It sounds like the plot of an adventure film — an elite, trained military unit is sent on a mission that’s intricate, critical and dangerous. But the story was real.

Long before he was president of the United States, Jimmy Carter was one of the heroes of this particular operation, one that called for smarts, bravery and a kind of manhood, one far different from the puffed-up, MMA, “your body, my choice” version so much on display these days.

Masculinity of a certain type does seem to be all the rage, with an emphasis on the rage.

As a new, or slightly used, president prepares to take the oath of office with the half of the country who didn’t vote for him hoping he means it this time, most of the nation and much of the world mourns the death of a past president whose reputation continues to grow.

This isn’t a column about politics, exactly. History is already being written and argued over when it comes to Carter’s presidency. It’s about character, and what people mean when they say of a person: “He was a real man.”

Devotion over domination

It’s a confusing time to evaluate just how to define masculinity, when “Me Too” seems so passé, when a federal appeals court upholds a jury’s finding in a civil case that President-elect Donald Trump sexually abused a woman in the 1990s, when tech billionaires in the so-called “broligarchy” who loom over every decision by the incoming administration view belligerence as virtue — being “based,” they call it — not recognizing how ridiculous a grown man looks when he wears such an unserious label with pride.

Then there was Carter, who said Rosalynn saying “yes” was the most “exciting” thing that ever happened in his life. The couple shared 77 years of marriage and a life — for better and for worse, in sickness and in health — until her death in 2023.

For a prospective partner, that devotion, as opposed to domination, is desired, not derided as soft.

When Carter’s father died, he did what the man of the family is traditionally supposed to do: return home — to Plains, Ga., in his case — to take over the family business. And he never got nor seemed to want bathrooms with chandeliers or buildings stamped with his name as a measure of making it.

That’s called taking responsibility, something weak men never do when there’s someone else to do the dirty work or shoulder the blame.

Of course, Jimmy Carter wanted to be powerful and in charge — name me any politician who doesn’t crave those things. Humility isn’t a hallmark of anyone who wants to be leader of the free world. However, President Carter did put that family peanut farm and warehouse into a blind trust to avoid legal and ethical concerns. He also released his tax returns, a convention the public hardly expects nowadays.

While some are always searching for that loophole, following tradition because it’s the right thing to do is certainly the more difficult, as well as “manly,” choice.

Faith in action

Sense of duty must have played a part during that dangerous mission, when a young Navy officer and the rest of the team were lowered into a partially melted-down nuclear reactor in order to repair it, as recounted in the publication The War Zone. Though an integral part of the Navy’s pioneering nuclear submarine program, chosen by future Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, Carter never viewed the exercise, which exposed the men to high levels of radiation, as routine.

The false frame of a backward Southerner, not a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, stuck to Carter, who was the butt of too many jokes and the recipient of too little respect. Even those who admired his work once he left the White House seldom used the word “tough” to describe him.

Maybe we’ve just defined it the wrong way.

A real man can cry when he sees children living halfway across the world suffering from diseases few know about. Vowing, through the work of the Carter Center, his global health and human rights organization in Atlanta, to do everything in his power to eradicate what’s causing the pain is just one promise kept that earned Carter the Nobel Peace Prize, although I doubt the honor was his incentive.

That was faith in action. Carter talked about Christianity in a way the Jesus of the Bible would recognize, yet was strong enough in his own beliefs to resist foisting them on others, a task too many of today’s vocal Christian nationalists seem only too eager to undertake.

Authenticity on display

Carter owned up to mistakes, including a personal past that pushed racial justice to the side in pursuit of electoral success, a decision that allowed him to become governor of Georgia in his second try.

In a personal evolution, he nurtured a close relationship with Martin Luther King Sr. (the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s father) and sought out an integrated church home. As governor and president, Carter gathered a diverse team and appointed Patricia Roberts Harris as the first African American woman to serve in a U.S. presidential Cabinet. “Jimmy Carter became president and was determined to draw on the talent of all of the people, not just some of them,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Believing this country’s diversity to be a positive is not exactly a sentiment you’d hear about from, say, John Wayne, the kind of take-charge big guy for whom Americans have always shown a certain affection despite the fact that he carried his guns not in war but in the movies. When I see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. baring his chest in videos or Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin challenging a Teamster to a fight when he’s supposed to be doing the people’s business, it’s the opposite of “manliness” on display, no matter how much they flex their real or imaginary muscles.

Jimmy Carter was authentic, a real man and a good one.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call “Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis” podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.