Jimmy Carter death: Jimmy Carter’s improbable journey from defeated one-term president to our best ex-president: Analysis [Video]

What ended up as the most consequential post-presidency in U.S. history began just as inauspiciously.

Jimmy Carter had lost his 1980 bid for reelection by ten percentage points, pulling just 41% of the popular vote versus 51% by his Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan. Shortly afterward, he discovered that the prosperous agricultural business he had built earlier in his career had been driven into the ground by a blind trust, leaving him millions in debt, adding to the $1.4 million of debt he had accrued as part of his failed reelection campaign, with no cash reserves to pay it off.

Then there was the unresolved matter of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which had crippled Carter’s presidency, leading critics to charge him with being weak and ineffectual. When Reagan succeeded him as president on Jan. 20, 1981, Carter had been awake for over two full days as he oversaw the negotiation to …