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Jimmy Carter | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 1977 | |
| 39th President of the United States | |
| In office January 20, 1977 – January 20, 1981 | |
| Vice President | Walter Mondale |
| Preceded by | Gerald Ford |
| Succeeded by | Ronald Reagan |
| 76th Governor of Georgia | |
| In office January 12, 1971 – January 14, 1975 | |
| Lieutenant | Lester Maddox |
| Preceded by | Lester Maddox |
| Succeeded by | George Busbee |
| Member of the Georgia State Senate from the 14th district | |
| In office January 14, 1963 – January 9, 1967 | |
| Preceded by | James M. Dykes |
| Succeeded by | Hugh Carter |
| Personal details | |
| Born | James Earl Carter Jr. October 1, 1924 Plains, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | December 29, 2024 (aged 100) Plains, Georgia, U.S. |
| Resting place | Jimmy Carter House, Plains |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4, including Jack and Amy |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | Carter family |
| Education | United States Naval Academy (BS) |
| Occupation |
|
| Civilian awards | Full list |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Branch/service | United States Navy |
| Years of service |
|
| Rank | Lieutenant |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Military awards | |
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Jimmy Carter (born October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia, U.S.—died December 29, 2024, Plains, Georgia) was the 39th president of the United States (1977–81), who served as the country’s chief executive during a time of serious problems at home and abroad. His perceived inability to deal successfully with those problems led to an overwhelming defeat in his bid for reelection. However, for his work in diplomacy and advocacy, both during and after his presidency, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002.
Early life and political career
The son of Earl Carter, a peanut warehouser who had served in the Georgia state legislature, and Lillian Gordy Carter, a registered nurse who went to India as a Peace Corps volunteer at age 68, Carter attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology before graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1946. After marrying Rosalynn Smith (Rosalynn Carter)—who came from Carter’s small hometown, Plains, Georgia—he embarked on a seven-year career in the U.S. Navy, serving submarine duty for five years. He was preparing to become an engineering officer for the submarine Seawolf in 1953 when his father died. Carter resigned his commission and returned to Georgia to manage the family peanut farm operations.
Beginning his political career by serving on the local board of education, Carter won election as a Democrat to the Georgia state senate in 1962 and was reelected in 1964. In 1966 he failed in a bid for the governorship and, depressed by this experience, found solace in Evangelical Christianity, becoming a born-again Baptist.
Prior to running again for governor and winning in 1970, Carter at least tacitly adhered to a segregationist approach. However, in his inaugural address he announced that “the time for racial discrimination is over” and proceeded to open Georgia’s government offices to Blacks—and to women. As governor, he reorganized the existing maze of state agencies and consolidated them into larger units while introducing stricter budgeting procedures for them. In the process he came to national attention, finding his way onto the cover of Time magazine as a symbol of both good government and the “New South.”
In 1974, just before his term as governor ended, Carter announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. Although lacking a national political base or major backing, he managed through tireless and systematic campaigning to assemble a broad constituency. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, which had raised widespread concern about the power of the presidency and the integrity of the executive branch, Carter styled himself as an outsider to Washington, D.C., a man of strong principles who could restore the faith of the American people in their leaders. Ironically, Carter’s moral stance and candor caused a small stir when, during the campaign, he admitted in an interview with Playboy magazine that he had “committed adultery in [his] heart many times.”
Winning the Democratic nomination in July 1976, Carter chose the liberal Sen. Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate. Carter’s opponent was the unelected incumbent Republican president, Gerald R. Ford, who had come into office in 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate. Many believed that the close race tipped in Carter’s favor after Ford stumbled in a televised debate by saying that eastern Europe was not dominated by the Soviet Union. In November 1976 the Carter-Mondale ticket won the election, capturing 51 percent of the popular vote and garnering 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 240.
At a glance: the Carter presidency
Presidency of Jimmy Carter
Beginning with his inaugural walk with Rosalynn down Pennsylvania Avenue, Carter tried to reinforce his image as a man of the people. In his inaugural address Carter also reflected this approach, saying:
You have given me a great responsibility—to stay close to you, to be worthy of you, and to exemplify what you are. Let us create together a new national spirit of unity and trust. Your strength can compensate for my weakness, and your wisdom can help to minimize my mistakes.
He adopted an informal style of dress and speech in public appearances, held frequent press conferences, and reduced the pomp of the presidency. Early on in his administration, Carter introduced a dizzying array of ambitious programs for social, administrative, and economic reform. Most of those programs, however, met with opposition in Congress despite the Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. On one hand, Congress, in the post-Watergate environment, was more willing to challenge the executive branch; on the other, Carter the populist was quick to criticize Congress and to take his agenda to the American people. In either case, Carter’s difficulties with Congress undermined the success of his administration, and by 1978 his initial popularity had dissipated in the face of his inability to convert his ideas into legislative realities.
Two scandals also damaged Carter’s credibility. In summer 1977 Bert Lance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and one of Carter’s closest friends, was accused of financial improprieties as a Georgia banker. When Carter stood by Lance (whom he eventually asked to resign and who later was acquitted of all charges), many questioned the president’s vaunted scruples. Carter’s image suffered again—though less—in summer 1980 when his younger brother, Billy (widely perceived as a buffoon), was accused of acting as an influence peddler for the Libyan government of Muammar al-Qaddafi. Senate investigators concluded that, while Billy had acted improperly, he had no real influence on the president.
Read President Carter’s Britannica essay on the Camp David Accords.
In foreign affairs, Carter received accolades for championing international human rights, though his critics charged that his vision of the world was naive. Carter’s idealism notwithstanding, his major achievements were on the more pragmatic level of patient diplomacy. In 1977 he obtained two treaties between the United States and Panama that gave the latter control over the Panama Canal at the end of 1999 and guaranteed the neutrality of that waterway thereafter. In 1978 Carter brought together Egyptian Pres. Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, and secured their agreement to the Camp David Accords, which ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries since Israel’s founding in 1948. The difficult negotiations—which lasted 13 days and were salvaged only by Carter’s tenacious intervention—provided for the establishment of full diplomatic and economic relations on condition that Israel return the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. On January 1, 1979, Carter established full diplomatic relations between the United States and China and simultaneously broke official ties with Taiwan. Also in 1979, in Vienna, Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a new bilateral strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT II) intended to establish parity in strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems between the two superpowers on terms that could be adequately verified. Carter removed the treaty from consideration by the Senate in January 1980, however, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. He also placed an embargo on the shipment of American grain to the Soviet Union and pressed for a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics due to be held in Moscow.
Carter’s substantial foreign policy successes were overshadowed by a serious crisis in foreign affairs and by a groundswell of popular discontent over his economic policies. On November 4, 1979, a mob of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehrān and took the diplomatic staff there hostage. Their actions, in response to the arrival of the deposed shah (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi) in the United States for medical treatment, were sanctioned by Iran’s revolutionary government, led by Shiʿi cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
A standoff developed between the United States and Iran over the issue of the captive diplomats (see Iran hostage crisis). Carter responded by trying to negotiate the hostages’ release while avoiding a direct confrontation with the Iranian government, but, as the crisis wore on (documented nightly on American television by a special news program that would become the influential Nightline), his inability to obtain the release of the hostages became a major political liability. The failure of a secret U.S. military mission to rescue the hostages (which ended almost before it began with a crash in the desert of a plane and helicopter) in April 1980 seemed to typify the inefficacy and misfortune of the Carter administration.
On the home front, Carter’s management of the economy aroused widespread concern. The inflation rate climbed higher each year he was in office, rising from 6 percent in 1976 to more than 12 percent by 1980; unemployment remained high at 7.5 percent; and volatile interest rates reached a high of 20 percent or more twice during 1980. Both business leaders and the public at large blamed Carter for the nation’s economic woes, charging that the president lacked a coherent strategy for taming inflation without causing a painful increase in unemployment.
The faltering economy was partly due to the energy crisis that had originated in the early 1970s as a result of the country’s overdependence on foreign oil. In 1977 the president, whose mistrust of special interest groups such as the oil companies was well known, proposed an energy program that included an oil tax, conservation, and the use of alternative sources of energy. The House supported the program but the Senate quashed it. Moreover, one of those alternative sources, nuclear power, seemed much less viable after the disastrous meltdown of the core reactor at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in March 1979.
In July 1979 Carter canceled a major policy speech and instead met with a wide cross section of American leaders at Camp David. In the nationally televised speech that followed that meeting, Carter spoke of a “crisis of spirit” in the country, but most Americans were ultimately no more interested in rising to the challenge of a national “malaise” than they were in Carter’s suggestion that they needed to lower some of their expectations. Still, Carter was able to fend off the challenge of Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980. However, the public’s confidence in Carter’s executive abilities had fallen to an irretrievable low. Above all else, he was generally seen as indecisive.
In the election held that November, Carter was overwhelmingly defeated by the Republican nominee, a former actor and governor of California, Ronald W. Reagan, who pointed to what he called Carter’s “misery index”—the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate, whose sum was over 20—and asked two poignant questions that the public took to heart: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” and “Is America as respected throughout the world?” In the landslide, Carter won only 41 percent of the popular vote and 49 votes in the electoral college (third-party candidate John Anderson captured 7 percent of the vote). In the late 1980s, allegations surfaced that the Reagan campaign had made a secret agreement with the government of Iran to ensure that the hostages were not released before the election (thus preventing an “October Surprise” that might boost Carter’s election chances); however, in 1993 a congressional subcommittee found the evidence inconclusive. Reagan invited Carter to greet the hostages in Germany after their release on January 21, 1981, one day after Reagan’s inauguration.
Life after the presidency of Jimmy Carter
In his final months in office, Carter was able to push through important legislation that created Superfund to clean up abandoned toxic waste dumps and that set aside some 100 million acres (40 million hectares) of land in Alaska to protect it from development. Carter would also be remembered for his inclusion of women and minorities in his cabinet, including Andrew Young, the African American former mayor of Atlanta, who played a prominent though controversial role as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
At the conclusion of the president’s term, the Carters returned to their hometown. Rosalynn, who had taken an active role as first lady—not only acting as an adviser to the president but also attending cabinet meetings when the subjects under consideration were of interest to her—joined her husband in establishing the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, which included a presidential library and museum.
Carter served as a sort of diplomat without portfolio in various conflicts in a number of countries—including Nicaragua (where he successfully promoted the return of the Miskito Indians to their homeland), Panama (where he observed and reported illegal voting procedures), and Ethiopia (where he attempted to mediate a settlement with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Force). He was particularly active in this role in 1994, negotiating with North Korea to end nuclear weapons development there, with Haiti to effect a peaceful transfer of power, and with Bosnian Serbs and Muslims to broker a short-lived cease-fire. His efforts on behalf of international peace and his highly visible participation in building homes for the poor through Habitat for Humanity established in the public mind a much more favorable image of Carter than had been the case during his presidency.
After leaving office, Carter also became a prolific author, writing on a variety of topics. Two books on the Middle East were Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006) and We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (2009). His interview with Syria’s Forward Magazine, published in January 2009, marked the first time that a former or current U.S. president had been interviewed by a Syrian media outlet. Carter was also the author of The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War (2003) and a collection of poetry. His presidency is chronicled in White House Diary (2010), which contains edited entries from a journal Carter kept during his years in the White House. Carter reflected on the lessons of aging and his long life in The Virtues of Aging (1998) and A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (2015). Faith: A Journey for All was published in 2018.
When he died, at the age of 100, he was the oldest former president in United States history.
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James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, Carter served from 1971 to 1975 as the 76th governor of Georgia and from 1963 to 1967 in the Georgia State Senate. He was the longest-lived president in U.S. history and the first to reach the age of 100.
Born in Plains, Georgia, Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the submarine service before returning to his family's peanut farm. He was active in the civil rights movement, then served as state senator and governor before running for president in 1976. He secured the Democratic nomination as a dark horse little known outside his home state before narrowly defeating Republican incumbent Gerald Ford in the general election.
As president, Carter pardoned all Vietnam draft evaders and negotiated major foreign policy agreements, including the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and he established diplomatic relations with China. He created a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. He signed bills that created the Departments of Energy and Education. The later years of his presidency were marked by several foreign policy crises, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (leading to the end of détente and the 1980 Olympics boycott) and the fallout of the Iranian Revolution (including the Iran hostage crisis and 1979 oil crisis). Carter sought reelection in 1980, defeating a primary challenge by Senator Ted Kennedy, but lost the election to Republican nominee Ronald Reagan.
Polls of historians and political scientists have ranked Carter's presidency below average. His post-presidency—the longest in U.S. history—is viewed more favorably. After Carter's presidential term ended, he established the Carter Center to promote human rights, earning him the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. He traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections, and end neglected tropical diseases, becoming a major contributor to the eradication of dracunculiasis. Carter was a key figure in the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity. He also wrote political memoirs and other books, commentary on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and poetry.
Early life
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, at the Wise Sanitarium, where his mother worked as a registered nurse.[1] Carter was the first U.S. president born in a hospital.[2] He was the eldest child of Bessie Lillian Gordy and James Earl Carter Sr., and a descendant of English immigrant Thomas Carter, who settled in the Colony of Virginia in 1635.[3][4] In Georgia, numerous generations of Carters worked as cotton farmers.[5] Carter's father was a successful local businessman who ran a general store and was an investor in farmland;[6] he had served as a reserve second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps during World War I.[6]
During Carter's infancy, his family moved several times, settling on a dirt road in nearby Archery, which was almost entirely populated by impoverished Black families.[2][7] His family eventually had three more children, Gloria, Ruth, and Billy.[8] Carter had a good relationship with his parents, even though his mother was often absent during his childhood since she worked long hours. Although his father was staunchly pro-segregation, he allowed Jimmy to befriend the Black farmhands' children.[9] Carter was an enterprising teenager who was given his own acre of Earl's farmland, where he grew and sold peanuts.[10] Carter also rented out a section of tenant housing he had purchased.[2]
Education
Carter attended Plains High School from 1937 to 1941, graduating from the 11th grade; the school did not have a 12th grade.[11] By that time, Archery and Plains had been impoverished by the Great Depression, but the family benefited from New Deal farming subsidies, and Carter's father became a community leader.[10][12] Carter was a diligent student with a fondness for reading.[13] According to a popular anecdote, he was passed over for valedictorian after he and his friends skipped school to venture downtown in a hot rod (although it is not clear he would otherwise have been valedictorian).[14] Carter played on the Plains High School basketball team and joined Future Farmers of America, which helped him develop a lifelong interest in woodworking.[15]
Carter had long dreamed of attending the United States Naval Academy.[10] In 1941, he started undergraduate coursework in engineering at Georgia Southwestern College in nearby Americus, Georgia.[16] The next year, Carter transferred to the Georgia School of Technology (now Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, where civil rights icon Blake Van Leer was president.[17] While at Georgia Tech, Carter took part in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.[18] Van Leer encouraged Carter to join the Naval Academy.[19] In 1943, he received an appointment to the Naval Academy from U.S. Representative Stephen Pace, and Carter graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1946.[20][18] He was a good student, but was seen as reserved and quiet, in contrast to the academy's culture of aggressive hazing of freshmen.[21] While at the academy, Carter fell in love with Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister Ruth.[22] The two wed shortly after his graduation in 1946, and were married until her death on November 19, 2023.[23][24] Carter was a sprint football player for the Navy Midshipmen and a standout freshman cross country runner.[25][26] He graduated 60th out of 821 midshipmen in the class of 1947[a] with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned as an ensign.[28]
Naval career
From 1946 to 1953, the Carters lived in Virginia, Hawaii, Connecticut, New York, and California, during his deployments in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.[29] In 1948, he began officer training for submarine duty and served aboard USS Pomfret.[30] Carter was promoted to lieutenant junior grade in 1949. His service aboard Pomfret included a simulated war patrol to the western Pacific and Chinese coast from January to March of that year.[31] In 1951, Carter was assigned to the diesel/electric USS K-1 (SSK-1), qualified for command, and served in several positions, including executive officer.[32]
In 1952, Carter began an association with the Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program, led by then-Captain Hyman G. Rickover.[33] Rickover had high standards, and Carter later said that, next to his parents, Rickover had the greatest influence on his life.[34] Carter was sent to the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C., for three-month temporary duty, while Rosalynn moved with their children to Schenectady, New York.[35]
On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown.[36] Carter was ordered to Chalk River to lead a U.S. maintenance crew to assist in the shutdown of the reactor.[37] The painstaking process required each team member to don protective gear and be lowered individually into the reactor for 90 seconds at a time, limiting their exposure to radioactivity while they disassembled the crippled reactor.[38] During and after his presidency, Carter said that his experience at Chalk River had shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to cease the development of a neutron bomb.[39]
In March 1953, Carter began a six-month nuclear power plant operation course at Union College in Schenectady.[29] His intent was to eventually work aboard USS Seawolf, which was intended to be the second U.S. nuclear submarine.[40] His plans changed when his father died of pancreatic cancer in July, two months before construction of Seawolf began, and Carter obtained a release from active duty so he could take over the family peanut business.[41][42] Deciding to leave Schenectady proved difficult, as Rosalynn had grown comfortable with their life there.[43][44] She later said that returning to small-town life in Plains seemed "a monumental step backward".[45] Carter left active duty on October 9, 1953.[46][47] He served in the inactive Navy Reserve until 1961 and left with the rank of lieutenant.[48] Carter's awards include the American Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, China Service Medal, and National Defense Service Medal.[49] As a submarine officer, he also earned the "dolphin" badge.[50]
Farming
After debt settlements and division of his father's estate, Jimmy inherited comparatively little.[51] For a year, he, Rosalynn, and their three sons lived in public housing in Plains.[b] Carter set out to expand the family's peanut-growing business.[53] Transitioning from the Navy to farming was difficult as his first-year harvest failed due to drought, and Carter had to open several lines of credit to keep the farm afloat.[54] He took classes and studied agriculture while Rosalynn learned accounting to manage the business's books.[55] Though they barely broke even the first year, the Carters grew the business and became quite successful.[52][55]
Early political career (1963–1971)
Georgia state senator (1963–1967)
As racial tension inflamed in Plains by the 1954 Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Brown v. Board of Education,[56] Carter favored integration but often kept those feelings to himself to avoid making enemies. By 1961, Carter began to speak more prominently of integration as a member of the Baptist Church and chairman of the Sumter County school board.[57][58] In 1962, he announced his campaign for an open Georgia State Senate seat.[59] Rosalynn, who had an instinct for politics and organization, was instrumental in his campaign. While early counting of the ballots showed Carter trailing his opponent, Homer Moore, this was later proven to be the result of fraudulent voting.[59] Another election was held, in which Carter defeated Moore as the sole Democratic candidate.[60] He served in both the 127th Georgia General Assembly and the 128th Georgia General Assembly.
The civil rights movement was well underway when Carter took office. Carter remained relatively quiet on the issue at first, even as it polarized much of the county, to avoid alienating his segregationist colleagues. Carter did speak up on a few divisive issues, giving speeches against literacy tests and against an amendment to the Georgia Constitution that he felt implied a compulsion to practice religion.[61] Carter entered the state Democratic Executive Committee two years into office, where he helped rewrite the state party's rules. He became the chairman of the West Central Georgia Planning and Development Commission, which oversaw the disbursement of federal and state grants for projects such as historic site restoration.[62]
When Bo Callaway was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1964, Carter immediately began planning to challenge him. The two had previously clashed over which two-year college would be expanded to a four-year college program by the state, and Carter saw Callaway—who had switched to the Republican Party—as representing aspects of politics he despised.[63] Carter was reelected to a second two-year term in the state Senate,[64] where he chaired its Education Committee and sat on the Appropriations Committee. He contributed to a bill expanding statewide education funding and getting Georgia Southwestern State University a four-year program. He leveraged his regional planning work, giving speeches around the district to make himself more visible to potential voters. On the last day of the term, Carter announced his candidacy for the House of Representatives.[65] Callaway decided to run for governor instead;[66] Carter decided to do the same.[67]
1966 and 1970 gubernatorial campaigns
In the 1966 gubernatorial election, Carter ran against liberal former governor Ellis Arnall and conservative segregationist Lester Maddox in the Democratic primary. In a press conference, he described his ideology as "Conservative, moderate, liberal and middle-of-the-road ... I believe I am a more complicated person than that."[68] He lost the primary but drew enough votes as a third-place candidate to force Arnall into a runoff election with Maddox, who defeated Arnall.[69] In the general election, Republican nominee Callaway won a plurality of the vote but less than a majority, allowing the Democratic-majority Georgia House of Representatives to elect Maddox as governor.[69] Maddox's victory—due to his segregationist stance—was seen as the worst outcome for the indebted Carter.[69] Carter returned to his agriculture business, carefully planning his next campaign. This period was a spiritual turning point for Carter; he declared himself a born again Christian. His last child, Amy, was born during this time.[70][71]
In the 1970 gubernatorial election, liberal former governor Carl Sanders became Carter's main opponent in the Democratic primary. Carter ran a more modern campaign, employing printed graphics and statistical analysis. Responding to polls, he leaned more conservative than before, positioning himself as a populist and criticizing Sanders for both his wealth and perceived links to the national Democratic Party. He also accused Sanders of corruption, but when pressed by the media, he did not provide evidence.[72][73] Throughout his campaign, Carter sought both the black vote and the votes of those who had supported prominent Alabama segregationist George Wallace. While he met with black figures such as Martin Luther King Sr. and Andrew Young and visited many black-owned businesses, he also praised Wallace and promised to invite him to give a speech in Georgia. Carter's appeal to racism became more blatant over time, with his senior campaign aides handing out a photograph of Sanders celebrating with Black basketball players.[72][73]
Carter came ahead of Sanders in the first ballot, leading to a runoff election. The subsequent campaign was even more bitter. Despite his early support for civil rights, Carter's appeal to racism grew, and he criticized Sanders for supporting Martin Luther King Jr. Carter won the runoff election and won the general election against Republican nominee Hal Suit. Once elected, Carter began to speak against Georgia's racist politics. Leroy Johnson, a black state senator, voiced his support for Carter: "I understand why he ran that kind of ultra-conservative campaign. I don't believe you can win this state without being a racist."[72]
Georgia governorship (1971–1975)
Carter was sworn in as the 76th governor of Georgia on January 12, 1971. In his inaugural speech, he declared that "the time for racial discrimination is over",[74] shocking the crowd and causing many segregationists who had supported his candidacy to feel betrayed. Carter was reluctant to engage with fellow politicians, making him unpopular with the legislature.[75][76] He expanded the governor's authority by introducing a reorganization plan submitted in January 1972. Despite an initially cool reception in the legislature, the plan passed at midnight on the last day of the session.[77] Carter merged about 300 state agencies into 22, although it is disputed whether that saved the state money.[78] On July 8, 1971, during an appearance in Columbus, Georgia, he stated his intention to establish a Georgia Human Rights Council.[79]
In a July 1971 news conference, Carter announced that he had ordered department heads to reduce spending to prevent a $57 million deficit by the end of the 1972 fiscal year, specifying that each state department would be affected and estimating that five percent over government revenue would be lost if state departments continued to fully use allocated funds.[80] In January 1972, he requested that the state legislature fund an early childhood development program along with prison reform programs and $48 million (equivalent to $270 million in 2023) in paid taxes for nearly all state employees.[81]
In March 1972, Carter said he might call a special session of the general assembly if the Justice Department struck down any reapportionment plans by either the House or Senate.[82] He pushed several reforms through the legislature, providing equal state aid to schools, setting up community centers for mentally disabled children, and increasing educational programs for convicts.[83][84] In one of his more controversial decisions, he vetoed a plan to build a dam on Georgia's Flint River, which attracted the attention of environmentalists nationwide.[85][86]
Civil rights were a high priority for Carter, who added black state employees and portraits of three prominent black Georgians to the capitol building. This angered the Ku Klux Klan.[86] He favored a constitutional amendment to ban busing for the purpose of expediting integration in schools on a televised joint appearance with Florida Governor Reubin Askew on January 31, 1973,[87] and co-sponsored an anti-busing resolution with Wallace at the 1971 National Governors Conference.[88][89] After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Georgia's death penalty statute in Furman v. Georgia (1972), Carter signed a revised statute that reintroduced the practice. He later regretted endorsing the death penalty, saying, "I didn't see the injustice of it as I do now."[90]
Ineligible for a second consecutive term under the 1945 Georgia Constitution, Carter considered running for president and engaged in national politics. He was named to several southern planning commissions and a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention, where U.S. Senator George McGovern was the likely nominee. Carter tried to ingratiate himself with conservative and anti-McGovern voters. He was fairly obscure at the time, and his attempt at triangulation failed.[91][c] On August 3, Carter met with Wallace in Birmingham, Alabama, to discuss preventing the Democrats from losing in a landslide,[93] but they did.[94]
Carter regularly met with his fledgling campaign staff and decided to start putting together a presidential campaign for 1976. He tried unsuccessfully to become chairman of the National Governors Association to boost his visibility. With David Rockefeller's endorsement, he was named to the Trilateral Commission in April 1973. The next year, he was named chairman of the Democratic National Committee's congressional and gubernatorial campaigns.[95] In May 1973, Carter warned his party against politicizing the Watergate scandal,[96] which he attributed to president Richard Nixon's isolation from Americans and secretive decision-making.[97]
1976 presidential campaign
On December 12, 1974, Carter announced his presidential campaign at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. His speech contained themes of domestic inequality, optimism, and change.[98][99] Upon his entrance in the Democratic primaries, he was competing against sixteen other candidates and was considered to have little chance against the more nationally known politicians such as Wallace.[100] His name recognition was very low, and his opponents derisively asked "Jimmy Who?".[101] In response to this, Carter began to emphasize his name and what he stood for, stating "My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president."[102]
This strategy proved successful. By mid-March 1976, Carter was not only far ahead of the active contenders for the presidential nomination, but led incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford by a few percentage points.[103] As the Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds, Carter's position as an outsider proved helpful. He promoted government reorganization. In June, Carter published a memoir titled Why Not the Best? to introduce himself to the American public.[104]
Carter became the front-runner early on by winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. His strategy involved reaching a region before another candidate could extend influence there, traveling over 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometres), visiting 37 states, and delivering over 200 speeches before any other candidate had entered the race.[105] In the South, he tacitly conceded certain areas to Wallace and swept them as a moderate when it became clear Wallace could not win the region. In the North, Carter appealed largely to conservative Christian and rural voters. While he did not achieve a majority in most Northern states, he won several by building the largest singular support base. Although Carter was initially dismissed as a regional candidate, he would clinch the Democratic nomination.[106] In 1980, Laurence Shoup noted that the national news media discovered and promoted Carter, and stated:
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During an interview in April 1976, Carter said, "I have nothing against a community that is... trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods."[108] His remark was intended as supportive of open housing laws, but specifying opposition to government efforts to "inject black families into a white neighborhood just to create some sort of integration".[108] Carter's stated positions during his campaign included public financing of congressional campaigns,[109] supporting the creation of a federal consumer protection agency,[110] creating a separate cabinet-level department for education,[111] signing a peace treaty with the Soviet Union to limit nuclear weapons,[112] reducing the defense budget,[113] a tax proposal implementing "a substantial increase toward those who have the higher incomes" alongside a levy reduction on taxpayers with lower and middle incomes,[114] making multiple amendments to the Social Security Act,[115] and having a balanced budget by the end of his first term.[116]
On July 15, 1976, Carter chose U.S. senator Walter Mondale as his running mate.[117] Carter and Ford faced off in three televised debates,[118] the first United States presidential debates since 1960.[118][119]
For the November 1976 issue of Playboy, which hit newsstands a couple of weeks before the election, Robert Scheer interviewed Carter. While discussing his religion's view of pride, Carter said: "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."[120][121] This response and his admission in another interview that he did not mind if people uttered the word "fuck" led to a media feeding frenzy and critics lamenting the erosion of boundary between politicians and their private intimate lives.[122]
Election
Carter once had a sizable lead over Ford in national polling, but by late September his lead had narrowed to only several points.[123][124] In the final days before the election, several polls showed that Ford had tied Carter, and one Gallup poll found that Ford was slightly ahead.[125] Most analysts agreed that Carter was going to win the popular vote, but some argued Ford had an opportunity to win the electoral college and thus the election.[126][127]
Carter and Mondale ultimately defeated Ford and his runningmate (Senator Bob Dole), receiving 297 electoral votes and 50.1% of the popular vote.[128] Carter's victory was attributed in part[129] to his overwhelming support among black voters in states decided by close margins.[130] In Ohio and Wisconsin, where the margin between Carter and Ford was under two points, the black vote was crucial for Carter; if he had not won both states, Ford would have won the election.[130][131]
Transition
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Preliminary planning for Carter's presidential transition had been underway for months before his election.[132][133] Carter had been the first presidential candidate to allot significant funds and a significant number of personnel to a pre-election transition planning effort, which then became standard practice.[134] He set a mold that influenced all future transitions to be larger, more methodical and more formal than they were.[134][133]
On November 22, 1976, Carter conducted his first visit to Washington, D.C. after being elected, meeting with director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) James Lynn and United States secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld at the Blair House, and holding an afternoon meeting with President Ford at the White House.[135] The next day, he conferred with congressional leaders, saying that his meetings with cabinet members had been "very helpful" and that Ford had offered his assistance if he needed anything.[136] Relations between Ford and Carter were relatively cold during the transition.[137] During his transition, Carter announced the selection of numerous designees for positions in his administration.[138]
A few weeks before his inauguration, Carter moved his peanut business into the hands of trustees to avoid a potential conflict of interest.[139] He also asked incoming members of his administration to divest themselves of assets through blind trusts.[140]
Presidency (1977–1981)
Carter was inaugurated as the 39th president on January 20, 1977.[141] One of Carter's first acts was the fulfillment of a campaign promise by issuing Proclamation 4483 declaring unconditional amnesty for Vietnam War–era draft evaders.[142][143] Carter's tenure in office was marked by an economic malaise, a time of continuing inflation and recession and the 1979 energy crisis. Under Carter, in May 1980, the Federal Trade Commission became "apparently the first agency ever closed by a budget dispute", but Congress took action and the agency opened the next day.[144]
Carter attempted to calm various conflicts around the world, most visibly in the Middle East with the signing of the Camp David Accords;[145] giving the Panama Canal to Panama; and signing the SALT II nuclear arms reduction treaty with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. His final year was marred by the Iran hostage crisis, which contributed to his losing the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan.[146] Whistleblowers have alleged, most recently in 2023, that people working on the Reagan campaign's behalf convinced Iran to prolong the crisis to reduce Carter's chance of reelection.[147]
Domestic policy
Holidays and proclamations
In 1978, Carter signed into law a bill creating a celebration in May called Asian American Heritage Week. May 7 and 10 were designated for national observance and recognition of the contributions of Asian Americans and Asian immigrants to American society. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed a bill expanding the celebration into Asian American Heritage Month.[148] In 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill renaming this celebration Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.[149]
Economy
The first two years of Carter's presidency were a time of intense stagflation, primarily due to recovery from a previous recession that had left fixed investment at extreme lows and unemployment at 9%.[150] Under Carter, the unemployment rate declined from 8.1% when he took office to 5.7% by July 1978,[151][152] but during the early 1980s recession it returned to its pre-1977 level.[153] His last two years were marked by double-digit inflation, very high interest rates,[154] oil shortages, and slow economic growth.[155] Due to economic stimulus legislation, such as the Public Works Employment Act of 1977, proposed by Carter and passed by Congress, real household median income had grown by 5.2%, with a projection of 6.4% for the next quarter.[156]
The 1979 energy crisis ended this period of growth, and as inflation and interest rates rose, economic growth, job creation and consumer confidence declined sharply.[154] Federal Reserve Board chairman G. William Miller's relatively loose monetary policy had already contributed to somewhat higher inflation,[157] rising from 5.8% in 1976 to 7.7% in 1978. The sudden doubling of crude oil prices[158] forced inflation to double-digit levels, averaging 11.3% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980.[150] The sudden shortage of gasoline as the 1979 summer vacation season began exacerbated the problem and came to symbolize the crisis to the general public;[154] the acute shortage, originating in the shutdown of Amerada Hess refining facilities, led the federal government to sue the company that year.[159]
Environment
During his 1976 campaign, Carter promised to sign into law any bills Congress passed to regulate strip mining.[160] In 1977, Carter signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, which regulated strip mining.[161]
In 1978, Carter declared a federal emergency in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York. More than 800 families were evacuated from the neighborhood, which was on top of a toxic waste landfill. The Superfund law was created in response to the situation.[162] Federal disaster money was appropriated to demolish about 500 houses and two schools built atop the dump, and to remediate the dump and construct a containment area for the hazardous waste. This was the first time such a process had been undertaken. Carter acknowledged that several more "Love Canals" existed across the country, and that discovering such hazardous dump sites was "one of the grimmest discoveries of our modern era".[163]
In December 1978, Carter used the 1906 Antiquities Act and his executive order power to designate 56,000,000 acres (23,000,000 ha) of land in Alaska as a national monument. This executive order protected the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge until Congress codified it into law with the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, which doubled the amount of public land set aside for national parks and wildlife refuges.[164][165]
U.S. energy crisis
Moralism typified much of Carter's action.[166] On April 18, 1977, he delivered a televised speech declaring that the energy crisis was the "moral equivalent of war". He encouraged energy conservation and installed solar water heating panels on the White House.[167][168] He wore a cardigan[169] to offset turning down the heat in the White House.[170] On August 4, 1977, Carter signed the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, forming the Department of Energy, the first new cabinet position in eleven years.[171]
Carter emphasized that the House of Representatives had "adopted almost all" of the energy proposal he had made five months earlier and called the compromise "a turning point in establishing a comprehensive energy program."[172] The next month, he called energy "the most important domestic issue that we will face while I am in office".[173]
On January 12, 1978, Carter said the continued discussions about his energy reform proposal had been "long and divisive and arduous".[174] In an April 11, 1978, news conference, Carter said his biggest surprise "in the nature of a disappointment" since becoming president was the difficulty Congress had in passing legislation, citing the energy reform bill in particular.[175] After much deliberation and modification, Congress approved the Carter energy legislation on October 15, 1978. It deregulated the sale of natural gas, dropped a longstanding pricing disparity between intra- and interstate gas, and created tax credits to encourage energy conservation and the use of non-fossil fuels.[176]
On March 1, 1979, Carter submitted a standby gasoline rationing plan per the request of Congress.[177] On April 5, he delivered an address in which he stressed the urgency of energy conservation and increasing domestic production of energy sources such as coal and solar.[178]
On July 15, 1979, Carter delivered a nationally televised address in which he identified what he believed to be a "crisis of confidence" among American people,[179] under the advisement of pollster Pat Caddell who believed Americans faced a crisis in confidence from events of the 1960s and 1970s, before his presidency.[180] Some later called this his "malaise speech",[179] memorable for mixed reactions[181][182] and his use of rhetoric.[180] The speech's negative reception centered on a view that he did not emphasize his own efforts to address the energy crisis and seemed too reliant on Americans.[183]
Relations with Congress
Carter typically refused to conform to Washington's rules.[184] He avoided phone calls from members of Congress and verbally insulted them. He was unwilling to return political favors. His negativity led to frustration in passing legislation.[185] During a press conference on February 23, 1977, Carter stated that it was "inevitable" that he would come into conflict with Congress and added that he had found "a growing sense of cooperation" with Congress and met in the past with congressional members of both parties.[186] Carter developed a bitter feeling following an unsuccessful attempt at having Congress enact the scrapping of several water projects.[187]
