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For other persons named Jimmy Carter, see Jimmy Carter (disambiguation).
James Earl Carter, Jr. 
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| 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 |
| Born | October 1 1924 Plains, Georgia |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | Rosalynn Smith Carter |
| Alma mater | United States Naval Academy Georgia Southwestern College Georgia Tech |
| Occupation | Politician, peanut farmer, Engineer (nuclear), sailor |
| Religion | Baptist |
| Signature | 
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James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) was the 39th President of the United States from 1977 - 1981, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Prior to becoming president, Carter served two terms in the Georgia Senate, and was the 76th Governor of Georgia from 1971 - 1975. "Jimmy Carter".. Georgia Humanities Council. Retrieved on 2007-12-09.
Carter\'s presidency was marked by several major crises, including the takeover of the American embassy and holding of hostages by students in Iran, a failed rescue attempt of the hostages, serious fuel shortages, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
His administration created two new cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He established a national energy policy,Biography of Jimmy Carter removed price controls from domestic petroleum production,Jimmy Carter: Decontrol of Marginal Oil Wells Executive Order 12209 but was unable to make the USA less reliant on foreign oil sources. In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Carter advocated a policy that held other countries to the highest moral standard possible, a standard by which, he believed, Americans would want themselves to be judged.http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/55.htm The final year of his term was dominated by the Iran hostage crisis, during which the United States struggled to rescue diplomats and American citizens held hostage in Tehran. By 1980, Carter was so unpopular that he was challenged by Ted Kennedy for the Democratic Party nomination in 1980. Carter received the Democratic nomination, but lost the election to Republican Ronald Reagan.
After leaving office, Carter founded an institute to promote global health, democracy and human rights. He has traveled extensively to monitor international elections, conduct peace negotiations and establish relief efforts.Carter fears Florida vote trouble, BBC He is also a key figure in Habitat for Humanity.[1] Carter also became a prolific author, writing 27 books. As of 2008, he is the earliest living president and the second-oldest living president.
With his mother, Lillian Carter, February 17, 1977
Jimmy Carter descended from a family that had lived in Georgia for several generations. His great-grandfather Private L.B. Walker Carter (1832–1874) served in the Confederate States Army.
Jimmy Carter, the first president born in a hospital,Jimmy Carter was the oldest of four children of James Earl and Bessie Lillian Gordy. He was born and grew up in the tiny southwest Georgia hamlet of Plains near the larger town of Americus. Carter\'s father was a prominent business owner in the community and his mother was a registered nurse. He was a gifted student from an early age who always had a fondness for reading. By the time he attended Plains High School, he was also a star in basketball. He was greatly influenced by one of his high school teachers, Julia Coleman (1889-1973). While he was in high school he participated in the Future Farmers of America (Now the FFA Association),http://www.ffa.org/documents/about_prominentmembers.pdf.[citation needed]
Carter had three younger siblings: his brother, Billy Carter (1937–1988), his sister Gloria (1926–1990), and his other sister Ruth (1929–1983).
He married Rosalynn Smith in 1946. They had four children: John William "Jack" Carter (born 1947); James Earl "Chip" Carter III (born 1950); Donnel Jeffrey "Jeff" Carter, (born 1952) and Amy Lynn Carter (born 1967).
He attended Georgia Tech and Georgia Southwestern State University before receiving an appointment to the United States Naval Academy where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1946 and is the only graduate of the Naval Academy to become President.The Class of 1947 had a war-accelerated three-year program. [2]. Carter finished 59th out of his Academy class of 820. Carter served on surface ships and diesel submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. As a junior officer, he completed qualification for command of a diesel submarine.
He was later selected by Captain (later Admiral) Hyman G. Rickover for the U.S. Navy\'s fledgling nuclear submarine program. Rickover\'s demands were legendary, and Carter later said that, next to his parents, Admiral Rickover had the greatest influence on him.
Carter often told of being interviewed by Admiral Rickover. He was asked about his rank in his class at the Naval Academy. Carter said "Sir, I graduated 59th out of a class of 820." Rickover only asked "Did you always do your best?" Carter was forced to admit he had not, and the Admiral asked why. Carter later used this as the theme of his presidential campaign and titled his first book Why Not The Best?
