A Q&A with Jimmy Carter's grandson
I interviewed Jason Carter last August about the ex-president's legacy & age in US politics.
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One of my favorite things about journalism is you can interview presidents one day and patrons outside a grocery store the next. Sometimes, you get to talk to a president’s grandson, too.
Last August, while working on Insider’s big ‘Red, White, & Gray’ project about America’s aging leadership, I reached out to descendants of the former presidents figuring they had unique views on a complicated topic that couldn’t be found elsewhere.
Jason Carter, a grandson of ex-president Jimmy Carter, agreed to speak with me and he delivered.
During a wide-ranging conversation, Carter talked about the 39th president’s legacy, the upsides of being a young president, and why he thinks some of his grandfather’s policies on topics like climate and marijuana were so ahead of their time that he could be dubbed the nation’s “first millennial president.”
Below is a partial and edited transcript of my interview with Jason Carter, an Atlanta lawyer and the chairman of the board of trustees at the Carter Center, as well as a former Georgia state senator and the 2014 Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.
I’m publishing this now to add to the tributes about Jimmy Carter, who at 98 is the country’s oldest living ex-president and this past weekend we learned had entered home hospice care.
Darren Samuelsohn: Your grandfather became president at the relatively young age of 52. Can you talk about how you think that influenced him as a presidential candidate and then as a president of the United States?
Jason Carter: Looking back at my grandfather's life, one of the remarkable things about it, and he's in his late 90s as we reflect right now, he only spent eight of those years in real big time elected office. He was the governor for four years. And he was the president for four years and for 90 something other years he was just a person, you know, regular citizen. Of course, the vast amount of that time he was a former president, and so it really is remarkable to have done what he did at his young age as president and as governor, and then you go on with sort of what he thinks of as his career, which started after that.
So you know, age is a thing for him, but it also just puts his service in the context of this incredibly long life. You know, my great grandmother, his mom, Lillian Carter, turned 70 in the Peace Corps. And so she was always this kind of person who believed she was going to live her life further for all of it. And so I think that one of the things that's certainly true about my grandfather, is that when he got out of the presidency in his 50s, she was standing behind him saying, ‘I turned 70 in the Peace Corps. What are you going to do?’ And so he had that motivation, I think to carry on for a long time.
I think those times were important moments. You were talking about generational change. You were talking about coming right after the 60s, right after Watergate and folks were looking for something new. And that's something new almost always is going to be a younger person. That's what it means to be something new. And so I think that's who he was. He matched that moment really, really well, which as you know, is the most important thing in politics is to match the moment and I think my grandfather's young, vibrant, dynamic, New South, new moment for America when they really needed a change was a fundamental part of his identity.
Darren Samuelsohn: I found an Associated Press clip in the news from your great grandmother Lillian during the 1980 campaign. This is when Ronald Reagan is still jostling for the nomination with George H.W. Bush. And Reagan is 68 years old. And Lillian is sizing up who the nominee will be against President Carter and she says, ‘It looks like Reagan, if he doesn't die first.’
Jason Carter: You think about these generational changes. Reagan was born before Kennedy. It's so interesting to see. People want something new and fresh. Sometimes they want to turn back to something that's more old school and that sort of harkens back to a different time and I think that's one of those aspects of age and politics that's fascinating. You've got to match the moment. And sometimes the moment calls for someone who's young and dynamic and sometimes it calls for somebody who's perceived as steady.
Darren Samuelsohn: The opening of Jonathan Alter's book about your grandfather starts with a scene of the solar panels getting put on the roof of the White House, which is about as far reaching as you can imagine in 1976. Can you talk about that in terms of just being a young president: Is he thinking about reelection, or is he thinking about 2076? And, you know, the sort of long range of the country?
Jason Carter: I think number one, people talk about being ahead of your time. I think my grandfather was ahead of his time in a lot of ways, right? I mean, you're talking about essentially, as I've said before, the first millennial president. He was hardcore on climate change, hardcore alternative energy, criminal justice reform, legalizing pot. He conserved more land than any other president ever. If you put that on the ballot now, you know, it would make Beto O'Rourke blush.
I think you've got a lot of remarkable foresight at that time. And, you know, and frankly, he also went hard on inflation and appointed a hawk to head the Federal Reserve Bank and all of those things combined. Appointed more women and more African Americans to the federal bench. The list goes on and on for things that would look remarkable in 2022 and the fact that they were done in the late 70s and were the centerpiece of a presidency, I think it almost looks like it's lost in time when you look back at it. But I believe that from a reelection standpoint, I think he was trying to do what was right. And I think he had some faith that that would help him get reelected. But I don't think he made those decisions based on reelection, maybe in a way that we all wish he'd done differently. But I think he was looking at what's right, and how to do things that are going to do things for, to your point 2076, rather than 1980 when the election was.