As a rift ensued between the White House and Congress afterward, Carter noted that the Democratic Party's liberal wing opposed his policies the most ardently, attributing this to Ted Kennedy's wanting the presidency.[188] Thinking he had support from 74 Congressmen, Carter issued a "hit list" of 19 projects that he claimed were "pork barrel" spending that he said he would veto if they were included in legislation.[189] He found himself again at odds with Congressional Democrats, as House Speaker Tip O'Neill found it inappropriate for a president to pursue what had traditionally been the role of Congress. Carter was also weakened by signing a bill that contained many of the "hit list" projects he had intended to veto.[190]
In an address to a fundraising dinner for the Democratic National Committee on June 23, 1977, Carter said, "I think it's good to point out tonight, too, that we have evolved a good working relationship with the Congress. For eight years we had government by partisanship. Now we have government by partnership."[191] At a July 28 news conference, assessing the first six months of his presidency, Carter spoke of his improved understanding of Congress:
On May 10, 1979, the House voted against giving Carter authority to produce a standby gas rationing plan.[193] The following day, Carter described himself as shocked and embarrassed for the U.S. government by the vote and concluded "the majority of the House Members are unwilling to take the responsibility, the political responsibility for dealing with a potential, serious threat to our Nation." He added that most House members were placing higher importance on "local or parochial interests" and challenged the House to compose its own rationing plan in the next 90 days.[194]
Carter's remarks were met with criticism by House Republicans, who accused his comments of not befitting the formality a president should have in their public remarks. Others pointed to 106 Democrats voting against his proposal and the bipartisan criticism potentially coming back to haunt him.[195] At a news conference on July 25, 1979, Carter called on believers in the future of the U.S. and his proposed energy program to speak with Congress as it bore the responsibility to impose his proposals.[196] Amid the energy proposal opposition, The New York Times commented that "as the comments flying up and down Pennsylvania Avenue illustrate, there is also a crisis of confidence between Congress and the President, sense of doubt and distrust that threatens to undermine the President's legislative program and become an important issue in next year's campaign."[197]
Deregulation
In 1977, Carter appointed Alfred E. Kahn to lead the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). He was part of a push for deregulation of the industry, supported by leading economists, leading think tanks in Washington, a civil society coalition advocating the reform, the head of the regulatory agency, Senate leadership, the Carter administration, and even some in the airline industry. This coalition swiftly gained legislative results in 1978.[198]
Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act into law on October 24, 1978. The main purpose of the act was to remove government control over fares, routes and market entry (of new airlines) from commercial aviation. The Civil Aeronautics Board's powers of regulation were to be phased out, eventually allowing market forces to determine routes and fares. The Act did not remove or diminish the Federal Aviation Administration's regulatory powers over airline safety.[199]
In 1978, Carter signed a bill into law "allowing homebrewing and small-scale craft brewing to operate legally".[200] The new law deregulated the American beer industry by making it legal to sell malt, hops, and yeast to American home brewers for the first time since the 1920 beginning of prohibition in the United States.[201] This deregulation led to an increase in home brewing that by the 2000s had developed into a strong craft microbrew culture in the United States.[202]
Chrysler bailout
In the late 1970s, the Chrysler Cooperation—one of the "Big Three" automakers in the U.S.—faced near-certain bankruptcy as it projected a loss of $1 billion.[203] Carter proposed that the company forgo salary increases and bonuses, saying that it might be done "without decimating the company or putting it on its knees", but the company had already frozen wage increases and bonuses months before, to no avail.[204] In 1979, Congress began working on a bailout plan for Chrysler, led by Congressman James J. Blanchard. Carter assembled a team that included Vice President Mondale and Assistant Domestic Policy Adviser David Rubenstein to secure a $1.5 billion loan guarantee.[205]
In December, Congress passed the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979 to bail Chrysler out with $3.5 billion (equivalent to $10.9 billion in 2023) in aid.[206] The bill turned over $162 million in stock to Chrysler's workers, eliminated around $125 million in wage increases, and gave Chrysler $500 million in bank loans.[203] Carter, who had initially opposed the bailout of corporations,[205] signed it into law in January 1980, saying that the bill saved thousands of jobs.[203] The bailout was successful at the time, but Chrysler would eventually file for bankruptcy during the 2008 financial crisis.[205]
Healthcare
During his presidential campaign, Carter embraced healthcare reform akin to the Ted Kennedy–sponsored bipartisan universal national health insurance.[207] Carter's proposals on healthcare while in office included a 1977 mandatory health care cost proposal,[208] and a 1979 proposal that provided private health insurance coverage.[209] The 1977 mandatory health care cost proposal was passed in the Senate,[210] but later defeated in the House.[211] During 1978, he met with Kennedy over a compromise healthcare law that proved unsuccessful.[212] He later said Kennedy's disagreements thwarted his plan to provide a comprehensive American health care system.[213]
In 1980, Carter signed into law the Mental Health Systems (MHSA) Act, which allocated block grants to states to bolster community health services and provided funding to states to create and implement community-based health services. The MHSA was considered landmark legislation in mental health care.[214] By September 1981, the Reagan administration had repealed most of the law.[215]
Education
Early into his term, Carter collaborated with Congress to fulfill his campaign promise to create a cabinet-level education department. In an address from the White House on February 28, 1978, Carter argued "Education is far too important a matter to be scattered piecemeal among various government departments and agencies, which are often busy with sometimes dominant concerns."[216] On February 8, 1979, the Carter administration released an outline of its plan to establish an education department and asserted enough support for the enactment to occur by June.[217] On October 17, the same year, Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act into law,[218] establishing the United States Department of Education.[219]
Carter added 43,000 children and families to the Head Start program,[220] while the percentage of nondefense dollars spent on education was doubled.[221] In a speech on November 1, 1980, Carter stated his administration had extended Head Start to migrant children.[222]
LGBTQ rights
During Carter's administration, the United States Foreign Service "lifted its ban on gay and lesbian personnel". In 1977, the Carter administration became the first U.S. presidential administration to invite gay and lesbian rights activists to the White House to discuss federal policy with regard to ending employment discrimination in the federal government on the basis of sexual orientation and related issues.[223]
Foreign policy
Israel and Egypt
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From the onset of his presidency, Carter attempted to mediate the Arab–Israeli conflict.[224] After a failed attempt to seek a comprehensive settlement in 1977 (through reconvening the 1973 Geneva conference),[225] Carter invited the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to the presidential lodge Camp David in September 1978, in hopes of creating a definitive peace. While the two sides could not agree on Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, the negotiations resulted in Egypt formally recognizing Israel, and the creation of an elected government in the West Bank and Gaza. This resulted in the Camp David Accords, which ended the war between Israel and Egypt.[226]
The accords were a source of great domestic opposition in both Egypt and Israel. Historian Jørgen Jensehaugen argues that by the time Carter left office in January 1981, he was "in an odd position—he had attempted to break with traditional U.S. policy but ended up fulfilling the goals of that tradition, which had been to break up the Arab alliance, sideline the Palestinians, build an alliance with Egypt, weaken the Soviet Union and secure Israel."[227]
Africa
In an address to the African officials at the United Nations on October 4, 1977, Carter stated the U.S.'s interest to "see a strong, vigorous, free, and prosperous Africa with as much of the control of government as possible in the hands of the residents of your countries" and pointed to their unified efforts on "the problem of how to resolve the Rhodesian, Zimbabwe question."[228] At a news conference later that month, Carter said the U.S. wanted to "work harmoniously with South Africa in dealing with the threats to peace in Namibia and in Zimbabwe in particular", to do away with racial issues such as apartheid, and to work for equal opportunities in other facets of society in the region.[229]
Despite human rights concerns, Carter continued U.S. support for Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire.[230] Zaire received nearly half the foreign aid Carter allocated to sub-Saharan Africa.[231] Under Carter an alliance with Liberia's Samuel Doe, who had come to power in a 1980 coup, was pursued.[232]
Carter visited Nigeria from March 31 to April 3, 1978, to improve relations,[233] the first U.S. president to do so.[234] He reiterated interest in convening a peace conference on Rhodesia that involved all parties.[235]
The elections of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister of the United Kingdom[236] and Abel Muzorewa for Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia,[237] South Africa turning down a plan for South West Africa's independence, and domestic opposition in Congress were seen as a heavy blow to the Carter administration's policy toward South Africa.[238] On May 16, 1979, the Senate voted in favor of lifting economic sanctions against Rhodesia, seen by some Rhodesians and South Africans as a potentially fatal blow to joint diplomacy efforts and any compromise between the Salisbury leaders and guerrillas.[239] On December 3, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance promised Senator Jesse Helms that when the British governor arrived in Salisbury to implement an agreed Lancaster House settlement and the electoral process began, the President would take prompt action to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe Rhodesia.[240]
East Asia
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Carter sought closer relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC), continuing the Nixon administration's drastic policy of rapprochement. The two countries increasingly collaborated against the Soviet Union, and the Carter administration tacitly consented to the Chinese invasion of Vietnam. In December 1978, he announced the United States' intention to formally recognize and establish full diplomatic relations with the PRC starting on January 1, 1979, while severing ties with Taiwan, including revoking a mutual defense treaty with the latter.[241][242] In 1979, Carter extended formal diplomatic recognition to the PRC for the first time. This decision led to a boom in trade between the United States and the PRC, which was pursuing economic reforms under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping.[243] Carter supported the China-allied Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia fighting the Soviet-backed Vietnamese invasion.[244]
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter allowed the sale of military supplies to China and began negotiations to share military intelligence.[245] In January 1980, Carter unilaterally revoked the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China (ROC). Conservative Republicans challenged Carter's abrogation of the treaty in court, but the Supreme Court ruled that the issue was a non-justiciable political question in Goldwater v. Carter. The U.S. continued to maintain quasi-diplomatic contacts with the ROC through the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.[246]
During Carter's presidency, the U.S. continued to support Indonesia under Suharto as a Cold War ally, despite human rights violations in East Timor. The violations followed Indonesia's December 1975 invasion of East Timor. Under Carter's administration military assistance to Indonesia increased, peaking in 1978.[247][248] This was antithetical to Carter's stated policy of "not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region".[249][250] In the Philippines, Carter supported the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos.[251]
During a news conference on March 9, 1977, Carter reaffirmed his interest in having a gradual withdrawal of American troops from South Korea.[252] On May 19, The Washington Post quoted Chief of Staff of U.S. forces in South Korea John K. Singlaub as criticizing Carter's withdrawal of troops from the Korean peninsula.[253] Carter relieved Singlaub of his duties on May 21.[254][255]
During a news conference on May 26, 1977, Carter said South Korea could defend itself with reduced American troops in case of conflict.[256] From June 30 to July 1, 1979, Carter held meetings with president of South Korea Park Chung Hee for a discussion on relations between the U.S. and South Korea as well as Carter's interest in preserving his policy of worldwide tension reduction.[257] On April 21, 1978, Carter announced a reduction in American troops in South Korea scheduled to be released by the end of the year by two-thirds, citing lack of action by Congress in regard to a compensatory aid package for the South Korean government.[258] He supported South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during the suppression of the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980.[259] South Korean pro-democracy activist Kim Dae-jung was sentenced to death in September 1980, but his sentence was commuted after the intervention of presidents Carter and Reagan.[260]
Iran
On November 15, 1977, Carter pledged that his administration would continue positive relations between the U.S. and Iran, calling its contemporary status "strong, stable and progressive".[261] On December 31, 1977, he called Iran under the Shah an "island of stability".[262][263] Carter praised the Shah's "great leadership" and spoke of "personal friendship" between them.[264] American support for the unpopular Shah increased anti-American sentiment in Iran, which intensified after the Shah, who was dying of cancer, left Iran for the last time in January 1979 and Carter allowed him to be admitted to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York on October 22, 1979.[265]
On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The students belonged to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line and supported the Iranian revolution.[266] Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for the next 444 days. They were freed immediately after Ronald Reagan succeeded Carter as president on January 20, 1981. During the crisis, Carter remained in isolation in the White House for more than 100 days.[267]
A month into the affair, Carter announced his commitment to resolving the dispute without "any military action that would cause bloodshed or arouse the unstable captors of our hostages to attack them or to punish them".[268] On April 7, 1980, he issued Executive Order 12205, imposing economic sanctions against Iran,[269] and announced further government measures he deemed necessary to ensure a safe release.[270][271]
On April 24, 1980, Carter ordered Operation Eagle Claw to try to free the hostages. The mission failed, leaving eight American servicemen dead and two aircraft destroyed.[272][273] The failure led Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the mission, to resign.[274]
Released in 2017, a declassified memo produced by the CIA in 1980 concluded "Iranian hardliners—especially Ayatollah Khomeini" were "determined to exploit the hostage issue to bring about President Carter's defeat in the November elections." Additionally, Tehran in 1980 wanted "the world to believe that Imam Khomeini caused President Carter's downfall and disgrace."[275]
Soviet Union
On February 8, 1977, Carter said he had urged the Soviet Union to align with the U.S. in forming "a comprehensive test ban to stop all nuclear testing for at least an extended period of time", and that he was in favor of the Soviet Union ceasing deployment of the RSD-10 Pioneer.[276] At a June 13 press conference, he announced that the U.S. would "work closely with the Soviet Union on a comprehensive test ban treaty to prohibit all testing of nuclear devices underground or in the atmosphere", and that Paul Warnke would negotiate demilitarization of the Indian Ocean with the Soviet Union.[277]
At a December 30 news conference, Carter said that during "the last few months, the United States and the Soviet Union have made great progress in dealing with a long list of important issues, the most important of which is to control the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons", and that the two countries sought to conclude SALT II talks by the spring of the next year.[278] The talk of a comprehensive test ban treaty materialized with the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II by Carter and Leonid Brezhnev on June 18, 1979.[279][280]
In 1979, the Soviets intervened in the Second Yemenite War. The Soviet backing of South Yemen constituted a "smaller shock", in tandem with tensions that were rising due to the Iranian Revolution. This played a role in making Carter's stance on the Soviet Union more assertive, a shift that finalized with the impending Soviet-Afghan War.[281]
In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter emphasized the significance of relations between the two regions: "Now, as during the last 3½ decades, the relationship between our country, the United States of America, and the Soviet Union is the most critical factor in determining whether the world will live at peace or be engulfed in global conflict."[282]
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
Communists under the leadership of Nur Muhammad Taraki seized power in Afghanistan on April 27, 1978.[283] Due to the regime's improvement of secular education and redistribution of land coinciding with mass executions and political oppression, Taraki was deposed by rival Hafizullah Amin in September.[283][284][285] Amin was considered a "brutal psychopath" by foreign observers and had lost control of much of the country, prompting the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan on December 24, 1979, execute Amin, and install Babrak Karmal as president.[283][284]
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In the West, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was considered a threat to global security and the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf, as well as the existence of Pakistan.[284][286] These concerns led Carter to expand collaboration between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which had begun in July 1979, when the CIA started providing $695,000 worth of non-lethal assistance to the Afghan mujahideen.[287] The modest scope of this early collaboration was likely influenced by the understanding, later recounted by CIA official Robert Gates, "that a substantial U.S. covert aid program" might have "raise[d] the stakes", thereby causing "the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended."[286][288]
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According to a 2020 review of declassified U.S. documents by Conor Tobin in the journal Diplomatic History:
On December 28, 1979, Carter signed a presidential finding explicitly allowing the CIA to transfer "lethal military equipment either directly or through third countries to the Afghan opponents of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan" and to arrange "selective training, conducted outside of Afghanistan, in the use of such equipment either directly or via third country intermediation."[287] His finding defined the CIA's mission as "harassment" of Soviet troops; at the time, "this was not a war the CIA expected to win outright on the battlefield," in the words of Steve Coll.[289]
Carter was determined to respond harshly to what he considered a dangerous provocation. In a televised speech on January 23, 1980, he announced sanctions on the Soviet Union, promised renewed aid and registration to Pakistan and the Selective Service System, and committed the U.S. to the Persian Gulf's defense.[286][288][290][291] Carter imposed an embargo on grain shipments to the USSR, tabled SALT II, requested a 5% annual increase in defense spending,[292][293] and called for a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which was ultimately joined by 65 other nations.[294][295][296]
In early 1980, Carter determined the thrust of U.S. policy for the duration of the war: he initiated a program to arm the mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI and secured a pledge from Saudi Arabia to match U.S. funding for this purpose. Despite huge expenditure, the Soviet Union was unable to quell the insurgency and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989.[297][286] The routing of U.S. aid through Pakistan led to some controversy, as weapons sent to Karachi were frequently controlled by Pakistan, whose government influenced which rebels received assistance. Despite this, Carter has expressed no regret over his decision to support what he considered the Afghan freedom fighters.[286]
International trips
Carter made twelve international trips to 25 countries as president.[298] He was the first president to make a state visit to Sub-Saharan Africa when he went to Nigeria in 1978.[234] He made several trips to the Middle East to broker peace negotiations. His visit to Iran from December 31, 1977, to January 1, 1978, took place less than a year before the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.[299] Carter gave his "Island of Stability" speech during this visit.