Carter loved the Navy, and had planned to make it his career. His ultimate goal was to become Chief of Naval Operations. Carter felt the best route for promotion was with submarine duty since he felt that nuclear power would be increasingly used in submarines. During service on the submarine, U.S.S. Pomfret, Carter was almost washed overboard.Hayward, Steven F. (2004). The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. ISBN 0895260905. Carter did post-graduate work, studying nuclear physics and reactor technology for several months at Union College starting in March 1953. This followed Carter\'s first-hand experience as part of a group of American and Canadian servicemen who took part in cleaning up after a nuclear meltdown at Canada\'s Chalk River Laboratories reactor.[3][4]
Upon the death of his father in July 1953, however, Lieutenant Carter immediately resigned his commission and was discharged from the Navy on October 9, 1953.[5].[6]. This cut short his nuclear power training school, and he was never able to serve on a nuclear submarine, as the first of the fleet was launched January 17, 1955, over a year after his discharge from the Navy.Atomic Insights Blog: Picking on the Jimmy Carter mythCarter is the first and only {2007} Korean War veteran to be President.[citation needed]
He then took over and expanded his family business in Plains. There he was involved in a farming accident that left him with a permanently bent finger.
From a young age, Carter showed a deep commitment to Christianity, serving as a Sunday School teacher throughout his life. Even as President, Carter prayed several times a day, and professed that Jesus Christ was the driving force in his life. Carter had been greatly influenced by a sermon he had heard as a young man, called, "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" Lieutenant James Earle Carter, Jr., USN - Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, October 19, 1997.
Jimmy Carter started his career by serving on various local boards, governing such entities as the schools, hospital, and library, among others. In the 1960s, he served two terms in the Georgia Senate from the fourteenth district of Georgia.
His 1962 election to the state Senate, which followed the end of Georgia\'s County Unit System (per the Supreme Court case of Gray v. Sanders), was chronicled in his book Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age. The election involved corruption led by Joe Hurst, the sheriff of Quitman County; system abuses included votes from deceased persons and tallies filled with people who supposedly voted in alphabetical order. It took a challenge of the fraudulent results for Carter to win the election. Carter was reelected in 1964, to serve a second two-year term.
In 1966, at the end of his career as a state senator, he flirted with the idea of running for the United States House of Representatives. His Republican opponent dropped out and decided to run for Governor of Georgia. Carter did not want to see a Republican Governor of his state, and, in turn, dropped out of the race for Congress and joined the race to become Governor. Carter lost the Democratic primary, but drew enough votes as a third place candidate to force the favorite, Ellis Arnall, into a runoff election, setting off a chain of events which resulted in the election of Lester Maddox.
For the next four years, Carter returned to his agriculture business and carefully planned for his next campaign for Governor in 1970, making over 1,800 speeches throughout the state.
During his 1970 campaign, he ran an uphill populist campaign in the Democratic primary against former Governor Carl Sanders, labeling his opponent "Cufflinks Carl". Carter was never a segregationist, and refused to join the segregationist White Citizens\' Council, prompting a boycott of his peanut warehouse. He also had been one of only two families which voted to admit blacks to the Plains Baptist Church.People & Events: James Earl ("Jimmy") Carter Jr. (1924–) - American Experience, PBS, accessed March 18, 2006. However, he "said things the segregationists wanted to hear," according to historian E. Stanly Godbold.[7] Also, Carter\'s campaign aides handed out a photograph of his opponent celebrating with black basketball players.The Claremont Institute - Malaise Forever"Jimmy Carter", Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2005, accessed March 18, 2006. Following his close victory over Sanders in the primary, he was elected Governor over Republican Hal Suit.
Carter was sworn-in as the 76th Governor of Georgia on January 12, 1971 and held this post for one term, until January 14, 1975. Governors of Georgia were not allowed to succeed themselves at the time. His predecessor as Governor, Lester Maddox, became the Lieutenant Governor. However, Carter and Maddox found little common ground during their four years of service, often publicly feuding with each other.Peter Applebome. "In Georgia Reprise, Maddox on Stump", The New York Times, 14 January 1990. Retrieved on 2008-02-13. http://www.racematters.org/lestermaddox.htm
Carter declared in his inaugural speech 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 statewide office holder in the Deep South to say this in public.[citation needed] Afterwards, Carter appointed many African Americans to statewide boards and offices. He was often called one of the "New Southern Governors" — much more moderate than their predecessors and supportive of racial desegregation and expanding African-Americans\' rights.
