I mourn Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100. I do.

But there is more to mourn than him. I mourn a South — an America — that claimed at least to value the qualities of a Jimmy Carter.

He was smart and humble, simple yet successful, dedicated to Rosalynn, his wife of 77 years, and their family. He was committed to his faith. To faith in a God he saw as loving, faith in a people he saw as worthy, faith in America’s promise of equality for all.

He was resolute, like a real-life Atticus Finch who went about the business of following his conscience even when he knew he couldn’t win. He was knocked down as president, humiliated when his own region abandoned him in 1980 in favor of a California actor. He was a military man, a U.S. Naval Academy grad and a submariner.

His were qualities I was brought up to admire, to emulate. They seem quaint now, archaic even.

I worry today that those qualities died with him. For America today values tricks over truth, bravado over bravery, conflict over conscience and decadence over decency.

It measures success by wins and losses and gotcha moments. I don’t know if Jimmy Carter feared the same thing. I do know it didn’t stop him from being, well, Jimmy Carter.

And that man lived with a depth and breadth today’s politicians will never match.

It is said often that Carter was a better ex-president than he was a president, and it’s true. Not because he was a bad president — timing is everything and inflation is political poison — but because he was extraordinary in the decades after, working on things big and small to make the world a better place.

This is a guy who traveled the world to ensure the rights of men and women, no matter what they looked like, no matter who they worshiped or loved. And this is a guy who taught Sunday school at his Baptist church in Plains, his hometown of fewer than 600 in Georgia. He was a man who stood for world peace on the biggest of all stages, and one who relentlessly hammered nails to build Habitat for Humanity homes.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 22 years after he left office, cited for “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

He simply did not stop doing good. He never stopped trying to do better.

Carter was easy to ridicule in his political prime. He was a peanut farmer from the rural South with buck teeth, a Southern drawl and a bubba brother who sold beer. He was old-school even then, lampooned when he admitted his regret for the sin of lusting in his heart. That’s hard to fathom today, in a world where even sex crimes aren’t always political deal breakers.

It is also said in the South that Carter was too nice, or too honest, or simply too decent to be a good president. If that is true, it is our fault, not his.

For there has to be room in America for kindness, and decency, and loyalty to faith and ethics and family. There is room in this country, still, for peace and equality and hope for humankind.

If there is not, there is no room for the American dream.

I mourn Jimmy Carter. I mourn who he was and what he represents. The world had him for 100 years, and it wasn’t enough.

Still, I can’t help but think it was in 1977, the year Carter was inaugurated as the 39th president of the United States, that Billy Joel sang to us that “Only the Good Die Young.”

Thank God he was wrong.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner.