Former US President Jimmy Carter takes questions from the media during a news conference about his recent cancer diagnosis and treatment plans, at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia August 20, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

The news that former US president Jimmy Carter's cancer has spread to his brain is saddening. Even as a political appointee in the Carter administration, I cannot say he was a great president but he certainly is one of our most exemplary former presidents. By fully disclosing his condition he continues to lead by example, as he has done before.

Carter had a number of success stories on the domestic front: the creation of Cabinet-level federal departments of education and energy, and the installation of solar panels in the White House during the energy crisis to set an example. But during his term, there was widespread domestic malaise, too: inflation rose to 13.5 percent and the prime lending rate to 20 percent.

On the international front, he led the Camp David discussions which culminated in a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, an event as astounding as former president Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. And in an act of great political courage, he returned the Panama Canal to Panama, thereby erasing one large vestige of 19th century American gunboat diplomacy.

But he was unable to get Congress to ratify the SALT II arms limitation treaty. Worst, the Iranian hostage crisis ended in the bungled rescue attempt called Operation Eagle Claw, in which eight Americans were killed. The hostages were released by Iran only in the first minutes after Ronald Reagan assumed office as president. I believe that had the rescue been successful, Carter could have been re-elected.

But to me, Carter's crowning achievement was shepherding to reality a new era of Sino-American relations. It must be remembered that while Nixon and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger opened the door, it was Carter and his national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski who steered the implementation of full diplomatic relations.