Jimmy Carter

CARTER, JAMES EARL, JR.

As the 39th president of the United States,
Jimmy Carter represented a historical change in
national politics. He was the first modern president to be elected from the Deep South. Following a successful career in Georgia—where he was a peanut farmer, state senator, and then governor—Carter entered the White House in January 1977 as a political outsider at a time of
distrust in elected officials. His Baptist upbringing
guided him in his vision of the office as a
post to be used for the nation’s moral leadership.
However, his presidency was one of only limited
success in both its domestic and international
endeavors, and voters rejected him for a second
term in 1980 by electing RONALD REAGAN in a
landslide that marked a new era of Republican
control of the EXECUTIVE BRANCH. After leaving Washington, D.C., Carter began a revitalized public life as a prominent HUMAN RIGHTS
activist and diplomat, addressing problems of
war, famine, and repression around the globe.
The small farming town of Plains, Georgia,
was Carter’s birthplace on October 1, 1924.
James Earl Carter Sr., a veteran of WORLD WAR I,
farmed cotton and had a general store. He was
conservative, strict, and a firm believer in his
son, whom he nicknamed “Hot,” for Hotshot—
because, Carter said, “Daddy never assumed I
would fail at anything.” Lillian Gordy Carter was
a registered nurse. As devout Baptists, the parents
expected much from Carter and their three
other children. Religion meant steadfastness and
a call to charity, as Carter’s mother demonstrated
by caring for patients without charge.
Archery, their community, was predominantly
African American. The young Carter worked
and played with his black neighbors and, like
them, lived without household plumbing or
electricity. The experience, along with the
virtues of hard work, frugality, and aspiration
taught by his parents, shaped the politician he
later became. After graduating at the top of his
high school class, Carter paid for college with
money he had earned and invested by selling
peanuts as a boy.
Carter’s ambition was naval service. Preparing
to enter the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis,
Maryland, he studied mathematics at
Georgia Southwestern College and then the
Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1943, he
entered Annapolis; he graduated in the top tenth
of his class with a bachelor of sciences degree.
Soon he married a long-time acquaintance, Rosalynn
Smith, and began in earnest to pursue his
career in the U.S.Navy.He worked as an instructor,
saw battleship and submarine duty, and ultimately
qualified as a sub commander. He served
as senior officer aboard the Sea Wolf, the navy’s
second atomic submarine. He left the service in
1953 after attaining the rank of lieutenant.
The decision to walk away from a promising
career came when Carter faced a personal crossroads.
His father had died, leaving a powerful
legacy: the one-time cotton farmer had become
a successful warehouse operator, peanut seed
seller, and, finally,member of the Georgia House
of Representatives. Carter now followed his
father’s example in business and politics. In his
first year as a peanut farmer, he scratched out an
income of $200, yet soon the business flourished.
Success in political life took longer. Carter
quickly became active in civic affairs. He
opposed SEGREGATION, scorned the local White
Citizen’s Council, and tried to integrate his
church. In the 1950s South, such views spelled
trouble.When he ran for the Democratic nomination
for the state senate in 1962 his opponents
stuffed ballot boxes to defeat him. Only after a
long legal fight did a court invalidate the nomination
because of FRAUD and turn it over to
Carter. He won the election.
State politics established Carter nationally.
In two terms as a state senator, from 1962 to
1966, his political philosophy was traditionally
liberal yet also bore the mark of a technocrat:
he advocated CIVIL RIGHTS, WELFARE, and open
government, while insisting on careful budgeting
to ensure fiscal responsibility. In 1966, his
first run for the governor’s office failed but he
won the election in 1971. Representing broad
political and social changes shaping the region,
Carter’s governorship helped shake Georgia out
of its segregationist past; he appointed African
Americans to state government and fostered
biracial cooperation through citizens groups.
As an administrator he specialized in micromanagement,
ordering frequent, strict review
of all publicly funded programs. By 1974 Carter
was rising within the national DEMOCRATIC
PARTY. His exposure grew as he served as chairman
of its campaign committee, and, fulfilling
an ambition that began with his election as
governor, announced his candidacy for president.
