- Alternative meaning: Jimmy Carter
(boxer).
James Earl Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) was the 39th (1977-1981)
President of the United States. Since leaving office, he has been active in international public policy and conflict resolution. He is also an author. He won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
Early years
Carter was born in the town of Plains, Georgia, to James Earl Carter and Bessie Lillian Gordy. He was
the first president born in a hospital. He grew up in nearby Archery. He attended Georgia
Southwestern College and the Georgia
Institute of Technology, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946, the same year he
married Rosalynn Smith. He served on submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, and was later selected by Admiral Hyman
Rickover for the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program. Upon the death of his father in 1953, he resigned from the Navy and established a peanut
farming business in Plains. From a young age, Carter showed a deep committment to
Christianity, serving as a Sunday School teacher throughout his political career.
Early political career
Carter started his career by serving on the Plains school board. In the 1960s he
served two terms in the Georgia State Senate.
In his 1970 campaign Carter was elected governor on a pro-George Wallace platform. Carter's campaign aides handed out thousands of photographs of his opponent,
the liberal former Gov. Carl
Sanders, showing Sanders associating with black basketball players. On the stump, Carter pledged to reappoint an avowed
segregationist to the state Board of Regents. He promised as his first act to invite former Alabama Gov. George Wallace into the
state to speak. Old-line segregationists across the state endorsed Carter for governor.
But following his election, Carter said in speeches that the time of racial segregation was over, and that racial discrimination had no place in the future of the state. He
was the first white southern politician to say this in public (such sentiments would have signaled the end of the political
career of white politicians in the region less than 15 years earlier), so his victory attracted some attention as a sign of
changing times. Carter served as governor of the state of Georgia from 1971 to 1975 but failed in his re-election bid, having
alienated both the voters and the state legislature through what has been described as an imperial style of governing.
When Carter entered the Democratic
Party Presidential primaries in 1976 he at first was considered to have little chance
against nationally better-known politicians. However the Watergate
scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds, so his position as an outsider distant from Washington, DC became an asset. He ran an effective campaign, did well in debates, and won his party's
nomination and then the election. Government reorganization was the centerpiece of his campaign platform. He was the first
candidate from the Deep South to be elected president since the American Civil War.
Presidency
President Carter meets with Governor Bill Clinton.
As part of his government reorganization efforts, Carter separated the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) into the
Department of Education
and the Department of Health and Human Services. He also elevated the Energy
agency into a new cabinet-level department, the
United States Department of
Energy.
The Carter Administration's foreign policy is best remembered for the peace
treaty he brokered between the states of Israel and Egypt with the Camp David Accord, the SALT II treaty brokered with the Soviet
Union, the Panama Canal treaty which turned the canal over to Panama, and an energy crisis. He was much less successful on the domestic front, having
alienated both his own party and his opponents through what was perceived as a lack of willingness to work with Congress —
much as he had in his term as Governor.
In 1979, Carter gave a nationally televised address in which he identified what he
believed to be a crisis of confidence among the American people. This has come to be known as his "malaise" speech, even though
he never actually used the word "malaise" anywhere in the text. Rather than inspiring Americans to action as he had hoped, the
speech was perceived by many to express a pessimistic outlook which may have further damaged his re-election hopes. At the time
the country was in the worst recession since the 1930s, with both inflation and unemployment at
record levels.
Among Presidents who served at least one full term, Carter is the only one who never made an appointment to the Supreme Court.
Foreign policies
Carter promoted his foreign policy as being one that would place human
rights at the forefront. This was intended to be a break from the policies of the Nixon administration, in which human rights
abuses were often overlooked if they were committed by a nation that was allied to the United States. The Carter administration
ended support to the historically U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, and gave millions of dollars in aide to the nation's new regime, following a
pro-democracy coup.
The main conflict between human rights and U.S. interests came in Carter's dealings with the Shah of Iran. The Shah had been a strong ally of America since World War 2, and was one of the few
U.S.-friendly regimes in the Middle East. However, his regime was also quite
brutal and oppressive. Though Carter praised the Shah as a wise and valuable leader, when a popular uprising against the monarchy
broke out in Iran, the Carter administration did not intervene.
The Shah was deposed and exiled. Many have since connected the Shah's dwindling U.S. support as a leading cause of his quick
overthrow. Carter was initially prepared to recognize the revolutionary government of the monarch's successor, but his efforts
proved futile.
In 1979, Carter reluctantly allowed the deposed Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into the United States for
political asylum and medical treatment. In response to the Shah's entry into the U.S., Iranian militants seized the American
embassy in Tehran taking 52 Americans hostage and demanded the Shah's return to Iran
for trial and execution. Though later that year the Shah would leave the US and die in Egypt, the Iran hostage crisis continued, and
dominated the last year of Carter's presidency. The subsequent responses to the crisis, from a "Rose Garden strategy" of staying inside the White House, to the botched attempt to rescue the hostages, were largely seen as
contributing to defeat in the 1980 election.
Although the Carter team had pursued the release of the hostages, an agreement for their release was not signed until January 19, 1981, after the election of Ronald Reagan. In what many observers have seen as a slight against Carter, the
Iranians waited to release the captives until minutes after Reagan was sworn-in as president. The hostages had been held captive
for 444 days.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 was a response to the U.S. military presence there, according to Carter's National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. After the invasion, Carter announced the
Carter Doctrine, according to which the U.S. would not allow any
outside power to gain control of the Persian Gulf. Also in response to the
events in Afghanistan, Carter prohibited Americans from participating in the 1980 Summer Olympics, which were held in Moscow, and he
reinstated registration for the draft for young males.
