Jimmy Carter

For the submarine, see USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23).

James Earl Carter, Jr.
File:Presidentcarter.jpg
39th President
Vice President	Walter Mondale
Preceded by	Gerald Ford
Succeeded by	Ronald Reagan
Personal details
Nationality	american
Political party	Democratic

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) an American politician, was the 39th President of the United States (1977–1981), and 83rd (1971–1975) Governor of Georgia.

Carter's presidency was marked by retrenchment, after the disappointing agony that had been the Vietnam War, and economic stagflation churning at home. He was elected over Republican Gerald Ford, in large part because of the public's resentment that Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Even then the election was very close.

One of the greatest contributors to Carter's political downfall came in November of 1979 when a pro-U.S. monarchy was toppled by the 1979 Iranian Revolution and dozens of American hostages were taken inside the American embassy by Islamic fundamentalist revolutionaries after Carter gave sanctuary to exiled dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. With the international outrage at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later the same year, Carter appeared impotent, as America saw its influence declining abroad. The Iran prisoners were released as Ronald Reagan was being sworn in as president, after defeating Carter in a landslide. Carter faced interest rates reaching their highest levels since World War II, and the administration froze domestic oil prices in response to rising prices from OPEC. The Misery Index, Carter's own invention of economic well-being, rose 50% in four years. Among his actions were the Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David Accords, and the SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union. Despite Carter's own Democratic Party controlling both Houses of Congress, and the White House his administration failed to reform the tax system, and to reduce the size of the government bureaucracy, as he promised during the 1976 campaign, or to pass the Martin Luther King holiday. His administration oversaw the founding of the Departments of Energy and Education, and enacted strong legislation on environmental protection.

In the decades since he left office, Carter took a role as an international mediator and has used his position as a former U.S. president to further many charitable causes. In 1982, he founded the Carter Center as a forum for issues related to democracy and human rights. He has also traveled extensively to monitor elections, conduct peace negotiations, and establish relief efforts. In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." In recent years, (2003-2005) Carter has been involved with the charity Habitat for Humanity which builds houses for the needy. He can actually be found doing the building of these houses.

Early years

Born the oldest of four children to James Earl Carter and Bessie Lillian Gordy in the Southwest Georgia town of Plains, he was the first president born in a hospital. Young Carter 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 and football. He was greatly influenced by one of his high school teachers, Julia Coleman. Ms. Coleman was handicapped by polio. She had encouraged young Jimmy to read War and Peace; he was disappointed to find that there were no cowboys or Indians in the book. Carter mentioned his beloved teacher in his inaugural address as an example of someone who beat overwhelming odds.

Carter had three siblings, all of them younger. His younger brother, Billy (1937-1988), caused some political problems for him during his administration. Carter's sister, Gloria (1926-1990), was low-key and was famous for collecting and riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles. His youngest sister, Ruth (1929-1983), became a well-known Christian evangelist. He grew up in nearby Archery.

He attended Georgia Southwestern College, Georgia Institute of Technology, and he studied nuclear physics at Union College, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946, the same year he married Rosalynn Smith. Carter was a very gifted student, and finished 59th out of his Academy class of 820. Vietnam POW and war hero, Jeremiah Denton, was one of Carter's classmates. They are considered members of the class of 1947, as their class would have graduated in 1947, except that the program had been temporarily compressed.

Carter served on submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. He was later selected by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover for the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program, where he became a qualified nuclear engineer. Rickover was a demanding officer, and Carter was greatly influenced by him. Carter later said that next to his parents, Admiral Rickover had had the greatest influence on him. There was a story he often told of being interviewed by the Admiral. 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 as the title of his first book, "Why Not The Best?" He even mentioned Admiral Rickover in his inaugural address. Carter loved the Navy, and had planned to make it his career. His ultimate goal was to become Chief of Naval Operations. Upon the death of his father in 1953, however, Carter resigned from the Navy, and established a peanut farming business in Plains, where he was involved in a farming accident which 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 political career. 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?" [1]

After World War II, he and Rosalynn started a family. She bore him three sons (John William, born in 1947; James Earl III, born in 1950; and Donnel Jeffrey, born in 1952), and gave birth to his daughter (Amy Lynn, late in life, in 1967).

Early political career

Carter started his career by serving on the Plains school board. In the 1960's, he served three terms in the Georgia State Senate. His 1962 election, 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 included corruption from the sheriff of one of the counties in Jimmy's district. This included people voting in alphabetical order and dead people voting.

