Man of peace
A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL
10/12/2002
JIMMY CARTER'S life is a lesson in renewal and the triumph of character over punditry.
The former US president, who won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, could have easily disappeared from public view after leaving the White House 22 years ago - and there were those in the Democratic Party who hoped he would.
Despite his success in brokering the 1978 peace accord between Egypt and Israel - one of many accomplishments that earned him this year's Nobel medal - by 1980 Carter was seen as an ineffectual leader who could not end the Iran hostage crisis abroad nor revive the economy at home, and who spoke of a national malaise when he might have rallied the public.
No one would have been surprised if he'd sunk into an embittered retirement to pen a grudge book and play golf. But he went out into the wider world instead, building on his success in getting Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to shake hands at Camp David, and on his commitment to a presidency that, in the words of the Nobel citation, put ''renewed emphasis on the place of human rights in international politics.''
Carter pressed the Soviet Union to adhere to the 1975 Helsinki Accord and expanded that social justice mission to other countries when he set up an office of human rights in the US State Department.
After leaving the White House, Carter became a travel ing broker for peace, exhibiting, as the Nobel committee stated, ''untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.''
Through the Carter Center, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, he has gone himself, or sent workers, to 65 countries to monitor elections, battle disease, and help raise living standards.
He has become America's nonpartisan elder statesman, with or without the blessing of the White House. While valued by Clinton for helping to win passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and for getting the military junta to stand down in Haiti, Carter riled the administration with a 1994 freelance peace mission to North Korea - he refused to take calls from Washington as he cooled a nuclear dispute in a meeting with Kim Il-sung.
Last month Carter criticized President George Bush's stand on Iraq, urging that the United States not act without support from the United Nations. The head of the Nobel committee, Gunnar Berge, said yesterday that the award was a slap at Bush, although other Nobel officials denied it.
Carter refused to discuss Iraq yesterday, perhaps preferring to keep his silence as a man of peace. He did get a call from Bush, as well he should, for he deserves the cheers and gratitude of the nation and the world.
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