A candidate out of nowhere – and in more ways than one. When the slim, medium-sized man with the friendly smile from the small village of Plains in western Georgia in December 1974 made his way to the White House in December 1974, he introduced himself to citizens in supermarkets and at factory gates with the words : “Hello, I’m Jimmy Carter, I want to be President.” The mocking counter-questions included: “Jimmy who?” or “President of what?”
As far as is known, these answers were not staged, but they were deliberately provoked. Because Jimmy Carter was not completely unknown at the end of 1974, either in the USA as a whole or even in Georgia – after all, he had been in office there since 1971 and until January 13, 1975 as governor, i.e. as the regional head of government of the state.
Despite this, he was relatively unknown compared to other candidates in previous presidential elections. Carter never held a position in Washington D.C. had never been a federal representative or senator, much less a minister. That is why, when announcing his candidacy (which of course he made public in Washington, at the National Press Club), he placed great emphasis on his domestic political program – foreign policy played almost no role.
It is therefore a step joke in world history that Carter of all people received the Nobel Peace Prize for his achievements. Because his presidency, which he won on November 2, 1976 with the surprise victory over the incumbent Gerald Ford, was not very successful in terms of domestic and foreign policy. But she brought Carter his life theme, for which he was finally honored with the most important political prize in the world.
During the 1976 election campaign, James Earl Carter Jr.’s résumé was seen as a reflection of the development of the US Deep South from backward agricultural regions to industrial boom, from narrow-minded racial fanaticism to a (relatively) harmonious juxtaposition of black and white. Born on October 1, 1924, Jimmy was the first member of his century-long Georgia family to graduate from high school and enter college.
When he was a child there was no electric light in his parents’ house. Working hard on the farm came naturally to the Carter children. There was no pocket money, Jimmy earned it by selling peanuts from his parents’ garden.
After two years at civilian colleges, Jimmy transferred to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1943 to become a Navy officer. He was too young to serve in World War II, but his career began in 1946 on board US warships, from 1948 specializing in submarines, where he also served as first officer.
In 1952 Carter moved to the Future Nuclear Submarines Division; he was slated as engineering officer for the USS “Seawolf,” commissioned in 1952, the Navy’s second nuclear-powered submarine. He qualified for this in reactor technology.
But because his father died in 1953, Carter was released to take over the family’s peanut business in Plains. Although he remained a reserve officer, positions of responsibility were reserved for career officers. After initial difficulties, the Carters’ farm prospered.
So good, in fact, that he began to get involved in politics – in the Democratic Party, of course. In 1963 he was elected to the Georgia State Senate, but his subsequent run for governor failed. Carter did not succeed until 1970, driven by his wife Rosalynn, whom he had married in 1946.
During his election campaign, Carter often served racist resentment among voters; after the success, he changed his tone significantly during his four-year tenure from early 1971 to early 1975, proclaiming that “the days of racial discrimination were over.” He tangled with the Ku Klux Klan while supporting the death penalty.
With no chance of running for re-election in Georgia, he focused on the possible move to Washington. He found the perfect time for this: the US political establishment was still heavily burdened by the Watergate scandal, including President Ford, who actually had little or nothing to do with the machinations of his predecessor Richard M. Nixon. Carter’s position as an underdog proved helpful: he won the Democratic presidential nomination contest and also put on a convincing performance in three televised duels with Ford, the first since 1960.
In the November 2, 1976 election, Carter won all of the Southeastern United States and most of the states east of the Midwest. That was only 23 states to the 27 Ford won, but because they had more electoral votes, the lead was clear, at 297 to 240 votes.
Carter was also ahead in the vote count (which is insignificant in the USA in terms of electoral law) across all states – albeit with only 1.7 million votes (50.1 to 48 percent). That was still more than 15 times more than John F. Kennedy’s lead over Nixon in 1960.
His tenure began quite successfully with domestic reforms, but his dislike of the Washington establishment handicapped him: Carter did not appoint a chief of staff for two and a half years, leaving this central coordinating post to Congress vacant. In terms of foreign policy, of all things, Carter, who was purely a domestic politician, was initially successful: in 1978 he mediated the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement and advanced the negotiations on arms limitation for strategic weapons (SALT II).
But the year 1979 changed everything: The revolution in Iran since February, which culminated in the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran on November 4, destroyed previous US policy in the Near and Middle East. Carter’s tearful TV address to the nation on July 15 went down in history as “malaise speech” and was understood as an insult to voters. At Christmas, the USSR occupied Afghanistan, showing what Moscow thought of the US President’s policy of detente: nothing at all.
Carter received the receipt on November 4, 1980: Although incumbent, he fell out of favor with the voters. Instead of 40.8 million voters, only 35.5 million voted for him. His Republican opponent Ronald Reagan won 489 electoral votes, Carter was only clearly ahead in his native Georgia (as well as in the traditionally anti-Republican Washington D.C.), in West Virginia, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Maryland and Hawaii more or less narrowly.
After his replacement on January 20, 1981, Carter was involved in peace and human rights, as an election observer and in many conflicts as a mediator. For this he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. However, the ex-president was not always right. For example, he completely misunderstood the current development of the Middle East conflict in a book published in 2006, soon after his 80th birthday. As of 2019, he is the former US President who has lived to the highest age.
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