In his 1970 campaign, Carter was elected governor on a pro-George Wallace platform. Carter's campaign aides handed out photographs of his opponent, former Gov. Carl Sanders, showing Sanders associating with black basketball players. On the stump, he promised to re-appoint an avowed segregationist to the state Board of Regents. But, following his election, Carter said in speeches 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 state-wide office holder in the Deep South to say this in public (such sentiments would have signaled the end of the political career of politicians in the region less than 15 years earlier, as was the case with Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen Jr., who testified before Congress in favor of the Voting Rights Act). Carter served as governor of the state of Georgia from 1971 to 1975.

When Carter entered the Democratic Party Presidential primaries in 1976, he at first was considered to have little chance against nationally better-known politicians. However, the Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds, and so his position as an outsider, distant from Washington, DC, became an asset. He ran an effective campaign appealing to Christian voters, did well in debates, and won his party's nomination and then the election, receiving 50.1% of the popular vote, making him one of only two Democratic Party Presidential Candidates to win a majority of the popular vote since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944. When running for re-election for a second term of his presidency, he was almost unseated in the primaries by Senator Ted Kennedy.

The centerpiece of his campaign platform was government reorganization. Carter was the first candidate from the Deep South to be elected president since Reconstruction.

Presidency

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President Carter meets with Governor (and future president) Bill Clinton.

President Carter - Oct 1980

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Jimmy Carter (center, in boat) and "killer rabbit" (at far right, fleeing). Image courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Library

The Carter Administration's foreign policy is most remembered for the Iran hostage crisis, for the peace treaty he brokered between the states of Israel and Egypt with the Camp David Accord, for the SALT II treaty brokered with the Soviet Union, for the Panama Canal treaty which turned the canal over to Panama, and for an energy crisis. He was much less successful on the domestic front, having alienated both his own party and his opponents, through what was perceived as a lack of willingness to work with Congress — much as he had in his term as Governor.

A small blow to his reelection campaign came on April 20, 1979, when he was attacked by a "killer rabbit" while fishing in a pond from a small boat. The swimming rabbit, perhaps ill or fleeing from a predator, attempted to board the president's craft. Carter flailed at the rabbit with his paddle, splashing water at it, and the rabbit turned and swam away. A White House photographer captured the scene on film. The story broke months after the attack, during the slow news month of August, when White House Press Secretary Jody Powell described the incident to reporter Brooks Jackson over tea; shortly thereafter, it was on the front page of The Washington Post with a cartoon take-off, Paws, of the poster from the film Jaws.

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 has come to be known as his "malaise" speech, even though he never actually used the word "malaise" anywhere in the text:

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.... I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

Carter's speech, written by MSNBC's Chris Matthews, was well-received, although some viewed it as too much like a sermon. The country was in the worst recession since the 1930s, with inflation and unemployment at record levels. But many who had hoped for more inspired leadership after the Ford administration found themselves disappointed. Two days after the speech, Carter asked for the resignations of all of his Cabinet officers, and ultimately accepted five. With no visible efforts towards a way out of the malaise, Carter's poll numbers dropped even further.

On 1 October 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 NATO. The RDF was the forerunner of CENTCOM.

Amongst Presidents who served at least one full term, Carter is the only one who never made an appointment to the Supreme Court.

Domestic policies

A major issue for President Carter was inflation, caused especially by continued high levels of government spending and the rising price of imported oil, which was the major source of energy for many industries. Carter added the United States Department of Energy as a new cabinet-level department. The first head of the department was James R. Schlesinger. He also installed solar power panels on the roof of the White House, and a wood stove in the living quarters; his successor, Ronald Reagan, later removed the solar panels and the wood stove.

It is popularly believed that Carter appeared in a sweater to urge citizens to turn down their thermostats and conserve energy. In fact the sweater had nothing to do with energy use. He wore a sweater on inauguration day and every time he addressed the nation, to establish an informal, common man image.

Carter's government reorganization efforts also separated the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The inflation caused interest rates to rise to unprecedented levels (above 12 percent per year). The rapid change in rates led to disintermediation of bank deposits, which sowed the seeds of the Savings and Loan crisis. Investments in fixed income (both bonds, and pensions being paid to retired people) were becoming less valuable. With the markets for U.S. government debt coming under pressure, Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; Volcker replaced G. William Miller who left to become the Secretary of the Treasury. Volcker took actions (raising interest rates even further) to slow down the economy and bring down inflation, which he considered his mandate. He succeeded, but only by first going through a very unpleasant phase where the economy slowed down, causing a rise in unemployment, prior to any relief from the inflation. The stagnant growth of the economy (causing unemployment), in combination with a high rate of inflation, has often been called stagflation, an unprecedented situation in American economics.

