WASHINGTON — Nearly 44 years after Jimmy Carter left the nation's capital in humbling defeat, the 39th president returned to Washington on Tuesday for state funeral rites that featured the kind of bipartisan praise and ceremonial pomp the Georgia Democrat rarely enjoyed at his political peak.
The military honor guards, a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue and a service in the Capitol Rotunda continued public commemorations for Carter, who died Dec. 29 at age 100. Services will continue through his state funeral Thursday at the National Cathedral, before Carter returns to his hometown of Plains, Georgia, for burial beside his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023.
As the sun set outside the Capitol, Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune — none of whom were old enough to vote in Carter's first national campaign — celebrated his faith, military service and devotion to service more than anything he did in politics.
''To be sure, his presidency was not without its challenges and international crises,'' said Harris, for whom Carter cast his final presidential ballot this fall. But she described him nonetheless as ''that all-too-rare example of a gifted man who also walks with humility, modesty and grace.''
As a presidential candidate in 1976, Harris noted, he slept in the homes of his supporters to ''share a meal with them at their table and listen to what was on their minds.''
Thune, the newly elected majority leader, ticked through Carter's legacy beyond the White House, including his hands-on contributions to rebuilding homes through Habitat For Humanity. ''First and foremost a faithful servant of his creator, and his fellow man,'' said Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who was just four years old when Carter was inaugurated, recalled his fellow Southerner as a man ''willing to roll up his own sleeves to get the work done.''
The former president was to lie in state Tuesday night and again Wednesday before his remains are moved to National Cathedral. There, President Joe Biden will eulogize Carter, his longtime ally.