Carter, Biden's long friendship to be on display a final time in eulogy

Joe Biden is the consummate Washington insider. Jimmy Carter was anything but.

Yet the 46th and 39th US presidents had a decades-long friendship starting when Biden, as a young Delaware lawmaker, became the first sitting senator to endorse Carter's outsider White House bid in 1976.

Their bond will be on display one final time Thursday as Biden eulogises Carter during his state funeral at Washington National Cathedral.

It marks quite a bookend for both men. Carter and Biden each marked evolutions as the Democratic Party and the country changed over their long public lives.

Both were presidents who endured four rocky years in the Oval Office before being forced out under terms that were not their own — and handing power to larger-than-life Republican figures in the process.

“America and the world in my view lost a remarkable leader. ... He was a statesman and humanitarian. And Jill and I lost a dear friend,” Biden said hours after Carter died December 29 at the age of 100.

For Biden, the spotlight provides an opportunity not simply to praise the late president's work after leaving office but perhaps also to amplify reassessments of Carter as president.

That framing could, not so subtly, be something the 82-year-old Biden hopes for himself as he prepares to hand power over to President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.

Trump's presence at Carter's funeral intensifies the dynamics. The former and incoming president spent the 2024 campaign lampooning Biden and Carter together, playing up Republican caricatures of Carter as an incompetent steward of an inflationary economy and directing the same indictment at Biden's administration.

“Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, worse than Jimmy Carter by a long shot,” Trump would say, even using some version of the attack when former first lady Rosalynn Carter was on her deathbed in 2023 and on Carter's 100th birthday on October 1, 2024. “Jimmy Carter is happy,” Trump would say, “because he had a brilliant presidency compared to Biden.”

But some Democrats say the timing of Carter's funeral, so close to Trump's second inauguration, makes for a favourable comparison with the Republican's bellicose tone.

“When I endorsed him for president ... it was not only his policies but his character,” Biden said after Carter's death. Asked specifically what Trump could learn from Carter, the president replied: “Decency, decency, decency.”

Biden, who served 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president before winning the presidency on his third try in 2020, had not yet become a Washington careerist when he aligned with Carter. Elected senator at 29, Biden was in his first term when Carter, then Georgia governor, mounted a White House bid as a Beltway afterthought.

“He grabbed me by the arm and said, 'I need you to help me with my campaign,' and I said, 'I've only been around a couple years, Mr. Governor,'” Biden recalled. “He said, 'No, it will make a difference.'”

Biden chose Carter over powerful Senate colleagues and campaigned across the country for him during primary season and the general election campaign.

Both were moderates on fiscal issues and social issues. Both were outspoken about their religious faith — Biden the Roman Catholic, Carter the evangelical Baptist.

Their relationship, however, was not seamless once Carter won.

Both had opposed federally mandated busing to make public schools more racially diverse. Still, in 1977, Carter opposed a Biden Senate bill that would have limited courts' authority on the topic. Carter viewed it as an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers.

The young senator quipped: “Nixon had his enemies list, and President Carter has his friends list. I guess I'm on his friends list, and I don't know which is worse.”

Still, Biden was one of the Democrats who warned Carter that his liberal rival, then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, might challenge the president in the 1980 primary. When Kennedy, an Irish Catholic like Biden, did run, Biden stuck with Carter even as his fortunes lagged.

When Biden ran for president the first time ahead of 1988, Carter was busy building his post-White House Carter Center, a nonpartisan human rights organisation, and he was still a pariah for Democrats after losing to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide. Carter took private meetings with aspiring presidents but generally did not appear publicly with them.

When Biden ran a second time, he assessed Carter in a 2007 book with a calculated realism, writing that Carter's values were not enough: “That's the first time I realised that on-the-job training for a president can be a dangerous thing.”

He even took issue with the former president's religiosity: “I campaigned hard for Carter in two elections, but I thought he had a dangerous penchant for moralizing. 'You thump that Bible one more time,' I told him once, and 'you're going to lose me, too.'”

Biden's second campaign also flopped, but nominee Barack Obama tapped him for the vice presidential slot. The Obama campaign did not invite Carter to speak at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

As Biden was running for president a third time, Carter, then almost 95, threw an unintentional curveball.

“I hope there's an age limit,” Carter said with a laugh as he answered audience questions at the Carter Center in 2019. “If I was 15 years younger, I don't believe I could undertake the duties I experienced when I was president.”

Biden and his primary rival Bernie Sanders were old enough to turn 80 in the White House.

Still, Carter returned Biden's loyalty with familiar language.

“We deserve a person with integrity and judgment. Someone who is honest and fair” and a president with “experience, character and decency,” Carter said in a message taped for Biden's 2020 nominating convention.

On one of Biden's first trips as president, he and first lady Jill Biden made a side trip to Plains, Georgia, to visit Carter and his wife. Biden told reporters afterward that Carter had asked him to speak at his state funeral.

Biden ultimately did reach 80 in the White House, and widespread worry over his age drove him to end his reelection bid. As pressure mounted on Biden after a disjointed debate against Trump, the widowed Carter, more than a year into hospice care, made no public statements or private maneuvers.

Whatever Biden says Thursday, former Obama campaign architect David Axelrod noted that the outgoing president will not enjoy the same opportunities as Carter to recast his legacy.

“Jimmy Carter spent four years in Washington out of 100 years of his life,” Axelrod said. “Jimmy Carter is looked at differently (now) because he spent 44 years after losing the presidency doing extraordinary things all over the world. … Biden won't have that luxury.”