39. JIMMY CARTER (Smile, though you're heart is aching)
Born: October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia
Died: At 98, he’s still with us. The oldest ex-President in American history
Term: January 20, 1977- January 20, 1981
Political Party: Democrat
Vice President: Walter Mondale
First Lady: Rosalyn Smith Carter
Before the Presidency: James Earl Carter was the son of a peanut farmer. He grew up in the small town of Plains, Georgia where he learned the value of a hard work ethic from his father, who was a successful businessman. His mother, Lillian, was trained as a nurse and counseled poor African American women on health care matters at a time when whites and blacks were not allowed to mix.
Young Jimmy knew the value of hard work and saving money at a young age. He sold produce from the family farm as early as age ten. At age thirteen he was able to buy five houses that were sold on the cheap. The family then rented the houses out.
Teenage Jimmy became enamored with joining the Navy after receiving letters from his uncle. In 1941 he submitted an application to the United States Naval Academy. That same year, he graduated at the top of his small high school class.
Though World War II had broken out, Carter had to wait two years before being admitted into the Naval Academy. Three years later, he would graduate in the top ten percent of his class.
Carter, now married to Rosalynn Smith and with family, had figured on a career in the Navy. Lieutenant Carter served in the submarine service. An incident in Bermuda gave a glimpse of Carter’s character when British officials offered a party invitation to white crewmembers only. Lieutenant Carter refused the invitation and his crewmembers followed suit, giving a glimpse at both the respect he garnered as well as his basic support of civil rights, something that seemed unusual for a Southerner.
Carter later worked under the famed Admiral Hyman Rickover. Rickover was something of a brutal taskmaster, but Carter came to admire him, even comparing him to his own father (stern but loving basically).
Carter’s naval career was cut short due to tragedy in the family. His father was dying of cancer and the fam was in decline. Carter resigned from the Navy so he could help on the family farm.
Carter returned to Georgia at a critical time in civil rights history. Brown v. Board had been decided by the Supreme Court in 1954 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott would begin over a year later. Times were changing in the South, whether the whites liked it or not. Carter was one of the few whites that actually did like it. As such, he was the only businessman in town to refuse to join the White Citizens Council and it cost him quite a bit of business as he was boycotted. But he stuck to his guns and the boycott slowly fizzled out.
With the farm back up and making a profit, Carter was able to serve on local boards for hospitals and the like. In 1962, he decided on politics and ran for the Georgia State Senate. He initially lost until it was discovered that Carter was the victim of fraudulent voting. A court overturned the election and Carter was in the Georgia Senate.
During his two terms, Carter was known as a hawk when it came to wasteful spending. He also voted with his convictions as a born again Christian as he helped to repeal discriminatory laws against African- Americans. He went even farther as, while his church in Plains voted to keep African Americans out almost unanimously. It was the Carters and a third person that prevented the vote from being totally unanimous.
In 1966, Carter was considering a run for Congress. He opted to run for Governor instead. By now, there was a large white backlash and Carter would lose the nomination to the controversial Lester Maddox. Carter, though, gave it another try in 1970. This time, he knew he had to get some segregationists to vote for him if he was going to win and he distanced himself from African Americans to the point that the Atlanta Constitution called him a racist. It’s something of a sad commentary that you had to be labeled a racist to win in Georgia, but it worked. Jimmy Carter was now the Governor of Georgia.
And imagine the surprise of the segregationists when it turned out Carter wasn’t a racist at all. He called for an end to segregation at his inaugural speech, making national news as a result. He was seen as the symbol of the New South, a much more tolerant version that rejected groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Carter was definitely a progressive as blacks were much more prominent in state government under him. He also hated wasteful spending as he streamlined a number of state agencies. It wasn’t perfect, as he often clashed with the State Legislature. Indeed, Carter was also seen as a bit arrogant among his peers, but the intentions were always good, and he still was able to make great strides in the environment and education.
Carter would develop National ambitions as he studied the George McGovern campaign in 1972. He was saddened that McGovern had been successfully labeled as an extremist and realized that a new Democrat would be needed in 1976 with maybe more views closer to the center but still nowhere near the right.
And maybe Jimmy Carter was that man.
Summary of offices held:
1946-1953: United States Navy, Lieutenant
1953-1961: United States Navy Reserve, Lieutenant.
1963-1967: Georgia State Senator
1971-1975: Governor of Georgia
What was going on: Energy crisis, Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown, Iranian Hostage Crisis, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Begin-Sadat peace talks
Scandals within the administration: Bert Lance banking scandal, Debategate
Why he was a good President: Like Ford before him, he brought honesty and integrity back to the White House. His ideals on energy and human rights remain timeless to this day. And, of course, there were the Camp David Accords
Why he was a bad President: He was in over his head with Iran. He also had a rocky relationship with Congress. And maybe he was a bit too hands on for his own good.