Foreign policies

President Carter initially departed from the long-held policy of containment toward the Soviet Union, as first articulated in the Truman Doctrine and held to by all subsequent American presidents, both Republican and Democrat. In its place Carter promoted his foreign policy as being one that would place human rights at the forefront. This was intended to be 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 to the United States. The Carter administration ended support to the historically U.S.-backed Somoza government in Nicaragua, and gave millions of dollars in aid to the nation's new regime, following a Sandinista coup.

Carter continued his predecessors' policies of imposing sanctions on Rhodesia, and, after Bishop Abel Muzorewa was elected Prime Minister, protested that the Marxists Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo were excluded from the elections. Strong pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom prompted new elections in what was then called Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Carter was also known for his criticism of Alfredo Stroessner, Augusto Pinochet, the apartheid government of South Africa, and other traditional allies.

Carter continued the policy of Richard Nixon to "normalize" relations with People's Republic of China granting full diplomatic and trade relations, thus ending official relations with the Republic of China (though the two nations continued to trade and the U.S. unofficially recognized Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act).

The main conflict between human rights and U.S. interests came in Carter's dealings with the Shah of Iran. The Shah 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. Though Carter praised the Shah as a wise and valuable leader, when a popular uprising against the monarchy broke out in Iran, the Carter administration did not intervene.

The Shah was deposed and exiled. Many have since connected the Shah's dwindling U.S. support as a leading cause of his quick overthrow. Carter was initially prepared to recognize the revolutionary government of the monarch's successor, but his efforts proved futile.

In 1979, Carter out of humanitarian concerns allowed the deposed Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi into the United States for political asylum and medical treatment. In response to the Shah's entry into the U.S., Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran taking some 100 Americans hostage. The Iranians demanded (1) the return of the Shah to Iran for trial, (2) the return of the Shah's wealth to the Iranian people, (3) an admission of guilt by the United States for its past actions in Iran, plus an apology, and (4) a promise from the United States not to interfere in Iran's affairs in the future. Though later that year the Shah would leave the U.S. and die in Egypt, the Iran hostage crisis continued, and dominated the last year of Carter's presidency, even though almost half of the hostages were released. 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, were largely seen as contributing to defeat in the 1980 election.

Nevertheless, the 1980 election results were not even close. Carter managed to win just six states, 49 electoral votes and 41% of the popular vote, barely beating the dismal record of Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964, who managed to win six states, 52 electoral votes and 38.5% of the popular vote against an incumbent president. Many political analysts have said Carter performed very poorly in his debates with Ronald Reagan. Reagan almost seemed to be making fun of the President. At one point he said "there you go again". Carter hurt himself in the debates when he talked about asking his young daughter Amy what the most important issue affecting the world was. She said it was nuclear proliferation, and the control of nuclear arms. Carter said that the point he was trying to make was that this issue affects everyone, especially our children. However, the way he phrased it led many to ridicule him.

Although the Carter team had negotiated with the hostage takers for release of the hostages, an agreement trusting the hostages takers to abide by their word was not signed until January 19, 1981, after the election of Ronald Reagan. The hostages had been held captive for 444 days, and their release happened just minutes after Carter left office. However, Reagan asked Carter to head to Germany to greet the hostages.

In December 1979, USSR invaded Afghanistan, after a Muslim insurgency overthrew the pro-Moscow Afghanistan government placed by a 1978 coup. The Soviet Union was evidently fearful that the Muslim uprising would spread from Iran and Afghanistan to the millions of Muslims in the USSR. After the invasion, Carter announced the Carter Doctrine: that the US would not allow any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf. Carter terminated the Russian Wheat Deal, a keystone Nixon Detente initiative 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. Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski started a $40 billion covert program of training Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In retrospect, this contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and is also often blamed for the resulting instability of post-Soviet Afghani governments, which led to the rise of Islamic theocracy in the region. Some even tie the program to the 1996 coup that established the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and to the creation of violent Islamic terrorist groups.

Interest in extraterrestrial life and UFOs

President Carter claims to have witnessed a UFO in 1969; he remains the only U.S. President to have formally reported a UFO. He filed a report with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City after a request from that organization. [2] During his presidential campaign, Carter promised to release the truth about any alleged UFO cover-up.

