Nearly four decades after voters unceremoniously rejected then-President Jimmy Carter’s bid for a second term, the 39th president has reached a milestone that electoral math cannot dispute: He is now the longest-living chief executive in American history.
Friday is the 172nd day beyond Carter’s 94th birthday, exceeding by one day the lifespan of former President George H.W. Bush, who died Nov. 30 at the age of 94 years, 171 days.
Both men were born in 1924: Bush on June 12, Carter on Oct. 1.
It’s yet another post-presidency distinction for Carter, whose legacy since leaving office has long overshadowed both his rocky White House tenure and the remarkable political rise that led him from his family peanut farm and a state Senate seat to the governor’s mansion and his unlikely presidential victory in 1976.
The achievement also defies medical odds, coming more than three years after Carter announced he had melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain. He underwent treatment and received a clean bill of health.
“There are no special celebrations planned,” said Deanna Congileo, spokeswoman for the former president and The Carter Center, which Carter and his wife, Rosaylnn, now 91, founded in Atlanta in 1982 to focus on global human rights issues.
Seemingly downplaying his political career, Carter has for years characterized the center’s work as his defining professional achievement – though, of course, having been a U.S. president is what allowed him the stature to establish the center.
“I spent four of my ninety years in the White House, and they were, of course, the pinnacle of my political life,” Carter wrote in a memoir published on his 90th birthday. “Those years, though, do not dominate my chain of memories, and there was never an orderly or planned path to get there during my early life.”
Rather, he continued, “Teaching, writing and helping The Carter Center evolve … seem to constitute the high points in my life.”
And the man who once held the U.S. nuclear codes, forged a historic Middle East peace deal at Camp David and tried to manage a hostage crisis that sealed his one-term fate has a simple answer whenever he’s asked to recount the best or most significant decision he’s ever made: “Asking Rosalynn to marry me.”
The former president and first lady still live in Plains, Georgia, a town of about 750 where they were born, raised and married 73 years ago, weeks after the future commander in chief graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy.
A devout Christian, Jimmy Carter regularly teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church, drawing hundreds of visitors to Plains for each session. The Carters pose for pictures with each attendee.
Though he sometimes de-emphasizes his elected career, living so long after his presidency is allowing Carter a resurgence of sorts in Democratic politics.
Georgia Democrats say they expect more presidential candidates to make a Plains pilgrimage.
“I’m hoping that I will live longer than the last Guinea worm,” he said in a British television interview in 2016. “That’s one of my goals in life, and I think I have a good chance to succeed.”
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