Allegations and investigations
On September 21, 1977, the Carter administration's OMB director Bert Lance resigned amid allegations of improper banking activities before his tenure.[300] United States Attorney General Griffin Bell appointed Paul J. Curran as a special counsel to investigate loans made to the peanut business Carter owned by a bank controlled by Lance,[301][d] and Carter became the first sitting president to testify under oath as part of an investigation of him.[302][303] In October 1979, Curran announced that no evidence had been found to support allegations that funds loaned from the National Bank of Georgia had been diverted to Carter's 1976 presidential campaign, ending the investigation.[304]
1980 presidential campaign
Carter's reelection campaign was based primarily on attacking Ronald Reagan. The campaign frequently pointed out and mocked Reagan's proclivity for gaffes, using his age and perceived lack of connection to his native California voter base against him.[305] Later, the campaign used similar rhetoric as Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign, portraying Reagan as a warmonger who could not be trusted with the nuclear arsenal.[306] Carter attempted to deny the Reagan campaign $29.4 million (equivalent to $91 million in 2023) in campaign funds, due to dependent conservative groups already raising $60 million to get him elected—an amount that exceeded the limit of campaign funds. Carter's attempt was later denied by the Federal Election Commission.[307]
Carter announced his reelection campaign in December 1979.[308] A month earlier, Senator Ted Kennedy had announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.[309] During the Democratic presidential primaries, questions about Kennedy were a frequent subject of Carter's press conferences.[310][311] Despite winning key states such as California and New York, Kennedy surprised his supporters by running a weak campaign. Carter won most of the primaries and secured renomination. He later wrote that the strongest opposition to his policies came from the Democratic Party's liberal wing, which he attributed to Kennedy.[312] Kennedy had mobilized the liberal wing, which weakened Carter's support in the general election.[313]
Carter and Mondale were formally nominated at the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City.[314] Carter delivered a speech notable for its tribute to the late Hubert Humphrey, whom he initially called "Hubert Horatio Hornblower",[315] and Kennedy made "The Dream Shall Never Die" speech, in which he criticized Reagan and did not endorse Carter.[316]
Along with Reagan and Kennedy, Carter was opposed by centrist John B. Anderson, who had previously contested the Republican presidential primaries, and upon losing to Reagan, reentered the race as an independent. Anderson advertised himself as a more liberal alternative to Reagan's conservatism.[317] As the campaign went on, Anderson's polling numbers dropped and his base was gradually pulled to Carter or Reagan.[318] Carter had to run against his own "stagflation"-ridden economy, while the hostage crisis in Iran dominated the news. He was attacked by conservatives for failing to "prevent Soviet gains" in less-developed countries, as pro-Soviet governments had taken power in countries including Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Afghanistan.[319] His brother, Billy Carter, caused controversy due to his association with Muammar Gaddafi's regime in Libya.[320] Carter alienated many liberal college students, who were expected to be one of his strongest support bases, by reactivating the Selective Service System on July 2, 1980, reinstating registration for the military draft. His campaign manager, Timothy Kraft, stepped down five weeks before the general election amid what turned out to be an uncorroborated allegation of cocaine use.[321]
On October 28, Carter and Reagan participated in the sole presidential debate of the election cycle in which they were both present, due to Carter refusing to participate in debates that included Anderson.[322] Though initially trailing Carter by several points,[323] Reagan experienced a surge in polling after the debate.[324] This was in part influenced by Reagan deploying the phrase "There you go again", which became the election's defining phrase.[325] It was later discovered that in the final days of the campaign, Reagan's team acquired classified documents Carter used to prepare for the debate.[326]
Reagan and his running mate (George H. W. Bush) defeated Carter and Mondale in a landslide, winning 489 electoral votes. The Senate went Republican for the first time since 1952.[327] Carter's 49 electoral votes were the second-fewest for an incumbent president seeking reelection. In his concession speech, Carter admitted that he was hurt by the election's outcome but pledged "a very fine transition period" with President-elect Reagan.[328]
Post-presidency (1981–2024)
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Shortly after losing reelection, Carter told the White House press corps that he intended to emulate the retirement of Harry S. Truman and not use his subsequent public life to enrich himself.[329]
Diplomacy
Diplomacy was a large part of Carter's post-presidency. These diplomatic efforts began in the Middle East, with a September 1981 meeting with prime minister of Israel Menachem Begin,[330] and a March 1983 tour of Egypt that included meeting with members of the Palestine Liberation Organization.[331]
In 2018, official files revealed that, in January 1993, Carter had been suggested for a Northern Ireland peace process role by president-elect Bill Clinton amid speculation that Clinton would appoint a special envoy for Northern Ireland.[332]
In 1994, Clinton sought Carter's assistance in a North Korea peace mission, during which Carter negotiated an understanding with Kim Il Sung.[333][334] Carter outlined a treaty with Kim, which, in order to spur American action, he announced to CNN without the Clinton administration's consent.[335] North Korea and the United States signed the Agreed Framework on October 21, 1994.
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In March 1999, Carter visited Taiwan and met with President Lee Teng-hui. During the meeting, Carter praised the progress Taiwan made in democracy, human rights, economy, culture, science, and technology.[336] But Carter remained a controversial figure in Taiwan for having ended U.S. diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan).[337]
In 2003, Carter championed a plan to hold elections in Venezuela amid protests aimed at doing so.[338] Ultimately, no elections were held.
In 2006, Carter stated his disagreements with Israel's domestic and foreign policy while saying he supported the country,[339][340] extending his criticisms to Israel's policies in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza.[341]
In July 2007, Carter joined Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, South Africa, to announce his participation in The Elders, a group of independent global leaders working together on peace and human rights issues.[342][343] After the announcement, Carter participated in visits to Darfur,[344] Sudan,[345][346] Cyprus, the Korean Peninsula, and the Middle East, among others.[347] He attempted to travel to Zimbabwe in 2008, but was stopped by President Robert Mugabe's government.[348] In December 2008, Carter met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,[349][350] and in a June 2012 call with Jeffery Brown, he stressed that Egyptian military generals could take full executive and legislative power to form a new constitution favoring themselves if their announced intentions came true.[351]
On August 10, 2010, Carter traveled to North Korea and negotiated the release of Aijalon Gomes.[352][353] In 2017, as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea persisted, Carter recommended a peace treaty between the two nations,[354] and confirmed that he had volunteered to the Trump administration to be a diplomatic envoy to North Korea.[355]
Views on later presidents
Carter began his first year out of office with a pledge not to critique the Reagan administration, saying it was "too early".[356] He sided with Reagan on issues like building neutron arms after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,[357] but frequently spoke out against his administration, denouncing many of its actions in the Middle East.[358] He condemned the handling of the Sabra and Shatila massacre,[359] the lack of efforts to rescue and retrieve four American businessmen from West Beirut in 1984,[360] Reagan's support of the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1985,[361] and his claim of an international conspiracy on terrorism.[362] In 1987 he criticized Reagan for conceding to terrorist demands,[363] nominating Robert Bork for the Supreme Court,[364] and his handling of the Persian Gulf crisis.[365]
On January 16, 1989, before the inauguration of George H. W. Bush, Carter told Gerald Ford that Reagan had experienced a media honeymoon, saying that he believed Reagan's immediate successor would be less fortunate.[366]
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Carter had a mostly poor relationship with Bill Clinton, who snubbed him from his inauguration ceremony. He questioned the Clinton administration's morality, particularly with respect to the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal and the pardon of Marc Rich.[367]
In July 2001, Carter said he was "disappointed in almost everything" President George W. Bush had done, but after the September 11 attacks, he offered only praise, calling on Americans to support Bush with "complete unity".[368] Later, Carter opposed the Iraq War[369] and what he considered an attempt by Bush and Tony Blair to oust Saddam Hussein with "lies and misinterpretations".[370] In 2004, Carter said he believed Bush had exploited the September 11 attacks.[371] In 2007, Carter said the Bush administration "has been the worst in history" on foreign affairs;[372] he later said he was just comparing Bush's tenure to Nixon's.[373] On the Bush administration's behalf, Tony Fratto responded that Carter's comments increased his irrelevance.[374]
Though he praised President Barack Obama in the early part of his tenure,[375] Carter stated his disagreement with using drone strikes against suspected terrorists, Obama's choice to keep Guantanamo Bay detention camp open,[376] and the federal surveillance programs Edward Snowden revealed.[377][378]
During Donald Trump's presidency, Carter spoke favorably of the chance for immigration reform[379] and criticized Trump for his handling of the U.S. national anthem protests.[380] In an October 2017 interview with The New York Times, he said the media had covered Trump more harshly "than any other president certainly that I've known about".[381][382] In 2019, Trump called Carter and expressed concern that China was "getting ahead" of the United States. Carter agreed, saying that China's strength came from its lack of involvement in armed conflict and calling the U.S. "the most warlike nation in the history of the world."[383]
In July 2021, Carter gave his final recorded interview and said that President Joe Biden "has done very well" in office.[384]
Presidential politics
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Carter was considered a potential candidate in the 1984 presidential election.[385][386] In May 1982, Carter ruled out another run, and instead endorsed Mondale for the Democratic presidential nomination.[387] After Mondale secured the nomination in the Democratic primaries, Carter critiqued the Reagan campaign,[388] spoke at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, and advised Mondale about his campaign.[389] After the election, in which Reagan defeated Mondale, Carter said the loss was predictable because Mondale's platform included raising taxes.[390]
In March 1987, Carter ruled himself out as a candidate in the 1988 presidential election.[391] Ahead of the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Carter predicted that the convention would see party unity[392] after tensions arose between presumptive nominee Michael Dukakis and runner-up Jesse Jackson.[393] Carter delivered an address at the convention.[394]
Carter spoke of the need for the 1992 Democratic National Convention to address certain issues not focused on in the past,[395] and campaigned for Clinton after he became the Democratic nominee,[396] publicly stating his expectation to be consulted during Clinton's presidency.[397]
Carter endorsed Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, days before the 2000 presidential election,[398] and in subsequent years voiced his opinion that Gore won the election,[399] despite Republican nominee George W. Bush having been certified the victor following the Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore.[400]
In the 2004 presidential election, Carter endorsed the Democratic nominee John Kerry and spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.[401] He also voiced concern about another voting mishap in Florida.[402]
During the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, it was speculated that Carter would endorse Barack Obama over his main primary rival Hillary Clinton, as Carter and other members of the Carter family had spoken favorably of Obama.[403][404] Although he did not endorse Obama during the primaries, he said in late May 2008 that Clinton should end her bid and concede to Obama after the final primaries on June 3.[405] On June 3, Carter endorsed Obama, and said he would vote for Obama as a superdelegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention[406] (as a former president, Carter was entitled to hold one of 20 superdelegate slots reserved for "distinguished party leaders").[407] Before this, he had remained publicly neutral.[406] During the general election campaign, Carter criticized John McCain, the Republican nominee.[408][409] Once Obama became the presumptive nominee, he advised Obama not to select Clinton as his running mate.[410]
Ahead of the primaries of the 2012 presidential election, Carter expressed his preference for Mitt Romney to win the Republican nomination, though he clarified that he preferred Romney because he believed him to be the prospective Republican nominee who would most assure Obama's reelection.[411] Carter recorded an address that was shown at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.[412]
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In the 2016 presidential election, Carter was critical of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump shortly after Trump entered the primary, predicting that he would lose.[413][414] As the primary continued, Carter said he preferred Trump to his main rival, Ted Cruz,[415] though he rebuked the Trump campaign during the primary[416] and in his address to the 2016 Democratic National Convention.[417] In August 2016, Carter endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.[418] He again expressed his support of Clinton in his speech to the Democratic convention, which he delivered by video.[417][419] In 2019, Carter said that Trump would not have been elected without Russia's interference in the 2016 election.[420] When questioned, he agreed that Trump is an "illegitimate president".[421][422] In a 2017 discussion with Senator Bernie Sanders, Carter said he voted for Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries.[423]
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter delivered a recorded audio message endorsing Joe Biden for the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention. On January 6, 2021, after the U.S. Capitol attack,[424] Carter released a statement that he and his wife were "troubled" by the events, that what had occurred was "a national tragedy and is not who we are as a nation", and that "having observed elections in troubled democracies worldwide, I know that we the people can unite to walk back from this precipice to peacefully uphold the laws of our nation".[425] Carter recorded an audio message for Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021, as the Carters could not attend the ceremony in person.[426]
In November 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overruled a three-judge panel of the court and scheduled a rehearing of the case against the Trump administration–proposed land swap in Alaska to allow a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. In an unusual action, Carter had filed an opinion in support of a lawsuit by environmental groups, saying the swap violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act passed near the end of his presidency. Carter said the act "may be the most significant domestic achievement of my political life".[427]
In August 2024, Carter's son Chip said his father wanted to live to 100 to vote for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.[428] He did so on October 16.[429][430]
Hurricane relief
Carter criticized the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina,[431] and built homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.[432] He also partnered with former presidents to work with One America Appeal to help the victims of Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma in the Gulf Coast and Texas communities,[433] in addition to writing op-eds about the goodness seen in Americans who assist each other during natural disasters.[434]
Other activities
The Carter family's peanut business accumulated a $1 million debt in 1981. Carter began writing books to pay off this debt. As of July 2019, he had "published more than 30, from a children's book to reflections on his presidency".[435] After he left the White House, "[o]n average, he completed just about one book per year over those 35 years, including many bestsellers, a novel and a children's book."[436]
In 1982, Carter founded the Carter Center,[437] a non-governmental and nonprofit organization with the purpose of advancing human rights and alleviating human suffering.[438] Among these efforts has been working with the World Health Organization to eradicate dracunculiasis, also called Guinea worm disease. The incidence of this disease has decreased from 3.5 million cases in the mid-1980s[439][440] to four in the first seven months of 2024, according to the Carter Center's statistics.[441]
Carter attended the dedication of his presidential library[442] and those of Presidents Ronald Reagan,[443] George H. W. Bush,[444] Bill Clinton,[445][446] and George W. Bush.[447] He delivered eulogies at the funerals of Coretta Scott King,[448] Gerald Ford,[449][450] and Theodore Hesburgh.[451]
In 2007, Carter founded the New Baptist Covenant organization for social justice.[452][453]
In 2013, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, their son Chip, and Chip's wife Becky traveled to the neighborhood of Queens Village in New York City. They worked on five housing construction projects with Habitat for Humanity.[454]
As of August 2019, Carter was Honorary Chair of the World Justice Project.[455] He was formerly an honorary chair of the Continuity of Government Commission.[456] He continued to occasionally teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church as of 2019.[457] Carter also taught at Emory University, and in 2019 was awarded tenure for 37 years of service.[458]
Israel and Palestine
Carter was one of many international observers who took part in the first Palestinian general election in 1996. The Carter Center and National Democratic Institute sent an 85-person team to take part in the election observation.[459][460]
Carter's 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, a New York Times Best Seller, generated controversy for characterizing Israel's policies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as amounting to apartheid.[461] In remarks broadcast over radio, he said that Israel's policies amounted to an apartheid worse than South Africa's:[462]
Carter defended himself against accusations of antisemitism by saying "the hope is that my book will at least stimulate a debate, which has not existed in this country. There's never been any debate on this issue of any significance."[462] He said that Israel would not have peace until it agreed to withdraw from the occupied territories, adding, "the greatest commitment in my life has been trying to bring peace to Israel."[462]
In a 2007 speech at Brandeis University, Carter apologized for wording in the book that suggested that Palestinian suicide terror attacks were justified as a political tool. "That sentence was worded in a completely improper and stupid way. I've written my publishers to change that sentence immediately in future editions of the book. I apologize to you personally and to everyone here."[463][464][465][466]
In his 2010 book We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land, Carter cites Israel's unwillingness to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories and settlement expansion as the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East.[467]
Personal life
Carter had three younger siblings, all of whom died of pancreatic cancer: Gloria Spann, Ruth Stapleton, and Billy Carter.[468] He was a first cousin of politician Hugh Carter and a distant cousin of the Carter family of musicians.[469]
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Carter married Rosalynn Smith on July 7, 1946, in the Plains Methodist Church, the church of Rosalynn's family.[470] They had three sons, John "Jack", James III "Chip", and Donnel "Jeff", and a daughter, Amy.[471] Mary Prince (an African American woman wrongly convicted of murder, and later pardoned) was their daughter Amy's nanny for most of the period from 1971 until Carter's presidency ended.[472][473][474] Carter had asked to be designated as her parole officer, helping to enable her to work in the White House.[473][e]
On October 19, 2019, the Carters became the longest-wed presidential couple, having overtaken George and Barbara Bush at 26,765 days.[477] After Rosalynn's death on November 19, 2023, Carter released the following statement:
The Carters' eldest son, Jack Carter, was the 2006 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Nevada and lost to Republican incumbent John Ensign. Jack's son Jason Carter is a former Georgia state senator[479] who in 2014 was the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, losing to the Republican incumbent, Nathan Deal. On December 20, 2015, while teaching a Sunday school class, Carter announced that his 28-year-old grandson Jeremy Carter had died of unspecified causes.[480]
Interests, friendships and hobbies
Carter's hobbies included painting,[481] fly fishing, woodworking, cycling, tennis, and skiing.[482] He also had an interest in poetry, particularly the works of Dylan Thomas.[483] During a state visit to the UK in 1977, Carter suggested that Thomas should have a memorial in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey;[484] this came to fruition in 1982.[483][485] In 1994, Carter published a book of poetry, Always a Reckoning and Other Poems, illustrated by his granddaughter Sarah Chuldenko.[486]
Carter was a personal friend of Elvis Presley, whom he and Rosalynn met on June 30, 1973.[487] They remained in contact by telephone two months before Presley's sudden death in August 1977. According to Carter, Presley was almost incoherent because of barbiturates; although he phoned the White House several more times, that was the last time they spoke.[488] The day after Presley's death, Carter issued a statement and said Presley had "changed the face of American popular culture".[489]
Carter filed a report with both the International UFO Bureau and the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena[490] saying that he saw an unidentified flying object in October 1969.[491][492][493] Records showed that Carter got the date wrong, and it was in fact on January 6, 1969. In 2016, a former Air Force scientist found old government reports about a scientific project that on that date launched a barium cloud to examine the upper atmosphere. It would have appeared in the sky at an elevation of 33 degrees, which is almost exactly what Carter had speculated.[494]
