Useful Notes / Jimmy Carter

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James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024) was the 39th President of the United States, in office from 1977 to 1981. The fourteenth president from the Democratic Party, Carter was preceded by Gerald Ford and followed by Ronald Reagan.

He began his political career in the state senate of Georgia, and following an unsuccessful run for governor in 1966 was elected on his second try in 1970, positioning himself as a segregationist to win popular support before revealing his actual, more racially liberal politics during his victory speech, to the audience's shock.^note The people who supported Carter's actual politics, meanwhile, were less thrown off: he privately confided with his supporters about his plans at the start of his 1970 campaign, warning them that he'd be saying a lot of things they wouldn't like and that pretending to be a segregationist was the only way he could move votes in the very southern state of Georgia. After an attempt to become the running mate of George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election ended in failure, Carter then decided to instead position himself for the top half of the ticket in the next election.

Carter launched his 1976 presidential campaign as a long shot against 17 other major candidates for the Democratic nomination, but managed to pull off a Dark Horse Victory in part due to the party's more liberal wing not being able to coalesce around a single candidate, and also because it was felt they needed a candidate who could win the Deep South states that Richard Nixon had flipped to the Republicans in his two elections. In this he was successful: Carter won every Southern state except Virginia, making him the last Democrat to carry a majority of the South. He narrowly unseated the incumbent President Ford in the general election, a result which was attributed primarily to lingering resentment at the Republicans over Watergate (Carter's wholesome outsider image contrasting with the corruption inextricably associated with Nixon), as well as to Ford's controversial pardon of Nixon and his having run a poor election campaign. Carter's was the only presidential election victory by a Democrat between 1964 and 1992, the Republicans winning every other one during that time frame (each time by a landslide, save for Nixon in 1968).

Even looking back at his presidency decades later, a cursory glance around the Internet will astonish many readers with just what a polarizing figure Jimmy Carter continues to be. Conservatives declare that his watch was a mess, liberals insist that he inherited a mess: the huge deficit from The Vietnam War, an economy that for the first time ever suffered rampant inflation while stagnating (which led to the portmanteau "stagflation" to be coined to describe it), and the national post-Vietnam, post-Watergate funk which has been described as a "malaise" — a word that conservative commentators (and The Simpsons) hang around his neck to this day, although Carter himself never actually used it. "Stagflation" was exacerbated by the 1979 oil crisis, as long gas lines and high energy costs contributed to the wider national unhappiness. Attempting to lead by example, Carter lowered the thermostats in The White House and donned sweaters to keep warm instead, an act which for many became a hated symbol of the lifestyle sacrifices which they believed his own policies had helped to make necessary.

That said, much of Carter's popularity with liberals came after his administration. He ran as a centrist Democrat, with a platform of Christian values and small government not dissimilar from that of Ronald Reagan four years later. Unlike previous Democratic presidents, Carter pivoted away from the social democratic policies of the New Deal and Great Society in favor of greater deregulation and privatization, which angered many liberals within his own party. He was considered a micromanager who had a limited White House staff and difficult relations with his own cabinet and Congress In 1980, he faced a strong primary challenge from Senator Ted Kennedy, who ran on the idea that Carter had sold out the party's progressive wing.^note The health care reform debate collapsed in part because of disputes between the White House and Congress with Carter aiming for expanded private insurance whereas Kennedy preferred a government-owned single-payer insurance system. Carter secured the nomination in the last brokered convention to date,^note Walter Mondale went into the 1984 Democratic convention without a majority of delegates, but the second-place challenger, Gary Hart, made no serious effort to contest his nomination at the convention. and his acceptance speech also drew some laughs for his Accidental Misnaming of the late former vice president Hubert Humphrey as "Hubert Horatio Hornblower" in an intended tribute.