Carter made government efficient by merging about 300 state agencies into 30 agencies. One of his aides recalled that Governor Carter "was right there with us, working just as hard, digging just as deep into every little problem. It was his program and he worked on it as hard as anybody, and the final product was distinctly his." He also pushed reforms through the legislature, providing equal state aid to schools in the wealthy and poor areas of Georgia, set up community centers for mentally handicapped children, and increased educational programs for convicts. Carter took pride in a program he introduced for the appointment of judges and state government officials. Under this program, all such appointments were based on merit, rather than political influence.
In 1972, as U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was marching toward the Democratic nomination for President, Carter called a news conference in Atlanta to warn that McGovern was unelectable. Carter criticized McGovern as too liberal on both foreign and domestic policy, yet when McGovern\'s nomination became a foregone conclusion, Carter lobbied to become his vice-presidential running mate. The remarks attracted little national attention, and after McGovern\'s huge loss in the general election, Carter\'s attitude was not held against him within the Democratic Party.
However, Carter received 30 votes at the Democratic National Convention in the chaotic ballot for Vice President. Interestingly, McGovern offered the second spot to Reubin Askew, from next door Florida and one of the "new southern governors," but he declined.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Georgia\'s death penalty law in 1972, Carter signed new legislation to authorize the death penalty for murder, rape and other offenses and to implement trial procedures which would conform to the newly-announced constitutional requirements. In 1976, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia\'s new death penalty for murder; in the case of Coker v. Georgia, the Supreme Court of the United States the death penalty was unconstitutional as applied to rape. In the words of Justice Lewis Powell, the victim of the rape did not sustain any "serious or lasting injury" (concurring and dissenting opinion).
Despite his earlier support, Carter soon became a death penalty opponent and during Presidential campaigns (like previous nominee George McGovern and two successive nominees, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis) this was noted.Democrats shift on death penalty - The Boston Globe
Currently Carter is known for his outspoken opposition to the death penalty in all forms and in his Nobel Prize lecture he urges "prohibition of the death penalty".CNN.com - Carter Nobel Peace Prize speech - Dec. 10, 2002
A longtime Georgia Democratic Senator and then-President pro tempore of the United States Senate Richard Russell, Jr. died in office on January 21, 1971 and Governor Carter, who held office just for nine days, appointed fellow political moderate, state Democratic Party chair David H. Gambrell to fill an uxperied Russell term in the Senate on February 1http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000034. Gambrell was defeated in the next Democratic primary by the more conservative Sam Nunn.
In 1973, while Governor of Georgia, Carter filed a report on his 1969 UFO sighting with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.Martin, Robert Scott (October 15, 1999). Celebrities Have Close Encounters, Too. Space.com. Retrieved on 2004-04-16.Horvath, Alex (February 7, 2003). Bolinas man\'s film says we are not alone. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved on 2007-04-16.Stenger, Richard (October 22, 2002). Clinton aide slams Pentagon\'s UFO secrecy. CNN. Retrieved on 2007-04-16. However, in the July 25, 2007 episode of The Skeptics\' Guide to the Universe podcast Carter claimed not to remember why he filed the report and believes he probably only did it at the request of one of his children. He also stated he does not believe it was an alien spacecraft or the planet Venus but rather believes it was likely some sort of military experiment being conducted from a nearby military base.The Skeptics Guide - Skepticast #105: 7/25/2007
Carter made an appearance as the first guest of the evening on an episode of the game show What\'s My Line in 1974, signing in as "X", lest his name give away his occupation. After his job was identified on question seven of ten by Soupy Sales, he talked about having brought movie production to the state of Georgia, citing Deliverance, and the then unreleased The Longest Yard, shot at Reidville Prison.[citation needed]
In 1974, Carter was chairman of the Democratic National Committee\'s congressional, as well as gubernatorial, campaigns.
When Carter entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 1976, he was considered to have little chance against nationally better-known politicians. He had a name recognition of only 2 percent. When he told his family of his intention to run for President, he was asked by his mother, "President of what?" However, Nixon\'s Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters\' minds, and so his position as an outsider, distant from Washington, D.C., became an asset. The centerpiece of his campaign platform was government reorganization.
