President speaks as thousands gather for former president’s funeral service at Washington national cathedral before he is laid to rest in Georgia
Joe Biden began by noting that he may have been the first senator to endorse Jimmy Carter’s candidacy for president in 1976, “based on what I believe is Jimmy Carter’s enduring attribute: character, character, character”.
“Character, I believe, is destiny. Destiny in our lives, and, quite frankly, destiny in the life of the nation. It’s an accumulation of a million things built on character that leads to a good life in a decent country,” Biden said.
“Jimmy Carter’s friendship taught me, and through his life, taught me, that strength of character is more than title or the power we hold. It’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect, that everyone, and I mean everyone, deserves an even shot.”
After finishing his eulogy of Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden reached out and touched the former president’s casket as he walked back to his seat.
The homily was just delivered by Andrew Young, a former congressman and mayor of Atlanta who Jimmy Carter appointed as ambassador to the United Nations.
“Time and time again, I saw in him the ability to achieve greatness by the diversity of his personality and his upbringing. Dr King used to say that greatness is characterized by antitheses, strongly marked. You’ve got to have a tough mind and a tender heart, and that was Jimmy Carter,” Young said.
“And he grew up in the tremendous diversity of the South, and he embraced both sides. He was a minority in Sumter County – just about 20% 25% of the population was white, but growing up as a minority, he became the friend of the majority.”
Young concluded:
I never cease to be surprised, I never cease to be enlightened, I never cease to be inspired by the little deeds of love and mercy that he shared with us every day of his life.
It was President James Earl Carter that for me symbolized the greatness of the United States of America, and I am truly grateful for him, because in spite of the harshness of the depression and the explosions of inflation, he never wavered from his commitment to God Almighty and his love of all of God’s children.
Jimmy Carter was a blessing that helped to create a great United States of America, and for all of us and many who are not able to be here, I want to say thank you.
After finishing his speech, Biden returned to his seat next to Jill Biden.
The former presidents and vice-presidents in attendance are not scheduled to speak.
Biden closed by reflecting on his visit to the Carters’s home in Plains, Georgia shortly after taking office, and saying he missed the former president.
“To young people, to anyone in search of meaning and purpose: study the power of Jimmy Carter’s example. I miss him, but I take solace in knowing that his beloved Rosalynn are reunited again,” the president said. Former first lady Rosalynn Carter died in 2023.
“To the entire Carter family, thank you, and I mean this sincerely, for sharing them both with America and the world. We love you all. Jill and I will cherish our visits with them, including that last one in their home. We saw Jimmy as he always was, at peace with a life fully lived, a good life, a purpose and meaning of character, driven by destiny and filled with the power of faith, hope and love.”
Echoing the remarks of others who eulogized him, Biden described Jimmy Carter as a president who saw today’s challenges coming long before they arrived.
“Many think he was from a bygone era, but in reality, he saw a well into the future,” the president said.
“A white southern Baptist who led on civil rights, a decorated navy veteran who brokered peace, a brilliant nuclear engineer who led on nuclear nonproliferation, a hard-working farmer who championed conservation and clean energy, the president who redefined the relationship with the vice-president.”
“As we all know, Jimmy Carter also established a model post-presidency by making a powerful difference as a private citizen in America, and, I might add, as you all know, around the world. Through it all, he showed us how character and faith start with ourselves and then flows to others.”
Joe Biden began by noting that he may have been the first senator to endorse Jimmy Carter’s candidacy for president in 1976, “based on what I believe is Jimmy Carter’s enduring attribute: character, character, character”.
“Character, I believe, is destiny. Destiny in our lives, and, quite frankly, destiny in the life of the nation. It’s an accumulation of a million things built on character that leads to a good life in a decent country,” Biden said.
“Jimmy Carter’s friendship taught me, and through his life, taught me, that strength of character is more than title or the power we hold. It’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect, that everyone, and I mean everyone, deserves an even shot.”
Joe Biden has stepped up to the podium to deliver a eulogy for Jimmy Carter at the National Cathedral.
He began by remarking on how he visited Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter shortly after taking office.
After leaving the presidency at the age of 56, Jimmy Carter dedicated himself to several causes, chief among them eradicating guinea worm.
The debilitating disease once affected millions of people each year in Asian and African countries, but thanks to efforts by Carter and other health organizations, has been almost entirely eradicated.