Carter’s campaign message was integrity.
The United States had just suffered through the
VIETNAM WAR and the WATERGATE scandal, producing
widespread cynicism concerning elected
officials. Carter’s opponent, GERALD R. FORD,
had pardoned Nixon, the man behind Watergate.
Carter positioned himself as an honest,
openly religious man beyond the political
intrigues of Washington. The peanut-farmerturned-
governor seemed to promise a new voice
in government and a new set of ideals. At the
start of the campaign voters responded eagerly:
Carter and his running mate,Walter F.Mondale,
led the incumbent, Gerald Ford, and his running
mate, BOB DOLE, by 30 percentage points. By
election day, however, the race was a dead heat.
Carter won by the smallest margin since the first
World War—57 ELECTORAL COLLEGE votes. The
new president walked along Pennsylvania
Avenue in his inaugural parade, making a symbolic
gesture that would be repeated in the thoroughly
populist trappings of the Carter White
House—fireside chats and radio call-in shows,
simple furnishings, and fewer limousines. “We
must adjust to changing times,” he said in his
inaugural speech, “and still hold to unchanging
principles.”
Carter’s domestic policies focused on civil
rights, welfare, tax reform, and budgetary control.
Almost immediately, however, two major
domestic concerns began to dictate his agenda.
One was the nation’s energy supply. In the late
1970s a severe energy crisis produced the worst
fuel shortage in U.S. history coupled with rising
international prices for oil. Congress cooperated
with Carter’s remedies by approving fuel conservation
policies, deregulating natural gas prices,
and passing a windfall tax on oil company profits.
He did not get everything he wanted: a federal
court blocked his attempt to decontrol
domestic oil prices and Congress denied him
authority for gasoline rationing. The second
major problem was the economy, which worsened
over the course of his term. His efforts to
fight inflation—especially controls on consumer
credit—produced a recession. Voters grew disgruntled.
His approval rating fell and a July 1979
speech in which he blamed the nation’s problems
on a spiritual “malaise” was disastrous:
afterward, a New York Times poll showed that for
the first time ever, U.S. citizens, who traditionally
had responded 2–1 that they were optimistic
about the future, now said nearly 2–1 that they
were pessimistic.
Foreign policy gave Carter triumphs and
failures. He made human rights a top priority in
the relationships between the United States and
foreign nations, directing SECRETARY OF STATE
Cyrus R. Vance to set a new standard: social and
economic rights were to be as important as
political and civil rights. Liberals praised the
policy; conservatives attacked it as muddled and
inconsistently applied. Critics were divided over
a controversial treaty with Panama to relinquish
control of the Panama Canal by 2000, a move
the U.S. Senate barely approved. Carter’s indisputable
triumph was a peace treaty he secured
between long-time enemies Israel and Egypt.
But he took much of the blame for a seizure of
the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian militants
in November 1979. A military rescue mission in
1980 failed and the 52 U.S. hostages were
released only after Carter left office.
Further weakening the presidency were
scandals within the administration. Andrew
Young, his ambassador to the UNITED NATIONS,
resigned amid revelations that he had secretly
met members of the Palestine Liberation Organization,
in violation of U.S. policy. Bert Lance,
director of the OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND
BUDGET, also resigned in disgrace; he was
charged with unethical conduct in his former
banking career. And Carter’s brother, Billy
Carter, caused the president embarrassment.
Often seen as a comical figure who had cashed in on Carter’s fame by lending his name to a
drink called “Billy Beer,” Billy was revealed to
have conducted business with Libya, an enemy
nation. A Senate subcommittee report on the
incident blamed Carter for not reining in his
brother.
By late 1980, Carter had the lowest approval
rating of any U.S. president in modern history.
Even after an extensive cabinet shake-up, his
administration was in disarray. Critics lambasted
his policies and, particularly, his methods:
he was considered to be too mired in details
to execute bold decisions. Editorial cartoonists
frequently lampooned him as either a country
bumpkin or a hapless, childlike figure, echoing
the prevailing sentiment that Carter was incapable
of running the country. To make matters
worse the Democratic Party effectively deserted
him. Senator EDWARD M. KENNEDY (D-Mass.)
nearly captured the party’s presidential nomination
and his supporters gained control of the
party’s platform over Carter’s objections.