Through Stanford Research Institute, Mr. Alfred Webre was Principal Investigator for a proposed civilian scientific study of extraterrestrial communication presented to and developed with interested Carter White House staff. This took place during the period from May 1977 until the fall of 1977.

President Carter, official statement placed on the Voyager spacecraft for its trip outside our solar system, June 16, 1977: "We cast this message into the cosmos . . . Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some - - perhaps many - - may have inhabited planets 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."[3] See also Voyager Golden Record.

Controversies

Members of the Reagan-Bush campaign and administration (most notably Barbara Honegger, in her contribution to Gary Sick's book October Surprise), and the president of Iran in 1980 (Abu Al-Hasan Bani-Sadr, My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals With the U.S.) have alleged that a secret agreement between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians (orchestrated by George H. W. Bush) was responsible for destroying a deal between the Carter administration and the hostage takers that might have led to their release a month before the election. Honegger and others said that, with the November election approaching, the Reagan team had reason to believe a second rescue attempt was being prepared or, absent that, a diplomatic deal to gain an election-eve release of the 52 American officials held in Tehran. [4] Such a scenario was termed "the October surprise" by the Reagan team.

In 1977, Carter stated that there was no need to apologize to the Vietnamese people for the damage and suffering caused by the Vietnam war as "the destruction was mutual."

During Carter's administration, diplomatic recognition was switched from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China, a policy continued into the 21st century. In response, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act.

Some have accused Carter of ordering a cover-up of the events at Three Mile Island following the near meltdown of that nuclear plant. He has also been criticized for not doing enough to promote his stated human rights foreign policy stance in his administration, such as continuing to support the Indonesian government even while it was implicated in the commission of acts of genocide in the occupation of East Timor.

In 1977, Bert Lance, Carter's director of the Office of Management and Budget, resigned after past banking overdrafts and "check kiting" were questioned by the U.S. Senate.

Cabinet

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	Jimmy Carter	1977–1981
Vice President	Walter F. Mondale	1977–1981
State	Cyrus R. 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
HUD	Patricia R. Harris	1977–1979
	Moon Landrieu	1979–1981
Transportation	Brock Adams	1977–1979
	Neil E. Goldschmidt	1979–1981
Energy	James R. Schlesinger	1977–1979
	Charles W. Duncan	1979–1981

Post-Presidency

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Presidents Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter at the dedication of the Reagan Presidential Library.

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Five presidents and first ladies attended the funeral of Richard Nixon on April 27, 1994, in Nixon's hometown of Yorba Linda, California. From left: Bill and Hillary Clinton, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Gerald and Betty Ford.

Since his unsuccessful bid for re-election, Carter has been involved in a variety of public policy, human rights, and charitable causes. His work in international public policy and conflict resolution is largely through the Carter Center. The center also focuses on world-wide health care including the campaign to eliminate guinea worm disease. He and members of the center are sometimes involved in the monitoring of the electoral process in support of free and fair elections. This includes acting as election observers, particularly in Latin America and Africa.

Carter was the third U.S. president, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize award. In his Nobel Lecture, Carter told the European audience that U.S. actions after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the 1991 Gulf War, like NATO itself, was a continuation of President Wilson's doctrine of collective security. [5]

He and his wife Rosalynn are also well-known for their work with Habitat for Humanity.

Carter visited Cuba in May 2002, meeting with Fidel Castro and becoming the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution.

Not all Carter's efforts have gained him favor in Washington; President Clinton and both Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush were said to have been less than pleased with Carter's "freelance" diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere. Critics of Carter's diplomatic efforts (during and after his presidency) generally concede that Carter is honest and well intentioned, but consider him to be naive about less scrupulous foreign leaders.

In 1994 Carter went to North Korea at the behest of President Clinton during a period of rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula that were caused by North Korea's expulsion of investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency and that country's threat to begin processing spent nuclear fuel. Carter met with North Korean President Kim Jong Il resulting in the signing of the Agreed Framework, under which North Korea agreed to stop processing nuclear fuel, in exchange for a return to normalized relations, oil deliveries and two light water reactors to replace its graphite reactors.

Though the Agreed Framework negotiated by Jimmy Carter was widely hailed at the time as a diplomatic achievement, it soon became apparent that despite their promises to Carter, North Korea had no intention of stopping its nuclear weapons program. In 2005, North Korea announced that it had nuclear weapons.

In 2001, Carter blasted President Clinton's controversial pardon of Marc Rich, calling it "disgraceful" and suggesting that Rich's large contributions to the Democratic Party were a factor in Clinton's action.

