Jimmy Carter, trounced in 1980, gets fresh look from history

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. In the past year, however, CNN released a documentary titled: “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President” and independent documentarists Jim Pattiz and Will Pattiz debuted “Carterland” at the Atlanta Film Festival. If “President Carter had gotten an extra term in office,” he said, “we likely wouldn’t be having a climate crisis right now.” Carter likely wouldn't go that far. In 2019, the former president used his last annual presentation at The Carter Center in Atlanta to blame himself for his post-presidential center being “basically mute on the subject of global warming.” In his new book, “The Outlier,” historian Kai Bird writes that Carter’s “domestic and foreign policy ledgers are lengthy and fulsome.” Carter’s brokerage of the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt remain his most undisputed success. Jason Carter said the new wave of analyses look beyond “the political failure of not getting reelected as the defining factor” of Carter's presidency.