In foreign policy, meanwhile, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent protracted holding of American hostages appeared to many to demonstrate the feebleness, incompetence and ineptitude of the Carter administration's foreign policy, with a bungled attempt to free the hostages by force naturally reinforcing such an impression. In fairness, Operation Eagle Claw was aborted before it ever reached the US Embassy due to mechanical issues; such is the fickleness of helicopters. Still, the inadequacy of his response to an act of war was emblematic of his presidency. (Conspiracy theorists have held that there was a secret arrangement between the Ayatollah and the Reagan campaign as the hostages were released almost immediately after Reagan had taken the oath of office in 1981.) Carter's term also saw the Soviets deploy improved nuclear weapons and invade Afghanistan, resulting in the SALT II arms control treaty not coming before the Democratic-controlled Senate. And, again emblematically, Carter withdrew Team USA from the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Both the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet–Afghan War led to him formulating the Carter Doctrine and greenlighting Operation Cyclone. The former declared that the United States will do anything to defend its Middle Eastern interests, while the latter allowed the funding and arming of anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen. Carter's successors would continue and expand these policies, which unfortunately led to the US getting embroiled in Middle Eastern conflicts like The War on Terror, which was, to put it politely, controversial.

More positively, his term saw a lasting (if somewhat frosty) peace negotiated between Israel and Egypt, having sponsored a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at Camp David. It remains the only significant and lasting peace settlement in the modern Middle East, and is so well-respected that even Egypt's new post-revolution government is still honoring it. His administration also (though not without controversy) negotiated the sharing of the Panama Canal with Panama and its eventual return to that country at the end of the 20th century. Additionally, later reviewers have observed that his long-sighted economic policies ultimately paid off over the next decade, and that much of the economic resurgence seen under Reagan could more accurately be described as Carter's policies succeeding despite Reagan's own policies.

The Carter administration's emphasis placed on human rights garnered respect even among his political opponents who never doubted the sincerity of Carter's intentions. More than a few people argue that Carter was essentially a Nice Guy who was good at humanitarianism and charity work, but was saddled with a job that he wasn't prepared for, at a bad time to have it—exacerbated by his "spokes of the wheel" approach to management, wherein he acted as the central hub of the White House to whom everyone else answered, rather than hiring more competent and capable department heads to handle the responsibilities. His former speechwriter James Fallows has opined that Carter's administration suffered from his lack of vision and an over-reliance on yes-men. It is often said that Carter might have made a better Secretary of State than a president.

Carter had one of the most active post-presidencies of any former president, founding the Carter Center to work toward peace, which helped him win a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. (Contrary to many people's recollections, Carter didn't win in 1978 for mediating the Camp David Accords. This was instead a joint prize awarded to Begin and Sadat, who did the negotiation.) His work with charities such as Habitat for Humanity gives him the interesting designation of causing people to like him better for his post-presidency activities than the ones during his presidency. His 2014 project was supporting the eradication of guinea worm, a Neglected Tropical Disease-causing parasite now found mainly in South Sudan and Chad. The efforts have been largely successful, with just 27 cases in 2020 (down from millions in the '80s). It will most likely be the second human disease,^note Third overall; the rinderpest virus, which infects only cattle and other even-toed ungulates, was the second to be eradicated following smallpox. and the first parasitic disease, to be completely eradicated.

For decades, Carter remained remarkably healthy despite his advanced age, walking without a cane, surviving the pancreatic cancer that killed his father and three siblings, and still doing humanitarian handiwork with his own hammer and tool belt, with Rosalynn at his side. But it couldn't last forever, as his advanced age caught up with him; in February 2023, the Carter Center announced that he had entered hospice care, and that he would spend the last days of his life with his family in retirement. Surprising almost everyone, he managed to hold on for quite a while afterwards, becoming the first (and thus far the only) American president to reach the age of 100, which he did on October 1, 2024. On November 19, 2023, his wife Rosalynn passed away from complications of dementia, two days after it was announced that she too was entering hospice care. Jimmy himself would pass away a little over a year later on December 29, 2024.

Satirical media portrayals of Carter focused on his southern-ness, ranging from portrayal as an incongruous Southern Gentleman out of place in a savvier Washington, D.C., to an out-and-out hickish bumpkin; his toothy smile became iconic. The "redneck president" conception fell a bit out of favor once the nation met Jimmy's brother, Billy Carter, who generally fit the stereotype a lot better, putting Jimmy in the role of the Straight Man. In the states of the former Confederacy, he was widely known as "The South's Revenge."

