The nation’s leaders on Tuesday kicked off three days of tributes to Jimmy Carter, staging an elaborate pageant of Washington fanfare for a politician who disavowed the trappings of the imperial presidency and never gave up his humble Georgia roots.
Mr. Carter, who died last week at age 100, was flown to Washington and taken to the U.S. Navy Memorial downtown, then delivered to the Capitol by a horse-drawn caisson. He will lie in state in the Rotunda all day Wednesday before a formal state funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday.
“James Earl Carter Jr. loved our country,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a eulogy during a solemn Capitol service attended by members of Congress, the cabinet, Supreme Court and diplomatic corps. “He lived his faith, he served the people and he left the world better than he found it. And in the end, Jimmy Carter’s work and those works speak for him louder than any tribute we can offer.”
The 39th president’s flag-draped coffin was carried into the Rotunda by military bearers and placed on the same catafalque that once bore the bodies of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. All four of Mr. Carter’s children — Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy — stood nearby, as did various grandchildren and other relatives, their faces a mix of sorrow and appreciation.
During the course of the long day’s journey from Atlanta to Washington, military bands played “Hail to the Chief” no fewer than five times for a president who initially barred the song from being played at all when he was sworn in as president in January 1977. Eager to present himself as a man of the people, Mr. Carter thought playing of the song smacked of haughtiness, though he later relented when aides persuaded him of the virtues of preserving the majesty of the office.
At three of the stops on Tuesday, a 21-gun salute was fired in Mr. Carter’s honor. A series of honor guards and military bands participated in the various events. The procession to the Capitol included a riderless horse with boots backward in the stirrups, a traditional military ritual symbolizing a fallen leader reviewing his troops for the final time.
All of the pomp and circumstance was traditional for a presidential memorial, in keeping with farewells to Presidents George H.W. Bush in 2018, Gerald R. Ford in 2007 and Ronald Reagan in 2004. But they were still striking in the case of Mr. Carter, who was intent on demonstrating humility to restore faith in government after Watergate and Vietnam.
On his Inauguration Day, he surprised the crowds by jumping out of his presidential limousine with his wife, Rosalynn Carter, and daughter Amy to walk the parade route to the White House. In addition to initially getting rid of the trumpeters whenever he entered a room, Mr. Carter sold the Sequoia, the presidential yacht, and insisted on carrying his own luggage onto Air Force One when he traveled. He barred senior members of his staff from using a White House car service to and from work and turned the thermostat of the White House down to 65 degrees in his first winter there to save energy.
That frugality flavored some of the tributes offered at the Capitol on Tuesday. Speaker Mike Johnson called Mr. Carter “an extraordinary man, a man who modeled the virtues of service and citizenship as well as any other American.” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican leader, said that Mr. Carter as a man of faith “did not come to be served but to serve.”
The grace demonstrated by the Republican congressional leaders stood in contrast to the incoming president of their party, Donald J. Trump, who just a few hours earlier had criticized one of Mr. Carter’s signature achievements and accused him of selling out the United States to foreign interests.
At a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Mr. Trump excoriated Mr. Carter’s decision to transfer the Panama Canal to Panama, a move meant at the time to avoid a guerrilla war and improve relations with Latin America.
“Giving that away was a horrible thing,” Mr. Trump said. “And I believe that’s why Jimmy Carter lost the election, even more so than the hostages.” He added, “He was a very fine person. But that was a big mistake.”
The transfer of the canal was hotly disputed at the time, but ultimately ratified on a bipartisan vote in the Senate and has been considered a settled matter ever since. Mr. Trump raised it seemingly out of the blue a few days before Mr. Carter died, claiming that Panama charges too much for ships using the canal and is too beholden to China. In his comments on Tuesday, Mr. Trump would not rule out using military force to take back the canal.
It said something about how long Mr. Carter had spent on the public stage that the three leaders who eulogized him at Tuesday’s ceremony were all children when he took office. Mr. Thune was 16 when Mr. Carter was sworn in as president, while Ms. Harris was 12 and Mr. Johnson was about to turn 5. President Biden, by contrast, was already a senator when Mr. Carter ran and will eulogize him at the cathedral on Thursday.
While the Republican congressional leaders on Tuesday focused on Mr. Carter’s character, decency and post-presidential humanitarian work, Ms. Harris made a point of praising his policies while in office as well. Among them, she cited his Camp David accords, environmental initiatives, energy policies, promotion of women to public office and creation of the Departments of Energy and Education.
“I was in middle school when Jimmy Carter was elected president,” she said, “and I vividly recall how my mother admired him, how much she admired his strength of character, his honesty, his integrity, his work ethic and determination, his intelligence and his generosity of spirit.”
Mr. Carter came by his humility honestly. Even after being defeated for re-election by Ronald Reagan in 1980, he and Mrs. Carter returned to the simple ranch house that they had built in 1961 in Plains, Ga., and lived out the remaining four decades of their lives there. The four-bedroom, three-bath house is valued at $241,000 by Zillow.
While other former presidents have cashed in with six- and even seven-figure checks for speeches, cushy corporate gigs and other multimillion-dollar moneymaking ventures, Mr. Carter earned a living in large part by writing books — 32 in all — and never lived the high life that his presidential peers have.
But at some point along the way, he clearly gave in to the demands of tradition and agreed to the sort of elaborate memorial events generally associated with a head of state. Presidents are deeply involved in the planning of their funerals — in Mr. Carter’s case, he was part of the discussions for decades. He did draw the line at one idea originally in the plans. He refused to let his remains be transported back to Georgia for burial by train. Instead, he will be flown.