In March 2004, Carter roundly condemned George W. Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war "based upon lies and misinterpretations" in order to oust Saddam Hussein. He claimed that Blair had allowed his better judgement to be swayed by Bush's desire to finish a war that George H. W. Bush (his father) had started. In June 2005, Carter urged the closing of the Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba, which has been the centerpoint for recent claims of prisoner and Muslim holy book Quran abuse.

On November 22, 2004, New York Republican Governor George Pataki named Carter and the other living former presidents (Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton) as honorary members of the board rebuilding the World Trade Center.

Because he had served as a submariner (the only president to have done so), a submarine was named for him. The USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) was named on April 27, 1998, making it one of the very few U.S. Navy vessels to be named for a person still alive at the time of the naming. In February 2005, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter both spoke at the commissioning ceremony for this submarine.

On November 4, 2005, Carter condemned all abortions and chastised his Democratic Party for its intolerance of candidates and nominees who oppose abortion saying "I never have felt that any abortions should be committed -- I think each abortion is the result of a series of errors".

Every September Carter goes to the Plains Peanut Festival and reportedly frequents the Pink Pig Barbecue Restaurant in Cherry Log, Georgia when he and the former First Lady are visiting their log cabin near Ellijay, Georgia. Carter also teaches a Sunday School class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. He is also an accomplished amateur woodworker and has occasionally been featured in the pages of Fine Wood Working magazine, which is published by Taunton Press.

Miscellaneous

• On October 14, 1978 President Carter signed into law a bill that legalized the homebrewing of beer and wine.

Carter has written over 20 books since leaving the presidency.

He was the first president to make public statements in support of gay rights. In California in the late 1970s, voters were facing a law which would have banned gays and lesbians from working in the school system. At a speech in California, Carter urged voters to reject the bill. Incidentally, former California governor Ronald Reagan, who later defeated Carter also opposed the bill.

Works

Jimmy Carter has been a relatively prolific author. He has written the following:

• Why Not the Best? (1975 and 1996)
• A Government as Good as Its People (1977 and 1996)
• Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (1982 and 1995)
• Negotiation: The Alternative to Hostility (1984)
• The Blood of Abraham (1985 and 1993)
• Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life (1987 and 1995), with Rosalynn Carter
• An Outdoor Journal (1988 and 1994)
• Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age (1992)
• Talking Peace: A Vision for the Next Generation (1993 and 1995)
• Always a Reckoning (1995), a collection of poetry, illustrated by his granddaughter
• The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer (1995), a children's book, illustrated by his daughter
• Living Faith (1996)
• Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (1997)
• The Virtues of Aging (1998)
• An Hour before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood (2001)
• Christmas in Plains: Memories (2001)
• The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (2002)
• The Hornet's Nest (2003), a historical novel and the first work of fiction written by a U.S. President
• Sharing Good Times (2004)
• Our Endangered Values : America's Moral Crisis (2005)

Further reading

• Jones, Charles O. The Trusteeship Presidency: Jimmy Carter and the United States Congress. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1988.
• Jordan, Hamilton. Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency. NY: Putnam, 1982.
• Jordan, William J. Panama Odyssey. Austin: UT Press, 1984.
• Kaufman, Burton I. The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr. Lawrence, KS: U. of KS, 1993.
• Kucharsky, David. The Man from Plains: The Mind and Spirit of Jimmy Carter. NY: Harper & Row, 1976
• Lance, Bert. The Truth of the Matter: My Life in and out of Politics. NY: Summit Books, 1991

See also

• U.S. presidential election, 1976
• U.S. presidential election, 1980
• The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia
• History of the United States (1964–1980)
• History of the United States (1980–1988)
• USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23)
• Jimmy Carter Library and Museum
• US health reform under Carter

External links

• Jimmy Carter Biography of President Jimmy Carter
• Inaugural Address of Jimmy Carter
• Audio recordings of Carter's speeches
• Nobel lecture, Oslo, Norway (10 December 2002)
• Nobel Prize for Carter
• The malaise speech text
• About the malaise speech
• Carter Center
• Jimmy Carter Library and Museum
• The October Surprise
• White House page for Carter
• Navy Years
• "The U.S. President was here" — about Carterpuri, a village in Haryana, India named after President Carter
• Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990 Chap. 3 The Carter Years

• Carter's hand written UFO sighting report of 1969
• Carter's church and Sunday school teaching schedule
• More information about the "killer rabbit" incident

• Jimmy Carter's Life
• Works by Jimmy Carter at Project Gutenberg

• Jimmy Carter at IMDb