A few other facts about President Carter:

• Was known as a very devout Southern Baptist (and brought the term "born-again Christian" into the national vocabulary), but left the denomination in 2000 because of its increasing conservatism, and specifically its ban on female ministers. Founded the New Baptist Covenant movement with Bill Clinton for more liberal Baptists.
• Grew up on a peanut farm.
• Had an embarrassing redneck brother Billy, renowned for his eponymous (and terrible) brand of beer and for financial trafficking with the Libyans.
• Pushed for a comprehensive national energy policy and advocated alternative energy sources in the mid-to-late '70s; whatever one's political views, this made him most certainly a man well ahead of his time.^note He even installed solar panels on the White House roof. Reagan had them removed as soon as he was inaugurated.
• Gave an interview to Playboy magazine in which he defended his own monogamy but admitted that he had at times had "lust in [his] heart" for women other than his wife (reference to Matthew 5:28), words that would haunt him.
• Was attacked by a rabbit during a boating excursion. Satirists had a field day with this, especially since Monty Python and the Holy Grail (which famously featured the scene that named the Killer Rabbit trope) was still fresh in public memory.
• During a 1977 state visit to Poland, he gave a goodwill speech that was infamously subjected to a "Blind Idiot" Translation that outlandishly insulted the country. Among other things, the translation mocked the country's constitution, claimed that Carter had "abandoned the U.S., never to return" and "lust in his heart for the Polish people", and ended with bits of Gratuitous Russian (in a nation with strong anti-Russian sentiments). The translator, who was well-versed with writing but inexperienced with speech, was replaced afterwards.
• Became good friends with Gerald Ford after his presidency.
• A graduate of the Naval Academy, where he played varsity lightweight football,^note Now known as sprint football, it's played at a few schools in the northeastern quadrant of the US using standard college rules, but with severe limits on player weight. Today, the upper limit is 178 lb/81 kg; it was lower in Carter's day. he was a submariner and nuclear engineer in his early life (although he never got to serve on a nuclear submarine). This is why he got the submarine USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23) named after him rather than a carrier (as is typical for presidents). It was a fast-attack nuclear boat and was also last of the even-scarier-than-the-name-makes-it-sound-but-also-ludicrously-expensive Seawolf class. According to one report, he got to ride on his submarine and even briefly drove it, being 81 at the time.
• His Naval Academy engineering degree makes him one of only two presidents to come from an engineering background. The other one? Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer by training, to whom Carter is often compared for presiding over a time of economic distress, serving only one term largely because said economic distress didn't get sorted out, having impeccable bona fides as a humanitarian, and living a very long time after leaving office.
• In 1952, then-Lieutenant Carter was sent to deal with a partial meltdown at Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in Ontario, Canada, whereupon he was lowered into the reactor wearing woefully inadequate protective clothing as part of his team to help safely disassemble it and prevent any harm to the surrounding area. It places him alone on the "most radioactive president" list — without the slightest exaggeration; Carter himself stated his waste products were radioactive for months afterward and the Navy personnel all joked that they'd surely sterilized themselves in the process and that he was certain he wouldn't have more children. Amy Carter was born several years later—and ought to place him on the "most badass" list, whatever one thinks of him; it is fairly typical of Carter that despite the story being in his campaign memoir, it's not widely-known or instantly associated with him.
• Carter had actually planned to make his career in the Navy, and maybe retire to the family peanut farm when he decided to quit; however, his father's death in 1953 at the age of 28 forced Carter to return so he could rescue the family business. For various reasons, Carter's farm didn't generate quite enough income, and he was forced to live in public housing for a time. He is the only president to have lived in subsidized housing for the poor (not even Bill Clinton—who grew up in backwoods Arkansas with a widowed mother and later an abusive stepfather who was The Gambling Addict—had done so).
  • The peanut farm seems to have overall been a net drain on Carter's financial assets: after being elected President, Carter placed the farm and other family holdings into a blind trust to avoid allegations of a conflict of interest. The trust was badly mismanaged, however, and Carter left office one million dollars in debt. As a result Carter is the only modern President to have left the office a debtor.
• Was the first president to be Only Known by Their Nickname in official White House/public correspondence, all of which referred to him as "Jimmy Carter" as opposed to "James E. Carter Jr." To put it in context, even though 42nd president Bill Clinton was known to the public as "Bill", his official public correspondence still referred to him as "William J. Clinton".
• Was the first serving President to be born after World War I.^note John F. Kennedy was a toddler, and Nixon and Ford preschoolers, when it ended; George H. W. Bush, born four months before Carter, wasn't elected until 1988.
• Carter is the only US president ever to admit to filing a UFO report.^note  For the record, Carter did not believe what he saw in 1969 was an alien spacecraft; he always thought that it was probably a top-secret military experiment.
• His father and three siblings all died from pancreatic cancer at a relatively young age. In August 2015, he disclosed that he had been diagnosed with cancer himself. In December 2015, he announced that the cancer had been cleared out.
• Had all but eradicated the Guinea Worm, a painful and hard-to-remove parasite, with the help of his Carter Foundation. Torpedoing the number of infections from the millions in the '80s, to fewer than 30 in the 2010s.
• He was the only modern President to return to living full-time in the house he lived in before entering politics: a two-bedroom ranch house in Plains, Georgia.
• Carter was America’s longest-lived President, having surpassed George H. W. Bush in practice in March 2019, then "officially" that October. His post-presidential longevity of nearly 44 years easily surpassed that of Herbert Hoover, whose post-presidential career spanned 31 years after leaving office, and who lived to the age of 90.
• He was the last living US President to be born before World War II.
• He was at the time of his passing one of the only two living former US Presidents eligible for re-election, as three of them (Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama) fulfilled the Constitutionally-imposed maximum of two terms.
• Was the first president to be born in a hospital (in this case, the Wise clinic in Plains, Georgia^note His mother Lilian worked there as a nurse. It is now a nursing center named after her.)
• Was the first president to make it to 100 years of age, reaching the milestone on October 1, 2024.

