Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S. President has died at the age of 100.

Jimmy Carter once went fishing near Plains, Georgia when he saw a white rabbit swimming toward his boat. The rabbit was hissing menacingly at him and Jimmy called it the ‘killer rabbit’—hence this cartoon.

My first attempt at caricature was Jimmy Carter. He was easy to draw—big hair and big smile. A lot of editorial cartoonists had a field day when Carter ran for re-election against Reagan. They both made great cartoon caricatures.

Carter lost in a landslide. As it turned out, Americans were ready to move on. The country was plagued by very high inflation, an energy crisis, as well as an outright recession. Carter tried to solve the malaise by forcing Americans to deal with less. If homes were cold in the winter he wanted the people inside to put on sweaters. Summer heat meant using fans—not air conditioners. He lowered the speed limit to 55 mph on the nation’s highways. Everyone in large states such as Texas and Montana were greatly annoyed by that.

After his defeat to Reagan, he went on to build houses with “Habitat for Humanity.” Unlike the obviously corrupt Joe Biden, Carter projected an image of civility and decency. Still, Carter left the presidency with an all-time low rating. Biden’s rating will easily be lower when he finally leaves.

As an evangelical Christian, Carter was a man of strong faith. Godspeed, Jimmy.

–Ben Garrison

Comment by Geoffrey Churchman

I was living in L.A. at the time of the 1980 presidential election and I liked both Carter and Reagan. They were both gracious types, not motivated by power or fortune — Reagan wanted to reduce the role of government — and Carter had a strong moral compass. He saw the interference of the CIA in other countries, such as in Chile, as inappropriate and took steps against the fascism of the military regime in Argentina in 1977. Most importantly he oversaw the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in 1979 between Begin and Sadat.

Carter’s policies domestically were problematic and why he lost to Reagan after years of stagflation. Another factor at the time was the hostage crisis in Iran after the Islamists seized power.

After leaving office, Carter continued to use his status to use diplomacy to resolve foreign issues and no doubt prevented wars. It’s not recorded what he thought of the corrupt, warmongering Biden, but I doubt it was positive.