Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter
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39th President of the United States
Term of office January 20, 1977 - January 20, 1981
Political party	Democratic
Vice President	Walter Mondale
Preceded by	Gerald Ford
Succeeded by	Ronald Reagan
Born	October 1, 1924 Plains, Georgia, USA
Spouse	Rosalynn Carter
Religion	Baptist

James Earl Carter, Jr. was the 39th President of the United States of America following Gerald Ford and preceding Ronald Reagan. He was a Democrat who served from 1977-1981, after being the Governor of Georgia.

Carter is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and served in the Navy from 1946 through 1953, rising to the rank of Lieutenant.

His difficulty in overcoming the challenges that were presented to the nation during his time in office helped lead to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. He has been unusually active as an ex-president, serving as an election monitor in many emerging democracies, working with Habitat for Humanity, and as a self-proclaimed "peace advocate", was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize. In recent years, he has become very controversial because of his alleged anti-semitic sentiments.

Early Years

Carter was born and raised on his father's farm in Georgia. He entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis and graduated from there in 1946. Shortly afterwards, on July 7, he married Rosalynn Smith. Carter worked in submarines, until he resigned in 1953. He became a peanut farmer afterwards.

Early Political Service

Carter entered politics by running for the Georgia State Senate. He almost lost a close race against Homer Moore, but Carter beat him in the final tally. He worked hard in the Legislature and went on to run for Governor of Georgia in 1966. Although he failed in 1966, in 1970 he managed to win the office of Governor. He was known as a supporter of equal rights for blacks and had the picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. hung in the Georgia state capitol. He went on regular trips to Europe and the Middle East.

1976 Campaign

Carter officially announced his involvement in the race for President. Despite being a relatively politically inexperienced candidate, he turned it to his advantage. He was able to avoid the Watergate scandal and claim a clean history. He eventually managed to win the Democratic nomination and chose Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale as his running mate. Carter based his campaign on his reputation, political freshness and being a honest, born-again Christian. His opponent Gerald Ford campaigned on his record as a Congressman and success in recovering from Watergate. Carter wavered slightly after the first presidential debate, but managed to regain lost ground over the next few appearances. Carter managed to win the general election over Ford.

Presidency

Carter's presidency was marked by retrenchment, after the disappointing agony that had been the Vietnam War, and economic stagflation churning at home.

In the midst of the 1980 campaign, 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 was rendered impotent, as America saw its influence declining abroad.

Despite Carter's own Democratic Party controlling both Houses of Congress, and the White House he failed to reform the tax system, and to reduce the size of the government bureaucracy, as promised during the 1976 campaign, or to pass the Martin Luther King holiday.

He has also been criticized for not doing enough to promote his proclaimed 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.

Carter's response to Soviet aggression against Afghanistan was to single out American farmers who suffered terribly when he terminated the Russian Wheat Deal, a keystone Nixon Detente initiative to establish trade with USSR and lessen Cold War tensions.

He was defeated in the 1980 presidential election by Ronald Reagan by nearly ten percentage points. Republicans also gained control of the Senate for the first time in twenty-five years. The electoral college vote was a landslide, with 489 votes (representing 44 states) for Reagan and 49 for Carter (representing 6 states and the District of Columbia).

Carter personally opposed abortion but only recently, more than a quarter of a century after his presidency, expressed his opposition in public.

Stagflation

A major issue President Carter failed to deal with 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. The Misery index, an indicator of economic hardship that Carter popularized and frequently mentioned in the presidential election of 1976, rose 50% in four years.

Government spending caused interest rates to rise to unprecedented levels (above 12 percent per year). Inflation and interest rates reached their highest levels since World War II. The rapid change in interest rates led to disintermediation of bank deposits, which sowed the seeds of the Savings and Loan crisis. Investments in fixed income were becoming less valuable. Holders of both bonds, and pensions being paid to retired people had their life savings wiped out. 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.

Bert Lance, Carter's appointee to head the Office of Management and Budget which manages the U.S. federal budget, was forced to resign when his past bank overdrafts and "check kiting" schemes in Georgia were exposed.

Post-presidency

Cover of Jimmy Carter's book, Peace Not Apartheid, which accuses Israel of practicing racism.

Carter has been active in foreign affairs since his presidency. His continued work mediating international disputes, organizing election observations, and working with organizations on disease and hunger were cited when he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. In his Nobel lecture, Carter declared his support for "international law":

Our President, Woodrow Wilson, was honored here for promoting the League of Nations, whose two basic concepts were profoundly important: "collective security" and "self-determination." Now they are embedded in international law. Violations of these premises during the last half-century have been tragic failures, as was vividly demonstrated when the Soviet Union attempted to conquer Afghanistan and when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

In a October 2000 survey of 132 prominent professors of history, law, and political science, President Carter was grouped in the "Below Average" group, ranked 30th, with a mean score of 2.47 out of 5.00. This survey, sponsored by the Wall Street Journal and the conservative Federalist Society, ranked President Carter ahead of Richard Nixon, and below George H.W. Bush.

In 2001 as President Clinton exited office and handed out many dubious and questionable pardons, some to terrorists and others which appeared bought and paid for, Carter blasted President Clinton's actions and referred to them as "disgraceful".

In Jimmy Carter's latest book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid", he made the point that any peace accords reached would fundamentally have to be accompanied by the ceasing of terrorist activity towards Israel, he wrote:

It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.

The sentiment was widely criticized. He apologized for the wording of that sentence, but not for his larger message.

• His 2006 book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," has attracted charges of plagiarism. It caused Professor Kenneth Stein to resign from the Carter Center because of its depiction of Israel through three decades of diplomatic and military dealings with the Palestinians. Mr. Stein had served as an aide to Mr. Carter during most of those years. He considers the book deceitful and malicious. As the book's title adumbrates, Jimmy compares Israel with the white supremacist regime of old South Africa. Fourteen members of the Carter Center's advisory board have resigned over the book. In March, Jimmy explained these resignations to an audience at George Washington University by saying, "They all happen to be Jewish Americans." [2]

UFO Sighting

President Carter's report the planet may have been visited by space aliens.

Carter claims to have witnessed an unidentified flying object in 1969; he remains the only U.S. President to have formally reported a UFO. In 1975 Carter told a Washington Post reporter, " A light appeared and disappeared in the sky . . . I think the light was beckoning me to run in the California primary." He filed a report with the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City after a request from that organization. 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.

Voyager Probe

President Carter placed this official statement on the Voyager space probe for its trip outside the solar system on 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."

See also

• Carter Doctrine

Further reading

• Carter the worst ex-president -- Steven Hayward
• Jimmy Carter is a liar, Alan Dershowitz, Jerusalem Post, March 13 2007.
• Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem by Deborah Lipstadt.