In order to oppose the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski started a $40 billion program of training Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In retrospect, this contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, but, ironically, is also often tied to the resulting instability of
post-Soviet Afghani governments, which led to the rise of Islamic theocracy in
the region. Some even tie the program to the 1996 coup that established the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and to the creation of violent Islamic terrorist groups. At the time, and perhaps continuing into the Reagan and G.H.W. Bush
presidencies, Islamic fundamentalism as a political force was not well understood.
Controversies
Members of the Reagan-Bush campaign and administration (most notably Barbara Honegger, in her book
October Surprise), and the president of Iran in 1980 (Abu Al-Hasan
Bani-Sadr, My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals With the U.S.) have alleged that a secret
agreement between the Reagan campaign (orchestrated by George H. W.
Bush) was responsible for destroying a deal between the Carter administration and the Iranian government that would have had
the hostages released in October 1980. Such a scenario was termed "The October Surprise" by
the Reagan team. Unnamed sources also are alleged to have claimed that it was blackmail over the deal that led to the U.S.
involvement in the later Iran-Contra scandal, as Iran
demanded to be sold weapons to use in its war against Iraq if the Reagan administration wanted it to keep quiet. It should be
noted that none of these allegations has been proven or even officially investigated by any governmental body.
During Carter's administration, diplomatic recognition was switched from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China, a policy continued into the 21st century. In response, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act.
Carter has been accused of ordering a cover-up of the events at Three Mile Island following the near meltdown of that nuclear plant. He has also been
criticized for not doing enough to promote his stated human rights foreign
policy stance in his administration, such as continuing to support the Indonesian
government even while it was implicated in the commission of acts of genocide in
the occupation of East Timor.
Post-Presidency
Presidents Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter at the dedication of the Reagan
Presidential Library.
Since losing his bid for re-election, Carter has been involved in a variety of public policy, human rights, and charitable causes. His work in international public policy and conflict resolution is largely through the Carter Center. The center also focuses on world-wide health care including the campaign to eliminate guinea worm disease.
He and members of the center are sometimes involved in the monitoring of the electoral process in support of
free and fair elections. This includes acting as election observers, particularly in Latin
America and Africa.
Because he had served as a submariner (the only President to have done so), a submarine was named for him. The USS Jimmy
Carter (SSN-23) was named on April 27, 1998, making it one of the very few US Navy vessels
to be named for a person still alive at the time of the naming.
Carter visited Cuba in May 2002 meeting with Fidel Castro and becoming the first
President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution.
Not all Carter's efforts have gained him favor in Washington; President Clinton and both Presidents George H.W. and
George W. Bush were said to have been less than pleased with Carter's
"freelance" diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to
advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development. He was the third U.S. president, after
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to receive the award.
In March 2004 Carter roundly condemned George W. Bush and Tony Blair
for waging an unnecessary war "based upon lies and misinterpretations" in order to oust Saddam Hussein. He claimed that Blair had allowed his better judgement to be swayed by Bush's desire to
finish a war that his father had started.
He and his wife Rosalynn are also well-known for their work with
Habitat for Humanity.
Cabinet
- United States Secretary of
State Cyrus R. Vance, Edmund S. Muskie (1980)
- United States
Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal,
G. William Miller (1979)
- United States Secretary of
Defense Harold
Brown
- United States Attorney General
Griffin B. Bell, Benjamin R. Civiletti
(1979)
- United States
Secretary of the Interior Cecil D. Andrus
- United States Secretary
of Agriculture Robert
S. Bergland
- United States Secretary of
Commerce Juanita M.
Kreps, Philip M.
Klutznick (1980)
- United States Secretary of
Labor Ray Marshall
- United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
Joseph A.
Califano, Jr., Patricia R. Harris (1979)
- United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Patricia R. Harris
- Secretary of housing and urban development Patricia R. Harris, Moon Landrieu
(1979)
- United States
Secretary of Transportation Brock
Adams, Neil E.
Goldschmidt (1979)
- United States Secretary of
Energy James R. Schlesinger, James Rodney, Charles W. Duncan,
Jr. (1979)
- United States Secretary of
Education Shirley
Hufstedler
Bibliography
Jimmy Carter has been a relatively prolific author. As of 2003 he has written the
following:
- Why Not the Best? (1975 and 1996)
- A Government as Good as Its People (1977 and 1996)
- Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (1982 and 1995)
- Negotiation: The Alternative to Hostility (1984)
- The Blood of Abraham (1985 and 1993)
- Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life (1987 and 1995), with Rosalynn Carter
- An Outdoor Journal (1988 and 1994)
- Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age (1992)
- Talking Peace: A Vision for the Next Generation (1993 and 1995)
- Always a Reckoning (1995), a collection of poetry, illustrated by his
granddaughter
- The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer (1995), a children's book, illustrated by his daughter
- Living Faith (1996)
- Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (1997)
- The Virtues of Aging (1998)
- An Hour before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood (2001)
- Christmas in Plains: Memories (2001)
- The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (2002)
- The Hornet's Nest (2003), a historical novel and the
first work of fiction written by a U.S. President
Here are some books written about Jimmy Carter:
- Jones, Charles O. The Trusteeship presidency: Jimmy Carter and the United States Congress Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1988
- Jordan, Hamilton Crisis: the last year of the Carter Presidency NY: Putnam, 1982
- Jordan, William J. Panama Odyssey Austin: UT Press, 1984
- Kaufman, Burton I. The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr.. Lawrence, KS: U. of KS, 1993
- Kucharsky, David The Man from Plains: The Mind and Spirit of Jimmy Carter. NY: Harper & Row, 1976
- Lance, Bert The Truth of the Matter: my life in and out of politics NY: Summit Books, 1991
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