One need not overstate the claims of Jimmy Carter’s supposed post-presidential saintliness or understate the failures of his presidency to recognize three of his signal achievements.

Democrats customarily are heavy regulators, but Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at age 100, deregulated the air, truck, and rail industries very much to the public’s benefit. Carter also deserves at least backhanded credit for appointing inflation-fighter Paul Volcker to lead the Federal Reserve and then not fighting Volcker’s bitter but necessary medicine. And even in retrospect, the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt are among the most stunning diplomatic triumphs of the modern world.