He chose Senator Walter F. Mondale as his running mate. He attacked Washington in his speeches, and offered a religious salve for the nation\'s wounds, which was necessary following the Watergate scandal.American Presidency, Brinkley and Dyer, 2004
The electoral map of the 1976 election (note: the current "red state-blue state" color coding system had not been established when this graphic was created; in this case the "red" states went for Carter and the "blue" for Ford
Carter became the front-runner early on by winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He used a two-prong strategy. In the South, which most had tacitly conceded to Alabama\'s George Wallace, Carter ran as a moderate favorite son. When Wallace proved to be a spent force, Carter swept the region. In the North, Carter appealed largely to conservative Christian and rural voters and had little chance of winning a majority in most states. In a field crowded with liberals, he managed to win several Northern states by building the largest single bloc. Initially dismissed as a regional candidate, Carter proved to be the only Democrat with a truly national strategy, and he eventually clinched the nomination.
The media discovered and promoted Carter. As Lawrence Shoup noted in his 1980 book The Carter Presidency and Beyond:
"What Carter had that his opponents did not was the acceptance and support of elite sectors of the mass communications media. It was their favorable coverage of Carter and his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls. This helped Carter win key primary election victories, enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to President-elect in the short space of 9 months."
Carter was interviewed by Robert Scheer of Playboy magazine for its November 1976 issue, which hit the newsstands a couple of weeks before the election. It was here that in the course of a digression on his religion\'s view of pride, Carter admitted that "I\'ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I\'ve committed adultery in my heart many times.""The Playboy Interview: Jimmy Carter." Robert Scheer. Playboy, November 1976, Vol. 23, Iss. 11, pg. 63-86 He remains the only American president to be interviewed by this magazine.
As late as January 26, 1976, Carter was the first choice of only 4% of Democratic voters, according to a Gallup Poll. Yet "by mid-March 1976 Carter was not only far ahead of the active contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, he also led President Ford by a few percentage points," according to Shoup.
Carter began the race with a sizable lead over Ford, who was able to narrow the gap over the course of the campaign, but was unable to prevent Carter from narrowly defeating him on November 2, 1976. Carter won the popular vote by 50.1% to 48.0% for Ford and received 297 electoral votes to Ford\'s 240. He became the first contender from the Deep South to be elected President since the 1848 election.
In his inaugural address he said: "We have learned that more is not necessarily better, that even our great nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems."American Presidency, Brinkley and Dyer, 2004 His first steps in the White House were to reduce the size of the staff by one third, and order cabinet members to drive their own cars.
In 1973, during the Nixon Administration, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed to reduce supplies of oil available to the world market. This sparked an oil crisis and forced oil prices to rise sharply, spurring price inflation throughout the economy, and slowing growth. Significant government borrowing helped keep interest rates high relative to inflation.[citation needed]
In 1977 Carter had convinced the Democratic Congress to create the United States Department of Energy. Promoting the department\'s recommendation to conserve energy, Carter wore sweaters, had solar hot water panels installed on the roof of the White House, had a wood stove in his living quarters, ordered the General Services Administration to turn off hot water in some federal facilities, and requested that Christmas decorations remain dark in 1979 and 1980. Nationwide controls were put on thermostats in government and commercial buildings to prevent people from raising temperatures in the winter (above 65 degrees Fahrenheit) or lowering them in the summer (below 78 degrees Fahrenheit).
During Carter\'s administration, the economy suffered double-digit inflation, coupled with very high interest rates, oil shortages, high unemployment and slow economic growth. Productivity growth in the United States had declined to an average annual rate of 1 percent, compared to 3.2 percent of the 1960s. There was also a growing federal budget deficit which increased to 66 billion dollars.
The 1970s are described as a period of stagflation, meaning economic stagnation coupled with price inflation, as well as higher interest rates. Price inflation (a rise in the general level of prices) creates uncertainty in budgeting and planning and makes labor strikes for pay raises more likely.
In the wake of a cabinet shakeup in which Carter asked for the resignations of several cabinet members (see "Malaise speech" below), Carter appointed G. William Miller as Secretary of the Treasury. Miller had been serving as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. To replace Miller, and in order to calm down the market, Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.Erwin C. Hargrove, Jimmy Carter as President: Leadership and the Politics of the Public Good, London, 1988, p 102. Volcker pursued a tight monetary policy to bring down inflation, which he considered his mandate. He succeeded, but only by first going through an unpleasant phase during which the economy slowed and unemployment rose, prior to any relief from inflation.
