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Journalism of Courage
After Jimmy Carter passed away, an image of the former president started circulating online. Taken in 2019, it shows 95-year-old Carter, months after breaking his hip, with a bandage above his left eye and a large, red welt below it, walking slowly across a muddy ground in Nashville, Tennessee. Assisted by a cane and several advisors, Carter was greeted by a cheering crowd as he prepared to help build a home with the non-profit, Habitat for Humanity.
When he left office in 1981, Carter was one of the most unpopular presidents in modern times. Defeated in a landslide by Ronald Reagan after a single term, he told Americans in his farewell address that he would leave the White House and “take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president — the title of citizen.”
Carter, who died at 100, had more time to shape his legacy than any of his successors, living longer than any former president in American history. His post-presidency lasted nearly 11 times longer than his time in office. During this period, he cemented his reputation as one of America’s finest citizens.
During the early days of the Republic, the post-presidency was largely insignificant. As Iwan Morgan, an American history professor at University College London notes in Former Leaders in Modern Democracies (2012), the majority of 19 presidents faded from national life after completing their tenure, largely due to illness or infirmity. This began to change during the early 20th century. By 1945, he writes, “the man who had been commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful nation, chief programme initiator of an increasingly activist federal government, and national political leader could no longer disappear into obscurity after leaving office.”
After leaving the White House, Carter planned to stay out of the spotlight, returning to the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he grew up and began his career as a peanut farmer. His plans were altered in October 1981, when Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated. Having brokered a historic peace treaty between Sadat and Israel during his presidency, Carter was compelled to act. Historian Douglas Brinkley, who wrote about Carter in a 1998 book, The Unfinished Presidency, told the New York Times, “Carter told me that if Sadat gave his life for peace in this broken world, then I have to dedicate my post-presidency to keeping peace alive.”
A year later, in 1982, he founded the Carter Center, an institute at Emory University that would integrate human rights into conflict mediation. Under his leadership, the Carter Center became a global authority in election monitoring, working on 113 elections across 39 countries including Myanmar, Bolivia, Nepal, and Tunisia. Carter personally dedicated himself to orchestrating a peace agreement in Sudan and helped ease out the authoritarian regimes of Manuel Noriega in Panama and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
His actions were not always well received. In 1994, he travelled to North Korea to avert a nuclear crisis but then irked President Bill Clinton by announcing a deal live on CNN. He was also criticised for his seemingly close relationship with Cuban President Fidel Castro, and for likening Israel to an apartheid state.
On the development front, however, Carter’s work was unparalleled. In addition to building dozens of houses for Habitat for Humanity, Carter also wrote 32 books devoted to advancing global health and human rights. Perhaps his most significant achievement was the near-total eradication of Guinea worm disease through the Carter Center. A painful parasitic infection for which there is no cure, in 1986, Guinea worm disease affected 3.5 million people in Africa and Asia.
Upon awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, the Norwegian Nobel committee noted “few could be better placed than Carter to explain with conviction that an election defeat does not necessarily put an end to political activity.” While Carter dedicated himself to the role of citizen, some former presidents couldn’t resist the allure of public office.
For early presidents such as George Washington, retirement meant being private citizens again – albeit with an outsized influence on society. In a 2020 essay for the think tank Cato Unbound Amherst professor Paul Musgrave argues that by 1830, that “cozy arrangement” had shattered.
After losing to Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams re-entered politics with vigour, serving as a passionate member of the House of Representatives until his death in the Capitol building after a dramatic vote opposing a Mexican War resolution. Jackson, meanwhile, remained a powerful figure in Democratic factional politics for a decade after his presidency. Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore continued their political pursuits, launching separate (and ultimately unsuccessful) third-party campaigns. Even Andrew Johnson, despite being impeached, managed to secure re-election to the Senate. William Howard Taft meanwhile, fulfilled his lifelong dream of serving on the Supreme Court, eventually becoming its Chief Justice.
“In the era of disunion and reconstruction (following the Civil War,)” Musgrave writes, “it made sense that being an ex-president carried neither an expectation that presidents would be reticent to engage in public affairs nor that they should expect any deference should they choose to do so.”
