Chris Tomlinson is a star opinion writer for The Houston Chronicle. His reflections on Jimmy Carter are worth reading. He knew President Carter well.
My first big assignment as a journalist was covering President Jimmy Carter’s 1995 visit to Rwanda, a doomed mission that brought him little acclaim.
Carter didn’t fight disease, promote democracy or negotiate peace to make headlines. He did the work quietly and diligently to make the world a better place. His life was a master class in a leadership style firmly out of fashion but will hopefully return.
I was in my third month as the Associated Press and Voice of America stringer in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. A civil war between an ethno-fascist Hutu government and rebels from the Tutsi minority had culminated in the 1994 genocide that slaughtered 1 million people, most of them Tutsi civilians, in 100 days.
The Tutsi-led rebels drove the Hutu leadership and 1.2 million of their followers into neighboring Zaire, rnow known as Democratic Republic of the Congo. Insurgents from the Zairian refugee camps were still killing 300 people a week in Rwanda more than a year later.
I trailed Carter through Rwanda and the Zairian refugee camps. His Secret Service detail was minimal, yet he moved through these dangerous places with a confidence, kindness and humility that only comes from tremendous inner strength.
He spoke to political leaders, genocide victims, refugees and me with the same courtesy and respect. He knew Mobutu would probably never agree to a peace deal, but unlike most famous people, he didn’t allow the likelihood of failure to stop him from trying.
Carter wanted to negotiate a deal between the new Tutsi-led Rwandan government and Zaire’s dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, whose murderous misrule had made him a pariah.
“These leaders know that I’m their last chance to rejoin the international community,” Carter told me while driving to a church where the skeletons of the dead were displayed as a genocide memorial. He laughed and added, “If Jimmy Carter gives up on you, there’s no one else coming.”
Carter met with Mobutu, and he agreed to a summit with the Rwanda foreign minister. Diplomats knew Mobutu had cancer and hoped he might cut a deal to boost his legacy.
Carter’s staff asked me to join the trip to Mobutu’s palace in Gbadolite, Zaire. I watched Mobutu turn the summit into a farce. Eighteen months later, Rwanda overthrew him, installed a new president and forced the refugees home. The old dictator died in exile. Carter kept lobbying for world peace.
I saw the former president many more times over my 11 years in Africa. His foundation, the Carter Center, monitored elections and fought preventable diseases like river blindness, guinea worm and other neglected tropical diseases. Carter’s work saved tens of millions of people from suffering, but he never made a big deal out of it.
No one can accomplish so much without steely determination. Too often, I hear people describe Carter as the weak and bumbling caricature that President Ronald Reagan created to win the 1980 election. Folks should stop confusing courtesy for weakness.
After the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam debacle, Carter, in 1976, offered an alternative to Richard Nixon’s imperial presidency. He practiced what has become known as servant leadership, the theory that a leader’s primary duty is ensuring subordinates have the tools they need to accomplish their mission.
In the Army, my brigade commander instilled servant leadership in me when I joined his staff as a newly minted sergeant in 1986. He explained that junior enlisted members did not serve me because I outranked them; my rank meant I was responsible for their success, and the colonel promised to hold me accountable if they failed.
The term servant leadership is hackneyed, but it captures valuable techniques that have caught on in the business world. It emphasizes listening, empathy, persuasion, stewardship and community building while discouraging egotism and authoritarianism.
The greater good comes first, not any individual.
While president, Carter rejected much of the pomp at the White House. His speeches focused on addressing problems, not promoting himself. Despite attending the U.S. Naval Academy and serving in the nuclear navy, he was never a warrior-king style leader, which American voters tend to favor.
Humility does not do well in the current culture, where conspicuousness is valued. Politicians must constantly self-promote while denigrating their rivals. Compromise is considered a failure, and vulgarity is considered clever.
The strongest people I’ve encountered in the most difficult places don’t puff up their chests. They don’t need others to bow before them. People with inner strength don’t use cruelty to prove their power.
Here’s hoping kindness makes a comeback, courtesy becomes cool, and strength is demonstrated by lifting people up, not knocking them down.
