BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (WISH) — Lee Hamilton can still remember the political environment in 1976. 

The Vietnam War had just ended. Washington was still reeling from Watergate. Inflation and unemployment were rising. It was against this backdrop that Hamilton, then a Democratic Congressman representing southeastern Indiana, first met Jimmy Carter. 

“He captured the mood of the country,” Hamilton said. “His down-home approach to things, played up the fact that he was from Plains, Georgia.” 

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At the time, Hamilton had already served in Congress since 1965. He had been on the House Foreign Affairs Committee from the beginning and was the chair of the Europe and the Middle East subcommittee. Hamilton said Carter brought a different mentality from his predecessors. He was deeply analytical and thoroughly studied whatever topic was presented to him. 

“You had to know what you were doing,” Hamilton said of working with him. “If you were invited to the White House to talk to the president, you had to do your homework before you went into the office. If you didn’t, you were very quickly isolated.” 

Although Hamilton spent little time working with Carter on legislation and was not especially close to him, his committee assignment gave him a front row seat to the foreign policy problems facing the 39th president. He said he worked quite closely with Carter on the Arab-Israeli peace talks that ultimately led to the Camp David Accords. 

“He had a very visceral feeling toward the Palestinians,” Hamilton said. “It kind of switched the dynamics of Washington because Washington has always been identified as having strong ties with Israel.” 

Hamilton said Carter’s analytical mind was both his greatest strength and his Achilles heel. He said Carter’s patience was limited, especially for people who were not as well-versed in a particular policy issue or with whom he disagreed. That limited his efficacy at the day-to-day give and take of governance. 

“He was good at identifying the problem, explaining the problem, articulating the problem,” Hamilton said, “but he had a hard time getting people to come along with him and he had a hard time understanding them.” 

Carter was out of office from January 20, 1981 until his death on Sunday, the longest post-presidency of any chief executive in U.S. history. Hamilton said Carter redefined what it meant to be an ex-president. 

“He knew an ex-president had a platform and he exploited that and did it skillfully,” Hamilton said. “His predecessors and successors much less so. They did it to some degree but not like he did. He really made it an art form.” 

Although Carter’s time on the national political stage was brief, Hamilton said he made several profound changes to policy that impacted all of his successors. He said Carter was the first president to spend a significant amount of time on environmental and energy policy. Perhaps most importantly, Hamilton said Carter was the first president to incorporate human rights into American foreign policy. He said every American president since has addressed human rights in some way in their doctrine. 

“He made human rights a major plank in American foreign policy. That’s not going to change and Jimmy Carter deserves credit for that,” Hamilton said.