However, in the latter half of the 20th century, the tide began to change once again. Between 1940 and 2020, only Gerald Ford even contemplated running for public office. Donald Trump, however, bucked the trend. Along with Grover Cleveland, he is the only former president to lose bid for re-election, only to win the vote four years later.
Either due to term limits or personal preferences, most 20th and 21st century presidents have abstained from interfering in national politics. However, a few have lent their voices to political causes, publicly campaigning for or against certain candidates.
Unlike George HW Bush, who refrained from actively engaging in the campaigns of his sons, George Bush and Jeb Bush, Clinton was a vocal advocate during his wife Hillary’s bid for the Democratic nomination (which she lost to Barack Obama) and later the presidency (which she lost to Trump.) He had hinted that this would be the case. Upon leaving office in 2001, Clinton promised a crowd of supporters, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Obama, for his part, was determined to stay out of politics. Nevertheless, in 2020, he criticised Trump for his handling of the Covid pandemic, calling his response to the crisis “an absolute chaotic disaster” and stating that the consequences of a Trump presidency have been “our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.”
Clinton and Obama’s public positions were the exceptions rather than the norm. However, as American University associate professor Shreya Upadhyay writes in Post-Presidency: A Second Inning in the Life of POTUS (2021), while former presidents were not very active in domestic politics after World War One, they often maintained a crucial role on the global stage.
The first former president to truly make a mark internationally was Ulysses Grant, the famed Civil War general and 18th president of the United States.
After two terms in office, Grant and his wife embarked on a sensational tour around the world for two and a half years. An uncredited biography of Grant found in Readex’s American Civil War Collection states that from 1861 to 1877, Grant had been at the disposal of his country and now, after years of active service, he needed rest. “But to retire was not rest,” it reads, “he would seek rest in recreation, turn cosmopolitan, go to the ends of the earth. Fame was his sesame to the nations, his badge of favour in countries, courts, and cities.”
Travelling across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America, Grant was received by massive crowds everywhere he went. He attended a Royal Concert at Buckingham Palace with Queen Victoria, became the first American president to visit Scotland, met Chancellor Otto von Bismark in Germany, King George in Greece, Pope Leo XIII in Rome, King Chulalongkorn in Thailand, and Viceroy Lord Lytton in India. Travelling as a statesman, he was regularly ferried around by America’s navy. When British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli failed to recognise him as a representative of the government, the White House clarified that “once a President, always a President.”
That sentiment holds true to this day.
When former president Teddy Roosevelt travelled to Europe in 1910, he was treated as if he were still head of state. In The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979), biographer Edmund Morris writes, “When he appears, the windows shake for three miles around… He has the gift, nay the genius of being sensational.” During his travels, Roosevelt reportedly made headlines for his thundering speeches and secretly discussed looming tensions with the region’s many kings.
Since Roosevelt, several former presidents have been active globally. Notably, in 2009, Clinton arrived in North Korea to negotiate the freedom of two American journalists jailed in Pyongyang. Clinton spent less than 20 hours in North Korea before returning to a hero’s welcome in Washington along with the journalists.
Like Carter, Clinton embodied the highest office in America, drawing clout by virtue of being a former president. By visiting states with which America has no formal relations, both lent credibility to their visits without serving as ‘official’ representatives of Washington.
Several former presidents are also noted for their social work. Obama, Clinton, and Carter set up charitable foundations to address development issues. The first president to act along these lines was Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s founding fathers and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. In 1819, he raised funds to form an institution of higher learning which would go on to become the University of Virginia. In his own words, this was his most important achievement. Jefferson listed founding the University on his tombstone, not his role as the President of the United States.
A less well-known president to have a significant impact was Herbert Hoover. While his presidency is remembered as a failure because the Great Depression began on his watch, Hoover, who lived until the age of 90, had a remarkable post-presidency. After World War II, President Harry Truman dispatched his only living predecessor to help plan famine relief in Europe. Hoover also helped deliver aid across the Iron Curtain by leading commissions to reorganise the executive branch, saving the federal government 10 per cent of its budget.
In Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1993), historian Richard Pipes wrote of Hoover’s post-presidency: “Many statesmen occupy a prominent place in history for having sent millions to their death; Herbert Hoover, maligned for his performance as President, has the rare distinction of having saved millions.”
During the 1992 election, Clinton defeated Bush in a contentious race. Both parties traded insults, Clinton calling Bush “old” and Bush referring to Clinton as a “bozo.” However, a decade later, the two became unlikely friends, thanks to a request made by Bush’s son, then president himself. In 2004, when a devastating tsunami left 165,000 people dead in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, the Bush administration searched for a way to coordinate aid from private sources, and to do so, roped in proven fundraisers in George HW Bush and Clinton.
According to Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, within days, the two former presidents were dispatched to tour the region, ask local governments how to target and deliver aid, and then return to the US to start raising money. According to reports, this initiative was successful in alleviating the humanitarian crisis. As Gibbs and Duffy note in The Presidents Club (2013), it also resulted in a heartwarming friendship between the two former rivals. “Once back in the States, the two men became an item,” they write. So much so that Bush’s wife Barbara referred to them as the ‘odd couple,’ and his son, Jeb, joked that he would start calling Clinton ‘bro.’
So far, we’ve discussed individuals who have maintained their role in the public sphere in some capacity. However, some former presidents were content with pursuing private lives, often to much financial gain.
The traditional expectation for former US presidents was often summed up as ‘writing books, playing golf, and being dispatched to funerals.’ President Howard Taft once jokingly suggested “a dose of chloroform” to spare the nation from the “troublesome fear” of a former president seeking a return to power. Similarly, Grover Cleveland quipped that it would spare everyone the awkwardness if every president simply passed away after their term.
Several former leaders have taken this sentiment to heart.
Upon leaving the White House in 1961, Dwight Eisenhower embraced the opportunity to return to private life. At age 70, there was little expectation for him to continue in public service. Instead, Eisenhower spent his time playing golf, visiting friends, and documenting his experiences through formal and informal memoirs of his life and presidency.
Truman, who left office in 1953, enjoyed twenty years as a private citizen until his death in 1973. Returning to Missouri, Truman embraced a quieter lifestyle, devoting himself to walks, piano playing, driving, writing his memoirs, and overseeing the work of his presidential library.
Notably, Truman left the White House without Secret Service protection, a federal expense account, or a staff funded by taxpayers. He avoided lobbying or consulting roles and refused to exploit his fame as a former president, finding contentment instead in a simple, private life – a period widely regarded as one of the happiest of his years.
Similarly, both George HW Bush and George W Bush opted against sustained involvement in politics after their presidencies. As Barbara Bradley Hagerty observed in The Atlantic, George W Bush “could be the poster child for a happy second act.”
However, some former presidents have been criticised for their attempts to ‘cash out’ on their presidencies. In All the Presidents’ Money (2022), Megan Gorman writes that Gerald Ford “created the model for the post-presidency as we know it today, when former presidents write books, join boards, and form foundations (or, in the case of Barack Obama, build media companies).”
Ford lived a modest life before the presidency but died with a net worth of USD 8 million thanks to speaking arrangements and corporate board appointment, Gorman reports. Nixon sold his memoirs for over USD 2 million and gave a series of 1977 interviews with British television host David Frost, for which he was paid USD 600,000.
Obama signed deals with Netflix, Penguin Random House, and Audible, reportedly worth hundreds of millions, and charges up to USD 500,000 for speaking arrangements. Clinton, too, is said to make USD 10 million a year by touring the lecture circuit. Unlike Truman, Musgrave writes, “Eventually cashing in on the presidency became normalized.”
Post-presidential legacies vary from person to person. Some remain prominent domestically and internationally. Others fade into obscurity. While forgettable as a president, Carter will be remembered for his exceptional work upon leaving office. As he said himself at the dedication of the George W Bush Library, his favourite cartoon from the New Yorker magazine was of a child saying, “Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a former president.”
