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Posted Tuesday, June 8, 2004
Former President Jimmy Carter, whom Ronald Reagan defeated at the polls in the 1980 presidential election, says that now is not the time to criticize his erstwhile rival, who passed away last week at the age of 93. "This week is devoted almost exclusively to accolades, I think justifiably," Carter said in an interview with TIME, "and to remembering the finest aspects of President Reagan's capability as a great communicator who could inspire a nation with simple and clear themes of his own philosophy, and his effectiveness as a leader of the Republican Party."
In the past, Carter, 79, has issued some tough critiques of Reagan. In 1989, according to The New York Times, at a reunion of Carter administration officials at Georgetown University, Carter said of Reagan: "If I had been President for four more years, we wouldn't have had a resurgence of racism and selfishness." But in the immediate wake of Reagan's death, Carter's public comments have been measured and empathetic. "This is a sad day for our country," Carter said before teaching Sunday school at a church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I probably know as well as anybody what a formidable communicator and campaigner that President Reagan was. It was because of him that I was retired from my last job."
Carter told TIME that he never really got to know Reagan: "I never did know him personally except during the times, very fleeting times, when we were debating each other and when he came down to help dedicate the Carter Center [in Atlanta in 1986]." Carter says he primarily interacted with Reagan through his national security advisors and his secretary of state, George Schultz.
Although Carter stresses that this is not the time to speak out about Reagan's policies, he does suggest that history will have a more nuanced view of Reagan's accomplishments. Says Carter: "The Iran-Contra scandal, the fact he had more people in his administration indicted and convicted than any other administration in history, his reluctance to try to bring an end to apartheid in South Africa — those are the kind of things I think will, over a period of years, be balanced against the positive aspects of his term."
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