December 31, 2024 - 10:30am
In the wake of Jimmy Carter’s death at the age of 100, Joe Biden said that Donald Trump could learn “decency” from his fellow ex-president. It’s a politically expedient suggestion, positioning the President-elect as the anti-Carter just weeks before he returns to office. But before Trump concerns himself with matters of decency, there are more practical lessons to be gleaned from Carter’s eventful single term.
The surface-level contrasts between the peanut farmer and the real estate mogul are almost too obvious to mention. Carter taught Sunday school; Trump’s religious convictions have always seemed surface-level at best. Carter lived modestly in a Georgia ranch house; Trump inhabits an estate on a golf course and a gilded tower bearing his name. Yet both men stormed Washington as consummate outsiders, channeling voter frustration with the political establishment into unlikely victories — Carter exploiting post-Watergate disillusionment in 1976, Trump riding anti-elite sentiment 40 years later.
Their outsider status wasn’t just campaign positioning: it defined their presidencies in ways that highlight the perils and possibilities awaiting Trump’s second term. Carter arrived in Washington determined to drain the swamp before that phrase entered the political lexicon, refusing to play by the capital’s traditional rules. He often snubbed and verbally sparred with members of Congress rather than cultivating them as allies, and even publicly admitted to making enemies in both parties. Sound familiar?
Yet Carter’s presidency also demonstrates how an outsider can achieve lasting reform by identifying opportunities for bipartisan structural change. His most consequential domestic achievement wasn’t any of his headline initiatives, but instead airline deregulation, which fundamentally transformed the industry by allowing market forces to determine routes and fares. Though remembered as a progressive, Carter proved remarkably willing to embrace free-market solutions, also deregulating trucking, telecommunications, freight rail, and even beer production.
Trump could find similar opportunities for bipartisan structural reform during his second term, particularly in dismantling aspects of the administrative state. The Department of Education, which Carter created out of an existing department in the interest of efficiency, presents an obvious target. Just as Carter consolidated scattered education functions into a new department, Trump could work to fold the still-useful parts back into Health and Human Services — a move that would appeal to conservatives while potentially streamlining bureaucracy in ways progressives might support.
The Middle East offers another arena in which Carter’s example proves instructive. His patient shuttle diplomacy produced the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, a landmark achievement that required engaging with difficult leaders and making painful compromises. Trump, who has already brokered the Abraham Accords normalising relations between Israel and several Arab states, could look to Carter’s painstaking process as a model for expanding regional peace. This would complement his own successes in checking Iranian aggression, an area where Carter fell short. Shortcomings aside, both men made diplomatic breakthroughs by channeling their outsider status into honest-broker credentials.
Even Carter’s much-maligned energy policy holds lessons for Trump’s second term. While their specific approaches couldn’t be more different — Carter donned a cardigan and called for Americans to make do in colder houses, while Trump champions American energy dominance — both recognised energy independence as necessary for national security. Trump could advance his energy agenda by studying how the late ex-president tried and ultimately failed to build coalitions around the issue, particularly as he attempts to bolster Silicon Valley’s growing support for nuclear power in an area where traditional partisan alignments become scrambled.
Perhaps the most striking parallel is how both men faced exceedingly elderly statesmen as reelection opponents, with Carter losing to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Trump falling to Biden in 2020. Reagan’s advanced age and occasional confusion became campaign issues, just as Biden’s declining cognitive fitness eventually forced him to withdraw from the 2024 rematch. The key difference is that Carter’s loss sent him into a post-presidential life of humanitarian work and diplomacy, while Trump engineered an unprecedented comeback.
This divergence highlights the fundamental contrast in how these two outsider presidents handled rejection by the establishment. Carter ultimately accepted it, channeling his energies into global good works that won him the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump instead spearheaded an offensive against the system’s use of various forms of lawfare to stymie his return to office. The two men’s legacies may demonstrate opposing models of how outsiders can shape American politics — one by achieving a few lasting successes within institutional constraints, the other by seeking to permanently upend them — but the incoming president can still learn from Carter’s example.
For now, Trump’s gracious statement on Carter’s passing, calling him “a truly good man” despite their past conflicts, hints at potential for growth. Whether he can translate that magnanimity into sustainable governance remains to be seen. The policy lessons are there in Carter’s journey from disruptive force to elder statesman, and they run far deeper than superficial “decency”. The question is whether a rejuvenated Trump will heed any of them.
Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work
MoustacheClubUS
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI love the idea that the President Elect would learn from anybody else!
> Yet Carter’s presidency also demonstrates how an outsider can achieve lasting reform by identifying opportunities for bipartisan structural change.