Darren Samuelsohn: What else do you think are intrinsic upsides of being a younger president versus being someone 20, 30, 40 years older? What did he bring coming from the generation that he came from?
Jason Carter: I think when he came in with this young, new understanding he recognized that he had to be new and fresh, and that he had to be forward looking because people don't elect a young person in order to go backwards. They elect a young person because they want to charge into the future. And so I just think that that is one of those things that helps to generate that momentum toward the future in a real way. And you look now at President Biden and it is an odd situation, because number one, you can tell that he is one of these forward looking people who wants to charge into the future. But again, those issues are the same ones that he has been confronting since my grandfather was the president and he was in the Senate. So I mean, on some level, you're charging into the future only because we've had so many of these same issues linger for so long, and that again, that the things that we were dealing with in the 70s are progressive in 2022.
Darren Samuelsohn: What do you think President Carter’s legacy will be 100 years, 150 years from his presidency? What do you think people might remember?
Jason Carter: I think there's a number of things. He conserved more land than any other president effort following in that Roosevelt tradition. Doubled the size of the national parks, those kinds of things. The desire to drive climate change as a topic is going to be an important one. This commitment to human rights and really focus on human rights throughout the world as one of the ways that the United States would exert its power.
But I think the number one thing that folks are going to be talking about is the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. I mean, those communities and this historic meaning, you know, from the time of Genesis until the 1970s, there was conflict in that region. And that particular treaty has been the basis for so much stability on all sides there, and of course, it's not resolved yet and it may not be in 100 years, but that peace treaty is still going to remain the cornerstone of the Middle East’s hope for peace.
Darren Samuelsohn: Your grandfather defines the post-presidency too. He literally wrote a book about the virtues of aging when he was out of office that was published in 1998. Do you think this will be part of his legacy?
Jason Carter: I think he really drove this idea that he was going to continue to contribute and to use his platform to do great things. But the partnership between he and my grandmother, they've recently celebrated their 76th anniversary. And now that is an incredible milestone for a host of reasons, but among them just the blessings that you know are there from that one fact. They’ve had each other, they've had their health, they've been able to do this and what they've accomplished in the last, you know, 40 something years since they left the White House, it's truly incredible.
Darren Samuelsohn: Did the presidency age him? You look at pictures of every president and there's always wrinkles, there's always gray hair. Obviously, we can't really do the same with presidents from the pre-photograph era, but did the presidency age Jimmy Carter?
Jason Carter: The pre-photographed presidents all look pretty old to me in general anyway. But yeah, I think so. I mean, how could it not, right? He has often talked about tackling that particular job and the level of commitment on a daily basis, the level of responsibility that weighs on you, even if you take care, as he did, to run, to stay in shape, to do the things that he knew he needed to do in order to stay focused on the issues that he needed to stay focused on. Even if you take care of your health, just the stresses that are associated with it are so intense and so incredible that anybody who goes through that is going to take a toll. But I also think that it convinced him and it steeled his resolve about the value of our common pursuits, the ability to make a change as a single person. You know, all of those things that have driven him for his whole life, I think really got forged even tighter in that presidency.
Darren Samuelsohn: You've spent many hours and days of your life with him. Has he talked about age and generational handoffs with you?
Jason Carter: The Carter Center is one of their life's work in many ways. And it's a remarkable organization. It has peace and health programs around the world. It will have eradicated only the second disease in the history of humanity ever eradicated, among many other things. Observed elections. And as we have transitioned to where they are truly retired now, and they have no day to day operations, they're even comfortable not getting reports on what the Carter Center is doing at this point.
But watching them go through that transition, of course it's difficult to let go of your life's work. But he eventually realized that he wanted to participate in the transition. So in order to do that, you have to let go. And so I think one of the reasons he's been so at peace for the last several years is that he knows that that life's work, part of his legacy there is that he's built this institution that's strong enough to carry on without him. And I have the small role of being the chairman of the board, but the institution runs and it runs because he took on as a part of his legacy this idea that he wanted it to be strong without him, that it was going to be able to succeed without he and my grandmother being a big part of it. So it's been a really great blessing for me to be part of that transition and to watch the way that it has left both of them feeling like they are at peace with being truly retired.
