Paul Krugman: “Jimmy Carter was a very good man — something that seems especially poignant to think about as we enter an age of kakistocracy, in which being a terrible person seems to be a necessary qualification for high office. And he was surely the best ex-president we’ve ever had. But his presidency itself is widely regarded as a failure.”

“I don’t think that’s fair. Carter wasn’t a Harry Truman, a great president whose greatness only came to be recognized many years later. But was he a bad president? Not in any way I can see. He was just a victim of time and chance… The truth is that luck plays a much bigger role in politics than we like to think.”

Gerald Seib: “Carter had been running a Georgia peanut farm just a few years before his improbable victory in 1976. At a time that the presidency had long been passed from one insider to another, he showed that an outsider could break through. In a sense, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump both walked in his footsteps.”

“Though the phenomenon now is associated with Republicans, Carter actually brought evangelical Christians into the political arena as an organized force. By openly presenting himself as a born-again Christian—indeed, one who continued to teach Sunday school while president—he saw a moral calculus in the decisions of governance and brought discussion of religion out of the political shadows. That won him, temporarily, the support of many Americans of similar belief.”

“It is little remembered now, but Carter, a Democrat, improbably introduced an era of deregulation of the U.S. economy. At least to some extent, he deregulated the airline, trucking and railroad industries, and lifted price controls on oil. He never quite got the benefits hoped for, but his actions marked an inflection point for the government’s relationship with the economy.”

Timothy Noah: The late former president wasn’t the liberal most people imagine.

New York Times: “Mr. Carter had a hot-and-cold relationship with the fellow members of the exclusive club of presidents — more cold than hot, in fact. From his re-election defeat in 1980 until his death on Sunday, he was the odd man out, distant from the Republicans and Democrats who followed him and often getting on their nerves because of his outspokenness.”

“He did not join his fellow presidents on the high-dollar speaking circuit, nor did he team up for many joint humanitarian missions. He was rarely consulted by incumbents except when he forced his way into some issue and made himself hard to ignore. When all of the living presidents gathered to welcome Barack Obama to the White House in 2009, Mr. Carter was the one standing slightly off to the side, removed from his chummy peers physically and metaphorically.”

“To many of his successors, he was a thorn in their side, always doing his own thing even if it conflicted with official foreign policy. What he considered principled, they considered sanctimonious. While other former presidents generally held their tongues out of deference to the current occupant of the Oval Office, Mr. Carter rarely stood on ceremony.”

CNN: From Biden to Clinton: Jimmy Carter’s relationships with his modern successors.

President Joe Biden said he’ll order a state funeral in Washington for Jimmy Carter, calling the former Democratic president who died Sunday “an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian,” Bloomberg reports.

Washington Post: “Jimmy Carter was delivered on Oct. 1, 1924, in a 60-bed hospital in Plains. — becoming the first future president to be born in such a setting.”

“A hospital birth may seem unremarkable today — but at the beginning of the 20th century, nearly all childbirths still took place at home, including the majority at the time of Mr. Carter’s birth.”

New York Times: “When he exited the White House, Carter’s job approval rating was only 34 percent, according to Gallup. But in more recent years, as people reassess past presidents, Carter’s retrospective approval rating has risen to 57 percent.”

New York Times: “There is something about former presidents departing during the holidays. The last three presidents who died all passed away between Thanksgiving and New Year’s — Gerald R. Ford died the day after Christmas in 2006, George H.W. Bush died on Nov. 30, 2018, and now Jimmy Carter died four days after Christmas.”

“Former President Jimmy Carter, a man who redefined what a post-presidency could be, died Sunday. He was 100,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

“The only Georgian ever elected to the White House, Carter left office after a single term that was highlighted by forging peace between Israel and Egypt, but was overshadowed by the Iran hostage crisis.“

Washington Post: “As the nation’s 39th president, he governed with strong Democratic majorities in Congress but in a country that was growing more conservative. Four years after taking office, Mr. Carter lost his bid for reelection, in a landslide, to one of the most conservative political figures of the era, Ronald Reagan.”

New York Times: “He presided over four tumultuous years plagued by long gas lines, high inflation and the Iran hostage crisis. But he also signed a strategic arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union and helped forge the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. Mr. Carter cemented his legacy with a deeper engagement in public affairs than any other former president of modern times and was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.”

Axios notes Carter has often been called the “nation’s greatest former president” for the humanitarian work he conducted in his more than four decades after Washington.

Former White House adviser David Gergen has dementia but he left some thoughts “on the path forward for our country” that his daughter published in the Boston Globe.

On future generations: “Many in the next generation are going to the best schools and not giving back what is remotely needed by our country. We need to continue to ensure that we have people in the next generation out front pulling the wagon — innovators and people in the public sector — delivering on the goods.”

Chuck Todd: “The last time the United States had three one-term presidents in a row, the calendar year began with an ‘18.’”

“Between Ulysses Grant and William McKinley, America actually had five straight one-term presidencies, including the two nonconsecutive terms of Grover Cleveland.”

“All of the elections in that period were quite close, and all were essentially about which party could bring the country together and move it forward after the Civil War. And while the divisive issues of that time were different from the divisive issues of this era, the mood and frustration of the country in the late 1800s seem to rhyme with the mood and frustration of the early 2000s.”

Simon Kuper: “Modern historians tend to be wary of ascribing change to individuals. They are more likely to identify ‘the fish that changed the world’ (to quote the subtitle of Mark Kurlansky’s book Cod) than a human who did. Most historians prefer impersonal structural forces: geography for the French Annales school, economics for Marxists, technology for others, while there’s been a recent surge of interest in climate change and pandemics.”

“But having said all that, here comes Donald Trump. He provides the biggest test of Great Man theory in our lifetimes. His supporters, enemies and the man himself (‘I alone can fix it’) depict him as an agent of historical change. Are we all suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome? Or will this individual really change history?”

“We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before world war two. Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First.’ That was what they said in the ’30s.”

–Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), in an interview with the Financial Times.

New York Times Magazine: “Robert Paxton thought the label was overused. But now he’s alarmed by what he sees in global politics — including Trumpism.”