The nation’s five living presidents gathered to honor former President Jimmy Carter in a pomp-filled funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral, a moment of solemn respite from the capital city’s political tensions and preparations for a new administration.
Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at age 100, outlived most of the cabinet officials and members of Congress who served while he was president in the late 1970s. One exception was President Biden, who as a young senator was early to endorse Carter’s 1976 campaign for the White House.
Speaking before Carter’s flag-draped casket on Thursday, Biden and others who eulogized the 39th president remembered him as a devoted evangelical Christian and longtime Sunday school teacher who sought to restore integrity to government after the Watergate scandal left Americans disillusioned about their leaders.
Biden said strength of character was Carter’s “enduring attribute.” A Navy officer and a peanut farmer from small-town Georgia, Carter “came from a house without running water or electricity and rose to the pinnacle of power,” but “never let titles and politics deter him from his mission to serve and shape the world,” Biden said.
Former President Gerald Ford addressed Carter in a eulogy written before Ford’s death in 2006 that was read by his son, Steven. Ford, who lost the presidency to Carter in 1976, said the former adversaries became friends on a long flight in 1981 after both had known electoral defeat.
“Jimmy, I’m looking forward to our reunion,” Ford said in his eulogy. “We have much to catch up on.”
The moments before the service brought political rivals together. President-elect Donald Trump elicited a laugh from former President Barack Obama during an animated chat. Trump also shook hands with his former vice president, Mike Pence, who became an adversary after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and ran against Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also attended, as did other former first ladies except for Michelle Obama.
Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy adviser, spoke of Carter’s political leadership, which had been tarnished by events including the crisis in which Iran held more than 50 Americans hostage for the last quarter of his presidency. He said Carter restored integrity to government after the Watergate scandal and praised the lasting peace he negotiated between Israel and Egypt.
“He may not be a candidate for Mount Rushmore, but he belongs in the foothills,” Eizenstat said.
Performers at the service included country stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, friends from their work with Carter for the housing group Habitat for Humanity.
After the funeral, Carter’s remains were to be flown to Georgia for a private service and burial in the town of Plains, where he was born and farmed peanuts, and where he lived during his post-presidential years. He will be buried next to his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, who died in 2023.
James Earl Carter Jr. was a one-term Georgia governor with little national profile when he won the Democratic nomination for president and defeated the Republican President Ford to win the presidency.
The clashing Washington traditions of the pomp and ceremony of a state funeral with the tumultuous preparations for a new administration highlighted sharp differences between Carter and Trump, who returns to office on Jan. 20. Both arrived in Washington as political outsiders at odds with their parties, and took office in periods of disillusion with government.
Trump arrived in Washington on Wednesday ahead of the funeral to meet with Senate Republicans to chart an agenda that in many ways would reverse the work of Carter and Biden, both Democrats. Trump’s second-term goals include eliminating the Education Department, established with Carter’s signature in 1979, and retaking control of the Panama Canal, given to Panama in a 1977 treaty Carter negotiated.
On Tuesday, as Carter’s remains arrived in Washington after lying in repose in his home state of Georgia, Trump called the treaty “a terrible thing to do” and declined to rule out using economic or military force to take over the canal.
Trump issued a gracious statement after Carter died, but later complained that flags would still fly at half-staff during his Jan. 20 inauguration. “Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it,” Trump wrote on social media.
Another longtime Trump rival, departing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, also attended the funeral. Since Trump’s election in November, he has needled Trudeau by saying Canada would gain lower taxes and greater national security if it became part of the U.S., mocking the country as the 51st state and Trudeau its governor. Now, Trudeau is likely to be succeeded as prime minister by a populist lawmaker with a Trump-like pugilistic style.
Carter has been praised as the only U.S. Naval Academy graduate to serve in the Oval Office and for postpresidential work, which included monitoring more than 100 foreign elections and efforts to eradicate diseases such as Guinea worm. In 2002, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work helping resolve international conflicts and promoting human rights.
Carter attempted to restore faith in government after Watergate by breaking many of its traditions. To counter the image of an imperial presidency, he refused for a time to allow “Hail to the Chief” to be played when he entered a room. He moved to kill a set of water projects to fulfill a promise to stop wasteful spending. It provoked outrage from lawmakers in affected districts and soured relations with Congress. A fight over strategy in passing healthcare legislation helped to prompt Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts to mount a primary campaign against Carter in 1980, which weakened him ahead of his eventual loss that year to Ronald Reagan.
Carter’s state funeral has been a six-day event filled with pomp and protocol. Earlier this week, his flag-draped casket was carried to the U.S. Capitol by a horse-drawn caisson along Pennsylvania Avenue, where crowds had once cheered him as he traveled to the White House for his presidential inauguration.
Thousands braved freezing temperatures on Wednesday to line up at the Capitol and pay their respects to Carter. To Mark Miller, 60, of Fredericksburg, Va., the moment was a reminder of a more respectful era of politics.
“Democrats and Republicans did not dare call each other ‘un-American,’” said Miller, who relayed that he has visited every president who has lain in state during Miller’s three decades working in Washington.
“I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning,” Miller said. “But I still haven’t missed one.”
Cary Caldwell said she disagreed with many of Carter’s policies while he was in office, but she admired his efforts to promote humanitarian causes both during and after his presidency. “As a human being, he was a wonderful person,” said Caldwell, 74, who lives in Washington.
After observing Carter’s coffin, Caldwell wrote her thoughts in a condolence book on her way out of the Capitol: “A life well lived, if ever there was one.”