The problem in this case is that half the partisan has a fanatical level of hatred for the current president elect that verges into mental illness territory, whereas people were willing to work with Carter. It seems that anyone who could work with President Trump has already sworn they never will because ideological grandstanding seems to be of more interest to them than actually helping solve the problems facing the government.
Not sure that’s entirely true. Been some interesting comments from some Democrats about if the DOGE actually comes up with decent propositions they would support and of course some may also support an extension of the debt ceiling next wk to get rid of that – and Johnson will be proposing one. In neither instance are they obliged and they could let Trump swivel and work it all out with his own side – who actually have growing fractures where they just might have to rely on some Democrats to get much done.
And we’ve had quite a bit of ideological grandstanding between MAGA core and the Tech Bros last wk, and they’re on the same side! For now at least.
Joe Biden lecturing anyone on decency is rich. Ollie’s TDS has not lessened since the election.
As somebody who lived during Carter administration I can only say that the “best former US president” can teach President Trump many lessons what not to do and very few, if any “what to do” ones…RIP
I skipped this article, like so many others about the nice things Trump might decide to do. Wishful thinking all of them. It does not matter what Trump might learn from Jimmy Carter, unless Trump has an interest in learning.
The most amazing thing in this article is the first sentence. The thought that Biden even knew the word decency even existed, let alone knew what it meant, is surely a joke?
Notwithstanding de mortuis nil nisi bonum, and while this essay is well-intentioned, suggesting President-elect Trump study the tenure of Jimmy Carter borders on the absurd.
As a young man I lived through those years between Ford and Reagan. His election was the first in which I voted. And I cast my ballot for the other guy. After Mr. Carter took office, I viewed any number of newscasts declaring this financial meltdown, or that economic downturn, or some foreign relations misstep, and earnestly tuned in to watch speeches President Carter gave that were uninspired, scolding, or otherwise useless in leading the people of my country out of their genuine malaise. His administration floundered from one mistake to the next, and it all would’ve been funny if the consequences of their failures were not so devastating to the citizens they served.
The late President Carter would spend time in his Oval Office reviewing the schedule of reservations for the White House tennis courts, evidently under the impression that it was his job to ensure no one was taking advantage of the privilege, and everyone interested had a chance to play there. He also had an undocumented encounter with what he claims was a wild rabbit swimming up to him on the lake where he was fishing, and attacking his boat.
Mr. Carter always chose to believe that his earnest efforts would be sufficient to create peaceful, successful outcomes to intransigent geopolitical conflicts, when the facts clearly demonstrated otherwise. And while the Camp David Accords were an undoubted triumph, we also saw the Egyptian signatory to the Accords, President Anwar Sadat, assassinated by his own people nine months after Mr. Carter left office; demonstrating that even the best of intentions in diplomacy often exact a terrible toll on those who seek peace.
President Carter was, in many ways, a genuinely good man. Nevertheless, his leadership, policies, and efforts to shake up the Washington status quo led to nothing in the end, and even managed to create dissension in his own party while it was in the majority on Capitol Hill, making many of his proposed policies impossible to put into effect.
Mr. Carter perennially floundered in a Capital world for which he was simply unprepared, and his own staff were just as naive. I still remember the story how one of them, a Georgia native like Mr. Carter, sought upon his arrival in Washington a townhouse in the trendy upscale Georgetown neighborhood a few miles from the White House. He requested the realtor seek out something priced in the mid $30,000 dollar range when houses there were selling for four, five, and six times that price. This typified the entire Carter presidency: his staff–while undoubtedly intelligent and successful in their own society–were hopelessly ignorant and completely at sea in the new world they found around them. And they were in no hurry to learn.
Inflation during the Carter years wiped out any raise I got, and only through timely promotions did I end up slightly ahead of the curve by the time I voted for Reagan in 1980. My vote was not so much for Mr. Reagan, as against Mr. Carter. At that point, any choice was better than the status quo.
Resolving the legacy of the disastrous Carter years meant that, unlike my slightly older brother and sister, I couldn’t buy a house for seven years after he left office because mortgage rates were 15-16%. I drove a ten year old car in order to save money for a down payment that in 1987 permitted me to purchase a home with a, at the time, low 9% 30 year mortgage.
If Donald Trump wishes to review a summary of the Carter Presidency, all I can think he would learn was precisely what not to do.
Sincerely, may former President Carter rest in peace.
And may all his misguided, pernicious ideas, policies, and programs join him in the darkness of Eternity.
Jimmah was the worst president in modern history until Obama came out of the darkness and then gave way to one even worse. To give a twist to the classic Nora Ephron line, I won’t have what this writer is drinking.
.
Ask yourself this. If Carter had challenged Reagan in the 1984 election, what would the American people have thought about that?