Republicans sensed a bloodbath, and they got it
in Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory.
Typical of the post-Carter-era assessments
was that of historian Burton I. Kaufman, whose
1993 book, The Presidency of James Earl Carter,
scathingly judged Carter as “lacking in leadership,
ineffective in dealing with Congress, incapable
of defending America’s honor abroad, and
uncertain about its purpose, priorities and sense
of direction.” Carter’s defenders have largely
chosen to blame his 1980 loss on intractable
national problems that he did not create as well
as on the overwhelming popularity of his opponent.“
He didn’t have the charisma of a Reagan,”
THOMAS P. “TIP” O’NEILL JR., former Democratic
Speaker of the House, observed. “He couldn’t
pull it off.” Some inside observers saw Carter’s
presidency as less a failure than a poor match of
his abilities. The author Hendrik Hertzberg, a
former Carter speechwriter, argued, “He was,
and is, more of a moral leader than a political
leader.”
Although Carter’s return to Georgia after his
1980 defeat might have been ignominious, it
proved otherwise. After his departure from
Washington, Carter immersed himself in scholarly
and humanitarian pursuits. He worked at
Emory University as a professor and later as a
visiting lecturer. In conjunction with Emory he
established the Carter Center which is a nonprofit
organization dedicated to advocating for
human rights, conflict resolution, and the
enhancement of democracy, along with the creation
of initiatives to improve health.
Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are particularly
committed to providing housing for those
who are in need, both in the United States and
abroad. They work closely with the nonprofit
group Habitat for Humanity, and they established
the Jimmy Carter Work Project, which has
built homes in the United States as well as in the
Philippines, South Korea, and South Africa.
“This is the kind of thing I enjoy doing. The
alternative is to loaf around the house and spend
my time playing golf or fishing,” Carter told a Canadian newsweekly.
Always the diplomat, Carter remained a
force in world affairs with human rights as his
focal point. He monitored elections in Central
America; negotiated further peace in the Middle
East; supervised inoculation programs for
children in Africa and elsewhere; and traveled
on diplomatic missions to North Korea,
Bosnia, Haiti, and the Sudan. In 1999, President
BILL CLINTON presented Carter and former
first lady Rosalynn Carter with the nation’s
highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal
of Freedom.
Traveling as a private citizen, Carter visited
Cuba in May 2002 and met with President Fidel
Castro. Carter, who had voiced his opposition to
the continuing embargo of Cuba by the United
States, expressed his interest in meeting with
religious groups and human rights activists. His
efforts to mend relations with Cuba did not prevent
Carter from criticizing Cuba’s communist
system. He openly promoted the Valera Project,
a reform movement proposed by Cuban dissidents
calling for social change and such basic
rights as free speech.
Carter also continues to be a prolific author.
While teaching at Emory, he wrote several books
whose topics ranged from politics to poetry. In
2001, Carter published a well-received autobiography
titled An Hour Before Daylight: Memories
of a Rural Boyhood, which was nominated for
the Pulitzer Prize.With the release of his historical
novel The Hornet’s Nest, in 2003, Carter
became the first president to publish a work of
fiction.
In December 2002, Carter was presented
with the Nobel Peace Prize. The selection committee
noted Carter’s tireless efforts to help
bring about the 1979 Camp David peace accord
between Israel and Egypt as well as his consistent
attempts to mediate and ameliorate international
problems. In his acceptance speech,
Carter explained that he has come to see the
concept of peace as one that embraces the need
for shelter, food, HEALTH CARE, and the opportunity
for economic development.
FURTHER READINGS
The Carter Center. Available online at (accessed June 17, 2003).
“Jimmy Carter Says Adios to Cuba.” May 17, 2002.
CBSnew.com:World.Available online at
(accessed June 17, 2003).
Jimmy Carter Work Project. Available online at (accessed June 17, 2003).