Jimmy Carter Signed Great Seal of the United States.

James Earl Carter Jr. (1924–2024), the thirty-ninth President of the United States, served a single term from January 1977 to January 1981 and went on to live the most consequential and morally distinguished post-presidential life in American history — a judgment rendered more remarkable by the fact that his presidency itself was widely regarded, at least in its immediate aftermath, as one of the more troubled of the modern era. Born in Plains, Georgia, and educated at the United States Naval Academy, where he served under Admiral Hyman Rickover in the early nuclear submarine program before returning to Plains to manage the family peanut farm following his father's death, Carter entered Georgia politics as a state senator and served as Governor from 1971 to 1975 before launching the improbable national campaign that carried him to the Democratic nomination and the presidency in 1976. His administration produced genuine achievements — the Camp David Accords of 1978, which brokered a historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel under Carter's personal mediation, stand as one of the most significant diplomatic accomplishments of any postwar presidency — alongside significant failures: the energy crisis, double-digit inflation, and above all the Iran hostage crisis, in which fifty-two American diplomats were held for 444 days following the Islamic Revolution, fatally damaged his standing with the electorate and opened the door to Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1980. In the four decades that followed his defeat, Carter transformed the post-presidency into a vehicle for sustained moral purpose — founding the Carter Center in Atlanta, monitoring elections in emerging democracies across the world, championing human rights and global health initiatives, and literally building houses for the poor through Habitat for Humanity — earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of decades of tireless effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts. He died in December 2024 at the age of one hundred, the longest-lived president in American history, and was mourned as a man whose goodness was never seriously in question.