By the Bloomberg Opinion editorial team

“I will never lie to you”. That was his clear message Jimmy Carterthe man whose improbable century run came to an end on Sunday. Carter became the 39th president of the USA in part because voters thought that simple dose of honesty was enough after the turmoil of the Richard Nixon era. Unfortunately, for Carter and the country, it was never enough.

Carter was the first president to be born in a hospital and will surely be the last to remember life before electricity. His childhood farm in Georgia had been decimated by the Depression and then revitalized by the New Deal. He graduated from the Naval Academy the year before the start of the Cold War and took up his duties shortly before the eventual Soviet invasion. His presidency bridged the end of the Roosevelt majority with the beginning of the Reagan revolution. It also heralded some of the defining challenges—energy dependency, climate change, partisan polarization—of the coming decades.

Historians have generally ranked Carter in the middle-lower class of US presidents, between Garfield, Hayes and Van Buren. From time to time there have been exaggerations against him. Even so, at the center of Carter’s long life and short presidency lay an enigma: How did this formidable man—widely regarded as tough, prudent, intelligent—fail to become president for most?

First, he was not a very good politician. Walter Mondale, his vice president, once said that Carter “considered political sin.” The talent for trading favors, managing egos, balancing coalitions eluded him completely. Carter compounded this weakness by surrounding himself with loyalists fatally unwise in Washington’s ways.

One result was that much of his ambitious agenda was thwarted. Although the Democrats held huge majorities throughout his tenure, Carter fought hard to advance his goals. Upon taking office, he named Frank Moore, a 41-year-old campaign aide, as his congressional liaison—Moore soon became known as “the meanest man” in Washington. Carter’s habit of rejecting formulated proposals in Congress backfired. Tax reform of 1978, a major priority, was finished even among his supposed allies. “He didn’t consult me ​​when he was writing this bill,” Democratic Sen. Russell Long recalled.

There were also successes though. Carter secured peace between Egypt and Israel at Camp David, a historic feat that helped end decades of violence. He reached an arms limitation agreement with Russia and supported an increase in defense spending at a pivotal moment in the Cold War. He normalized diplomatic relations with China, making the world safer and wealthier for decades. His efforts to liberalize industry—including airlines, freight railroads, and interstate trucking—helped lay the groundwork for the 21st century’s consumer economy.

However, it was Carter’s inability to effectively exercise the powers of the presidency that would destroy him. His failure to free 52 American hostages in Iran for more than a year became a microcosm of US ineptitude. Announcing his intention to challenge Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980, Senator Ted Kennedy said: “Now, the people are blamed for every national ill, they are accused of being greedy, wasteful and mired in evil.”

A year later, Ronald Reagan asked voters two simple questions: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” and “Is America respected around the world?” Reagan defeated him by a landslide.

It is generally accepted that Carter was better as a former president than as a sitting president. Opinions may differ about his activism or his tendency to criticize his successors. Undoubtedly, it has been an active force in favor of democracy and public service. More to the point: Who could deny the evocative power of an elderly former president, bent but alive, building houses for the poor, teaching seminary and simply getting on with life after so many and often violent setbacks? And that, too, was Carter.