'Jimmy Who?' they derisively called him when he started to run for the Presidency of the United States in 1975. 

By the time Jimmy Carter died yesterday at the age of 100 he was respectively known as St Jimmy – universally revered for his good deeds in the poorest countries in the world and for the impeccable moral probity of his character.

The paradox of James Earl Carter was that during his single term of office as the 39th President of the United States he was widely regarded as a failure. 

But as an ex-President he was universally acclaimed as a huge success. After his crushing defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 Carter turned the tables in terms of his historical and personal reputation.

Over the next 43 years he grew in stature. His record was re-evaluated. His reputation and status soared as he won the Nobel Peace Prize and became venerated as an outstanding pioneer in human rights, conflict resolution, and the eradication of severe diseases in Africa. 

In many marginalised countries and deprived communities Jimmy Carter was hailed as a hero, admired around the world for his natural rapport with the oppressed.

'I am accused of being an outsider and I plead guilty to the charge', declared candidate Carter in the early stages of his slow burning effort to win the Democratic Party's nomination for the 1976 Presidential campaign. 

It was a time when America was in turmoil, reeling from the scandals of Watergate, the shock of its first ever war defeat in Vietnam, and the growing belief that 'The Imperial Presidency' was the cause of the nation's problems.

Against this background, a homespun outsider of transparent humility and sincere religious belief caught the voters' mood of wanting political change, particularly when he promised to cut the White House and Washington down to size. 

But after Carter had narrowly defeated the incumbent President Gerald Ford, he took office with little or no understanding of how to deliver his promises let alone how to run America's domestic and foreign policy.

Carter failed as a national leader because he thought he could run the Presidency in the same personalised quirky style he had used in his single term as governor of Georgia. His top White House aides were good ol' boy cronies from his home state – but few of them were up to the job. 

He lost sight of the fact that a President must be a strategist. Carter was a workaholic micromanager who immersed himself in small print details and administration. He even insisted on personally controlling the bookings for the White House tennis court!

The power barons of Congress never quite knew what to make of Carter who came across to them as an aloof and ascetic loner. 

Even with a Democrat majority in both houses, the President declined to make friends with his supporters or cut deals with his opponents. 

So his legislative programme failed. His promises to stimulate the economy and introduce measures to solve the energy crisis never got off the ground. America felt poorer and colder, suffering from a malaise of national self-confidence.

Part of the problem was Carter's personality. To the public he was an enigma. He had no ability to make Americans feel good about themselves. 

Within the Washington Beltway his enemies saw him as vacillating and indecisive. His friends were mystified by his remoteness. Practically no-one except for his devoted wife Rosalynn – nicknamed the 'Steel Magnolia' for her inflexibility – ever enjoyed personal empathy with the 39th President. 

The chilliness was a major weakness in dealing with his fellow politicians who came to reciprocate the hostility they felt he showed them.

More troublingly, Jimmy Carter lacked the leadership skills to reach out and reassure the country beyond Washington. 

His fireside chats were devoid of warmth and his set speeches seemed stilted. His thin, reedy voice gave him, said his acerbic rival Senator Eugene McCarthy 'the eloquence of a mortician'.

Although he lacked charisma of a national communicator, Carter was authentic in his personal sincerity and private faith. 

On the campaign trail he emphasised his outsider credentials as a small Southern farmer, a Sunday school teacher and 'a born-again Christian' a term which he single-handedly made famous. 

He promised that he would never tell a lie and that he would bring honesty and integrity back into government. 

The voters believed him although his piety came in for some ridicule when he gave an interview to Playboy admitting that he had 'lusted in his heart' after other women.

In both domestic and international policy, Carter was a dedicated champion of human rights. His father, who started the family peanut farm, was an old fashioned segregationist.   

But his mother argued for the rights of her black neighbours. Their son Jimmy followed the maternal example and adopted the anti-discrimination fervour of a new liberal Southerner. 

From the White House he appointed black Cabinet officers, judges, ambassadors and senior officials on a scale undreamed of by any previous President. 

He was equally determined to ensure that women became full partners in all phases of policy making. His affirmative actions and appointments transformed the look of the US government at senior levels.

On the international stage, Carter put human rights at the forefront of his foreign policy. At the time his initiatives in this field were often derided as the empty gestures of a righteous preacher, cut off from the realpolitik of world affairs. 

But in his dogged way Carter persevered and gradually succeeded. Some years after leaving office he was asked by Presidential historian Theodore H White what he thought were his most lasting achievements? 'Emphasis on human rights', replied the ex-President. 'I printed that commitment on worldwide consciousness. It may have permanent results …' History has vindicated that judgement.

In his diplomacy Carter had one remarkable success which was entirely personal. Tireless in his quest to defuse tensions in the Middle East he organised the 1978 Camp David summit between Israel and Egypt. 

The ground breaking Accords signed there have stood the test of time. These agreements would have been impossible to achieve without the tenacity and sincerity of Jimmy Carter. 

