The un-celebrity president
Jimmy Carter lives modestly in his little Georgia hometown; he’s not one to cash in on his presidency, report journalists KEVIN SULLIVAN and MARY JORDAN
JPLAINS, Ga. immy Carter finishes his Saturday night dinner, salmon and broccoli casserole on a paper plate, flashes his famous toothy grin and calls playfully to his wife of 72 years, Rosalynn: “C’mon, kid.” She laughs and takes his hand, and they walk carefully through a neighbor’s kitchen filled with 1976 campaign buttons, photos of world leaders, and a couple of unopened cans of Billy Beer, then out the back door, where three Secret Service agents wait.
They do this just about every weekend in this tiny town where they were born — he almost 94 years ago, she almost 91. Dinner at their friend Jill Stuckey’s house, with plastic Solo cups of ice water and one glass each of bargain-brand chardonnay, then the half-mile walk home to the ranchhouse they built in 1961.
On this south Georgia summer evening, still close to 90 degrees, they dab their faces with a little plastic bottle of No Natz to repel the swirling clouds of tiny bugs. Then they catch each other’s hands again and start walking, the former president in jeans and clunky black shoes, the former first lady using a walking stick for the first time.
The 39th president of the United States lives modestly, a sharp contrast to his successors, who have left the White House to embrace power of another kind: wealth.
Even those who didn’t start out rich, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have made tens of millions of dollars from the private-sector opportunities that flow so easily to ex-presidents.
When Mr. Carter left the White House after one tumultuous term, trounced by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, he returned to Plains, a speck of peanut and cotton farmland that to this day has a nearly 40 percent poverty rate.
The Democratic former president decided not to join corporate boards or give speeches for big money because, he says, he didn’t want to “capitalize financially on being in the White House.”
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said that Gerald Ford, Mr. Carter’s predecessor and close friend, was the first to fully take advantage of those high-paid post-presidential opportunities, but that “Carter did the opposite.”
Since Mr. Ford, other former presidents, and sometimes their spouses, have routinely earned hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Mr. Carter says over dinner. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich.”
Mr. Carter was 56 when he returned to Plains from Washington. He says his peanut business, held in a blind trust during his presidency, was $1million in debt, and he was forced to sell.
“We thought we were going to lose everything,” says Rosalynn, sitting beside him.
Mr. Carter decided that his income would come from writing, and he has written 33 books, about his life and career, his faith, Middle East peace, women’s rights, aging, fishing, woodworking, even a children’s book written with his daughter, Amy Carter, called “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer.”
With book income and the $210,700 annual pension all former presidents receive, the Carters live comfortably. But his books have never fetched the massive sums commanded
by more recent presidents.
Mr. Carter has been an expresident for 37 years, longer than anyone else in history. His simple lifestyle is increasingly rare in this era of President Donald Trump, a billionaire with gold-plated sinks in his private jet, a Manhattan penthouse, and his Mar-aLago estate.
Mr. Carter is the only president in the modern era to return full-time to the house he lived in before he entered politics — a two-bedroom rancher assessed at $167,000, less than the value of the armored Secret Service vehicles parked outside.
Ex-presidents often fly on private jets, sometimes lent by wealthy friends, but the Carters fly commercial. Ms. Stuckey says that on a recent flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, Mr. Carter walked up and down the aisle greeting other passengers and taking selfies.
“He doesn’t like big shots, and he doesn’t think he’s a big shot,” said Gerald Rafshoon, who was Mr. Carter’s White House communications director.
Mr. Carter costs U.S. taxpayers less than any other expresident, according to the General Services Administration, with a total bill for him in the current fiscal year of $456,000, covering pensions, an office, staff, and other expenses. That’s less than half the $952,000 budgeted for George H.W. Bush. The three other living ex-presidents — Mr. Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — cost taxpayers more than $1 million eachper year.
Mr. Carter doesn’t even have federal retirement health benefits because he worked for the government for four years — less than the five years needed to qualify, according to the GSA. He says he receives health benefits through Emory University, where he has taught for 36 years.
The federal government pays for an office for each expresident. Mr. Carter’s, in the Carter Center in Atlanta, is the least expensive, at $115,000 this year. The Carters could have built a more elaborate office with living quarters, but for years they slept on a pullout couch for a week each month. Recently, they had a Murphy bed installed.
Mr. Carter’s office costs a fraction of Mr. Obama’s, which is $536,000 a year. Mr. Clinton’s costs $518,000, George W. Bush’s is $497,000 and George H.W. Bush’s is $286,000,according to the GSA.
“I am a great admirer of Harry Truman. He’s my favorite president, and I really try to emulate him,” says Mr. Carter, who writes his books in a converted garage in his house. “He set an example I thought was admirable.”
But although Mr. Truman retired to his hometown of Independence, Mo., even he took up residence in an elegant house previously owned by his prosperous in-laws, Mr. Beschloss said.
As Mr. Carter spreads a thick layer of butter on a slice of white bread, he is asked whether he thinks, especially with a man who boasts of being a billionaire in the White House, any future ex-president will ever live the way Mr. Carter does.
“I hope so,” he says. “But I don’t know.”
Plains is a tiny circle of Georgia farmland, a mile in diameter, with its center at the train depot that served as Mr. Carter’s 1976 campaign headquarters. About 700 people live here, 150 miles due south of Atlanta, in a place that is a living museum to Mr. Carter.
The general store, once owned by Carter’s Uncle Buddy, sells Carter memorabilia and scoops of peanut butter ice cream.
The Jimmy Carter National Historic Site is essentially the entire town, drawing nearly 70,000 visitors a year and putting $4 million into the county’s economy.
Mr. Carter has used his post-presidency to support human rights, global health programs and fair elections worldwide through his Carter Center, based in Atlanta. He has helped renovate 4,300 homes in 14 countries for Habitat for Humanity, and with his own hammer and tool belt, he will be working on homes for low-income people in Indianalater this month.
Mr. Carter’s gait is a little unsteady these days, three years after a diagnosis of melanoma on his liver and brain. At a 2015 news conference to announce his illness, he seemed to be bidding a stoic farewell, saying he was “perfectly at ease with whatever comes.” But now, after radiation and chemotherapy, Mr. Carter says he is cancer-free.
In October, he will become the second president ever to reach 94; George H.W. Bush turned 94 in June. These days, Mr. Carter is sharp, funny and reflective.
The Carters walk every day — often down Church Street, the main drag through Plains, where they have been walking since the 1920s.
Two teenagers wave to the former president. They say people in Plains think of the Carters as neighbors and friends, just like anybody else.
“He’s a good ol’ Southern gentleman,” says David Lane.
The Carters’ house is dated but homey and comfortable, with a rustic living room and a small kitchen. A cooler bearing the presidential seal sits on the floor in the kitchen — Mr. Carter says they use it for leftovers. They have no chef and they cook for themselves, often together. They make their own yogurt.
On this summer morning, Rosalynn mixes pancake batter and sprinkles in blueberries grown on their land.
Mr. Carter cooks them on the griddle.
Then he does the dishes.