Led by Volcker, the Federal Reserve raised the discount rate from 10% when Volcker assumed the chairmanship in August 1979 to 12% within two months.Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis - Discount Rates. The prime rate hit 21.5% in December 1980, the highest rate in U.S. history under any President.http://mortgage-x.com/general/indexes/prime.asp. Investments in fixed income (both bonds and pensions being paid to retired people) were becoming less valuable. The high interest rates would lead to a sharp recession in the early 1980s"The downturn was precipitated by a rise in interest rates to levels that exceeded the record rates recorded a year earlier." Congressional Budget Office, "The Prospects for Economic Recovery," February 1982.
When the energy market exploded — an occurrence Carter desperately tried to avoid during his term — he was planning on delivering his fifth major speech on energy; however, he felt that the American people were no longer listening. Carter went to Camp David and for ten days met with governors, mayors, religious leaders, scientists, economists and citizens. He sat on the floor and took notes of their comments and especially wanted to hear criticism. His pollster told him that the American people simply faced a crisis of confidence because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and Watergate.American Experience | Jimmy Carter | People & Events On July 15, 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 came to be known as his "malaise" speech, although the word never appeared in it:
Carter\'s speech, written by Hendrik Hertzberg and Gordon Stewart[citation needed], was well-received by some.Clymer, Adam (July 18, 1979). "Speech Lifts Carter Rating to 37%; Public Agrees on Confidence Crisis; Responsive Chord Struck Speech Lifts Carter Rating to 37% Big Impact Found Some Would Buy Bonds Big Gain in the South More Encouragement". New York Times: A1. The country suffered from the weak economy that was dominated by OPEC-influenced double-digit inflation. Americans, directly affected by the economy, were concerned about the federal government\'s response to the economic situation[citation needed]. Three days after the speech, Carter asked for the resignations of all of his Cabinet officers, and ultimately accepted five. Carter later admitted in his memoirs that he should simply have asked only those five members for their resignations. By asking the entire Cabinet, it gave the appearance that the White House was falling apart.
Jimmy Carter\'s reorganization efforts separated the Department of Health, Education and Welfare into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. Efforts were also made to reduce the number of government departments and employees as Carter had done when he was Governor of Georgia[citation needed]. He signed into law a major Civil Service Reform, the first in over a hundred years. Despite calling for a reform of the tax system in his presidential campaign, once in office he did very little to change it.Jimmy Carter - MSN Encarta
On Carter\'s first day in office, January 20, 1977, he fulfilled a campaign promise by issuing an Executive Order declaring unconditional amnesty for Vietnam War-era draft evaders. [8] [9].
Initially, Carter was fairly successful in getting legislation through Congress, but a rift grew between them. A few months after his term started, and thinking he had the support of about 74 Congressmen, Jimmy Carter issued a "hit list" of 19 projects that he claimed were "pork barrel" spending. He said that he would veto any legislation that contained projects on this list.Pincus, W., & Writer, W. P. S. (1977, April 1). When a campaign vow crashes into a pork barrel. [i]The Washington Post[/i]
This list met with opposition from the leadership of the Democratic Party. Carter had characterized a rivers and harbors bill as "pork barrel" spending. House speaker Tip O\'Neill, who supported the President in a lot of matters, thought it was unwise for the President to interfere with matters that had traditionally been the purview of Congress. Carter was then further weakened when he signed into law a bill containing much of the "hit list" projects.
Later, Congress refused to pass major provisions of his consumer protection bill and his labor reform package. Carter then vetoed a public works package calling it "inflationary", as it contained what he considered to be wasteful spending. Congressional leaders sensed that public support for his legislation was weak, and took advantage of it. After gutting his consumer protection bill, they transformed his tax plan into nothing more than spending for special interests, after which Carter referred to the congressional tax committees as "ravenous wolves."
Carter signed legislation greatly increasing the payroll tax for Social Security, and appointed record numbers of women, blacks, and Hispanics to government and judiciary jobs. He also initiated a comprehensive urban policy. His Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act created 103 million acres (417,000 km²) of national park land in Alaska.