Beliefs
From a young age, Carter showed deep commitment to evangelical Christianity.[495][496] He taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.[497] At a private inauguration worship service, the preacher was Nelson Price, the pastor of Roswell Street Baptist Church of Marietta, Georgia.[498] An evangelical Christian, Carter appealed to voters after the scandals of the Nixon Administration, and is credited with popularizing the term "born again" into American lexicon during his 1976 presidential campaign.[496][499][500][501] As president, Carter prayed several times a day, and said Jesus was the driving force in his life. He was greatly influenced by a sermon he had heard as a young man that asked: "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"[502] In 2000, after the Southern Baptist Convention announced it would no longer permit women to become pastors, he renounced his membership, saying: "I personally feel that women should play an absolutely equal role in service of Christ in the church."[503] He remained a member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.[495] Carter's support for the Equal Rights Amendment[504] led many evangelical conservatives to leave the Democratic Party, contributing to the development of the Christian right in American politics.[505]
Health
On August 3, 2015, Carter underwent elective surgery to remove a small mass on his liver, and his prognosis for a full recovery was initially said to be excellent. On August 12, he announced he had been diagnosed with cancer that had metastasized.[506] On August 20, Carter said that melanoma had been found in his brain and liver and that he had begun treatment.[507] On December 5, he announced that his medical scans no longer showed any cancer.[508]
Carter broke his hip in a fall at his Plains home on May 13, 2019, and underwent surgery the same day at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Georgia.[509] On October 6, an injury above his left eyebrow sustained in another fall at home required 14 stitches[510] and resulted in a black eye.[511] On October 21, Carter was admitted to the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center after sustaining a minor pelvic fracture from falling at home for the third time in 2019.[512]
On November 11, 2019, Carter was hospitalized at the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for a procedure to relieve pressure on his brain caused by bleeding connected with his falls.[513][514] He was released from the hospital on November 27.[515][513] On December 2, 2019, Carter was readmitted to the hospital for a urinary tract infection. He was released on December 4.[516][517]
On February 18, 2023, the Carter Center announced that following a "series of short hospital stays", Carter decided to "spend his remaining time at home with his family" in Plains to "receive hospice care"[518][519] for an unspecified illness.[520][521]
Longevity
At 100 years old, Carter was the longest-lived former U.S. president.[522] He was the earliest-serving living former president since Gerald Ford's death in 2006. In 2012, he surpassed Herbert Hoover as the longest-retired president. In 2017 and 2021, he became the first president to live to the 40th anniversary of his inauguration and post-presidency, respectively. In 2017, Carter, then 92, became the oldest former president ever to attend an American presidential inauguration.[523][524] On March 22, 2019, he became the longest-lived U.S. president.[525] He said in a 2019 interview with People that he never expected to live as long as he had and that the best explanation for longevity was a good marriage.[526]
The Carter Center announced Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song, an event concert to celebrate Carter's 100th birthday that featured appearances by musicians and celebrities. The event took place on September 17, 2024, at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.[527] On October 1, 2024, Carter turned 100, the first U.S. president to do so.[528] Local events celebrating his birthday included a F-18 Super Hornet flyover formation by eight Navy pilots from Naval Air Station Oceana, which Carter viewed from his backyard, and a naturalization ceremony for 100 new citizens at Plains High School, which Chip Carter attended.[529][530]
Carter made arrangements to be buried in front of his home at 209 Woodland Drive in Plains. In 2006, he said that a funeral in Washington, D.C., with visitation at the Carter Center, was also planned.[531] Carter asked President Biden to deliver his eulogy.[532]
Death and funeral
Carter died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on December 29, 2024, at the age of 100.[533][534][535]
Shortly after the announcement, President Joe Biden released a statement honoring Carter's legacy, calling him a "man of principle, faith, and humility".[536][537][538] The nation held an official state funeral and day of mourning for Carter on January 9, 2025. All five living U.S. presidents—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, president-elect Donald Trump, and incumbent Biden—attended Carter's funeral.[539]
Legacy
Assessments
When Carter left office in 1981, scholars and even many Democrats viewed his presidency as a failure.[540][541][542][543] Betty Glad, a political scientist at the University of Illinois, summarized the public consensus on Carter: "he didn't have a well-developed political philosophy and gave people a feeling he didn't quite know where he was headed."[544]
Historians have ranked Carter's presidency as below average.[545][546] After leaving office, he told allies he predicted history would be kinder to him than voters were in the 1980 election.[544] In a 1982 Chicago Tribune survey, when 49 historians and scholars were asked to rank the best and worst U.S. presidents, Carter was ranked the tenth worst.[547] In 2006, conservative British historian Andrew Roberts ranked Carter the worst U.S. president.[548] Yet some of Carter's policy accomplishments have been more favorably received.[549] The 2009 documentary Back Door Channels: The Price of Peace credits Carter's efforts at Camp David, which brought peace between Israel and Egypt, with bringing the only meaningful peace to the Middle East.[550][551] Stuart E. Eizenstat, who served as Carter's chief White House domestic policy adviser, wrote, "Carter's accomplishments at home and abroad were more extensive and longer lasting than those of almost all modern presidents."[552]
While historians generally consider Carter a below-average president, his post-presidency activities have been universally praised, including his peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts.[545][546] The Independent wrote in 2009, "Carter is widely considered a better man than he was a president."[553]
Public opinion
In exit polls from the 1976 presidential election, many voters still held Ford's pardon of Nixon in 1974 against him.[554] By comparison, Carter was viewed as a sincere, honest, and well-meaning southerner.[553] During his presidency, polls generally showed that most Americans saw Carter as likable and "a man of high moral principles".[555] In the 1980 election, Reagan projected an easy self-confidence, in contrast to Carter's serious and introspective temperament. Carter was portrayed as more pessimistic and indecisive than Reagan, who was known for his charm and delegation of tasks to subordinates.[556] Reagan used the economic issues, the Iran hostage crisis, and the lack of Washington cooperation to portray Carter as a weak and ineffectual leader. Carter was the first elected incumbent president since Herbert Hoover in 1932 to lose a reelection bid.[557]
Carter began his presidency with an approval rating between 66% and 75%.[558][559] He maintained approval ratings above 50% until March 1978,[559] and the following month his approval rating fell to 39%,[560] primarily due to the declining economy.[561] His ratings briefly rebounded after the Camp David Accords in late 1978[562] but dipped during the 1979 energy crisis and got as low as 28% in July 1979.[563] At the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis, his approval rating surged to 61%, up 23 points from his pre-crisis rating.[564] Polls also found that up to 77% of Americans approved of Carter's initial response to the crisis,[564] but by June 1980, amid heated criticism from across the political spectrum[565] for his failure to free the hostages, his approval rating slumped to 33%; that same month Reagan surpassed Carter in pre-1980 election polling.[566] As Carter was leaving office, a Gallup poll found that 48% of Americans thought he had been an "average" or "above average" president, 46% said he had been "below average" or "poor", and only 3% thought he had been "outstanding".[567] His average approval rating during his entire presidency was 46%,[568][569] and he left office as one of the most unpopular U.S. presidents in history.[570]
In a 1990 Gallup survey, 45% of respondents said they approved of the overall job Carter did as president, leaving only Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson with lower ratings.[571] In a 2006 poll, 61% of respondents said they approved of the job Carter did as president, his highest rating since 1979.[572] In a 2021 survey, 27% of respondents said he had been an "outstanding" or "above average" president, 43% regarded him as "average", and only 24% said he had been "below average" or "poor".[573] A 2025 YouGov poll listed Carter as the most popular politician in America, with an overall approval rating of 64%.[574]
Awards and honors
Carterpuri, a village in Haryana, India, was renamed in his honor after he visited in 1978.[575][576]
Carter received the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award in 1984.[145]
The Jimmy Carter Library and Museum was opened in 1986.[577] The following year, buildings connected to Carter's life were granted status as National Historic Sites[578] and in 2021 were collectively renamed the Jimmy Carter National Historic Park.[579]
In 1991, Carter was made an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Kansas State University,[580] and was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[581] In 1998, the U.S. Navy named the third and final Seawolf-class submarine USS Jimmy Carter.[582]
Carter received the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights, given in honor of human rights achievements,[583] and the Hoover Medal, recognizing engineers who have contributed to global causes.[584] Carter's 2002 Nobel Peace Prize[585] was partially a response to president George W. Bush's threats of war against Iraq and Carter's criticism of the Bush administration.[586]
In 2009, the Souther Field Airport in Americus, Georgia, was renamed Jimmy Carter Regional Airport.[587]
In November 2024, Carter received his 10th nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for audio recordings of his books. He won four times—for Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2007), A Full Life: Reflections at 90 (2015), Faith: A Journey For All (2018), and Last Sunday in Plains: A Centennial Celebration (2024).[588][589][590][591][592][593] He is the most nominated and awarded recipient in the category.
On February 21, 2024, the White House Historical Association unveiled its official 2024 White House Christmas ornament honoring Carter's naval service and efforts for peace. This was the first time a president being honored was alive at the time of the unveiling.[594]
See also
- Electoral history of Jimmy Carter
- Jimmy Carter rabbit incident – Swamp rabbit attack on the American president
- List of centenarians (politicians and civil servants)
- List of members of the American Legion
- List of peace activists
- List of presidents of the United States
- List of presidents of the United States by previous experience
- "Mush from the Wimp" – Joke headline from The Boston Globe in a 1980 op-ed
- Political positions of Jimmy Carter
Notes
- The Naval Academy's Class of 1947 graduated in 1946 as a result of World War II.[27]
- Carter was the only U.S. president to have lived in subsidized housing before he took office.[52]
- Eagleton was later replaced on the ticket by Sargent Shriver.[92]
- Curran also investigated President Jimmy Carter's family peanut business for the Justice Department in 1979, and thus became the first lawyer to examine a sitting president under oath.
- After working in the Georgia governor's mansion as a trustee prisoner, Prince had been returned to prison in 1975 when Carter's term as governor ended, but intervention on her behalf by both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, with Jimmy Carter asking to be designated as her parole officer, enabled her to be reprieved and to work in the White House.[475][473][476]
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- National Park Service 2020.
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My last book, Sharing Good Times, is dedicated "to Mary Prince, whom we love and cherish." Mary is a wonderful black woman who, as a teenager visiting a small town, was falsely accused of murder and defended by an assigned lawyer whom she first met on the day of the trial, when he advised her to plead guilty, promising a light sentence. She got life imprisonment instead ... A reexamination of the evidence and trial proceedings by the original judge revealed that she was completely innocent, and she was granted a pardon.
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Earl may not have voted for FRD again, but he was not above receiving several New Deal agricultural subsidies as the Depression wore on.
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- Panton, Kenneth J. (2022). Historical Dictionary of the United States. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-5381-2419-2. OCLC 1295808727.
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- Schneider, Dorothy; Schneider, Carl J. (2005). First Ladies: a Biographical Dictionary (2 ed.). Infobase. ISBN 978-1-4381-0815-5. OCLC 234178582.
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- Wooten, James T. (1978). Dasher: The Roots and the Rising of Jimmy Carter. Summit Books. ISBN 0-671-40004-5. OCLC 3481251.
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News sources
- Hingston, Sandy (April 24, 2016). "Why This Princeton Football Team Won't Be Suiting Up Next Season". Philadelphia. Archived from the original on November 6, 2016. Retrieved November 5, 2016.
- Argetsinger, Amy (June 5, 1996). "The Class of the Naval Academy Has 50th Reunion". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
- Barrow, Bill; Warren, Michael (November 20, 2023). "Rosalynn Carter, Outspoken Former First Lady, Dies At 96". Associated Press News. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
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- Suciu, Peter (March 27, 2020). "Why President Jimmy Carter Got His Very Own Submarine". The National Interest.
- Berman, Eliza (2022). "A Governor Speaks Out on Race: LIFE's Look at Jimmy Carter, 1971". Life. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
- "Carter Aims to Create Human Relations Panel". Rome News-Tribune. July 8, 1971. Archived from the original on December 12, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
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Websites
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Further reading
- Andelic, Patrick. Donkey Work: Congressional Democrats in Conservative America, 1974–1994 (2019) excerpt Archived March 31, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
- Berggren, D. Jason; Rae, Nicol C. (2006). "Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush: Faith, Foreign Policy, and an Evangelical Presidential Style". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 36 (4): 606–632. doi:10.1111/j.1741-5705.2006.02570.x. ISSN 0360-4918.
- Bird, Kai (2021). The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter (First hardcover ed.). New York: Crown. ISBN 978-0-451-49523-5. OCLC 1280936868. In-depth biography focused on the presidency. Excerpt; Archived January 25, 2022, at the Wayback Machine.
- Busch, Andrew E. (2005). Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right. University Press of Kansas.
- Clymer, Kenton (2003). "Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and Cambodia". Diplomatic History. 27 (2): 245–278. doi:10.1111/1467-7709.00349. ISSN 0145-2096. JSTOR 24914265.
- Daigle, Craig. "Beyond Camp David: Jimmy Carter, Palestinian Self-Determination, and Human Rights." Diplomatic History 42.5 (2018): 802–830.
- Dumbrell, John (1995). The Carter Presidency: A Re-evaluation (2nd ed.). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4693-3.
- Fink, Gary M.; Graham, Hugh Davis, eds. (1998). The Carter Presidency: Policy Choices in the Post-New Deal Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-0895-9.
- Flint, Andrew R.; Porter, Joy (March 2005). "Jimmy Carter: The re-emergence of faith-based politics and the abortion rights issue". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 35 (1): 28–51. doi:10.1111/j.1741-5705.2004.00234.x.
- Freedman, Robert (2005). "The Religious Right and the Carter Administration". The Historical Journal. 48 (1): 231–260. doi:10.1017/S0018246X04004285. ISSN 0018-246X. S2CID 154791980.
- Gillon, Steven M. (1992). The Democrats' Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-07630-2.
- Glad, Betty (1980). Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-07527-4.
- Hahn, Dan F. (1992). "The rhetoric of Jimmy Carter, 1976–1980". In Windt, Theodore; Ingold, Beth (eds.). Essays in Presidential Rhetoric (3rd ed.). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt. pp. 331–365. ISBN 978-0-8403-7568-1.
- Hargrove, Erwin C. (1988). Jimmy Carter as President: Leadership and the Politics of the Public Good. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-1499-5.
- Harris, David (2004). The Crisis: the President, the Prophet, and the Shah – 1979 and the Coming of Militant Islam. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-32394-9.
- Jensehaugen, Jørgen. Arab-Israeli diplomacy under Carter: the US, Israel and the Palestinians (Bloomsbury, 2018).
- Jones, Charles O. (1988). The Trusteeship Presidency: Jimmy Carter and the United States Congress. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-1426-1.
- Jorden, William J. (1984). Panama Odyssey. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-76469-9.
- Keys, Barbara J. (2014). Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-72603-1. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
- Kucharsky, David (1976). The Man From Plains: The Mind and Spirit of Jimmy Carter. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-064891-6.
- Mattson, Kevin (2010). What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-60819-206-9. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
- Morgan, Iwan (2004). "Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and the New Democratic Economics". The Historical Journal. 47 (4): 1015–1039. doi:10.1017/S0018246X0400408X. ISSN 0018-246X. S2CID 159975563.
- Reichard, Gary W. "Early Returns: Assessing Jimmy Carter" Presidential Studies Quarterly 20#3 (Summer 1990) 603–620. online Archived May 13, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
- Ribuffo, Leo P. (1989). "God and Jimmy Carter". In M. L. Bradbury and James B. Gilbert (ed.). Transforming Faith: The Sacred and Secular in Modern American History. New York: Greenwood Press. pp. 141–159. ISBN 978-0-313-25707-0.
- Ribuffo, Leo P. (1997). "'Malaise' revisited: Jimmy Carter and the crisis of confidence". In John Patrick Diggins (ed.). The Liberal Persuasion: Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and the Challenge of the American Past. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 164–185. ISBN 978-0-691-04829-1.
- Rosenbaum, Herbert D.; Ugrinsky, Alexej, eds. (1994). The Presidency and Domestic Policies of Jimmy Carter. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. pp. 83–116. ISBN 978-0-313-28845-6.
- Schram, Martin (1977). Running for President, 1976: The Carter Campaign. New York: Stein and Day. ISBN 978-0-8128-2245-8.
- Schmitz, David F.; Walker, Vanessa (2004). "Jimmy Carter and the Foreign Policy of Human Rights: the Development of a Post-cold War Foreign Policy". Diplomatic History. 28 (1): 113–143. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2004.00400.x. ISSN 0145-2096.
- Strong, Robert A. (Fall 1986). "Recapturing leadership: The Carter administration and the crisis of confidence". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 16 (3): 636–650.
- Strong, Robert A. (2000). Working in the World: Jimmy Carter and the Making of American Foreign Policy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-2445-1.
- "Topics; Thermostatic Legacy". The New York Times. January 1, 1981. Section 1, Page 18, Column 1. Archived from the original on October 9, 2021. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
- Vogel, Steve (May 4, 2000). "Remembering Failed Iranian Mission". The Washington Post.
- White, Theodore H. (1982). America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President, 1956–1980. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0-06-039007-5.
- Williams, Daniel K. The Election of the Evangelical: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and the Presidential Contest of 1976 (University Press of Kansas, 2020) online review Archived August 20, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
- Witcover, Jules (1977). Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972–1976. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-45461-7.
- "Jimmy Carter: Life After the Presidency". Miller Center. October 4, 2016. Archived from the original on September 22, 2018. Retrieved September 22, 2018.
Primary sources
- Califano, Joseph A. Jr. (2007) [1981]. Governing America: An Insider's Report from the White House and the Cabinet. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-5211-6.
- Carter, Jimmy (1977). Why Not the Best?.
- Carter, Jimmy (1982). Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President; excerpt; Archived January 8, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
- Carter, Jimmy (1978–1981). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1977. Annual compilation of all his public documents.
- Carter, Jimmy (2001). An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood. Excerpt; Archived August 8, 2022, at the Wayback Machine.
- Carter, Jimmy (2002). The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture: Delivered in Oslo on December 10, 2002.
- Carter, Jimmy (2003). Negotiation: The Alternative To Hostility; excerpt; Archived August 30, 2022, at the Wayback Machine.
- Carter, Jimmy (2005). Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis. Excerpt; Archived August 10, 2023, at the Wayback Machine.
- Carter, Jimmy (2006). Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
- Carter, Jimmy (2007). Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope.
- Carter, Jimmy (2011). White House Diary.
- Carter, Jimmy (2015). A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety.
- Jordan, Hamilton (1982). Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency. Putnam. ISBN 978-0-399-12738-0.
- Lance, Bert (1991). The Truth of the Matter: My Life In and Out of Politics. Summit. ISBN 978-0-671-69027-4.
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Jimmy Carter, Peacemaking President Amid Crises, Is Dead at 100
Rising from Georgia farmland to the White House, he oversaw the historic Camp David peace accords, but his one-term presidency was waylaid by troubles at home and abroad.
The Last Word: Jimmy Carter
In a never-before-seen interview with The Times in 2006, Jimmy Carter reflects on his life and work as a Cold War leader, Middle East peace broker and post-presidential career as a citizen diplomat.
