Habitat Appreciates Its Most Visible Volunteer, Leon Reed

[Gettysburg Times, February 24, 2023]

A Habitat volunteer is seemingly ending his mortal life with the same dignity and class with which he lived it. America’s best known Habitat volunteer, Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care and may well have passed by the time this column appears.

Jimmy Carter was a post-president for 42 years and in many ways invented the idea of the “post-presidency” as an active and productive time. The precedents before him weren’t inspiring: a few ran again for the presidency (Fillmore, Cleveland, TR, Trump), one became a Confederate senator (John Tyler), many retired to well-deserved obscurity (both Johnsons, Buchanan), some (e.g., Nixon) wrote memoirs to rebuild a damaged reputation. Some (Ford, Ike) played golf and enjoyed retirement. Eight got no post-presidency and several others barely did.

Between his work to promote democracy and free elections, and his highly visible work as a Habitat volunteer, Jimmy Carter set a standard for presidential behavior that will be hard to match.

 But lost in the praise for his post-presidency is the under-appreciated fact of a presidency in which he accomplished many important things. It is true that he had two major negatives on his watch, First, he didn’t do a great job of handling the hyperinflationary economy that Nixon and Ford handed him (after Vietnam, wage-price controls, and the first oil shock, among other things). Second, of course, the hostage crisis.

First, against all odds, he remains the only world leader who has achieved a durable peace in the Middle East. Five years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Carter brought two adversaries, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to Camp David and achieved agreement on the Camp David Accords. And the treaty turned out to be so beneficial that the two adversaries, who had fought four wars In the previous 30 years, have now had peace 50 percent longer (45 years) than the original wartime state.

Even more impressive is the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty. The special status of the United States in the so-called “Canal Zone” had always been an irritant and by the 1960s, led to riots and termination of diplomatic relations.

Yet the Canal Zone ignited equal jingoistic sentiments in the United States and when Carter got agreement on a treaty, “everyone knew” there was no chance of ratification in the US Senate. As Senator SI Hayakawa said, “We stole it fair and square and we should keep it.” Thirty-eight senators (four more than the 34 needed to block ratification) announced their opposition. Yet Carter went to work with a massive persuasion campaign and eventually was successful. The American fears that Panama might neglect the canal or deny passage to our fleets proved groundless and a major impediment to relations throughout Latin America was removed.

Carter had strong moral convictions and brought a moral sense to US foreign policy, reversing decades of “sure, he’s an SOB but he’s our SOB” foreign policy that gave US support to regimes like the Greek colonels, Latin American juntas, and a crop of kleptocrats in Africa and Asia.                      

Carter is frequently derided for his “malaise” speech, his sweaters, and his lowered thermostats – though the latter two are recognized as baseline elements of any program to reduce energy consumption. He had a strong presidency with at least two accomplishments that any president would be proud to claim.

 Leon Reed is a board member of Adams County Habitat for Humanity