Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter was president of the United States for one term and then spent four decades building a post-presidency without precedent. Born in Plains, Georgia in 1924, he grew up on a farm without electricity, graduated from the Naval Academy, and worked under Hyman Rickover on the nuclear submarine programme. In 1952 he was part of a team that entered a damaged reactor at Chalk River in Canada in short shifts to dismantle it. He returned to run the family peanut business when his father died, entered Georgia politics, and became governor in 1971, announcing in his inaugural address that the time for racial discrimination was over. He won the presidency in 1976 as an outsider after Watergate. His domestic record includes the departments of Energy and Education, deregulation of airlines and trucking, and the first serious national energy policy, with solar panels installed on the White House roof. His achievement was the Camp David Accords of 1978, in which he kept Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at the table for thirteen days and produced a peace that has held. He also concluded SALT II and the Panama Canal treaties, and made human rights an explicit criterion of foreign policy. He was destroyed by inflation above thirteen per cent, an oil shock, and the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran in November 1979; fifty-two hostages were held for 444 days and a rescue attempt failed at Desert One. He lost in 1980 to Ronald Reagan. The Carter Center monitored elections in dozens of countries and led the near-eradication of Guinea worm disease. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 and died in 2024, aged a hundred.
- Lived: 1924 CE – 2024 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: 39th President of the United States (1977–81)