“Mr. President, 50 years from now, 100 years from now, what do you want your legacy to be?” When Jimmy Carter was sworn in as the president of the United States in 1977, the nation was still reeling from a period of political upheaval. “I came along at a time when Americans still remembered painfully the lies told and the debacle of Watergate. I was outside of Washington, I was not stigmatized by the mistakes that had been made in those previous years.” “It’s a long way from Plains, Ga., to Washington, D.C.” “And I brought a fresh face of a peanut farmer, a working man who swore never to tell a lie or make a misleading statement. Jimmy Carter from Georgia. I hope to be your next president.” “The president and his family surprise and delight everyone by walking the parade route down Pennsylvania Ave. up to the presidential reviewing stand in front of the White House.” But winning the White House at the height of the Cold War carried extraordinary responsibility. “The system is survivable. It’s verifiable.” The peanut farmer from Plains suddenly had his finger on the button to start World War III. “It’s a horrifying thought. If the Soviets launched a missile attack from Soviet territory, we had 26 minutes before the missile struck New York or Washington or whatever, for me to respond. And so I knew what — that I would have to respond, which may result in a holocaust. So I went out of my way to understand the problems of Brezhnev. I used to sit by a globe and turn it to Moscow, and try to imagine how it looked out on the rest of the world with a formidable military force in NATO and tremendous challenge from China. And what would happen if the Soviets became convinced that they were in danger. Well, I tried to avoid all that, but it was a very, very terrible responsibility. To give our own and our nation’s security.” Carter took pains to keep the peace and to broker a nuclear arms deal. But when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, he rolled out a covert mission to arm Afghan resistance fighters and announced a boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. “With Soviet invading forces in Afghanistan, neither the American people nor I will support sending an Olympic team to Moscow.” The goal, he says, was to pressure the Soviets to reform. “I wanted to change their system of government, but I also wanted to bring the Soviet Union into the international forum. The Soviet Union had, in effect, promised to honor human rights, and they had failed. But over a period of time, I think that may or may not have had an impact on Mikhail Gorbachev when he decided on glasnost and perestroika, and that in effect, resulted in the dismantlement of the Soviet Union, and also resulted in the withdrawal of Soviet invading troops from Afghanistan.” Despite his ongoing struggles with the Soviets, Carter forged major accomplishments in foreign policy: opening diplomatic relations with China, pushing through a Panama Canal treaty and brokering a historic Middle East peace deal. “Sun and tension on the Egyptian-Israeli border.” “I recognized before I was president the importance of the Mideast crisis between Israel and Egypt because there had been four major wars in the previous 25 years. I was able to bring Sadat and Begin to Camp David, and we had a very successful 13 days there. And we came out with the Camp David Accords, which led six months later to a treaty between Israel and Egypt. Not a word of which has ever been violated since.” But the watershed agreement did not fix the problems dogging Carter’s presidency: runaway inflation. “We must face a time of national austerity.” The energy crisis. “All of us must learn to waste less energy.” And a management style that Americans found pessimistic and uninspiring. “It is a crisis of confidence.” The final blow for Carter’s re-election came in November 1979. “Good evening. The U.S. Embassy in Tehran has been invaded and occupied by Iranian students.” More than 50 Americans were taken hostage in Iran and held for 444 days until the final hours of Carter’s presidency. “We had adequate warning that there was a threat to our embassy, and we could have done what other embassies did — either strengthen our security there or remove our personnel.” Polls predicted a close race, but in the end, Carter won in just five states and Washington, D.C. “And this country is almost solidly in the Reagan colors tonight.” After leaving the White House, Jimmy Carter reinvented himself. And redefined the role of a former president, finding his new purpose and esteem as a freelance statesman. [speaking Spanish] Carter says even political rivals asked for his diplomatic help. “Ronald Reagan didn’t take an active interest in the Mideast. He disavowed many of the things that I had done, and to my surprise, he called me on the phone and asked if I would help draft a speech that he wanted to deliver on the subject. And I responded eagerly. So he sent his national security adviser or his speechwriter — I can’t remember which — down to my home, and in the front room of my house, we drafted the portion of his speech delivered in 1982 on the Middle East.” “With respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict, we’ve embraced the Camp David framework as the only way to proceed.” “When George Bush senior came into the White House, they were interested in Latin America. They specifically asked me to get involved in holding an election that replaced the Sandinistas peacefully instead of by war, and ended the war. The Contra problem for Nicaragua will be solved by an honest election.” Carter’s diplomatic skills really got put to the test in 1994, when tensions between President Clinton and Kim Il Sung over North Korea’s nuclear program put the two countries on a collision course. “Kim Il Sung was giving me constant requests that I come to Pyongyang and help him resolve the impasse. I wrote President Clinton a letter and said, I have decided to go to North Korea. Al Gore, the vice president, was in the White House and he intercepted my letter and he said, ‘Mr. President, if you’ll change your letter to say I’m strongly inclined to go to North Korea instead of I’m going to North Korea, I’ll try to get President Clinton to agree to approve.’” Carter finally got the green light from the White House, or so he thought. “They didn’t think I had any chance to succeed. Good morning. I succeeded.” Key for Carter was having CNN camera crews broadcasting the historic negotiations. “I’m a nuclear engineer by training. I knew the intimacies of their nuclear power plant. I talked to their nuclear specialists and also directed to Kim Il Sung. And he and I agreed that he would not proceed with his nuclear program. The proposal was that there would be an immediate assurance that the I.A.E.A. inspectors would stay on site. When I got back to Seoul, though, I was told by the White House that they were dissatisfied. Al Gore was on the speakerphone. I said, I want to come to Washington and explain what I’ve done. And he told me, ‘Mr. President, you are not wanted in Washington. Our suggestion is you go directly back to Plains.’ Well, I was angry, put it mildly. I thought I had prevented a war. I thought I had worked out a satisfactory agreement for the future.” As soon as Carter touched down in the U.S., the press was filled with stories about how Carter had turned what was meant to be a private visit into a televised summit. “There were horrendous stories about me in The New York Times that I had exceeded my authority and that I had made false claims about the acquiescence of Kim Il Sung. That I was naive and ignorant and so forth. So I sent Kim Il Sung an urgent letter, and asked him to confirm to Clinton, not to me, all the agreements he had reached. I think there were 12 of them. And so that was adopted by the Clinton administration as their policy.” That policy did help to avert war. But critics say Jimmy Carter and President Clinton were wrong to appease a rogue nation like North Korea, which would later develop a nuclear arsenal in violation of the agreement he helped broker. In his later years, Carter traveled the globe with the Carter Center to fight disease and monitor elections in emerging democracies. “We believe that all of our questions have been answered.” Work that earned the former president a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, just as he was forging a very public campaign opposing the coming American invasion of Iraq. “Global challenges must be met by an emphasis on peace.” When we sat down with President Carter in 2006, he laid out his vision for America’s role in the future and his concerns about missteps in the post-9/11 world. “The announcement and practice of preemptive war, the complete abandonment of all the nuclear arms control agreements that were reached, the claim, in effect, that prisoners could be mistreated or tortured or deprived of habeas corpus, these are some of the things that I think has caused a deterioration in our country’s basic stature and integrity. I would like to see our country be the champion of human rights. And every American Embassy looked upon as a haven for those who suffer from human rights abuse. I’d like to see our country be the most generous on earth. These are not just my goals, and they will not be my accomplishments, but the affirmation of our nation’s continuing moral strength and our belief in an undiminished, ever expanding American dream.”
Jimmy Carter, who rose from Georgia farmland to become the 39th president of the United States on a promise of national healing after the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam, then lost the White House in a cauldron of economic turmoil at home and crisis in Iran, died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga. He was 100.
The Carter Center in Atlanta announced his death, which came nearly three months after Mr. Carter, already the longest-living president in American history, became the first former commander in chief to reach the century mark. Mr. Carter went into hospice care 22 months ago, but endured longer than even his family expected.
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Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and many everyday people from around the world who admired not only Mr. Carter’s service during four years in the White House but his four decades of efforts since leaving office to fight disease, broker peace and provide for the poor. President Biden ordered a state funeral to be held and was expected to deliver a eulogy.
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“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith and humility,” Mr. Biden, the first Democratic senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s long-shot 1976 bid for the presidency, said in a statement. “He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who often denigrated Mr. Carter and in recent days spoke of unraveling one of his signature accomplishments, the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama, issued a gracious statement. “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans,” Mr. Trump said. “For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude.”
Mr. Carter was no fan of Mr. Trump and family members said he was holding on in part to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president cast his absentee ballot for her in mid-October after making his final public appearance on his birthday when he was rolled out to his yard in a wheelchair to watch a flyover of military jets in his honor.
Other than interludes in the White House and the Georgia governor’s mansion, he and his wife, the former first lady Rosalynn Carter, lived in the same simple home in Plains for most of their adult lives and each of them passed away there, Mrs. Carter in November last year.
A lifelong farmer who still worked with his hands building houses for the poor well into his 90s, Mr. Carter had long defied death and outlived not only his wife but his vice president, most of his cabinet, key aides and allies as well as the Republican president he defeated and the Republican challenger who later defeated him. Over the years, he beat back a series of health crises, including a bout with the skin cancer melanoma, which spread to his liver and brain, and repeated falls, one giving him a broken hip.
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The Carter Center announced in February last year that Mr. Carter, “after a series of short hospital stays,” had decided to forgo further life-prolonging medical treatment and would receive hospice care at home.
News that he seemed to be in his final days prompted a wave of appreciations and remembrances of his extended and eventful life, but even then he upended expectations by living for nearly two years. He lived long enough to bid farewell to Mrs. Carter, who died at 96, culminating a marriage of 77 years.
Mr. Carter’s death sets the stage for the first presidential funeral since that of George H.W. Bush in 2018, to culminate in a service at Washington National Cathedral. Such occasions traditionally prompt a cease-fire in America’s fractious political wars as the nation’s leaders pause to remember and bid farewell to one of their own. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump would attend.
With his peanut farmer’s blue jeans, his broad, toothy grin and his promise never to tell a lie, Mr. Carter was a self-professed outsider intent on reforming a broken Washington in an era of lost faith in government. He became one of his generation’s great peacemakers with his Camp David accords, bringing together Israel and Egypt, but he could not turn around a slumping economy or free American hostages seized by militants in Iran in time to win a second term.
While his presidency was remembered more for its failures than for its successes, his post-presidency was seen by many as a model for future chief executives. Rather than vanish from view or focus on moneymaking, he established the Carter Center to promote peace, combat disease and tackle social inequality. He transformed himself into a freelance diplomat traveling the globe, sometimes irritating his successors but earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
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Mr. Carter was outspoken into his final years. He condemned the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters trying to overturn his election defeat to Mr. Biden, and he denounced new voting limits subsequently passed by Republicans in Georgia. In an essay for The New York Times on the first anniversary of Jan. 6, he warned that “our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss” and called for changes to avoid “losing our precious democracy.”
Long a favorite target for Republicans, Mr. Carter’s name came up repeatedly as a foil for Mr. Trump to mock Mr. Biden even after the incumbent president withdrew from this year’s race. “Jimmy Carter is the happiest man because Jimmy Carter is considered a brilliant president by comparison,” Mr. Trump said on Mr. Carter’s 100th birthday. Mr. Biden’s critics compared high inflation on his watch to the price increases of Mr. Carter’s presidency, and the fall of Afghanistan to the Iran hostage crisis.
Mr. Carter went to Washington with an outsider’s promise to “drain the swamp” and make America great again four decades before Mr. Trump expressed those same aims. But the two could hardly have come from more different origins. Unlike the thrice-married New York playboy mogul with the flashy golf resorts and the private airliner, Mr. Carter grew up on a peanut farm with no electricity or running water. He was a frugal born-again Christian who taught Sunday school and was married to the same woman for more than three-quarters of a century.
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He was a man of the people, or so he wanted to be perceived. Minutes after his Inaugural Address in January 1977, he surprised the crowds lining Pennsylvania Avenue when he and Rosalynn Carter and their 9-year-old daughter, Amy, got out of the presidential limousine and walked the parade route to the White House, smiling and waving in the sunshine as spectators cheered.
Mr. Carter once said that he had gone to the capital to restore the country’s faith in itself after the twin traumas of Watergate and Vietnam — to build a “new foundation,” as he put it, of trust, decency and compassion.
Meeting that goal would have been hard enough without the intrusions of national and international crises. His four-year tenure was a story of distraction, disappointment and serial drama that came to an end only in the last tortured minutes of his presidency, with the release of Americans held hostage by Iranians for 444 days.
Troubles and Triumphs
To his critics, Mr. Carter often undermined his own ambitions through stubbornness and insufficient attention to the egos and political needs of others in the government. His unorthodox style — informal in his cardigan sweaters but uncomfortable with the glad-handing ways of Washington — and an unfortunate confluence of circumstances cost him dearly in the domestic arena.
There was an intractable energy problem brought on by an Arab oil embargo. Inflation soared, and so did interest rates, leaving businesses and home buyers deeply discouraged. He found himself at odds with an increasingly assertive Congress controlled by his own party. His approval rating in the polls sank from 70 percent early in his presidency to 28 percent little more than a year later.
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He nevertheless achieved some notable successes in office, particularly in foreign affairs. His human rights policies set a new standard for how the United States should deal with abusive governments. The peace treaty he hammered out between Israel and Egypt still holds decades later. He signed a strategic arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union and formalized diplomatic relations with China. And over the opposition of conservatives like Ronald Reagan, he pushed through the treaties turning over the Panama Canal to Panama.
Long pilloried by Republicans as a model of ineffectual liberal leadership and shunned by fellow Democrats who saw him as a political albatross, Mr. Carter benefited in recent years from some historical reappraisal, reinforced by a visit to Plains by Mr. Biden in 2021 and a gala celebration of the Carters’ 75th wedding anniversary three months later. Several recently published books argued that his presidency had been more consequential than it was given credit for.
In “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life,” published in 2020, Jonathan Alter called him “perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history,” one who was ahead of his time on the environment, foreign policy and race relations.
Similarly, Kai Bird maintained in “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter” (2021) that the traditional view of Mr. Carter as a better former president than president was belied by the historical evidence. “The record of these achievements is not to be lightly dismissed,” he wrote.
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And Stuart E. Eizenstat, Mr. Carter’s domestic policy adviser, insisted in “President Carter: The White House Years” (2018) that the former president was a thoroughly decent, honorable man who had been underrated. While he may have been miscast as a politician, Mr. Eizenstat wrote, Mr. Carter’s accomplishments, measured against those of other presidents, made him “one of the most consequential in modern history.”
A son of a small-town businessman and farmer, Mr. Carter was the first president from the states of the former Confederacy to be elected since the Civil War, not counting Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian who had moved to New Jersey, where he taught and served as governor, and Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan who ascended to the Oval Office upon the assassination of his predecessor before being elected to a full term. To many Americans it was remarkable that a molasses-voiced Southerner from what had been a white-supremacist section of Georgia could win the presidency just over a decade after the death of Jim Crow.
Defeated in 1980 by Mr. Reagan, Mr. Carter went home to Plains not only disappointed but also worn in body and spirit. Then he set about rebuilding. He became a global humanitarian, an author, a professor and a wealthy landowner, engaging in public affairs to a degree not seen among former presidents in modern times.
While he had first made his mark in national politics as a relatively moderate Democrat — he started the military buildup that Mr. Reagan would later expand while presiding over smaller deficits than his successor did — Mr. Carter migrated to the left in the years after office. By 2016, he supported Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont, over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the more centrist party favorite, for the Democratic presidential nomination.
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In his path to power, Mr. Carter had pledged a government “as good as the American people,” but he showed little talent for the compromise and dealing that politics demands. He envisioned fundamental changes in policies ranging from taxes to the organization of federal agencies, but he found that Congress was unwilling or unable to enact them. He had been trained as an engineer and a problem solver, but he came up against a nation that had grown hesitant, drained and divided by war in Southeast Asia and demoralized by scandal in the White House.
When Mr. Carter announced his presidential candidacy in 1974, his political qualifications seemed unexceptional. He had been governor of Georgia for a single term and before that a state senator. He started adulthood as a Navy officer, then went home to run the family business. His first dalliance with politics was little more than the expression of civic involvement expected of such men in small towns everywhere.
Then, as his interest in public affairs deepened, it became obvious that the man was not ordinary and never had been. There was an intensity about him, a drive to learn and excel, that few outside his family and friends had noticed.
He was similarly underestimated when he walked onto the national stage in the 1970s. And even after voters had elected him president in 1976, they still knew little about him, except that they liked him and that he seemed to be honest and decent and untainted by the nation’s recent dishonor.
Peanuts, Bibles and Politics
James Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains on Oct. 1, 1924, into a family not wealthy but “well off,” as Southerners put it. His father, who was known as Earl, owned enough fertile land to make a comfortable living growing peanuts, cotton and other crops. Jimmy’s mother, Lillian (Gordy) Carter, was a nurse and an avid reader with a keen interest in public affairs.
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Their son would become known for his strong Baptist faith, but Earl and Lillian wore their religion more lightly. They and their friends raised eyebrows in their Bible Belt town by partying on Saturday nights with liquor and dancing. Come Sunday morning, however, they all showed up at church.
Jimmy inherited a taste for politics from both sides of his family. His maternal grandfather, James Jackson Gordy, was a friend and follower of the Georgia populist Tom Watson, a confounding mixture of race-baiter and civil liberties champion. Earl Carter was a disciple of Eugene Talmadge, the segregationist governor of Georgia.
Jimmy Carter’s attitude toward race was shaped by a Southern complexity in which white people would keep their distance from Black people in town, expressing contempt for them there if not outright hostility, and then work side by side with them on the farm, where Black and white children might play together.
Mr. Carter spent a lot of time with his Black neighbors. “I played with their children, often ate and slept in their homes, and later hunted, fished, plowed and hoed with their husbands and children,” he wrote in a 2001 memoir, “An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood.”
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His father’s racial attitudes were typical of the time and place. Earl Sr. treated Black neighbors fairly, the younger Mr. Carter said, but insisted on the customary boundaries. His mother, on the other hand, refused to acknowledge most racial distinctions. Years later, when Lyndon Johnson ran for president, Miss Lillian, as she was known, managed his local campaign office. Segregationists repeatedly vandalized her car.
The Carter farm was at Archery, a hamlet just west of Plains that no longer exists. Jimmy lived there — in a one-story white-frame house, now a National Historic Site — from 1928 through the Depression. He saw many sharecropper families subsisting on fatback, cornmeal and molasses with an occasional squirrel or possum.
Jimmy learned the proper way to cook possum. “They were always baked whole,” he wrote, “smothered in sweet potatoes, apples, or other fruits, vegetables and spices that never adequately concealed their unique taste.”
By 1937, three other children had been born into the Carter house: Gloria in 1926, Ruth in 1929 and Billy in 1937.
Their living was primitive by today’s standards. They drew water from a well and relieved themselves in an outdoor privy. One of Jimmy’s first chores was milking the cows.
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Jimmy exerted himself to learn all he could about running a farm. Even so, he harbored an ambition to go to sea one day. He set his sights on Annapolis and a career as a naval officer.
