president James Earl Carter, Jr., was the president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, succeeding Gerald Ford.. In 1962 he was elected to the State Senate, and he ran for governor o
Trang 1will continue to have a major impact on the region’s
economies and inhabitants
Further reading: Alonso, Irma T., ed Caribbean Economies
in the Twenty-First Century Gainesville: University of
Flori-da Press, 2002; Rosen, Ellen Israel Making Sweatshops: The
Globalization of the U.S Apparel Industry Berkeley:
Univer-sity of California Press, 2002
Michael J Schroeder
Carter, Jimmy
(1924– ) U.S president
James Earl Carter, Jr., was the president of the United
States from 1977 to 1981, succeeding Gerald Ford
Though he only served a single term, his was a
signifi-cant presidency in both foreign and domestic affairs,
and he presided over a tumultuous time in American
history
Like his predecessor, he was a gifted student and
athlete and a navy officer He resigned from the navy
in 1953 immediately following the death of his father
and worked on his family’s Georgia peanut farm for
the rest of the decade, becoming active in local
poli-tics In 1962 he was elected to the State Senate, and he
ran for governor only four years later, losing, but
win-ning the 1970 election During the election, he seemed
to pay lip service to segregationists, but he condemned
segregation immediately upon attaining office He was
the first southern governor to condemn segregation,
and he underscored his point by appointing blacks to
many state offices A reform-minded pragmatist, he
worked at streamlining state government, condensing
programs and agencies while increasing school
fund-ing, especially in the poorer parts of the state
But nothing in his governorship brought him to
national attention, and when he ran for president in
1976, he was almost a complete unknown He made
his reorganization of state government the centerpiece
of his national campaign, and his soft-spoken charisma,
southernness, and traditional moral character (Carter
had taught Sunday school for years, and his sister Ruth
was a well-known evangelist) were well received in the
aftermath of Nixon’s corruption and Ford’s irrelevance
Though his opposition to segregation distanced him
from the Dixiecrats, he was conservative for a
Dem-ocrat and had criticized 1972 DemDem-ocratic candidate
George McGovern for being too liberal Sentiment was
against Ford sufficiently for Carter to win the election,
albeit by a slim (2 percent) margin He was the first southerner elected president since 1848
As president, Carter inherited a difficult economic situation Stagflation and the 1973 oil crisis had dis-couraged growth for too long, after the lengthy healthy period to which Americans had become accustomed after World War II The 1979 energy crisis followed the Iranian revolution, when the (previously American-supported) shah of Iran fled his country and allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to seize power Inflation reached double digits, and although many of Carter’s fixes were probably effective, the results were not seen until after he had lost the 1980 election
Where Carter excelled was in diplomacy In Septem-ber 1978 he brought Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat to Camp David, to continue and finalize peace negotiations that had been ongoing for months in the wake of the Yom Kippur War and the other Middle Eastern conflicts of the decade The Camp David accords remain one of the most important developments in modern Middle Eastern relations, setting a precedent for Arab-Israeli diplomacy while segregating powerful Egypt from its Arab allies Carter’s foreign policy was driven by his respect for human rights, which may have influenced his decision to deny the shah’s request for help during the Iranian Revo-lution Though the shah’s reign had begun with American support immediately after World War II, and his gover-nance remained more liberal and Western-friendly than any other in the region, his social policies were still a far cry from what even conservative Westerners would sup-port, and by the late ’70s, this gap was more pronounced than it had been 30 years earlier Carter did eventually grant the exiled shah entry to the United States for can-cer treatment in October 1979 In response, Iranian mili-tants seized the American embassy in Tehran and held
53 hostages for more than a year There is widespread speculation that the final negotiations were delayed by parties seeking Ronald Reagan’s election; the hostages were released on the day of his inauguration
The combination of the failing economy and the hostage crisis led to Carter’s loss to Reagan in the 1980 election For years he was considered something of a joke, emblematic of a weak Democratic Party unable
to contend with the 12-year Reagan-Bush era He remained active in humanitarian work, especially in the areas of human rights and public health, and was only the third U.S president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Since the 1990s he has taken on a role as occa-sional diplomat, visiting countries such as North Korea and Venezuela, and was the first president to visit Cuba