In the frenetic pace of the modern political news cycle, we are rarely able to take a moment for self-reflection and insight on our shared journey. The passing of President Jimmy Carter offers this pause for all citizens and politicians, who are leaders, vessels for, and drivers of cultural energies and targets of hope, idealization, contempt, and projection from the masses.

American presidents serve an outsized role in the American psyche. As a 1.8-generation immigrant to the American South from South India at less than 2 years old and the son of a single mother, I looked up to President Carter as a father figure. This smiling, friendly, intelligent, charismatic man was elected president when I was 9 years old. Soon after, he inspired me to write him a letter outlining my ideas for saving energy. (My “bright” idea was to add a tiny solar panel to light bulbs to capture unneeded light... OK, so I was no energy prodigy!)

Many details of President Carter’s long life are well known. Born and raised in modest, even bare-bones, material conditions in 1920s rural Georgia. Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. Submarine officer for several years before the untimely passing of his father made him choose between taking over his family farm and what looked to be a promising career in the military. He chose the farm and applied his intellect to turning the farm around and making it a success.

Ten years later, he began his political career in the Georgia Senate. He was elected president in 1976 after serving as Georgia’s governor, but he may be one of the few U.S. presidents who will ever be able to say that the high points of his life came after the presidency. In those 44 years, he performed monumental service for world health, peace, diplomacy, and human and political rights, to name a few. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. (Though he may well have........

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