Jimmy Carter Turns 100; First President to Live to a Century
Alex Brandon / Associated Press / File
Former President Jimmy Carter turns 100 years old on Tuesday, October 1, making him the first U.S. president to reach the century mark.
The Hill noted:
When James Earl Carter Jr. was born in 1924 in the small farming town of Plains, Ga., the U.S. still had 48 states. Wheaties cereal was just making its debut on grocery store shelves, President Calvin Coolidge was in office and Babe Ruth slugged his way to becoming the MLB’s American League batting champion.
…The naval engineer-turned-peanut farmer won election to the Georgia state Senate in 1962, before triumphing in the Peach State’s gubernatorial race in 1971.
…Carter won his Democratic presidential bid against incumbent President Gerald Ford in 1976 and entered the White House.
Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and is widely regarded as a failed president, due to economic stagnation and chaos in foreign policy, including the Iran hostage crisis that haunted his last year in office. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work on the Camp David Accords of 1978, which brought peace between Israel and Egypt.
He is also regarded as a disruptive former president, infamously bungling an effort to isolate North Korea during the Clinton administration, and leading efforts to demonize Israel by calling it an “apartheid” state.
Carter’s wife, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, died less than a year ago at the age of 96.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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