JIMMY CARTER in 2008 (Shutterstock).

Jimmy Carter was not a great president. There remains considerable divided opinion on whether he was a good president.

But I don’t think there’s much question that he was a good man.

These days there’s a feeling that the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia was too much of a nice guy, not the virile man – however fictionalized – that Americans seem to prefer in the White House.

But his “nice guy” persona was enough to keep him on the plus side of the public opinion polls until the 1979-80 Iranian hostage crisis came along.

Iranian students, angry that the U.S. had allowed the deposed (and despised) Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to come to America for cancer treatment, seized the U.S. Embassy on Nov. 4, 1979.

The students, supporters of the new radical Islamic government, wanted the Shah handed over to them for trial for crimes of which he was likely guilty.

Initially, public opinion rallied around Carter, who demanded the quick and safe release of the 60-plus hostages. But as time went on and little progress was evident, the public mood soured.

A rescue attempt in April 1980 was a failure which historians blamed on a fierce dust storm and the decision not to send an extra helicopter – one was damaged at the landing site – as a backup.
Carter took responsibility for the disaster. When was the last time you saw any politician take responsibility for anything?

When swept out of office by Ronald Reagan in November 1980, Carter returned to life as a private citizen. He spent years building houses – with his own hands – and teaching Sunday School classes back in Plains.

Despite his humiliation, he had no enemies’s list. He was not interested in revenge or retribution. Perhaps if not for a dust storm 45 years ago, Americans would be admiring the soft-spoken and gentle sort of leader we seem to have left behind.