I've heard him described as much too good a man to be a good President. I think it's a collective failure that this can be the case.

The thing that hurt Jimmy the most was the Reagan campaign interfering in foreign policy by negotiating with the Iranian government and asking them to keep the hostages to make Jimmy look bad.

Yeah, the '80s in the US were many things, but golden age they were not.

I think, leaving aside what went down during the election and after, the biggest thing against Carter was that he was acting like a responsible adult and was trying to get the public to do the same and they wanted to hear fairy tales and return to a fictional time of great prosperity, with 5 cent gas and everyone smooching America's backside. Carter recognized those days were long gone (or never existed) and that we had real problems and the solutions weren't going to be easy, but a few small sacrifices could lead to major gains. The 55 MPH speed limit was established to try to reduce gas consumption, by putting a lower limit on things, creating a great fuel savings. People didn't want to do it. They wanted to roar down the highway, like they were in a Formula 1 racer, on the Autobahn. He led the way by putting solar panels on the White House and putting an emphasis on renewable energy, not some treasure hunt for untapped oil. People didn't want to make sacrifices by cutting back on their energy usage and industry fought efforts to reduce emissions. The auto industry fought government mandates on fuel efficiency,

Carter tried to shift US military strategy to more rapid response, rather than the continued focus of fighting a large scale war on two fronts. Carter was a former naval officer and understood that we were not in World War II anymore; but, we were dealing with brushfires all over the globe. Towards that end, he established the Rapid Deployment Force, which largely got ignored by the succeeding administration, until they needed to suddenly move large troop elements into Saudi Arabia, to counter the invasion of Kuwait. The military was in sad shape, post Vietnam, with poor leadership at the top and low morale across the board. The reason Operation Eagle Claw (the Iran Hostage Rescue mission) was such a debacle was because the US military was not ready to carry out such a mission. It's only previous experience in such a thing was the Son Tay Raid, during the Vietnam War, where Special Forces soldiers carried out a helicopter assault on a North Vietnamese prison. However, the raid was an intelligence failure, as the POWs had been moved, some time before. Most of the experience from that mission had left the Army, by the time of the Hostage Crisis. Delta Force had only just come into being, in 1977, after Col Charles Beckwith had lobbied for a group that operated like the British SAS, back in the 60s (after a cross training assignment with them) The Israeli Raid, at Entebbe, demonstrated the effectiveness of such a force; but, Delta was still young and was not properly equipped and supported. They did not have their own dedicated aircraft, with pilots trained in special operations missions. The rescue used Navy SH-53D helicopters, with regular air crews, with little experience or previous training. They had issues with communications and intelligence gathering. The raid strategy was to insert a team in the Iranian desert, to set up a forward operating base and refueling point. They were inserted in a C-130 Hercules cargo plane. The helicopters came from the USS Nimitz and the raiding party were flown in on another C-130. There were 93 Delta Force raiders, plus a 13-man Special Forces A-Team, to assault the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where 3 hostages were believed to be held, plus a 12-man Ranger team tasked to provide security for the Desert One base and then seize Manzariyeh Air Base, near Tehran, to provide the extraction point for the raiders and the freed hostages. 12 people to secure an airfield is ridiculously low and normally would call to a company-strength airborne unit, such as during Operation Dargon Rouge, when the US Air Force and Belgian Paracommandos seized control of the Stanleyville Airport, in the Congo, and then carried out a rescue of European hostages, from Simba rebels, who were holding them and threatening to kill them, while a mercenary column and Congolese Gendarmery moved in from the opposite direction, on the ground.

The plan was to rendezvous at Desrt One, refuel the helicopters and lay up for 24 hours, then launch the assault. The Delta operators would hit the embassy compound, the Green Berets the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Rangers the airfield. Helicopters would land the raiders, who would then silence the sentries and take down the guards holding the hostages, then move the hostages to a nearby soccer stadium, for extraction to the airfield, to be flown out on larger aircraft, to a friendly base, while the raiding force provided security, along with Naval aircraft. During the initial rendezvous, a civilian bus stumbled across the site and was stopped and held, while Delta radioed Washington for instructions. A tanker truck also came up to the sight but ignored the Rangers' signal to halt and was destroyed with a rocket launcher, causing an explosion that lit up the sky, confusing the helicopter crews. As it was, the helicopters flew threw a haboob and there were only 6 out of 8 operable helicopters and the crews were badly shaken. That was the minimum required for the mission, loss of another helo meant an abort. While maneuvering to refuel, there was a collision and explosion, which killed the helicopter crew and support personnel on the ground. They aborted the mission and abandoned Desrt One, with the subsequent debacle of the Iranians displaying the dead bodies and the wreckage.

Out of that came the Joint Special Operations Command and a more unified command and support structure for special operations, including dedicated special operations aircraft and crews, as well as a unification of the various special operation forces, across the services. It still took another decade to be effective.

The Pentagon fought the Carter Administration objectives tooth and nail and did similar things in the Clinton years, when he tried to order special operations missions against Al Queida targets. The Reagn Administration pumped tons of money into the defense industry, but largely continued the strategy of rehashing WW2, rather than mobile rapid response. Carter had pushed for improving the US' sealift capacity, to move forces around the globe, intact, while the Reagan Administration focused on a 600 ship Navy, with more carriers and submarines, at high cost, plus missile systems, but did not address the sealift problem, wich is part of why it took 6 months to build up US forces, during Desert Shield, before launching operational strikes, in the Desert Storm phase.

Like I said, when you dig into events and issues, it is hard to find better alternatives than Carter pursued and he as a straight shooter with the American public. However, the public didn't want to hear it and wanted to be in this safe, ignorant little bubble. It's why we have carbon offsets, instead of concrete plans and initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and why Big Oil makes billions of dollars, but alternative energy companies have to fight disinformation campaigns to present pretty solid and effective opportunities for cheaper electricity.

The world has been a better place with President Carter. He's 98 and that's a great run by any standard. 

I agree with so many thoughful reflections on Mr. Carter's legacy not only as a president but as a person.

I have pretty much checked out of modern politics, though I am not unaware of how bad political polarization is in our country. As I've kept up with the news reports on President Carter's health, it has been the rarest glimmer of positivity I've seen that the vast majority of people commenting, regardless of how liberal or conservative they may otherwise be, have such great respect for Mr. Carter's character.

I think this speak volumes of what's really most important when we reflect on those who are elected to lead and represent us, and I am happy that President Carter was "my president" during my very young days. While I can now better reflect with maturity and deeper insight what his successes and challenges may have been as a president, I remain proud that he "turned out" to be as genuinely nice an individual as in my innocence I believed him to be.