born October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia, U.S.

39th president of the United States (1977–81), who served as the nation's chief executive during a time of serious problems at home and abroad. His perceived inability to deal successfully with those problems led to an overwhelming defeat in his bid for reelection. After leaving office he embarked on a career of diplomacy and advocacy, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency, see presidency of the United States of America.)

In 1974, just before his term as governor ended, Carter announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. Although lacking a national political base or major backing, he managed through tireless and systematic campaigning to assemble a broad constituency. In the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal, which had raised widespread concern about the power of the presidency and the integrity of the executive branch, Carter styled himself as an outsider to Washington, D.C., a man of strong principles who could restore the faith of the American people in their leaders. Ironically, Carter's moral stance and candour caused a small stir when, during the campaign, he admitted in an interview with Playboy magazine that he had “committed adultery in 【his】 heart many times.”

Cabinet of President Jimmy CarterWinning the Democratic nomination in July 1976, Carter chose the liberal U.S. Senator Walter F. Mondale (Mondale, Walter) of Minnesota as his running mate. Carter's opponent was the unelected incumbent Republican president, Gerald R. Ford (Ford, Gerald R.), who had come into office in 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate. Many believed that the close race tipped in Carter's favour after Ford stumbled in a televised debate by saying that eastern Europe was not dominated by the Soviet Union. In November 1976 the Carter-Mondale ticket won the election, capturing 51 percent of the popular vote and garnering 297 electoral votes to Ford's 240. (The table provides a list of cabinet members in the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Cabinet of President Jimmy Carter)

In foreign affairs, Carter received accolades for championing international human rights, though his critics charged that his vision of the world was naive. Carter's idealism notwithstanding, his major achievements were on the more pragmatic level of patient diplomacy. In 1977 he obtained two treaties between the United States and Panama that gave the latter control over the Panama Canal at the end of 1999 and guaranteed the neutrality of that waterway thereafter. In 1978 Carter brought together Egyptian President Anwar el-Sādāt (Sādāt, Anwar el-) and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (Begin, Menachem) at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, and secured their agreement to the Camp David Accords, which ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries since Israel's founding in 1948. The difficult negotiations—which lasted 13 days and were salvaged only by Carter's tenacious intervention—provided for the establishment of full diplomatic and economic relations on condition that Israel return the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. On January 1, 1979, Carter established full diplomatic relations between the United States and China and simultaneously broke official ties with Taiwan. Also in 1979, in Vienna, Carterand Soviet (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) leader Leonid Brezhnev (Brezhnev, Leonid Ilich) signed a new bilateral strategic arms limitation (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) treaty (SALT II) intended to establish parity in strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems between the two superpowers on terms that could be adequately verified. Carter removed the treaty from consideration by the Senate in January 1980, however, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. He also placed an embargo on the shipment of American grain to the Soviet Union and pressed for a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics due to be held in Moscow.

In July 1979 Carter canceled a major policy speech and instead met with a wide cross section of American leaders at Camp David. In the nationally televised speech that followed that meeting, Carter spoke of a “crisis of spirit” in the country, but most Americans were ultimately no more interested in rising to the challenge of a national “malaise” than they were in Carter's suggestion that they needed to lower some of their expectations. (See primary source document: A National Malaise (Jimmy Carter: A National Malaise).) Still, Carter was able to fend off the challenge of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy (Kennedy, Edward M.) to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980. However, the public's confidence in Carter's executive abilities had fallen to an irretrievable low. Above all else, he was generally seen as indecisive. In the elections held that November, Carter was overwhelmingly defeated by the Republican nominee, a former actor and governor of California, Ronald W. Reagan (Reagan, Ronald W.), who pointed to what he called Carter's “misery index”—the inflation rate plus the unemployment rate, whose sum was over 20—and asked two poignant questions that the public took to heart: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” and “Is America as respected throughout 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). In the late 1980s, allegations surfaced that the Reagan campaign had made a secret agreement with the government of Iran to ensure that the hostages were not released before the election (thus preventing an “October Surprise” that might boost Carter's election chances); however, in 1993 a congressional subcommittee found the evidence inconclusive. Moreover, Reagan invited Carter to greet the hostages in Germany after their release on January 21, 1981, the day after Reagan's inauguration.

Carter recorded his presidential memoirs in Keeping Faith (1982, reissued 1995). Other works by Carter include The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East, new ed. (1993), a discussion of Arab-Israeli relations, and Always a Reckoning, and Other Poems (1995). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 9 vol. (1977–82), includes speeches and statements from 1977 to 1981.Biographies of Carter include Betty Glad, Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House (1980), which touches on all stages of Carter's career through the presidency, as well as on the political implications of his self-image; and William Lee Miller, Yankee from Georgia: The Emergence of Jimmy Carter (1978), which portrays Carter as possessing a psychological makeup usually attributed to New England Puritanism. Gary M. Fink, Prelude to the Presidency (1980), discusses Carter's goals and achievements as the governor of Georgia. Kenneth E. Morris, Jimmy Carter, American Moralist: The Life Story and Moral Legacy of Our Thirty-Ninth President (1996), is a more recent biography.Haynes Johnson, In the Absence of Power: Governing America (1980), examines the difficulties faced by the Carter administration in its dealings with Congress, the political bureaucracy, and the media. M. Glenn Abernathy, Dilys M. Hill, and Phil Williams (eds.), The Carter Years: The President and Policy Making (1984), provides an overview of the Carter presidency in a collection of essays. Carter's self-image as the trustee of the public interest is covered in Erwin C. Hargrove, Jimmy Carter as President: Leadership and the Politics of the Public Good (1988); and Charles O. Jones, The Trusteeship Presidency: Jimmy Carter and the United States Congress (1988). Additional works focusing on Carter's term as president include Garland A. Haas, Jimmy Carter and the Politics of Frustration (1992), a valuable introductory examination; Burton I. Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr. (1993); and Herbert D. Rosenbaum and Alexej Ugrinsky (eds.), The Presidency and Domestic Policies of Jimmy Carter (1994), a collection of papers from a conference on the Carter presidency.Studies of foreign policy during the Carter presidency include two works by members of the Carter administration: Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices (1983); and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle, rev. ed. (1985). Additional works covering foreign policy include Gaddis Smith, Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986); and Herbert D. Rosenbaum and Alexej Ugrinsky (eds.), Jimmy Carter: Foreign Policy and Post-Presidential Years (1994), collected conference papers. William B. Quandt, Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics (1986), highlights Carter's role as the catalyst in the negotiations that resulted in the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. The influence of the Carter administration's human rights policy on its foreign policy is examined in Joshua Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade: Jimmy Carter and the Dilemmas of Human Rights Policy (1986); and John Dumbrell, The Carter Presidency: A Re-evaluation, 2nd ed. (1995), including coverage of civil rights and women's rights.Carter's two presidential election campaigns are reviewed in Jules Witcover, Marathon (1977), a report on the 1976 campaign; and Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover, Blue Smoke and Mirrors (1981), an account of the unsuccessful 1980 campaign. Carter's considerable accomplishments since leaving the White House are examined in Douglas Brinkley, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House (1998).Rosalynn Carter, First Lady from Plains (1984), offers memoirs from her days in the White House and focuses not only on her responsibilities as first lady but also on the important events of the Carter presidency.