Carter, Jimmy

INTRODUCTION

Carter, Jimmy (1924- ), American businessman and politician, 39th President of the United States (1977-1981), the first president from the Deep South since Andrew Jackson, and an outsider to traditional party politics.

Carter was born James Earl Carter, Jr. in Plains, Georgia, on October 1, 1924. In 1927 his family moved to the tiny settlement of Archery, just outside Plains, where he lived until he was 17 years old. He graduated from high school in 1941, then spent a year at Georgia Southwestern College and another at Georgia Institute of Technology.

EARLY CAREER

Carter began a military career in June 1943 by enrolling in the United States Naval Academy. By 1946 he was serving as a commissioned officer, and in that same year he married Rosalynn Smith. On his father's death he left the navy to take over the family's peanut business in Plains. In Georgia, Carter became a prominent businessman and active citizen, known as a liberal on racial matters. He was elected to the state senate in 1962, was re-elected two years later, and then ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1966. At that time he became a "born-again" Christian. He won the governorship in 1970 and headed a politically moderate administration, representative of the so-called New South.

Before his gubernatorial term ended, Carter had decided to run for the presidency. After intense primary battles, he overcame the problems of being an unknown candidate from the Deep South without a national constituency, and in 1976 gained the Democratic Party nomination on the first ballot. Carter and his vice-presidential running mate, Senator Walter F. Mondale, defeated the Republican incumbent president, Gerald R. Ford, and his running mate, Senator Robert Dole, with an electoral vote of 297 to 241. Carter received 40.8 million popular votes to Ford's 39.1 million.

PRESIDENCY

Two of Carter's most difficult challenges were to combat rising inflation and to establish an energy programme to decrease American dependence on foreign oil. Inflation reached a high of 20 per cent a year in 1980, but when the government raised interest rates in an attempt to bring it down, unemployment became a serious problem. The economy eventually became the thorniest issue of his re-election campaign. Carter did, however, secure passage of a comprehensive energy programme that was supportive of private energy development. In matters of defence, Carter advocated increased spending, favouring a cruise missile system. He endorsed a strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization but opposed its use of neutron bombs. He secured passage of a new Panama Canal treaty and concluded a Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) Treaty.

Carter initiated a foreign policy based on respect for human rights. Critics claimed that he applied the policy unevenly, leading to a deterioration in relations with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). He retaliated for Soviet intervention in Afghanistan by instigating an international boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. His greatest triumph in foreign affairs came in 1978, when he provided the framework for the historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that was signed in 1979. In November 1979 Iranian militants seized the United States Embassy in Tehrân and took a group of American citizens hostage. Carter refused to meet the demands of the Iranians and aborted an unsuccessful rescue attempt. The last of the hostages was released just after Carter left office on January 20, 1981. Although Carter's popularity declined sharply during his term, he successfully campaigned for renomination in 1980, fighting off a strong challenge from Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In the election, however, Carter and Mondale were overwhelmingly defeated by Republicans Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

LATER CAREER

After leaving office, Carter continued to champion human rights and became a public spokesman for numerous charitable causes, such as the low-income housing organization Habitat for Humanity. During 1994 Carter's public profile underwent a dramatic renaissance when he conducted several delicate international talks, ostensibly on his own but unofficially representing the US government, first negotiating with Kim Il Sung (just before the latter's death in July) a solution to North Korea's aspirations to nuclear power; then reaching an agreement with the military regime in Haiti in September for a peaceful return to power of the elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, just as US forces were preparing to do so by an armed invasion; and lastly helping to bring about a ceasefire in the Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian War at the end of the year. He continued his round of international mediations by going to Africa in 1995, intervening in the civil war in Sudan in March and April, and in November attending a conference on the refugee problems created by the civil wars in Burundi and Rwanda.