Only he could have succeeded in corralling Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt at Camp David for thirteen days. 

Eventually he persuaded them that the honour of the American President could permit them to lay down arms against each other.

The final year of the Carter presidency was a sea of troubles. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The domestic economy deteriorated. 

Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in Iran compounded the President's difficulties, ruining his reputation with its knock-on effects of soaring oil prices, diplomatic humiliations, and a military disaster.

The President's luck ran out after 53 Americans were taken hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran by Islamic revolutionaries. 

After months of fruitless efforts to get them freed, Carter ordered their rescue by America's elite Delta Force. In giving the go ahead on April 19 1980 the President over-ruled the advice of his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, who opposed the mission because of its high risks. 

Instead Carter backed the plan of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Tragically, their Operation Eagle Claw turned out to be a fiasco. In the harsh conditions of the Iranian desert, three of the Delta Force's eight helicopters malfunctioned because of sandstorms. 

A fourth helicopter crashed into a C130 transport plane killing eight Special Forces commandos. The mission had to be aborted. No hostages were rescued.

Jimmy Carter was devastated by this failure. Three decades after the event he said the greatest regret of his Presidency was not having used his power as Commander-in Chief to send more helicopters. 

At the time he was physically and mentally shattered. Soon after giving the order to abort he went out for an early morning jog in the Rose Garden of the White House, watched by his Acting Chief of Staff Alonzo McDonald who later told me 'I have never seen a man look more utterly sad and dejected'.

But in Tehran, the hostages remained incarcerated by the Ayotollah's mobs, whose jubilant taunts provided a nightly reminder on the news bulletins of the shaming of American pride.

At home, with the election looming, domestic inflation soared to 18 per cent. Carter was severely weakened in the primaries by having to beat off a bruising challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy. 

The Republican contender, Governor Ronald Reagan won the Presidential debates by portraying himself as strong, decisive, charismatic and likable. None of these adjectives could be applied to the incumbent.

With his support draining away, the President's personal pollster, Patrick Caddell gave his boss the dire news in a private memorandum 'By and large the American people do not like Jimmy Carter' said it's final sentence 'Indeed a large segment could be said to loathe him'.

By polling day the loathing of the President turned into a landslide for Reagan. Carter lost the election by 49 Electoral College votes to 489. 

He carried only 6 States while Reagan won 45. Never had a sitting occupant of the White House been so politically trounced and so personally humiliated.

After losing office, ex-President Carter went home to his modest farmhouse in Plains. At 56 he was too young to retire so he began working as a carpenter for Habitat for Humanity. 

This Christian organisation, based just down the road from Plains, built low cost housing for the poor and for those who lost their homes in natural disasters. The sight of a former President wielding a hammer to rebuild tenement blocks in New York City or shanty towns devastated by earthquakes in Haiti caused many Americans to re-assess Carter the private citizen. 

His humility, idealism and selflessness were admired, particularly after he opened the non-profit making Carter Centre in Atlanta with the objective of ameliorating suffering and disease.

These ambitious goals were often achieved by Jimmy Carter in the decades after he left the White House. His medical programmes operated in 65 countries in the developing world. 

In Africa his campaign to eradicate the killer Guinea Worm disease was successful. His initiatives were also responsible for reducing Malaria, river blindness and Trachoma while at the same time improving nutrition among some of the worlds' poorest communities by ambitious agricultural developments. 

He was tenacious in his service to the underdogs of humanity.

In the course of his global travels, Jimmy Carter became heavily involved in conflict resolution. He and his Centre developed an impressive record of helping to resolve conflicts in Haiti, Bosnia, Sudan, Uganda and other countries. 

In North Korea, Carter undertook a secret peace mission to Kim Il-sung which achieved a nuclear freeze in the region for several years. In 2002 the ex-President was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advancing democracy, human rights and peaceful solutions in several of the world's most difficult countries.

The cause that engaged him most passionately was the plight of the Palestinian people, whose sufferings he described as 'one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth'. 

After one visit to the West Bank he stopped off in London to address an audience of Parliamentarians in Westminster. Embarrassingly only five or six MPs showed up of which I was one. 

The former leader of the free world seemed quite unfazed by the low turnout. His modesty and self-effacement made his mastery of detail on the complex Arab-Israeli dispute seem all the more impressive.

At the end of the meeting I asked the ex-President where he was travelling to next. 'Back to Plains' he said 'I don't like to miss teaching Sunday School at our church. And I don't like to be away from Rosalynn for too long'.

It was a reminder that the quintessence of Jimmy Carter was his commitment to faith and family values. 

A transparently good and decent man he did more to make the world a better place after losing the Presidency than he did while in office. 

It was a paradox that his achievements were greater when he was vulnerable than when he was powerful. 

Perhaps his strength was that he remained faithful to his Christian ideals at all stages, high and low, of his life's journey. He would not be disappointed with such an epitaph.