Longest-living former US President Jimmy Carter turns 100 | 2020 US election news

Former United States President Jimmy Carter turns 100 and praises the peanut farmer whose post-presidential career reverberated well beyond his short term in office.

Carter celebrated his birthday Tuesday in his birthplace of Plains, Georgia, where he was accepted into hospice care at his modest home last year.

He is both the oldest living president and the longest-living president in U.S. history, with an outsized legacy marked by his human rights and humanitarian work after a presidency in which he was heavily criticized.

“I think he has a complicated legacy, but for me and I think for him it boils down to the fact that he lived his faith and the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself in a way that made him made people respect people,” said Carter's grandson, Jason Carter told local news station 11Alive before the ex-president's birthday.

“And he used that respect to tell the truth. He used that respect to promote human rights,” he said. “He used that respect to work with the least of these around the world in ways that gave him partners in the world’s poorest places with whom he could do remarkable things.”

While Carter did not attend any events for his birthday, it did take place in September with a concert in Atlanta, Georgia, where several former US presidents sent video messages praising Carter's life's work. A recording of the concert is scheduled to be broadcast in the USA on Tuesday evening.

A year after leaving the presidency, Carter founded the charity Carter Center, which has led a number of global programs. This includes monitoring election integrity around the world, promoting human rights and strengthening public health.

The charity's efforts contributed to the near eradication of Guinea worm around the world. Carter also remained active with Habitat for Humanity, a global housing organization, well into his 90s.

He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for “conducting peace negotiations, his commitment to human rights and his commitment to social welfare.”

“General silence” on Israel

Carter's post-presidency legacy was marked by his willingness to break with the norms of the American political establishment.

In 2006, he was the rare political figure – let alone a former president – to question Israel's policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

He condemned “an almost universal silence on anything that might be critical of the Israeli government’s current policies.”

He also described the control system in the occupied territories as “apartheid,” a stance that has since been adopted by some human rights organizations.

In 2009, he said that Palestinians in Gaza were “treated more like animals than people.”

His position helped pave the way for criticism of Israeli policies in mainstream U.S. politics, despite deep-rooted support for Washington's “iron” ally in the U.S. political class.

His words also helped lay the groundwork for the growing number of U.S. lawmakers who have called on President Joe Biden's administration to stop arms transfers to Israel amid the war in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since October were killed on 7th 2023.

Biden was among those who praised Carter in the days leading up to his milestone birthday.

In a video address on CBS' Sunday morning program, Biden praised the “moral clarity you have demonstrated throughout your career.”

“You are a voice of courage, conviction, compassion and, most of all, a beloved friend to (First Lady) Jill, me and our family,” Biden said.

He added that this is the first birthday since the death of Carter's wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, in November 2023.

Peanut farmer surprises the president

Born in 1924, Carter grew up supporting his father's peanut farming business, which he took over after serving in the U.S. Navy. He became a Democratic activist amid the civil rights movement before becoming a state senator and eventually governor of Georgia.

Virtually unknown nationally, he enjoyed a surprise surge in the Democratic presidential primary before the 1976 election and went on to defeat Republican President Gerald Ford.

However, his only term in office was marked by a faltering economy marked by high inflation and unemployment. His attempt to shift US energy consumption to renewable energy sources failed in the US Congress.

Foreign policy was rather mixed. Carter helped establish diplomatic relations with China, brokered limits on nuclear weapons with then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and concluded a treaty that brought the Panama Canal under local control.

He also oversaw talks between then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, during which the two countries established full diplomatic and economic relations under the Camp David Accords – in exchange for Israel sharing part of the Sinai peninsula returned.

But the 1979 storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in which 52 U.S. citizens were taken hostage, was a major blow to Carter's already weak approval ratings. They were further damaged by a failed rescue attempt in 1980. Soon after, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide.

In later life, Carter, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2015, remained active in Democratic politics, rallying voters and advising candidates. Its reemergence during the 2020 presidential election season was dubbed by some as a “Jimmy Carter renaissance.”

His family said he expressed hope that he would live to see the upcoming Nov. 5 election. He hopes to vote for the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.