Introduction:
James Earl Carter, Jr. known as Jimmy Carter, was the 39th president of the United States (1977–1981) and was in office while there were significant issues both at home and abroad.
Carter was born in Plains, Georgia, on October 1, 1924. His reelection campaign was decisively defeated due to his apparent failure to resolve those issues.
However, he was given the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002 for his efforts in campaigning and diplomacy both during and after his presidency.
Early life
Carter attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology before earning his degree from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1946.
He is the son of Earl Carter, a peanut warehouser who served in the Georgia state legislature, and Lillian Gordy Carter, a registered nurse who volunteered for the Peace Corps in India at the age of 68.
Following his marriage to Rosalynn Smith (Rosalynn Carter), a native of Carter’s little hometown of Plains, Georgia, he began a seven-year career in the U.S. Navy, spending five of those years on submarine duty. When his father passed away in 1953, he was getting ready to join the submarine Seawolf as an engineering officer.
Carter gave up his commission and moved back to Georgia to oversee the operations of the family’s peanut farm.
Political Career:
Carter began his political career by sitting on the neighborhood school board. In 1962, he was elected as a Democrat to the Georgia state Senate and re-elected in 1964.
He unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1966, and after being discouraged by the experience, he turned to Evangelical Christianity and converted to Baptism.
Carter at least tacitly supported segregationist policies prior to campaigning again for governor and winning in 1970. However, in his inaugural address, he declared that “the time for racial discrimination is over” and went on to admit Black people—as well as women—to Georgia’s government jobs.
As governor, he simplified the existing web of state agencies, combined them into more substantial entities, and instituted stricter spending guidelines for them.
Carter started out in politics by serving on the local school board. He won re-election to the Georgia state senate in 1964 after being elected as a Democrat in 1962.
He attempted to become governor in 1966 but was defeated, and after being disheartened by the experience, he turned to Evangelical Christianity and became a Baptist. Prior to running again for governor and winning in 1970, Carter at least implied support for segregationist policies.
In contrast, he said in his inaugural speech that “the time for racial discrimination is over” and went on to allow Black people and women to work in Georgia’s administration. As governor, he streamlined the complex network of state agencies, consolidated them into larger organizations, and imposed stricter budget restrictions on them.
Sen. Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, a leftist, was selected by Carter as his running mate after he won the Democratic nomination in July 1976. Gerald R. Ford, the incumbent Republican president who had taken office in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate, was Carter’s opponent Ford had not been elected.
Many people thought that Carter won the close election after Ford faltered in a televised debate by asserting that the Soviet Union did not dominate Eastern Europe. With 51% of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 240, the Carter-Mondale ticket won the election in November 1976.
Jimmy Carter as President:
Jimmy Carter minimized the trappings of the presidency, conducted numerous press conferences, and adopted a casual attire and speaking style while making public appearances.
Carter launched a bewildering array of ambitious social, administrative, and economic reform programs at the outset of his presidency. Despite Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the majority of these programs encountered opposition in Congress. Conversely, Carter, the populist was ready to criticize Congress and push his agenda on the American people.
On the one hand, Congress was more inclined to challenge the executive branch in the post-Watergate context. In either event, Carter’s problems with Congress hampered the effectiveness of his presidency.
scandals:
Carter’s reputation was also harmed by two scandals. One of Carter’s closest friends and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance, was charged with financial misconduct while working as a Georgia banker in the summer of 1977.
Many questioned Carter’s renowned scruples when he stood by Lance (whom he ultimately asked to resign and who was later found not guilty of any charges).
In the summer of 1980, Carter’s reputation took another hit, albeit a smaller one, when his younger brother Billy, who was widely seen as a fool, was charged with serving as an influence-peddling agent for Muammar al-Qaddafi’s government in Libya.
Despite Billy’s unethical behavior, Senate investigators came to the conclusion that he had little to no influence over the president.
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International:
Jimmy Carter won praise for promoting international human rights in foreign policy, but his detractors claimed that his outlook on the world was unsophisticated. Despite his idealistic tendencies, Carter’s greatest diplomatic successes were on a more realistic level of patient diplomacy.
