to high-mindedness.

Sure, Carter made mistakes — and what president hasn’t? — but he was, above all else, an example of human good and principled leadership — an example that our current felonious president-elect would do well to heed. 

Even in Carter’s failures, we see integrity. Take his granting of asylum to the overthrown Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — was the move (one, I might point out, that was done quite hesitantly) diplomatically correct? Arguable. As a longtime ally, the United States owed it to him, as inconvenient as accommodating him might be. But was it morally correct? Without a doubt, yes. The former monarch needed life-saving cancer treatment. Carter got him it. 

I am not a mindless child; I understand that altruism only gets you so far. But the America I have grown up in could use a little less pragmatism and a little more idealism. If we lose our appreciation for morality, however visionary or utopian, we lose ourselves, and we lose the notion of America. 

The day that realpolitik wins is the day we lose the American spirit.

As a young person, my knowledge of presidential politics is far from complete. But I know what’s right, and so did Carter. Idealism paired with naiveté is dangerous, but we must remember that idealism is not in itself naiveté. It is uprightness. And a president — and a people — who are not upright go grievously astray. 

Donald Trump came to power when I was eight years old. In the most formative years of my life, I watched a tax cheat, rapist, slanderer, open racist, bully, advocate of violence and twice-impeached insurrectionist lead our country. That was what I was taught America accepted and encouraged. 

Young people like myself — We are in for another four years of rule by a man whose morals are six feet under. A man who inflicts injustice on a whim, whose primary motivator is not good-doing but rather self-elevation and enjoyment, and who surrounds himself with a group of cronies who sleep on a Benjamin-stuffed mattresses. There’s nothing we can do to change this; it’s done and done. 

But what we can do is be better than him. The People make the president. So when the president is a Trump, not a Carter, when the president is corrupt and a crook, we must remember who and what we stand for, and protest when that is disregarded. We must be unyieldingly upright, even if that means being righteous. We must not let the Executive debase the People. 

We young people are the future. We have the responsibility and the power to ensure that America remains a champion, not a caricature, of human rights. Jimmy Carter — with the spirit of a dreamer — had the right idea. So let’s heed his legacy. 

Those who grew up under Carter — the post-World War II baby boom generation — had ideals. Ideals of justice — about the environment, race relations, and humanitarianism. They valued peace and progress. And they had a president who was on their side. A president who showed them that America could be a peacemaker — not a warmonger. 

President Joe Biden revived those ideals. Ironically, he was also a one-term Democratic president who, despite his enormous humanitarian and legislative achievements, is being mocked in the same terms as Carter was during his times. 

With Carter, there was a general morality imparted to young people. But in the Trump era, I worry for young people like myself. I worry they are being taught that cynicism is better than hope, that self-interest is better than selflessness, that money means power, and that greed is the way to the top. 

So to young people, I say: Remember that this is not what it has to be like. This is not America. 

We need to keep dreaming of a better world. The peanut farmer president certainly knew how to.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.