Jimmy Carter: the Sunday-school president

Poor old Jimmy Carter. The most decent man ever to be President of the United States, yet with an irrevocable air of haplessness. His admirers, quite rightly — and with an earnestness that emulates their hero — celebrate his four-decade-long post-presidential career, during which time he has won a Nobel prize for his work in bringing warring parties together and almost totally eliminated Guinea worms. There is nothing sordid about Carter — no stain of personal corruption, no grubby post-presidential effort to enrich himself, no seats on oil company boards, no vainglorious polishing of his own legacy. No one becomes president without ambition and a measure of self-regard, yet Carter’s political rise was manifestly an extension of his lifelong dedication as a Sunday School teacher: a searching for ways to make the world a fairer, happier place.