What could have saved his Presidency: A successful end to the Iranian Hostage Crisis a little earlier might have been enough.
What could have destroyed his Presidency: A failed Camp David Accords. He could have turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Election of 1976: Jimmy Carter came in as a dark horse for the Democratic nomination. The Democrats had held out hope that maybe Ted Kennedy would give it a run, but he wasn’t ready quite yet.
So, the field was ripe with favorites such as Frank Church of Idaho and Henry Jackson of Washington. By now, the parties depended on voter primaries to nominate the candidate, though they were often fixed to favor the preferred candidate or for whoever had the power at the time (such as Hillary Clinton in 2016). And the voters were trying to run away from Watergate, still fresh on peoples’ minds, as far away as they could. They saw in Jimmy Carter, a sense of honesty and decency, almost as if he were an innocent really, and he proved to be a major candidate once the primaries started. His outsider status scored him victories in the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary, perhaps the two most important primaries in any election. Carter campaigned hard as the others slowly dropped out, his only real opponent at the end was the maverick Governor of California, Jerry Brown, and he was a latecomer.
Carter didn’t have enough delegates to win the nomination going into New York City but by now the super delegates were sold on him and he won nomination on the first ballot. He would choose Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate and Mondale, along with a close working relationship with Carter, would revolutionize the Vice Presidential position by making it much more than just being a stone’s throw away from the Presidency.
After a bitterly fought campaign on the Republican side, Carter would square off with the incumbent President, Gerald Ford. It was, for the most part, a civil campaign on both sides as both candidates were beyond reproach. Of course, as in any election, they had their criticisms of each other, but Ford had to carry the burden of Watergate giving Carter a decided edge.
That edge disappeared though as Carter was also pretty adept at making missteps. In one, he admitted having lust for women in a Playboy interview. That only brought the polls to a dead heat. Ford then made his famous gaffe about no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe.
Then there was the October surprise when Carter’s church denied entry to an African American minister despite Carter’s pleas to allow him in (Carter later nearly left the church over the incident).
It was a close election, the closest since 1960, in fact, but when it was over, Carter would win. The future seemed bright with large Democratic majorities in both houses and the Republicans still trying to recover from Watergate.
And, of course, they would.
First term: President Carter started out with a lot of good will. He had planned on accomplishing a lot during his Presidency and started by unconditionally pardoning Vietnam War draft evaders. The US was still mired in an Energy Crisis and Carter was having his own version of fireside chats, urging the American public to turn down their thermostats.
The honeymoon didn’t last very long. Carter would have difficult relations with his own party in Congress as they expected the pork barrel projects to continue while Carter railed against wasteful spending. No, he wasn’t about to slash welfare benefits or anything like that; he just wanted to know where the money was going.
Carter’s popularity slipped rapidly among the public and Congress took advantage of it by shooting down programs they would have ordinarily supported such as a Consumer Protection Bill. They obviously wanted to get rid of Carter that bad (and they asked so hard in 1980, they got it, the dummies).
That didn’t mean Carter didn’t have his accomplishments. Despite dealing with low poll numbers and a political scandal involving his budget director, Bert Lance, he was able to make the US less dependent on foreign oil. And even with his struggling relations with Congress, he was able to get many of his initiatives through, even more than LBJ had in fact, but because of Carter’s basic modesty, he got very little credit for it and publicly came off as a rather inept President.
There was controversy within his family too. His sister, Ruth Carter Stapleton, was a well-meaning evangelist who thought she could somehow convert porn king Larry Flynt into a devout Christian. This drew more than a few laughs.
A bigger problem for him would be his n’eer do well brother, Billy Carter. He, needless to say, was not an evangelist. Indeed, he was everything his brother Jimmy was not, a beer drinking good ol’ boy. Carter cringed wondering what would come out of Billy’s mouth next. Billy became something of a celebrity and was marketing his own beer known as Billy Beer. In the end, Billy would step over the boundaries too far and he would be under investigation for his business dealings with the Libyans (he would later be cleared).
President Carter, for the most part, managed to stay above the family fracas and he would make his greatest accomplishment in 1978. For decades there were wars in the Middle East involving Israel and the other Arab states, notably Egypt and Syria. But by 1977, Egypt’s President, Anwar Sadat, had enough, and offered an olive branch to Israeli PM Menachem Begin. Though a staunch war hawk, Begin accepted the offer and the two began negotiations. Of, course, both sides were far apart and there were accusations from both sides in the press. Sadat, by then, had a bit of a diplomatic relationship with President Carter and he and Begin both asked for his help. Carter, being something of a peacenik, gladly accepted.
And President Carter more or less took charge, practically locking the two leaders in a cabin at Camp David until they could reach an agreement. And, in September 1978, an agreement was reached. The Camp David Accords was the result and, while not perfect (Israel still has skirmishes with the Palestinians in particular), there has been a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt and Middle Eastern wars in general (Save Iran and Iraq maybe) have been in decline. Begin and Sadat would share the Nobel Peace prize in 1978 but many, including Sadat, thought the prize should have gone to Carter.
If the Camp David Accords signaled the Carter administration at its peak, then it was all downhill from there. Carter did have some success when he returned the Panama Canal back to Panama (a pretty controversial issue at the time), but other world events would signal doom for the Carter Presidency in 1979 and 1980.
For decades, the United States had supported the right wing regime of the Shah of Iran. By the late seventies, the Iranians had enough of the Shah and was hell bent on overthrowing him. Their leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, returned to Iran from exile and the writing on the wall was for all to see, including the Shah.
Carter was no big fan of the Shah, but he felt obligated to honor the commitments of previous Presidents, so when the Shah fled from Iran and was diagnosed with cancer in Mexico, Carter allowed the Shah to enter the United States for treatment. This enraged the fundamentalist Islamists that now ruled Iran, and, in November 1979, a throng of Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans as hostages. They demanded the return of the Shah, all assets that the Shah had taken, and an apology from the nation they were referring to as, “The Great Satan.”
Carter did no such thing, of course. Instead, he froze all Iranian assets while staging secret negotiations. Meanwhile, the press had jumped on the hostage crisis like never before and Nightline, an ABC news program, began a running total of days the hostages were held in captivity.
And it got to the point where the incident that probably proved the nail in the coffin took place. Frustrated, Carter went along with a plan for a helicopter rescue of the hostages in 1980. It was not a well thought out plan to begin with and the mission was aborted after the helicopters were well inside Iran. It should have ended there, but one of the helicopters suffered mechanical problems and crashed, killing eight soldiers. After the incident, Iran moved and dispersed the hostages making it virtually impossible for another rescue. Worse, for Carter, it solidified his reputation as an inept President.
Carter had a little better success with the Soviet Union. Taking a page out of Lyndon Johnson, I guess, the Soviets thought they could prop up a Communist regime in Afghanistan, so they invaded the country. This drew international outrage and President Carter called for an Olympic Boycott (the 1980 Olympics were being held in Moscow). It drew a mixed reaction from Americans and a slew of protests from the athletes themselves, but Carter stuck to his guns and the US would not participate in the Olympics that year. And, while it didn’t get immediate results, The Soviets would take an economic hit and when they boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, their ploy would backfire spectacularly. More to the point, Afghanistan became the Soviet’s Vietnam, and they would finally withdraw with their proverbial heads between their legs in 1988.
Despite some accomplishments, Carter’s popularity was rather low. By 1980, the US was in another recession, there was international embarrassment from the ongoing hostage crisis, even as Carter continued to negotiate, and there was a feeling of malaise, as Carter put it in an infamous address in 1979. Re-election did not seem to be in the cards.
But he was going to give it a try anyway.
Election of 1980: Before the election season even started, President Carter would suffer the humiliation that few incumbents had suffered, a credible challenge within his own party. Senator Ted Kennedy had been coy for years about running for President and, with two brothers having been assassinated, you could understand the trepidation. But Kennedy saw the weakness in Carter and saw 1980 as his opportunity at last, so he entered the race. Carter reacted by saying he’d whip his ass. The Democrats were split between the two factions and the New York press seemed giddy when Ted won the state. Indeed, it was a closely fought contest throughout, but in the end, Carter would wind up with the nomination.
Carter’s weak renomination (he had to give up a lot to Kennedy’s platform) contrasted negatively to the practical anointment of Ronald Reagan for the Republicans. Of course, the Republicans had their factions too and one, liberal Republican John Anderson, would break off to run as a third party candidate. Of course, we’ll have a lot more on Reagan (and Anderson) later.
Carter never really had much of a chance as the economy and the hostage crisis kept his poll numbers low. He didn’t do himself any favors either when he boycotted the first debate because he didn’t want Anderson on the podium. When he did get to debating Reagan, it was more or less a disaster as Reagan kept going, “There You Go Again.”
And so, in no real surprise, Carter got thumped in the general election, winning all of six states plus DC. Ronald Reagan was to be the next President of the United States. The Democrats finally got Carter out of the White House and now they had to uh, reap the rewards?
One more note about Carter to show you what kind of man he was. A one term President may have more or less coasted his way out, but Carter didn’t do that. Instead, he was determined to get the hostages out of Iran, and he worked for their release up to the morning of Reagan’s inauguration. And, though the Iranians timed the release for the inauguration as a way of humiliating Carter, history doesn’t work that way. In some ways Carter’s efforts at getting the hostages out was as important as the Camp David Accords had been.
And Jimmy Carter left with his dignity intact.