President "Jimmah" Carter: Some thoughts on his presidency, legacy

I was born in 1963, so Jimmy Carter is by far the best president in my political memory. He told the American people what they didn't want to hear - that we needed not only to conserve energy, but develop and utilize alternative, renewable sources of energy. As you may already know, he installed solar panels on top of the White House. The Carter administration, while hardly having a perfect human rights record, prodded Congress cut off military aid to Guatemala in 1977; a number of other militaristic regimes were also de-funded. Lord knows there were economic problems, especially in 1979-1980. But the national debt was about $150 billion dollars at the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency; it ballooned to more than $1 trillion under Carter's successor, Ronnie Reagan. I certainly took issue with some of Carter's polices, foreign and domestic; but looking back, the years 1977-1981 were a hell of a lot better than what came afterwards! At least the old peanut farmer and pro-nuclear veteran of the US Navy has had a better legacy as ex-president than he did while in the Oval Office. Can't think of a single other Twentieth Century ex-pres. who founded anything as useful as Habitat for Humanity. The Carter Center has also done some good in places like Equatorial Africa. And of course, there's the following instructive quote from "Jimmah:" “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marijuana.” ― Jimmy Carter http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/20/jimmy-carters-hometown-cancer-hundreds-signs#comment-57972200