Look at the POTUS rankings by professional historians and he ranks between 18th and and 34th best, but mostly in the 20's.

In some ways, his contributions to the Presidency and Executive branch as a whole are overlooked.

He transformed the role of the Vice President. As late as Nixon's presidency (just one election prior to Carter's) the VP was a job without duties. The main duties of the VP were to be the figurehead President of the Senate (with the only real job being that of breaking ties and ceremonially counting electoral college votes) and to hang around in case the President dies. Carter gave his Veep (Walter Mondale) actual everyday duties and made him a partner in governing. That role has continued to this day.

Carter also established the Departments of Energy and Education.

And he is the only President to actually make progress in the Middle East, helping negotiate a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt that has held up for the last 40+ years.

His undisputed honesty and openness was clearly a restoration of dignity to the office after Nixon's scandal and resignation.

Unfortunately, those accomplishments were overshadowed by inflation and the Iran hostage crisis. He inherited the "stagflation" from Nixon/Ford and didn't get much help from the Fed or Congress in dealing with that, nor did he show any great leadership on that front, either.

But it was the Iran hostage situation and the disastrous rescue failure that likely sealed his fate as a one term President. I remember the 1980 election cycle pretty well, as that was my first election. Carter chose to stick with the job of working on the hostage situation instead of vigorously campaigning. He felt it was his job as President to devote most of his efforts to the hostages rather than spend lots of time on the campaign trail. Reagan was, of course, free to campaign non-stop, which he did. I knew all I needed to know about Reagan when he announced the release of the hostages mere hours after his inauguration. Their release could not (or, in hindsight, should not) be due to anything that Reagan did, since Reagan couldn't (hindsight again - shouldn't) be negotiating with Iran before he was President. If Reagan were as decent a man as I thought he was, he would have asked Carter to join him in making the announcement as an acknowledgement of Carter's contributions to the hostage release. How naive I was back then. And now, 40+ years on, we learn that there is a good chance that Reagan DID negotiate with Iran - not to release the hostages, but to hold on to them until after the election and inauguration because the hostages were working to improve Reagan's chances in the election.

I have a suspicion that future Presidential historians will look a bit more favorably on Carter that those of today.

Looking to his post-Presidency, I don't know how Carter could be anything other than the best (or maybe second best, to Washington) former President we've had. Like any former President, he wasn't going to be a poor man after his term. But he didn't go around promoting himself. Instead, he worked tirelessly to help make the lives of others better. Habitat for Humanity is his signature legacy, but he also worked around the world to relieve poverty in some little way wherever he could.

We were lucky to have Carter in that time and that place to show all of us how a US President could be after the scandal filled Nixon administration. That, more than anything else, might be his best contribution to the country and the office of President.

--Peter