Under Carter\'s watch, the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was passed, which phased out the Civil Aeronautics Board. He was also somewhat successful in deregulating the trucking, rail, communications, oil and finance industries.[citation needed]
Carter legalized home-brewing when he signed the congressionally approved bill into law in February 1979. Home-brewing led to a renewal of appreciation for beer styles largely unseen due to the dominance of the large brewing companies and prefaced a leap in the number of U.S. micro-breweries beginning in the late 1980\'s.[citation needed]
Among Presidents who served at least one full term, Carter is the only one who never made an appointment to the Supreme Court.[citation needed]
Jimmy Carter was one of the first presidents to address the topic of LGBT rights.Shilts, Randy, Conduct Unbecoming He opposed a California ballot measure that would have banned gays and supporters of gay rights from being public school teachers. His administration was the first to meet with a group of gay rights activists, and in recent years he has come out in favor of civil unions and ending the ban on gays in the military. Gaywired.com
Carter\'s official statement placed on the Voyager 1 spacecraft for its trip outside our solar system on September 5, 1977:Voyager hurtles deep into outer space. BBC News (February 18, 1998). Retrieved on 2004-04-16.Voyage of The Voyagers: First Quarter-Century. Retrieved on 2007-04-16.
We cast this message into the cosmos.... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some — perhaps many — may have inhabited planet and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.
—Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter UFO. Presidential UFO. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.Jimmy Carter and the Voyager Spacecraft. Retrieved on 2007-04-16.
Celebrating the signing of the Camp David Accords, a key foreign policy issue of the Carter presidency: Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter and Anwar Sadat, 1978.
During his first month in office Carter cut the defense budget by $6 billion. One of his first acts was to order the unilateral removal of all nuclear weapons from South Korea and announce his intention to cut back the number of US troops stationed there. Other military men confined intense criticism of the withdrawal to private conversations or testimony before congressional committees, but in 1977 Major General John K. Singlaub, chief of staff of U.S. forces in South Korea, publicly criticized President Carter\'s decision to lower the U.S. troop level there. On March 21, 1977, Carter relieved him of duty, saying his publicly stated sentiments were "inconsistent with announced national security policy".[10] Carter / Singlaub (NBC) from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive[11]Time Magazine - General on the Carpet Carter planned to remove all but 14,000 U.S. air force personnel and logistics specialists by 1982, but after cutting only 3,600 troops, he was forced to abandon the effort in 1978. [12]
Carter\'s Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski paid close attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Diplomatic communications between Israel and Egypt increased significantly after the Yom Kippur War and the Carter administration felt that the time was right for comprehensive solution to the conflict.
One of Carter\'s most important accomplishments as President were the Camp David Accords on September 17, 1978. They were a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt negotiated by President Carter, which followed up on earlier negotiations conducted in the Middle East. In these negotiations King Hassan II of Morocco acted as a negotiator between Arab interests and Israel, and Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania acted as go-between for Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO, the unofficial representative of the Palestinian people). Once initial negotiations had been completed, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat approached Carter for assistance. Carter then invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Sadat to Camp David to continue the negotiations. The Camp David Accords produced two frameworks for peace between Egypt and Israel, and a peace treaty was later signed on March 26, 1979.
Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin meet on the Aspen Lodge patio of Camp David on September 6, 1978.
On October 1, 1979, President Carter announced before a television audience the existence of the Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF), a mobile fighting force capable of responding to worldwide trouble spots, without drawing on forces committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The RDF was the forerunner of CENTCOM.[citation needed]
President Carter initially departed from the long-held policy of containment toward the Soviet Union. In its place Carter promoted a foreign policy that put human rights at the front. This was a break from the policies of several predecessors, in which human rights abuses were often overlooked if they were committed by a nation that was allied with the United States. The Carter Administration ended support to the historically U.S.-backed Somoza regime in Nicaragua and gave aid to the new Sandinista National Liberation Front government that assumed power after Somoza\'s overthrow. However, Carter ignored a plea from El Salvador\'s Archbishop Óscar Romero not to send military aid to that country. Romero was later assassinated for his criticism of El Salvador\'s violation of human rights.[citation needed]
Carter continued his predecessors\' policies of imposing sanctions on Rhodesia, and, after Bishop Abel Muzorewa was elected Prime Minister, protested the exclusion of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo from participating in the elections. Strong pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom prompted new elections in what was then called Zimbabwe Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which saw Robert Mugabe elected as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe; afterwards, sanctions were lifted, and diplomatic recognition was granted. Carter was also known for his criticism of Paraguay\'s Alfredo Stroessner, Augusto Pinochet (who was forced to grant Chile a constitution providing for a transition back into democracy), the Apartheid government of South Africa, Zaire (although Carter later changed course and supported Zaire, in response to alleged - albeit unproven - Cuban support of anti-Mobutu rebelsCrawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State, p. 389Jeffrey M. Elliot and Mervyn M. Dymally, Voices of Zaire: Rhetoric or Reality, p. 88) and other traditional allies.
