Arms Dealers, Lovers and Condemners
This past week marked the deaths of three of the 20th century’s most instrumental political figures: former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former First Lady Rosalyn Carter and former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sandra Day O’Connor.
The first passing was Rosalynn Carter’s on Nov. 19, 2023. Carter was a dedicated humanitarian who worked alongside her husband, former President Jimmy Carter. At a young age, she lost her father and began supporting her family through scattered labor jobs before she and Jimmy married in 1946.
Over the next 30 years, the couple raised four children while operating a peanut-planting enterprise inherited by Jimmy’s late father. Along with spearheading the company, Rosalynn began independently campaigning for Jimmy’s respective runs for Georgia’s Senate and governorship. Both bids were highly successful and boosted his prospects as the 1976 Democratic presidential candidate.
During the Carter administration, Rosalynn pushed for vital mental health programs, elderly care, and healthy diplomatic relations with several Latin American countries. She continued her commitment to human rights activism after founding The Carter Center with her husband in 1982, an organization “guided by a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering,” according to their website.
The Carters revealed Rosalynn’s dementia diagnosis in May 2023, shortly after her husband moved into hospice care for his own health complications. Her funeral (held in the couple’s Plains, Georgia, hometown) marked an extremely rare appearance from the 99-year-old Carter, a man dedicated to his long-lasting love for his late wife of 77 years.
Jimmy Carter would face another close loss soon after Rosalynn’s passing. Henry Kissinger died Nov. 29 at 100, leaving a polarizing legacy. Kissinger was born in 1920s Germany but fled to New York City with his Jewish family to escape Nazi persecution. He rose to academic prominence as a Harvard alumni and later as a tenured professor of government.
In 1969, Kissinger served as Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor, leading the U.S. response to the looming Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal. However, his most well-known foreign policy was ushering the People’s Republic of China into the global economy after nearly 30 years of poor relations between the U.S. and the PRC. He was soon promoted to Secretary of State under the Nixon and Ford administrations.
Even after leaving behind his government role, Kissinger remained a fervent political voice. President Joe Biden said of their first encounter, “His fierce intellect and profound strategic focus were evident. Long after retiring from government, he continued to offer his views and ideas to the most important policy discussion across multiple generations.”
Regardless, his legacy is not without criticism, to put it lightly. Since his passing, most headlines regard Kissinger as a controversial diplomat who directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths across Vietnam, Laos, East Timor, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina and Bangladesh. Rolling Stone was even so declarative to title their obituary, “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal, Dead at 100.” That sentiment may be the defining statement of Kissinger’s contentious legacy.
Just two days after Kissinger’s death, reports revealed Sandra Day O’Connor’s passing. O’Connor was a monumental judicial figure serving as the first woman on the Supreme Court of the United States.
O’Connor was born in 1930 in Texas but grew up on her family’s cattle ranch in Arizona. She returned to El Paso years later to attend an all-girls high school, where she graduated two years earlier to attend Stanford University.
After college, she struggled to find work in a male-dominated law scene but found unpaid work as a county attorney. She quickly left the position to move to Frankfurt, Germany, as a civilian attorney while her husband was stationed within the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corp. Over the following two decades, O’Connor swiftly rose in judicial ranks, ultimately leading to her Supreme Court nomination by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. She happily accepted a unanimous vote from the Senate.
O’Connor’s most substantial decision on the bench was the reaffirmation of Roe v. Wade in 1992, in which she served as the deciding “swing” vote. Her position on the bench led the path for a newly confident movement of women in politics. Thanks to her commitment to U.S. law, the Supreme Court saw five more women nominated to the bench in the 50 years since her appointment.
After four different presidential administrations, O’Connor retired to care for her ill husband. She lived to see her Roe v. Wade affirmation overturned in 2022 before succumbing to “complications related to advanced dementia,” according to the court.