He was 16 when he graduated from Plains High School at the top of his class of 26 — the first in his family to finish high school. He went on to spend a year at Georgia Southwestern College in nearby Americus and a year at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Then, in 1943, with the United States far into World War II, he was accepted into the Naval Academy at 19. He spent the rest of the war there in an accelerated program and graduated in 1946.
A month later he married Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister Ruth’s. Rosalynn had briefly attended Georgia Southwestern and was ready to leave Georgia.
The Navy gave the Carters a look at the world. Their first son, John, known as Jack, was born in Portsmouth, Va., in 1947; James Earl Carter III, known as Chip, was born in Honolulu in 1950; and the third son, Donnel, was born in New London, Conn., in 1952. (Their daughter, Amy, came along much later in Plains, in 1967.)
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In October 1952, Lieutenant Carter went to work for Capt. Hyman Rickover, who was well along in developing the Navy’s first nuclear-powered submarines and ships. After going back to school to study nuclear engineering, Lieutenant Carter became the executive officer in a crew that would build and prepare the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus. By the winter of 1953, he was dreaming of commanding his own sub.
Then, on July 23, 1953, his father, at that point a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, died of pancreatic cancer, the disease that would take the lives of three of his children, though not his son Jimmy’s.
Lieutenant Carter resigned his commission, angering Rickover, and returned to Plains to take over the family’s peanut warehouse and processing plant, angering Rosalynn; she had no interest in going back to Georgia.
No to Segregationists
These were lean times; the business earned less than $200 in net profit the first year. But with Rosalynn keeping the books and both working long hours, they built it into a profitable operation.
Mr. Carter became a civic leader, spearheading the building of the town’s first swimming pool, leading an effort to pave its streets, helping to bring a doctor to town and getting appointed to the Sumter County school board.
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But tensions rose as the civil rights movement gained steam, and when a White Citizens Council was formed to resist integration in Plains, Mr. Carter refused to join. His business was briefly boycotted, but he rode out the trouble and mostly avoided speaking publicly about race. Still, word got around that he and Rosalynn were different from most white Georgians.
Deciding to go into politics, he ran for the State Senate in 1962 and won. Months later, civil rights activists moved into Americus, in his district. The police used violence to break up demonstrations, and obscure laws were used to jail protesters. But as the national media covered the turmoil, Mr. Carter kept silent rather than join the cry of resistance that most white Southerners expected of their political leaders at the time.
As a state senator, Mr. Carter soon proved politically nimble, befriending progressives in the capital while treading the fine line between segregationists and integrationists in his rural district. His constituents tolerated him even when he spoke out in favor of admitting Black people to Plains Baptist Church, where the vote was 54 to 6 against it.
Increasingly confident of his political skills, Mr. Carter ran for governor in 1966. But he came in third in a six-man race, drawing enough votes to contribute to the failure of a fellow progressive, former Gov. Ellis Arnall, who was forced into a runoff against the arch-segregationist Lester Maddox. Maddox won, a victory for which a dismayed Mr. Carter held himself partly responsible.
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Mr. Carter immediately planned to run again in 1970. Guided by his sister Ruth, a charismatic religious leader, he became newly serious about his faith, describing himself as a born-again Christian. His mother, in her late 60s, was undergoing a conversion of sorts at the same time. In 1966, bored and restless, she joined the Peace Corps. She learned two languages and spent the next years teaching nutrition in India.
For his run for governor in 1970, Mr. Carter gathered a staff of up-and-coming Georgians, Black and white, including Mr. Eizenstat, Hamilton Jordan, Jody Powell, Bert Lance, Vernon Jordan and the Rev. Andrew Young, all of whom remained close to him as president.
With a deft though vague message that appealed to both liberals and conservatives, Mr. Carter handily defeated Carl Sanders, a former governor with a progressive image. While he had appealed during the campaign to supporters of George C. Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, Mr. Carter stunned his conservative backers when he stood in front of the Capitol and proclaimed in his inaugural address, “I say to you quite frankly the time for racial discrimination is over.”
Before summer, Mr. Carter was on the cover of Time magazine, hailed as one in a wave of “New South” governors elected in 1970.
‘President of What?’
Jimmy Carter’s quest for the White House began in the fall of 1972 as it became clear that Senator George S. McGovern, the Democratic nominee, would lose to President Richard M. Nixon in November. Mr. Carter and his advisers calculated that the Democratic field in 1976 would be wide open and that a newcomer would have a chance.
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He was encouraged by Peter Bourne, a British psychiatrist who had landed in Georgia and joined Mr. Carter’s staff to work on health matters. Dr. Bourne had written a 10-page memorandum to Mr. Carter during the 1972 Democratic National Convention, when Mr. Carter had hopes of being Mr. McGovern’s running mate. Dr. Bourne urged him to aim higher than vice president and to start campaigning for the presidency early. Mr. Jordan wrote a similar memo.
Dr. Bourne’s optimism was based on the presumption that a Carter campaign would signal a departure from the old politics of race. “No Southerner has captured the presidency,” Dr. Bourne wrote, “because he has not been willing to take the drastic step away from traditional Southern politics that is necessary.”
Mr. Carter was willing and able to take that step because of a new Southern political reality that had been fostered by the civil rights movement and Johnson’s leadership in dismantling the legal underpinnings of Jim Crow, including the disenfranchisement of Black voters. No longer necessarily tethered to that segregationist legacy, white Southerners could henceforth run for national office on an equal footing with others, although for years they would have to demonstrate that they were not racists.
The day after Mr. McGovern’s resounding defeat, Mr. Carter summoned several advisers to the Georgia governor’s mansion to begin planning his presidential run. The group assumed that his main rivals for the Democratic nomination in 1976 would be Wallace and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Wallace was recovering from wounds at the hands of a would-be assassin earlier that year. By Christmas 1972, the Carter campaign was quietly underway.
Two months later, Mr. Carter spoke to the National Press Club in Washington, laying out a vision for the nation that combined populism, frugality and criticism of Nixon, the latter a note that would sound prescient during the unfolding Watergate scandal just ahead.
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Mr. Carter recognized that he was weak on foreign affairs at the time. So in April 1973, he and Rosalynn Carter brushed up on their Spanish and led a delegation of Georgians on a trade mission to Latin America. A month later, he and his group were in Britain, West Germany, Belgium and Israel. He accepted an appointment to the Trilateral Commission, which had been created by the banker David Rockefeller in 1973 as a forum for political and business figures from North America, Western Europe and Japan. The director was the political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Mr. Carter extended his reach in the national party in 1974 as chairman of the midterm elections campaign. Democrats were emboldened in the wake of Watergate, and he traveled the country to speak for 62 candidates for Congress. In the November election, Democrats made large gains in the House and the Senate as well as in statehouses across the nation. Within weeks Mr. Carter announced his intention to run for president.
Many observers were incredulous and shared the reaction of his plain-spoken mother, Lillian: “President of what?”
His brother, Billy, who had acquired the image of a beer-guzzling Southern good old boy, had misgivings of his own. When a reporter suggested to him that he was a little strange, he replied: “Look, my mama was a 70-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in India, one of my sisters goes all over the world as a holy-roller preacher, my oldest sister spends half her time on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and my brother thinks he’s going to be president of the United States. Which one of my family do you think is strange?”
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But the dark horse’s chances improved as Senator Kennedy made no moves toward a candidacy and Wallace’s health failed to improve. The early campaign, short on funds, gave new meaning to the term grass roots. Mr. Carter flew coach and saved on lodging by staying with families, some poor, as he crisscrossed the nation. He generated support among establishment figures like Cyrus R. Vance, Warren M. Christopher and Richard C. Holbrooke and made inroads in organized labor, the entertainment industry and the news media.
For the first time since 1960, when John F. Kennedy had to assert that his Roman Catholicism would not influence his White House decision making, religion became an issue in a presidential campaign. By labeling himself a born-again Christian, Mr. Carter appealed to many voters, especially Black fellow Baptists. But to others his religiosity seemed self-righteous and vaguely alarming.
The religion issue subsided, then erupted again when he acknowledged to Playboy magazine that he had lusted in his heart for women besides his wife. He was trying to explain Jesus Christ’s admonition that people should not harshly judge one another; he himself, Mr. Carter said, should not look down on the man who has committed adultery. Nuance was lost, however, and he endured weeks of anger, ridicule and jokes.
Mr. Carter’s strategy for 1976 was to win the early nomination contests and build momentum. It worked. He practically planted himself in Iowa — where few presidential hopefuls had ever taken its complicated January caucuses all that seriously before — and stunned the political world by surpassing every other candidate. (The victory put Iowa on the presidential map in future races, a status diminished when Mr. Biden ended its first-in-the-nation position for Democrats earlier this year.) Mr. Carter parlayed his success into a victory in the New Hampshire primary in February.
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By the end of the primary season, he had outpaced a field that included not just Wallace but prominent Democrats like R. Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy family member and former vice-presidential nominee, and Gov. Jerry Brown of California.
The party formally nominated Mr. Carter on July 15 at Madison Square Garden in New York, and he selected Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate, balancing out his ticket with a liberal Washington insider who had strong labor ties.
In the general election, Mr. Carter took on President Gerald R. Ford, who had succeeded to the office with Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and then controversially pardoned him. Mr. Carter argued that after Watergate it was time for a change in Washington. “I will never lie to you,” he promised.
His campaign was aided by the poor economy. He cited the “misery index,” the combination of inflation and unemployment rates, which reached 13 percent by Election Day. On Nov. 2, 1976, Mr. Carter defeated Ford with 297 electoral votes to 240, and 50.1 percent of the popular vote to 48 percent for the incumbent.
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President Everyman
On Jan. 20, 1977, Mr. Carter opened his Inaugural Address by thanking Ford “for all he has done to heal our land.” It sounded a therapeutic tone that he would seek to sustain.
He made a point of deconstructing the imperial presidency associated with Nixon, presenting himself as an Everyman. In addition to walking the route of his inaugural parade, he banned the playing of “Hail to the Chief,” sold the presidential yacht Sequoia and carried his own bags onto Air Force One.
Mr. Carter’s first act as president was to grant amnesty to Vietnam War draft resisters. The predicted firestorm raged then quickly faded. He had fulfilled his first campaign promise, part of his plan to bind up the nation’s wounds. Warned that the order would be fiercely opposed in the Senate, as indeed it was, he replied: “I don’t care if all 100 of them are against me. It’s the right thing to do.”
Mr. Carter immediately tried to allay any lingering doubts about his stand on race. One of his first appointments, ambassador to the United Nations, was Mr. Young, his Atlanta friend and a former aide to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was the first of many minority appointments.
He was also attentive to placing women in high positions. One was Patricia Derian of Jackson, Miss., a white civil rights leader, who turned the position of assistant secretary of state for human rights into an instrument of pressure on abusive strongmen around the world.
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Ms. Derian’s husband, Hodding Carter III, another Mississippian, became even more prominent as the State Department’s chief spokesman. During the Iran hostage crisis, the face of Hodding Carter (no relation to Jimmy Carter) became almost as familiar on television as the president’s.
The president himself was on television almost daily in his first months in office. He held news conferences twice a month and addressed “town meetings” around the country. In his televised “fireside chats” — reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s radio addresses from the White House — he spoke to the citizenry wearing a fatherly cardigan sweater rather than a suit. He answered questions on a national radio broadcast.
Surrounded by the “Georgia Mafia” he had taken with him to the White House, Mr. Carter refused at first to have a chief of staff, preferring what was called a “spokes of the wheel” structure in which many advisers had access to him. As it turned out, he was a micromanager, drawing scorn for keeping tabs even on the schedule of the White House tennis court.
Part of his problem could be traced to a cultural gap between Mr. Carter’s team and the Washington sophisticates who set the tone in national affairs. The Southerners, wearing bluejeans to work and acting boisterous in public after hours, were greeted skeptically in some quarters and often ridiculed.
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The Washington Star saluted the new administration with a page of mocking cartoons by Patrick Oliphant. In one, Lillian Carter wore a sunbonnet and smoked a corncob pipe; an outhouse could be seen on the White House lawn.
There was similar comment overseas. In London, the humor magazine Punch published a weekly column titled “Miz Lillian Writes,” composed in an exaggerated Southern patois. The president’s mother was portrayed as a crude racist, though she was perhaps the oldest white integrationist in Plains.
The administration had its first hint of scandal in September 1977, when Mr. Lance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and a close Carter friend, was forced to resign after allegations of civil fraud and numerous violations of banking and securities laws during his Atlanta days. A federal jury later acquitted him and his associates on nine counts of banking law violations but deadlocked on three other counts.
In response to criticism that his presidency was all style and no substance, Mr. Carter proposed tax reform, an overhaul of the welfare system and a comprehensive approach to the energy problem. He offered policies to halt the decline of cities, tackled inflation and unemployment, and sought increased spending for guns and butter while preaching the necessity of a balanced budget.
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His foreign affairs list was just as long: disarmament; a new international respect for human rights; meaningful dialogue with developing nations; closer ties with Latin America; resolution of the Middle East conflict; better relations with the Soviet Union; and, presaging his first big fight with Congress, the pair of treaties turning over the Panama Canal to Panama.
The upshot was that he overloaded Congress with proposals. “The president personally tries to solve too many problems,” Attorney General Griffin B. Bell said when he resigned in 1979 to return to private law practice. “The president can’t spend his time on minutiae. He’s got to deal with the big things, like inflation.”
‘Sacrifice and Pain’
Despite his infectious smile, Mr. Carter was an introvert at heart and faced policy challenges like an engineer, not a politician. He could be priggish and even moralistic. He made little allowance for the political needs of his own allies, alienating fellow Democrats in Congress, especially the House speaker, Thomas P. O’Neill of Massachusetts. Mr. Carter “did not like politicians and felt uncomfortable with the normal byplay of political compromise,” Mr. Eizenstat wrote in his 2018 book.
As a result, Mr. Carter’s legislative record was mixed. He created a Department of Energy and a Department of Education, both of which would go on to survive generations of Republicans who vowed to eliminate them. But other proposals, like a wellhead tax on new oil, went down to defeat.
Circumstances outside his control made matters worse. The Iranian revolution in late 1978 cut oil production in Iran and increased energy problems in the United States. There were long lines at gasoline stations. To alleviate the pain, Mr. Carter, by executive action, ended controls on the price of domestically produced oil.
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Stung by criticism that he did not appreciate the ways of Washington, the president changed his style during the spring of 1978. He reined in freewheeling cabinet officers and put more power in the White House. He gave senior White House staff members more authority, overcoming his initial fear of creating another Nixon White House. He reluctantly decided to grasp the levers of power and play the political game.
By the end of his second year, Mr. Carter had succeeded in pushing through a Democratic-controlled Congress a tax cut, Civil Service reorganization and an energy bill that had been significantly changed from his original proposal. He vetoed bills for public works and the military that he deemed “inflationary.”
But Congress refused to act on other initiatives, including parts of his urban aid programs and his plan to scrap welfare programs in favor of a system of cash grants for those who were not expected to work.
He tried to balance the budget. He also wanted to increase military spending, so he proposed cutting social programs, but that provoked warnings of social unrest from members of Congress and leaders of Black organizations. The criticism was only partly blunted by his appointment of more Black and Hispanic people than any president before him.
Mr. Carter took strong environmental stands, but problems persisted in hazardous wastes, water resources, wildlife protection and coastal conservation. After a partial meltdown of a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and a subsequent radiation leak — the worst civilian nuclear accident in American history — Mr. Carter traveled to the plant to reassure the nation.
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The president’s political problems worsened by the middle of his term. In the summer of 1979 he spent 10 days at Camp David, the Maryland presidential retreat, conducting a “domestic summit,” listening to advice from 150 prominent Americans. He returned to Washington and delivered an Oval Office address on what he termed “a crisis of confidence” in the nation. What became known as his “malaise” speech — although he did not use that word — lifted his popularity briefly but came to be derided as preachy and downbeat, seeming to define what many considered the uninspiring tone of his presidency.
Two days after the speech, Mr. Carter asked his entire cabinet to submit resignations. He accepted five. The shake-up set off an uproar in Congress. Some critics, including Democrats, suggested that he had undercut confidence in the government; even Mr. Mondale was so distressed that he briefly contemplated resigning.
Mr. Carter’s response to the criticism was the time-honored device of blaming the news media. From the beginning, there had been antagonism between the Washington press corps and the Carter outsiders. Late in his administration, he held more “town meetings” around the country and began meeting with out-of-town reporters and editors to circumvent the capital news media.
But broadly speaking, “Carter’s message was sacrifice and pain,” Mr. Eizenstat wrote. During an address to the nation on the energy crisis, the president opened by saying, “Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem that is unprecedented in our history.” When celebrating the creation of the Education Department, he said dolefully, “This thing won’t work as well as you think it will.”
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It was not as if his presidency was without successes. Eight months after he took office, he and the leader of Panama, Omar Torrijos, signed treaties obliging the United States to surrender control of the Panama Canal by 1999, settling a longstanding point of friction between the two countries.
Mr. Carter saw the move as an overdue show of American resolve “to deal with the developing nations of the world, the small nations of the world, on the basis of mutual respect and partnership.”
But led by Mr. Reagan, conservatives denounced the treaties as a giveaway. “We built it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and we’re going to keep it,” Mr. Reagan said. Gallup found that 78 percent of Americans opposed the treaties.
Mr. Carter campaigned for the measures in the classic style, cajoling, twisting arms and inviting senators to the White House. He also went over their heads with a publicity blitz aimed at voters. In March 1978, he won with a Senate vote of 68 to 32, one more than the two-thirds required for ratification.
His next foreign affairs triumph came more easily. Mr. Carter signaled early in his presidency that he wished to complete the normalization of relations with China that had started with Nixon’s diplomatic breakthrough. To establish full-fledged embassies and increase trade, Mr. Carter embarked on months of secret, delicate negotiations.
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The two nations reached an agreement on the main obstacle, the status of Taiwan, which China regarded as a renegade province. The United States severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan and withdrew its military presence there, but also insisted on continuing arms sales, commercial trade and other ties on an unofficial basis.
Mr. Carter and the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, announced the agreement on Dec. 15, 1978. Some conservatives objected, but the normalization seemed to please most Americans. Formal recognition took place on New Year’s Day 1979. Mr. Deng visited Washington that January.