The former president’s grandson Jason Carter remarked on that in his just-concluded eulogy:
We’ve all heard a lot lately about guinea worm disease. It’s an ancient and debilitating disease of poverty, and that disease will have existed from the dawn of humanity until Jimmy Carter.
When he started working on this disease, there were three-and-a-half million cases in humans every year. Last year, there were 14. And the thing that’s remarkable is that this disease is not eliminated with medicine. It’s eliminated essentially by neighbors talking to neighbors about how to collect water in the poorest and most marginalized villages in the world, and those neighbors truly were my grandfather’s partners for the last 40 years.
And as this disease has been eliminated in every village in Nigeria, every village in Sudan or Uganda, what’s left behind in those tiny 600 person villages is an army of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s, who have demonstrated their own power to change their world.
Here’s more about the philanthropic work Carter undertook after leaving the White House:
In his eulogy, Jimmy Carter’s former White House domestic affairs adviser Stuart Eizenstat mounted a defense of his record as president.
Carter struggled to maintain his public support while in the White House, and overwhelmingly lost his bid for a second term in 1980 to Republican Ronald Reagan.
“As we lay our 39th president to rest, it’s time to redeem his presidency and also lay to rest the myth that his greatest achievements came only as a former president,” Eizenstat said.
He recounted how Carter, a southerner whose home state Georgia once practiced segregation, appointed people of color as judges and top administration officials. Eizenstat noted that the former president created the education department and Federal Emergency Management Agency, which remains “crucially important today, and we see it in Los Angeles”.
While crediting Carter with fighting climate change, Eizenstat added that “his energy bills were critical to move our country from dependence on foreign oil to energy security. We are now, as a result, the largest oil and gas producer in the world”.
“He may not be a candidate for Mount Rushmore, but he belongs in the foothills of making the US stronger and the world safer,” Eizenstat said in conclusion.
Here’s more about the political headwinds Carter faced during his presidency:
In a eulogy for Jimmy Carter delivered by his son, former vice-president Walter Mondale credited his boss with attempting to tackle climate change long before it became a global crisis.
“Carter was far-sighted. He put aside his short term political interests to tackle challenges that demanded sacrifice to protect our kids and grandkids from future harm. Very few people in the 1970s had heard the term climate change, yet Carter put his presidency on the line to pass laws to conserve energy, deregulate new oil and gas prices and invest in clean renewable alternatives to fossil fuels,” Mondale, who died in 2021, wrote in the eulogy being read by Ted Mondale, a former Minnesota state senator.
“It wasn’t a perfect program, but thanks to President Carter, US energy consumption declined by 10% between 1979 and 1983. In many ways, he laid the foundation for future presidents to come to grips with climate change. Some thought he was crazy to fight so hard to pass these laws, but he was dead right, and we know that now.”
At that last line, Ted Mondale appeared to look directly at the former presidents that are seated right in front of him. Among that group is Donald Trump and George W Bush, whose administrations did little to tackle the climate crisis.
Jimmy Carter beat Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election, but the two political rivals later became friends, and agreed to deliver eulogies at each other’s funerals.
Carter followed through on that promise after Ford died in 2006, and today, the Republican’s duty has fallen to his son, Steven Ford. “I can just see my dad getting his yellow legal pad out with his pen and writing this for his beloved friend,” Ford said as he began.
Here’s part of it:
By fate of a brief season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals, but for the many wonderful years that followed, friendship bonded us as no two presidents since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. It is said that president Adams’s last words were “Thomas Jefferson still survives”.
Now, since Jimmy has a good decade on me, I’m hedging my bets by entrusting my remembrances of Jimmy to my son, Steve. According to a map, it’s a long way between Grand Rapids, Michigan and Plains, Georgia, but distances have a way of vanishing when measured in values rather than miles. And it was because of our shared values that Jimmy and I respected each other as adversaries even before we cherished one another as dear friends.
Now, this is not to say that Jimmy never got under my skin, but has there ever been a group of politicians that didn’t do that to one another? During our 1976 contest, Jimmy knew my political vulnerabilities and he successfully pointed them out. Now, I didn’t like it, but little could I know that the outcome of that 1976 election would bring about one of my deepest and most enduring friendships.
