Carter, Jimmy

Carter, Jimmy (James Earl Carter, Jr.), 1924–, 39th President of the United States (1977–81), b. Plains, Ga, grad. Annapolis, 1946.

Carter served in the navy, where he worked with Admiral Hyman G. Rickover in developing the nuclear submarine program. Resigning his commission (1953) after his father's death, he ran his family's peanut farm, which he built into a prosperous business. In 1962 he was elected as a Democrat to the first of two terms in the Georgia Senate. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1966, then succeeded in 1970, replacing Lester Maddox. As governor, Carter proclaimed that the time had come to end racial discrimination and formed alliances with such civil-rights leaders as Andrew Young.

Although little known outside Georgia, Carter announced that he would run for president at the end of his gubernatorial term, and through sustained and diligent campaigning won the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination. With Minnesota Senator Walter F. Mondale as his running mate, Carter defeated incumbent President Gerald R. Ford. But Carter never established good relations with Congress and, with Republican successes in the 1978 midterm elections, his difficulties increased.

In foreign policy, Carter had some initial success. He secured congressional ratification—by a single vote after extended and rancorous debate—of his two Panama Canal treaties (1977), establishing a timetable for passing control of the canal to Panama. Then, in 1979, at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, Carter personally persuaded Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel to sign the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state (see Camp David accords).

Although he and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Salt II treaty (see disarmament, nuclear), it had uncertain chances for Senate ratification, and Carter shelved the treaty in Jan., 1980, as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (see Afghanistan War). When the USSR refused to withdraw, Carter also initiated a trade embargo and a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympic Games. In the last year of his administration, Carter's foreign policy was overshadowed by the Iran hostage crisis, in which Iranian students invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 55 hostages. When attempts to negotiate their release failed, Carter authorized a military rescue mission in Apr., 1980, that failed ignominiously.

Domestically, Carter had difficulties controlling inflation, which rose in each year of his administration—in part because of oil price increases after the Iranian revolution. The Federal Reserve Board's drastic remedies for curtailing inflation led to interest rates of more than 20% by 1980. Inflation and the unresolved hostage crisis put Carter in a weak position as the 1980 presidential election campaign began. He won the Democratic nomination only after a bitter challenge from Sen. Edward Kennedy. In the general election he was decisively defeated by Ronald Reagan.

Since leaving office, Carter has been active in international human-rights efforts, often as an impartial observer of first-time free elections. He has served as an international mediator in North Korea, Haiti, Bosnia, Venezuela, and elsewhere, and has worked to focus world attention on epidemics in Africa. He made a highly publicized trip to Cuba in May, 2002, becoming the most prominent American to visit the nation since Castro came to power. The Carter Center in Atlanta, founded in 1986, became an important arena for the discussion of international affairs. Carter also has been deeply involved with Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that helps working-class people in North America and abroad build and finance new homes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to advance peace, democracy, human rights, and economic and social development.

Jimmy Carter married Rosalynn Smith in 1946; they have four children. During his term of office Carter published Why Not the Best? (1975) and A Government as Good as Its People (1977). After it, he wrote more than a dozen works of poetry and nonfiction, including The Blood of Abraham (1985); Everything to Gain (1987, written with his wife); Turning Point (1992); The Hornet's Nest (2003), a novel set in the South during the Revolutionary War; and Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006), which some critics accused of one-sided, anti-Israeli views.

Bibliography

See his memoirs, Keeping Faith (1982) and An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood (2001); J. Wooten, Dasher: The Roots and the Rising of Jimmy Carter (1978); E. C. Hargrove, Jimmy Carter as President (1988); P. G. Bourne, Jimmy Carter (1997); D. Brinkley, The Unfinished Presidency (1998).

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Carter, Jimmy

 orig. James Earl Carter

Jimmy Carter.

(credit: Courtesy Jimmy Carter Library)

(born Oct. 1, 1924, Plains, Ga., U.S.) 39th president of the U.S. (1977–81). He graduated from Annapolis and served in the U.S. Navy until 1953, when he left to manage the family peanut business. He served in the state senate from 1962 to 1966. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1966; depressed by this experience, he found solace in evangelical Christianity, becoming a born-again Baptist. In 1970 he ran again and won. As governor (1971–75), he opened Georgia's government offices to African Americans and women and introduced stricter budgeting procedures for state agencies. In 1976, though lacking a national political base or major backing, he won the Democratic nomination and the presidency, defeating the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford. As president, Carter helped negotiate a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, signed a treaty with Panama to make the Panama Canal a neutral zone after 1999, and established full diplomatic relations with China. In 1979–80 the Iran hostage crisis became a major political liability. He responded forcefully to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, embargoing the shipment of U.S. grain to the Soviet Union and pressing for a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The poor state of the economy, which was plagued by high inflation and high unemployment, contributed to Carter's electoral defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980. He subsequently became involved in numerous international diplomatic negotiations and helped to oversee elections in countries with insecure democratic traditions; he also became the first sitting or former American president to visit Fidel Castro's Cuba. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002.

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Carter, (James Earl) Jimmy (1924–  ) thirty-ninth U.S. president; born in Plains, Ga. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy (1946) and served in the navy until 1953; part of that time he worked under Admiral Hyman Rickover on the naval nuclear reactor project. Carter left the navy to take over the family's peanut business, which he built up. He served two terms as a Democrat in the Georgia legislature (1963–67). After serving as a liberal governor of Georgia (1970–74), he began campaigning for the presidency and won the Democratic nomination of 1976, narrowly beating Gerald Ford in the election. In contrast to recent administrations, he had promised an open and progressive government responsive to the public; despite a Democratic Congress, however, his presidency was notable more for good intentions than achievements. He did effect the Panama Treaty and the historic Camp David agreements between Israel and Egypt (1979), but his initial popularity waned during 1979–80 as a result of mounting economic difficulties and the seizure of U.S. hostages in Iran. He lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan. Back in private life he was active in national and international social concerns, taking a hands-on approach to everything from building homes for poor Americans to mediating between hostile parties (as in Haiti).