A Historic Handshake
Mr. Carter’s pursuit of a Middle East peace settlement was an even more momentous venture in personal diplomacy. He invited Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt to Camp David in September 1978 for what would become 13 days of dramatic negotiations to end decades of conflict between their nations.
The talks began in gloom and discord and almost broke down several times, only to be salvaged by Mr. Carter’s persistence in finding a way to continue. Ultimately, the leaders emerged with what was billed as a “framework for peace.” As the world watched in disbelief, Mr. Carter hosted a White House ceremony with a smiling Mr. Begin and Mr. Sadat.
Mr. Begin and Mr. Sadat returned home to growing dissent, however. The framework projected a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and self-rule for Palestinians on the West Bank of the Jordan River and in the Gaza Strip. Israel was to return Egyptian territory in the Sinai Peninsula that it had seized in their 1973 war. But negotiations bogged down on the details.
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Mr. Carter stepped in again. Mr. Begin returned to Washington for more talks and agreed to break the deadlock. Mr. Carter flew to Cairo to get Mr. Sadat’s approval, then to Jerusalem for Mr. Begin’s final assent for what would be known as the Camp David Accords. While the Palestinian piece of the negotiation would remain unresolved, the image of Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin shaking hands with a grinning Mr. Carter at the peace treaty signing would become one of the most enduring images of the era.
The agreement brought Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1978. Mr. Carter, the architect of the settlement, was passed over on a technicality: He had not been nominated in time. He was to wait 24 years for the honor.
One of Mr. Carter’s biggest foreign policy disappointments was his failure to finalize a new Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT, treaty with the Soviet Union, something he had pledged to do when he took office. The first SALT agreement, signed in 1972, was to expire in 1977.
Negotiations got off to a rocky start. Mr. Carter had criticized human rights violations in the Soviet Union, but he instructed Secretary of State Vance to persist, and on June 18, 1979, in Vienna, the new SALT II treaty limiting each side’s nuclear bombers and missiles was signed by Mr. Carter and the Soviet premier, Leonid I. Brezhnev.
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Then, during a bitter, protracted debate about the treaty in the Senate, the issue was suddenly removed from the table by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, making approval impossible. On Jan. 3, 1980, Mr. Carter reluctantly asked the Senate to delay the ratification process. It never resumed, and in 1986, Mr. Reagan, then president, formally repudiated the treaty.
Mr. Carter later called the failure of the SALT negotiations “the most profound disappointment of my presidency.”
He responded to the invasion by ordering an embargo on sales of grain and high technology to the Soviet Union and by persuading the United States Olympic Committee to boycott the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. Both actions elicited protests at home, especially from farmers over the grain embargo.
To address human rights, a theme of his Inaugural Address, Mr. Carter hired a group of strong rights advocates led by Ms. Derian, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, who was known for standing up to the segregationist power structure in Mississippi. In her new job, she traveled the world confronting dictators and demanding an end to torture and other abuses.
But Mr. Carter soon learned that change could be difficult. There were tensions over ideology. Some rights advocates wanted to attack the violations of right-wing dictators; others saw the abuses by Communist nations as more pernicious.
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The administration ultimately drew back from its confrontation with the Soviet Union over human rights but pursued the campaign in Latin America and Africa, cutting military aid to Argentina, Uruguay and Ethiopia.
How much Mr. Carter advanced the cause of human rights is difficult to gauge. There is no doubt, however, that he made the issue more visible beyond the American borders.
The Hostage Crisis
On Nov. 4, 1979, militant Iranian students seized the United States Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. Thus began the most traumatic episode of the Carter administration.
The hostage crisis had its origins in the Iranian revolution led by the Islamic fundamentalist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran and ruler of the country intermittently since 1941, went into exile in January 1979. He lived in Mexico until November, when he was allowed to travel to the United States for cancer treatment.
Mr. Carter had resisted pressure to let the shah into the country. Among those pleading the shah’s case were Mr. Brzezinski, by now the president’s national security adviser; Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state; and Mr. Rockefeller, the banker.
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The president relented only after learning that the shah could not receive the treatment he needed in Mexico, but he foresaw the consequences. “What are you guys going to advise me to do when they overrun our embassy now and take our people hostage?” he asked his aides.
The shah arrived in New York on Oct. 24, 1979. Iranian militants began to demonstrate outside the American Embassy. Days later, about 3,000 of them overran the embassy and seized the hostages with the approval of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Mr. Carter and his advisers began planning a rescue operation as early as the second day of the hostages’ captivity. One plan after another was discarded. To bring pressure on the Iranian ruler, Mr. Carter stopped the purchase of Iran’s oil and froze all Iranian assets in the United States.
Two weeks into their captivity, more than a dozen hostages were released. Six others who eluded the militants and took refuge with the Canadian ambassador were spirited out of the country in a C.I.A. operation later made famous by Ben Affleck in “Argo,” the 2012 movie he directed and starred in.
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Mr. Carter continued to negotiate for the remaining 52 hostages through both open and secret channels, but to no avail, and on April 24, 1980, he ordered a military rescue. The mission failed amid a disastrous loss of helicopters and the death of eight soldiers in the Iranian desert. He also lost Mr. Vance, his valued secretary of state, who had counseled against the mission and resigned in protest four days later. Mr. Vance was replaced by Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine.
While the public initially rallied behind Mr. Carter, the longer the crisis wore on, the more feckless he appeared. Over the objections of his advisers, he limited his campaigning for re-election and other activities to concentrate on freeing the hostages, ultimately making it look as if his whole presidency had been taken hostage. In their nightly broadcasts, network anchors counted the numbers of days since the hostages had been seized.
“I may have overemphasized the plight of the hostages when I was in my final year,” Mr. Carter told The Washington Post in 2018. “But I was so obsessed with them personally, and with their families, that I wanted to do anything to get them home safely, which I did.”
A new and frantic effort to free the hostages was begun just days before the end of the Carter presidency. Working through a half-dozen foreign capitals, the administration reached a general agreement with Iran, but it snagged on details of releasing Iranian assets held in United States banks.
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Mr. Carter’s diary (he talked into a tape recorder at increasingly short intervals during the last days of the crisis) reveals that he was up all night the night before he left office.
He kept President-elect Reagan informed with regular phone calls. Just after 6:47 a.m. on Jan. 20, 1981, Inauguration Day, he had good news to share. All the promised money for Iran was now in an escrow account, and the Bank of England was ready to forward it. “I place a call to Governor Reagan to give him the good news,” Mr. Carter recorded in his diary, “and am informed that he prefers not to be disturbed, but that he may call back later.”
Mr. Carter walked reluctantly to his private quarters to get dressed for Mr. Reagan’s inauguration. Later he wrote, “As I looked at myself in the mirror, I wondered if I had aged so much as president or whether I was just exhausted.”
A little more than a half-hour after leaving the presidency, Mr. Carter learned that the hostages, after 444 days of captivity, had left Iran. It was one final indignity inflicted on him by Tehran, which had delayed their departure until after Mr. Reagan took the oath of office.
The hostage crisis reverberated for years. Some in the Carter camp were convinced that the Reagan campaign had made a secret deal with the Iranians in 1980 to keep the hostages in Tehran until after the election. In his book “October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan” (1991), Gary G. Sick, a specialist on Iran as a member of the National Security Council during the crisis, asserted that William J. Casey, a World War II spymaster and Mr. Reagan’s campaign manager, had promised massive arms shipments to Iran as part of the deal. A congressional investigation produced suspicions but no hard proof, and the Reagan team adamantly denied any such plot.
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But last year, more than four decades later, new testimony implicated Mr. Casey. Ben Barnes, a former lieutenant governor of Texas, told The Times that he joined a trip to the Middle East in the summer of 1980 with former Gov. John B. Connally of Texas, a Republican hoping to serve in a future Reagan cabinet. According to Mr. Barnes, Mr. Connally told multiple regional leaders to urge Iran to hold the captives until after the American vote. Mr. Connally later reported to Mr. Casey about his trip, Mr. Barnes said. “History needs to know this happened,” he said, explaining why he came forward so many years later.
Campaign ’80
The 1980 election had been a struggle for Mr. Carter. Before facing Mr. Reagan, he was forced to deal with a challenge from Senator Kennedy for the Democratic nomination.
The Carter-Kennedy relationship was chilly from the start. With Mr. Carter sinking in the polls in 1979, Mr. Kennedy announced his candidacy three days after the hostage crisis erupted. He was joined in the primary contests by Jerry Brown, the former (and future) governor of California. But both ran out of steam before the convention in August at Madison Square Garden.
In Mr. Reagan and his running mate, George H.W. Bush, the Democrats faced a formidable ticket. Mr. Reagan, a former actor and California governor, was one of America’s most skilled users of television, and his sunny vision of America as a “shining city on a hill” contrasted with Mr. Carter’s view of a troubled country.
Mr. Reagan pursued a Southern strategy of driving a wedge between the region’s increasingly conservative white voters and a Democratic Party that had shifted to the left on civil rights and other issues. Mr. Reagan kicked off his Southern campaign with a speech at the Neshoba County Fair, just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964.
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Throughout the campaign, the nation watched the spectacle of Cuban refugees, many of them criminals turned out of jail by President Fidel Castro, flooding into the United States and creating turmoil. Among those upset was the young Democratic governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, who would later attribute his own re-election defeat in 1980 to Mr. Carter’s decision to house many of the Cubans at Fort Chaffee, in Mr. Clinton’s state, where they rioted in June.
Another distraction was Mr. Carter’s younger brother, Billy, who had registered as a foreign agent. He had accepted a $220,000 loan from Libya to try to get its oil on the United States market. His financial dealings were investigated by the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department, and while no charges were filed, the publicity caused problems for the Carter campaign.
Mr. Carter ignored the third candidate in the race, Representative John B. Anderson, a Republican from Illinois running as an independent, and met Mr. Reagan for a debate in Cleveland on Oct. 28, just a week before the election. The president demonstrated command of the issues, but Mr. Reagan outflanked him with a genial demeanor that belied the warmonger image promoted by Democrats.
When Mr. Carter presented him as a radical right-winger who would gut Medicare and Social Security, Mr. Reagan defused the attack by shaking his head as if in disappointment. “There you go again,” he said.
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But along with the Iran hostage crisis, perhaps the most important factor in Mr. Carter’s undoing was the dismal state of the economy. Mr. Reagan turned the “misery index,” which had reached 22 percent, against Mr. Carter and summed up his case at the debate with the cutting question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
The answer for many Americans was no. On Nov. 4, 1980, Mr. Reagan won in a landslide, capturing 489 electoral votes to 49 for Mr. Carter, who won just six states and the District of Columbia. In the popular vote, Mr. Reagan received 51 percent to 41 percent for Mr. Carter; Mr. Anderson finished with 7 percent.
After the White House
Recovering from the voters’ painful rejection, Mr. and Mrs. Carter, in time, began to build a new life. They moved back to Plains to the first and only house they had ever owned, a modest one-story rancher valued in 2018 at just $167,000 — a figure that The Washington Post noted was less than the cost of the armored Secret Service vehicles parked outside day and night.
Shortly after returning to Georgia, the Carters learned that the peanut operation, which had been placed in a blind trust, was in debt by more than $1 million. They sold it to the Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, the farm-products conglomerate, but kept 2,000 acres of farmland, along with their house and its accompanying 170 acres.
The Carters fished, hiked and went to church. Mr. Carter learned to ski at age 62. He climbed Mount Fuji at 70. Both he and Mrs. Carter wrote memoirs, and Mr. Carter went on to write 32 books, mainly extended essays on public policy but also an inspirational volume, “The Virtues of Aging” (1998); a novel, “The Hornet’s Nest” (2003), set during the Revolutionary War; and a children’s book, “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer” (2014), illustrated by his daughter, Amy.
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Of all his books, the most controversial was “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” (2006), which compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to South Africa’s former system of racial repression. The book generated a backlash among Israel’s supporters, and 14 members of the Carter Center advisory board resigned in protest.
Mr. Carter’s final book, published in 2018 by Simon & Schuster, was “Faith: A Journey for All,” a reflection on the role of faith in his life. He also wrote poetry, taught at Emory University in Atlanta and led Sunday school classes at his local church every other week.
But in leaving the White House at age 56, Mr. Carter resolved to do more than write books and build a presidential library. “What Carter really wanted was to find some way to continue the unfinished business of his presidency,” the historian Douglas Brinkley wrote in “The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House” (1998).
In 1984, the Carters got involved in a well-publicized venture, Habitat for Humanity. They spent one week a year wielding hammers and saws to build houses for the poor, and as of 2019 the former president had helped renovate nearly 4,400 homes in 14 countries with his own tool belt. He also launched an effort to eliminate Guinea worm in Africa, a disease that afflicted 3.5 million people a year when he started but was detected just seven times this year through November.
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Mr. Carter developed an easy camaraderie with Gerald Ford, and they collaborated on a variety of post-presidential pursuits, including a joint call in 1998 for Congress to censure Mr. Clinton rather than impeach him for lying under oath to cover up his affair with a White House intern. By the time Mr. Ford died in 2006, they had become such good friends that Mr. Ford requested that Mr. Carter speak at a memorial service.
But Mr. Carter had testier relations with other presidents. He fumed that Mr. Reagan had reversed many of his policies on the environment and human rights, and the Carters bristled at never being invited to the Reagan White House for a state dinner. He was a vocal critic of the Iraq invasion of 2003 and called George W. Bush’s administration at the time the “worst in history.”
At the heart of Mr. Carter’s post-presidency was his ambition to be a peacemaker. In 1989, he led a team in monitoring the elections in Panama and denounced them as fraudulent. The next year, he monitored elections in Nicaragua that resulted in the ouster of the Sandinista government, accomplishing at the ballot box what Mr. Reagan had been unable to do on the battlefield with the contra rebels.
In the following years Mr. Carter traveled the globe mediating conflicts in regions from Asia to the Caribbean and pushing to improve global public health and human rights. Mr. Clinton, who had rebounded from his setback in 1980 and captured the presidency in 1992, sent Mr. Carter, Gen. Colin L. Powell and Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia to Haiti in 1994 to persuade a military junta there to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. They did.
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Throughout his post-presidency, Mr. Carter involved himself in Middle Eastern and arms control issues, sometimes nettling American administrations, both Republican and Democratic. Despite friction over the private diplomacy, Mr. Clinton in 1999 presented Mr. and Mrs. Carter with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.
One of Mr. Carter’s last triumphs of personal diplomacy came when he flew to North Korea in 2010 and obtained the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, an American who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for entering the country illegally.
In 2002 Mr. Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts,” as the citation put it, and used the occasion to warn against invading Iraq. He was one of four American presidents to be awarded the prize, the others being Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama, who were all given the honor while still in office.
Mr. Carter expressed strong disapproval of what he saw as a worrisome turn toward human rights abuses by the United States, even with a fellow Democrat, Mr. Obama, in the White House.
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“Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended,” he wrote in The Times in June 2012.
Alone among his presidential peers, Mr. Carter initially expressed sympathy for Donald Trump, telling The Times in 2017 that “the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about.” He offered to help the president broker a nuclear agreement with North Korea.
But a year later he had changed his mind, telling The Post that Mr. Trump had been “a disaster.” In a speech in September 2018, Mr. Carter said that if he were president again “the first thing I would do would be to change all of the policies that President Trump has initiated.” He expressed concern about Mr. Trump’s trade war with China, opposed his border wall and supported an impeachment investigation against him.
At one point, Mr. Carter asserted that Mr. Trump “didn’t actually win the election in 2016” and that he had assumed office only with the help of Russia. The comment drew a retort from Mr. Trump, who called Mr. Carter a “terrible president.”
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But Mr. Carter later sent a letter to Mr. Trump offering thoughts about China, prompting the incumbent to call him. Afterward, Mr. Trump released a statement saying he had “always liked” Mr. Carter, despite having previously called him the worst president in history.
Mr. Carter chose to sum up his presidency differently, of course. In 2010, in his book “White House Diary,” he quoted his friend and partner Mr. Mondale: “We obeyed the law, we told the truth, and we kept the peace.”
Mr. Carter’s survivors include his four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Carter escaped the pancreatic cancer that killed his father and his three younger siblings at relatively young ages. Ruth Carter Stapleton died in 1983 at 54, Billy Carter in 1988 at 51 and Gloria Carter Spann in 1990 at 63.
But he was not immune to another kind of cancer. His doctors had noticed a mass on his liver in the spring of 2015 while examining Mr. Carter after he had returned from a trip to Guyana with a cold.
Announcing his brain cancer at a news conference, he struck many as unusually candid for a former president. Some said he showed both vulnerability and bravery.
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That Sunday morning, he showed up at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, as promised, to teach Sunday school. Just months later, he announced that after undergoing treatment he was cancer-free.
It was a testament to his resilience, even in advanced age. He repeatedly bounced back from medical troubles. In 2017, he collapsed in Canada while cutting wood on one of his annual Habitat for Humanity projects and was treated for dehydration. He fell and broke his hip in May 2019, then fell two more times that October, the first time requiring 14 stitches and the second time fracturing his pelvis. He was back in the hospital the following month for a procedure to relieve bleeding in his brain.
For all those pointed reminders of his mortality, Mr. Carter expressed no fear of inevitable death.
“I wasn’t afraid or particularly sorrowful, except that I wouldn’t see the people I loved anymore,” he recalled about his bout with cancer in an interview with the presidential historian Mark K. Updegrove in Parade magazine in 2018. “But I didn’t have any feeling of resentfulness or fear, and I was surprised at that. I just felt a particular equanimity about it.”
He lived long enough to see Mr. Biden elected, a special moment given their history; Mr. Biden had been the first senator to endorse Mr. Carter’s bid for the White House. When Mr. Carter was not well enough to attend the inauguration, Mr. Biden made a point of visiting him in Georgia weeks later.
In the four decades since Mr. Carter left the White House, no other sitting president had paid him the respect of coming to see him in Plains, making Mr. Biden’s visit something of a symbolic embrace that reflected evolving views of the defeated president-turned-elder-statesman.
“He showed us throughout his entire life what it means to be a public servant, with emphasis on the word servant,” Mr. Biden said in a video tribute issued at that time. Addressing his predecessor, Mr. Biden added: “President Carter, you’ve shown us what we can be as individuals, as a nation — courageous, compassionate and humble.”
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