Carter continued the policy of Richard Nixon to normalize relations with the People\'s Republic of China by granting them full diplomatic and trade relations, and not with Taiwan (though the two nations continued to trade and the U.S. unofficially recognized Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act). In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations dated January 1, 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The U.S. reiterated the Shanghai Communiqué\'s acknowledgment of the Chinese position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; Beijing acknowledged that the American people would continue to carry on commercial, cultural, and other unofficial contacts with the people of Taiwan.
One of the most controversial moves of President Carter\'s presidency was the final negotiation and signature of the Panama Canal Treaties in September 1977. Those treaties, which essentially would transfer control of the American-built Panama Canal to the nation of Panama, were bitterly opposed by a majority of the American public and by the Republican Party. A common argument against the treaties was that the United States was transferring an American asset of great strategic value to an unstable and corrupt country led by a military dictator (Omar Torrijos). Those that supported the Treaties argued that the Canal was built within Panamanian territory therefore, by controlling it, the United States was in fact occupying part of another country and this agreement was intended to turn back to Panama the sovereignty of its complete territory. After the signature of the Canal treaties, in June 1978, Jimmy Carter visited Panama with his wife and twelve U.S. Senators, amid widespread student disturbances against the Torrijos dictatorship.Carter then began urging the Torrijos regime to soften its policies and move Panama towards gradual republicanism.
President Jimmy Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna
A key foreign policy issue Carter worked laboriously on was the SALT II Treaty, which reduced the number of nuclear arms produced and/or maintained by both the United States and the Soviet Union. SALT is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks, negotiations conducted between the US and the USSR. The work of Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon brought about the SALT I treaty, which had itself reduced the number of nuclear arms produced, but Carter wished to further this reduction. It was his main goal (as was stated in his Inaugural Address) that nuclear weaponry be completely vanished from the face of the Earth.
Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, reached an agreement to this end in 1979 — the SALT II Treaty, despite opposition in Congress to ratifying it, as many thought it weakened US defenses. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan late in 1979 however, Carter withdrew the treaty from consideration by Congress and the treaty was never ratified (though it was signed by both Carter and Brezhnev). Even so, both sides honored the commitments laid out in the negotiations.
The United States secretly began sending aid to anti-Soviet, Afghan Islamist factions on July 3, 1979. In December 1979 the USSR invaded Afghanistan, after the pro-Moscow Afghanistan government, put in power by a 1978 coup, was overthrown. At the time some believed the Soviets were attempting to expand their borders southward in order to gain a foothold in the region. The Soviet Union had long lacked a warm water port, and their movement south seemed to position them for further expansion toward Pakistan in the East, and Iran to the West. American politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, ignorant of U.S. involvement, feared the Soviets were positioning themselves for a takeover of Middle Eastern oil. Others believed that the Soviet Union was afraid Iran\'s Islamic Revolution and Afghanistan\'s Islamization would spread to the millions of Muslims in the USSR. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed the Carter Administration\'s involvement in starting the war in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur. Brzezinski told Le Nouvel Observateur that the Soviet invasion gave America "the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."Full Text of Interview
After the invasion, Carter announced what became known as the Carter Doctrine: that the U.S. would not allow any other outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf. He terminated the Russian Wheat Deal, which was intended to establish trade with USSR and lessen Cold War tensions. The grain exports had been beneficial to people employed in agriculture, and the Carter embargo marked the beginning of hardship for American farmers. He also prohibited Americans from participating in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, and reinstated registration for the draft for young males.
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Carter and Brzezinski started a $40 billion covert program of training Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a part of the efforts to foil the Soviets\' apparent plans. On the surface as well, Carter\'s diplomatic policies towards Pakistan in particular changed drastically. The administration had cut off financial aid to the country in early 1979 when religious fundamentalists, encouraged by the prevailing Islamist military dictatorship over Pakistan, burnt down a US Embassy based there. The international stake in Pakistan, however, had greatly increased with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The then-President of Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, was offered 400 million dollars to subsidize the anti-communist Mujahideen in Afghanistan by Carter. General Zia declined the offer as insufficient, famously declaring it to be "peanuts"; and the U.S. was forced to step up aid to Pakistan.
Reagan would later expand this program greatly to combat Cold War concerns presented by Russia at the time. In retrospect, this contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Critics of this policy blame Carter and Reagan for the resulting instability of post-Soviet Afghan governments, which led to the rise of Islamic theocracy in the region, and also created many of the current problems with Islamic fundamentalism.
The main conflict between human rights and U.S. interests came in Carter\'s dealings with the Shah of Iran. The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had been a strong ally of America since World War II and was one of the "twin pillars" upon which U.S. strategic policy in the Middle East was built. However, his rule was strongly autocratic, and he went along with the plan of the Eisenhower Administration to depose Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953.
On a state visit to Iran, Carter spoke out in favor of the Shah, calling him a leader of supreme wisdom, and a pillar of stability in the volatile Middle East. The speech was apparently never shown on American television.
When the Iranian Revolution broke out in Iran, and the Shah was overthrown, the U.S. did not intervene. The Shah went into permanent exile. Carter initially refused him entry to the United States, even on grounds of medical emergency.
Despite his initial refusal to admit the Shah into the United States, on October 22, 1979, Carter finally granted him entry and temporary asylum for the duration of his cancer treatment; the Shah left for Panama on December 15, 1979. In response to the Shah\'s entry into the U.S., Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage.American Presidency, Brinkley and Dyer, 2004 The Iranians demanded:
Though later that year the Shah left the U.S. and died in Egypt, the 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 unsuccessful attempt to rescue the hostages by military means—were largely seen as contributing to Carter\'s defeat in the 1980 election.
After the hostages were taken, President Carter issued, on November 14, 1979, Executive Order 12170 - Blocking Iranian Government property,http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/1979.html. which was used to freeze the bank accounts of the Iranian government in US banks, totaling about $8 billion US at the time. This was to be used as a bargaining chip for the release of the hostages.
In the days before President Ronald Reagan took office, Algerian diplomat Abdulkarim Ghuraib opened fruitful, but demeaning, negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. This resulted in the "Algiers Accords" one day before the end of the Carter\'s Presidency on January 19, 1981, which entailed Iran\'s commitment to free the hostages immediately.Iranian Hostage Crisis. Additionally, Executive Orders 12277 through 12285 were issued by Carterhttp://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/executive_orders.php?year=1981. releasing all assets belonging to the Iranian government and all assets belonging to the Shah found within the United States and the guarantee that the hostages would have no legal claim against the Iranian government that would be heard in U.S. courts. Iran, however, also agreed to place $1 billion of the frozen assets in an escrow account and both Iran and the United States agreed to the creation of a tribunal to adjudicate claims by U.S. Nationals against Iran for compensation for property lost by them or contracts breached by Iran. The tribunal, known as the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, has awarded over $2 billion dollars to U.S. claimaints and has been described as one of the most important arbitration bodies in the history of International Law. Although the release of the hostages was negotiated and secured under the Carter administration, the hostages were released on January 20, 1981 moments after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President.
| OFFICE | NAME | TERM |
| President | Jimmy Carter | 1977–1981 |
| Vice President | Walter Mondale | 1977–1981 |
| State | Cyrus Vance | 1977–1980 |
| Edmund Muskie | 1980–1981 | |
| Treasury | W. Michael Blumenthal | 1977–1979 |
| G. William Miller | 1979–1981 | |
| Defense | Harold Brown | 1977–1981 |
| Justice | Griffin Bell | 1977–1979 |
| Benjamin R. Civiletti | 1979–1981 | |
| Interior | Cecil D. Andrus | 1977–1981 |
| Commerce | Juanita M. Kreps | 1977–1979 |
| Philip M. Klutznick | 1979–1981 | |
| Labor | Ray Marshall | 1977–1981 |
| Agriculture | Robert Bergland | 1977–1981 |
| HEW | Joseph A. Califano, Jr. | 1977–1979 |
| HHS | Patricia R. Harris | 1979–1981 |
| Education | Shirley M. Hufstedler | 1979–1981 |