You just have to keep some simple tropes:

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The premise of Saturday Night Live's "Ask President Carter" sketch was not fiction, Carter actually did host a two-hour show where anyone could call in and ask him a question. Here's a clip.
• Approval of God: Carter commented on the 2012 film Argo, which is a dramatization of the "Canadian Caper", a joint covert rescue by the Canadian government and the CIA of six American diplomats who had evaded capture during the Iran Hostage Crisis.
• Butt-Monkey: Carter was the go-to President to use as the butt of jokes until George W. Bush came along, so many media portrayals of Carter from the '80s and The '90s characterize him in this manner or otherwise portray him as a loser. The Simpsons took it up to eleven.
• Handy Man: Commonly portrayed as this in his post-presidency due to his extensive work building houses for Habitat for Humanity. He personally chastises Tim Taylor for the poor quality of his Habitat for Humanity house on a 1994 episode of Home Improvement.
• Jack of All Trades: Dan Aykroyd's portrayal of Carter on Saturday Night Live leaned into this, particularly during the memorable 1977 "Ask President Carter" sketch. The sketch revolves around Carter setting up a hotline in the Oval Office so regular Americans can call him for help with their problems. Calls included a woman needing advice on how to set up a letter sorter at the post office and a college student asking how to deal with a particularly bad acid trip. Carter had the exact solution to all their issues right off the top of his head.
• Memetic Loser: How the media generally treated Carter during his post-presidency until he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002: the first and only US President to win the prize for post-presidential work.
• Southern-Fried Genius:
  • Carter was somewhat portrayed as this before his approval rating plunged into the toilet in 1979. It made sense as Carter was a skilled engineer and a top-tier student with a high IQ (he graduated 60th out of 821 in his Naval Academy class, putting him in the top 8%—magna cum laude at most American universities (the service academies don’t use Latin honors).
  • While many US Presidents have served in the military, Carter is the only one that can decisively claim to be a literal nuclear scientist. Carter specialized in nuclear technology during his academic career, served as a specialist during a nuclear crisis (the NRX meltdown), and was preparing to serve in the Navy's nuclear submarine program before a family emergency ended his military career.

Jimmy Carter in fiction: