Jimmy Carter is viewed by many as the greatest former president in US history. This moniker serves as a tribute to his long life of good works; it also is something of a back-handed compliment suggesting that his presidency was largely unremarkable and in some respects, a failure.
With his recent passing at age 100, tributes to Carter suggest that history’s long view of his administration has undergone a bit of a transformation. While his accomplishments are significant—including the negotiation of an arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union, mediating a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and important environmental legislation—these are all overshadowed by the Iranian Hostage Crisis. During the Iranian Revolution in November of 1979, 52 Americans at the US Embassy in Teheran were taken hostage and held for 444 days.
As he ran for re-election throughout 1980, this ongoing crisis became Carter’s albatross, and the question of a potential hostage release was seen by many as the determining factor in who would win the White House in November. In April, Carter authorized an effort to rescue the hostages using eight Sea Stallion helicopters which launched from an aircraft carrier, the US Nimitz, in the Arabian Sea. The subsequent disaster—mechanical breakdowns and failure to prepare for the weather—eroded Carter’s support further, especially in light of his post-Vietnam efforts to reform the military. Not only did the mission fail, 8 American servicemen were killed and only two of the helicopters made it back to the Nimitz.
As Ronald Reagan was securing the Republican presidential nomination in July, his campaign manager, William Casey, claimed that Carter might use the Hostage Crisis to his advantage by negotiating their release right before the election and thus secure a second term. Casey’s comments mark the origin of the phrase “October surprise,” a last-minute revelation held back in order that it might have an outsized effect on a presidential election.
What we have long known for certain is that the hostages were not released before the election and Ronald Reagan handily defeated Carter. And, only minutes after Reagan was inaugurated, the hostages were released. Rumors began to swirl that Reagan’s campaign had conspired with the Iranians to delay release of the hostages until after the election.
In April of 1991, a former Carter administration official, Gary Sick, penned an op-ed for the New York Times claiming that there was a growing body of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence suggesting that Reagan’s campaign had, indeed, struck a bargain with Iran, offering them American weapons – in what turned out to be a near-decade-long war with Iraq – in return for delaying the release of the hostages. After laying out this evidence, Sick acknowledged that he had failed to prove what he increasingly believed to be true. “Can this story be believed? There is no ‘smoking gun’ and,” he added, “I cannot prove exactly what happened at each stage. In the absence of hard documentary evidence, the possibility of an elaborate disinformation campaign cannot be excluded.”
More than three decades later, Craig Unger’s Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House (2024) Den of Spies reveals the “hard documentary evidence” which makes it clear that Reagan’s campaign did what Gary Sick surmised. There is now no doubt that Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey, who became Reagan’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, orchestrated the “arms for hostage-release-delay” deal with the Iranians to secure the victory for Reagan. We have a name for this type of political shenanigans; it’s called treason.
This is a fascinating book that reads like a spy thriller. It is also a disconcerting pronouncement that the increasingly anti-democratic world we live in has been over 40 years in the making. The arguments are compelling. Casey’s treasonous acts during the 1980 presidential campaign led first to the rise of Ronald Reagan. Then in 1994, Newt Gingrich put forth the Contract with America promising what Republicans would do if they gained control of Congress. This legislative agenda was inspired by Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union Address and ideas originating with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. Republicans took control of both the House and the Senate.
Unger also draws a very clear line from the Contract with America to the rise of the Tea Party movement in the late 2000s, the emergence of Donald Trump in 2016 and, most recently, another report from the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025.
It is one thing to play politics with one’s political opponents. It is not politics, however, when an act of treason jump-starts a movement that has transformed our country. Unsurprisingly, according to the book jacket of Den of Spies, “Craig Unger is the… author of six books on the Republican Party’s assault on democracy.”
With that dreary message delivered, I would like to return to Jimmy Carter and what it is exactly that has us now seeing him in a kinder and, to many of us, more adoring light. If we set aside his policy accomplishments and his dramatic failures, something else remains upon which history can judge. From our vantage point well-removed from the turbulence of his administration, we now see in Jimmy Carter those things that we so drastically lack today; their very absence serving as a beacon, of sorts, perhaps reminding us that every once in a while, the American people elevate the good and decent to high office.
So, in honor of his passing, and in dire need of a political figure we can admire, and also with respect to that which we should or should not say regarding the dead, I choose to see our 39th president this way. Jimmy Carter was a red-letter Baptist who saw his Bible as a handbook to live more than 36,000 days in the manner of Jesus. He exhibited fidelity in his personal and professional life. He wore honesty and decency on his sleeve and regularly expressed these qualities with an iconic toothy grin. As a politician he remained committed to his ideals no matter the consequences. He offered humility in the face of crisis and accountability in moments of failure. And finally, despite his high station, he looked upon others of all ranks and classes with congeniality and grace befitting our shared humanity.
Rest in Peace, Jimmy.
