In the world of politics, the peanut farmer from Georgia and the Greek kid from Massachusetts were an unlikely duo.
But, as Michael Dukakis recalled decades later from the dining room in his Brookline, Massachusetts, home, he and Jimmy Carter “were very different in many ways and yet very much the same in many ways.”
“Small town guy comes out of Georgia, very bright, and I’m sorry he didn’t serve two terms, because he was a guy of real integrity, and he brought something a little different, I think, to the world, because of that and who he was and what he became,” Dukakis said.
The two men shared many views and hopes, Dukakis said, and that focus on integrity united them.
Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts when Carter took the oath of office in 1977. The following year, President Carter year signed a law creating Lowell National Historic Park, marking the city’s Industrial Revolution past.
Aside from working together on matters of governing, the two Democrats supported each other politically. Dukakis said he was “very upset” when Carter lost his bid for a second term. When Dukakis ran for president in 1988, Carter joined him at a Georgia rally
“He was somebody that I would pick up and call if I had a problem,” Dukakis said. “He always gave me good advice, and he was straight from the shoulder. I mean, he’d tell you exactly what he thought.”
Carter, a one-term president who lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan, remained in the public realm in his post–White House life as an advocate for human rights through his nonprofit, the Carter Center, a high-profile volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, and a teacher of Sunday school classes at his Georgia church.
Carter began receiving hospice care in February 2023. About a year and a half later, his grandson Jason Carter said he believed the longest-lived former president was “coming to the end.” Carter died on Sunday. He was 100 years old.
David Gergen, founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, said Carter widely has been recognized as a good person but, during his time in office, was seen as a weak president, despite his background as a Navy submarine officer.
“Carter had the inner makings,” said Gergen, a White House advisor to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. “He could come up with very good ideas on policy, but he didn’t execute the policy. He didn’t know how to get it into place.”
Post-presidency, his work with the Carter Center and other causes allowed Carter a “kind of comeback period,” Gergen said.
He said Carter and his Republican predecessor Gerald Ford are both examples of politicians who stood up for what they believed in, “took a lot of hits on the chin” and now, “in the rearview mirror of history,” command more respect.
“Carter was able to convince people that he stood for a set of values, moral values, and that he had moral character,” Gergen said. “That gave him great strength. And in recent years, he’s now much better remembered as president than he was 50 years ago.”
Dukakis, speaking to GBH News in mid-May, about six months before his own 91st birthday, said it was still early to try to make the call on what Carter’s legacy would be.
“I’m not sure I know what my legacy will be at some point,” said Dukakis. “But he was a good model for a good, decent, honest political leader.”
