Carter, Jimmy (1924–), thirty‐ninth president of the United States.James Earl Carter Jr., was born in Plains, Georgia, the son of a conservative agribusinessman and a liberal nurse. Growing up in a prosperous but demanding family, Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1946. The high point of his naval career was service in the nuclear submarine corps under Admiral Hyman Rickover (1900–1986), who reinforced Carter's commitment to self‐discipline and efficiency. Returning to Plains following his father's death in 1953, Carter established himself as a civic leader and was elected to the Georgia State Senate in 1962. Defeat in the 1966 Democratic gubernatorial primary plunged him into a brief depression that ended with a spiritual rebirth. He won the governorship in 1970 and attracted national attention by repudiating racial
segregation in his inaugural address. Winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, he narrowly defeated the Republican Gerald
Ford by courting diverse constituencies and by emphasizing different sides of himself: farmer, fiscally conservative small businessman, nuclear engineer, and “born again”
Baptist. In the aftermath of the
Watergate scandal, he insisted on his honesty.
Carter entered the presidency with two major handicaps. First, he not only lacked experience dealing with Congress but also, viewing himself as an ethical “outsider” untainted by Washington corruption, doubted the propriety of making any deals. Second, while most congressional Democrats wanted to expand the welfare state, Carter stressed efficiency and limited government instead.
Nonetheless, Carter did record several major achievements. In keeping with his relatively conservative economic philosophy, he deregulated the airline and trucking industries and took steps to decontrol the prices of natural gas and oil. An advocate of
civil rights, he appointed many
African Americans to federal office. His campaign to protect human rights abroad, which he considered both sound national policy and a personal Christian duty, placed the issue firmly on the American agenda. At great political cost, he secured ratification of treaties returning the Canal Zone to Panama, mediated the
Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, and rejected military intervention in both the Nicaraguan civil war and the Iranian revolution.
In 1979–1980, Carter's presidency was disabled by deteriorating economic conditions, the collapse of Soviet‐American détente, and his decision to allow the exiled Shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment. The oil shortages and rising fuel prices that accompanied the Iranian revolution worsened the “stagflation” (a combination of stagnation and inflation) already afflicting the economy. Carter's unsuccessful effort in July 1979 to rally the country with an inspirational address was ridiculed as a lamentation over the nation's “malaise.” The Shah's arrival in November provoked Islamic militants to seize the U.S. embassy in Iran and take American hostages. Soviet–American relations, acrimonious from the start of Carter's term, plummeted when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 and remained there despite the sanctions Carter imposed. Similarly, neither negotiations nor an inept rescue attempt in April 1980 managed to free the Americans held hostage in Iran. Having satisfied neither liberals nor conservatives, Carter narrowly won renomination but then lost the 1980 election to Ronald
Reagan. In a final blow, Iran released the hostages hours after Carter left office.
Carter returned to Plains depressed and facing financial insecurity. He recuperated quickly by pursuing diverse activities with his customary discipline. Establishing the Carter Center at Atlanta's Emory University as his base, he continued to mediate Arab–Israeli differences, supervised foreign elections, focused attention on disease and starvation in poor and unstable nations, and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, a program to build houses for the poor. In 1994, he defused a confrontation between the United States and North Korea and helped arrange the peaceful end of Haiti's military dictatorship. Although critics still questioned his diplomatic judgment and administrative style, Carter's postpresidential years largely restored his reputation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work as a mediator and head of the Carter Centre in Atlanta. In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a mediator and as head of the Carter Center.
See also
Cold War;
Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency;
Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America;
Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with the Middle East;
Energy Crisis of the 1970s;
Panama Canal.
Bibliography
Burton I. Kaufman , The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr., 1993.
Peter Bourne , Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography from Plains to the Presidency, 1997.
Robert A. Strong , Working in the World: Jimmy Carter and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 2000.
Leo P. Ribuffo
; Updated by
Paul S. Boyer
