Happy Birthday Mr. President

The presidency of Jimmy Carter was plagued by the times in which it occurred; it's unlikely any President - even one of the most popular ones - could have surmounted the myriad challenges presented by the difficult times of the late 1970s...

Carter's post-Presidency, however, more than redeems his rather dismal single term in the White House. After all, most ex-Presidents routinely do a couple of years of high-paid speaking, scoop a hefty advance for writing their memoirs, and then retire to a life of golf and fishing, before finally taking up a career of drooling into their bib. That is to say, those who don't get shot while on duty.

Carter, on the other hand, did the speaking, wrote the memoirs (and more than 20 other books besides), built houses with Habitat for Humanity (making it a household name in the process), won the Nobel Peace Prize (one of only three US Presidents to do so), and monitored elections in several developing democracies. The fact that no one's tried to shoot him for doing all that can only mean that he is some kind of an alien.

In 1982 he established the Carter Center in Atlanta, adjacent to his Presidential Library, with the stated goal of advancing human rights and alleviating suffering; currently, projects at the center benefit people in 70 countries worldwide. Going against tradition, he's decided not to be buried there, but will spend his eternity in front of the home where he's lived his whole life, in Plains.

Nearly twenty years after leaving the White House, President Carter was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for all his good works, the most important of dozens of others he's received; today he turns a spry 86, and shows no signs of letting up, for which millions - if not billions - of people around the world are grateful.
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