He was successful in obtaining two treaties between the United States and Panama in 1977, which secured the neutrality of that canal after 1999 and granted Panama jurisdiction over that river.
At the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, in 1978, Carter brought together Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to secure their acceptance of the Camp David Accords, which put an end to the state of war that had existed between the two nations since Israel’s founding in 1948.
The 13-day-long, tough negotiations, which were only saved by Carter’s relentless intervention, called for the creation of full diplomatic and commercial ties in exchange for Israel giving Egypt back the Sinai Peninsula that it had occupied.
Carter severed diplomatic connections with Taiwan at the same time he opened full diplomatic relations with China on January 1, 1979.
A second bilateral strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT II) was signed by President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Vienna also in 1979.
Its goal was to ensure parity in the two superpowers’ strategic nuclear weapon delivery systems on terms that could be sufficiently confirmed.
However, once the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in January 1980, Carter removed the deal from Senate consideration.
Carter postponed a significant policy speech in July 1979 in favor of a meeting at Camp David with a diverse group of American leaders.
Carter spoke of a “crisis of spirit” in the nation in the nationally televised speech that followed that meeting, but most Americans ultimately showed no more interest in rising to the challenge of a national “malaise” than they did in Carter’s suggestion that they needed to lower some of their expectations.
Carter managed to defeat Kennedy’s challenge, however, and secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1980. But the public’s faith in Carter’s managerial skills had reached an untenable low. Above all, he was viewed as being unresolved.
The Republican candidate in the election that November, Ronald W. Reagan, a former actor and governor of California, referred to Carter’s “misery index”—the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate, whose combined number was over 20—and posed two moving questions to the electorate: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” and “Does America enjoy the same respect around 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). inconclusive.
Reagan invited Carter to greet the hostages in Germany after their release on January 21, 1981, one day after Reagan’s inauguration.
Jimmy Carter’s Life after the Presidency:
Carter was successful in passing significant laws during his final months in office, including the creation of a Superfund to clean up abandoned toxic waste sites and the setting aside of around 100 million acres of land in Alaska to prevent development.
Jimmy Carter would also be noted for adding women and people of color to his cabinet, including Andrew Young, an African American who served as Atlanta’s mayor and who later served as the United States ambassador to the UN.
As a sort of diplomat without a portfolio, Carter participated in conflicts in a number of nations, such as Ethiopia Panama, and Nicaragua (where he successfully advocated for the return of the Miskito Indians to their homeland).
In 1994, he played a particularly active role in this capacity, engaging in negotiations with North Korea to stop the country from developing nuclear weapons, with Haiti to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power, and with Bosnian Serbs and Muslims to mediate a fleeting cease-fire.
The public’s perception of Carter is much more favorable than it was during his presidency thanks to his work for international peace and his very prominent involvement in Habitat for Humanity’s construction of homes for the underprivileged.
Carter continued to write prolifically after leaving government, covering a wide range of subjects. “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (2009)” and “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006)” are two books on the Middle East. His interview with Syria’s Forward Magazine, which was released in January 2009, was the first one conducted by a Syrian media source with a previous or sitting U.S. president.
In addition, Jimmy Carter published a book of poetry as well as The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War in 2003.
White House Diary (2010), which includes edited entries from a journal Carter kept throughout his time in the White House, provides a history of his presidency. In his books The Virtues of Ageing (1998) and A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (2015), Carter discussed the lessons learned from aging and his long life.
In 2018, the book Faith: A Journey for All was released.
FAQs:
Q. is jimmy carter still alive 2023?
Ans. Yes, Jimmy Carter recently celebrated his 77th wedding anniversary.
Q. who was the president of the united states before Jimmy Carter?
Ans. Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States.
Q. Who is carter jimmy’s Wife?
Ans. Nancy Juvonen.
Q. What did jimmy carter do before he was president?
Ans. Jimmy Carter was in the U.S. Navy before he left the service and come back to his home in Georgia.
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