How Did President Jimmy Carter Work?

to making the world a better place. Our thirty ninth President was born James Earl Carter Junior in rural Georgia, to a father, Earl, who was a peanut farmer and businessman, and a mother, Lillian, who was a registered nurse. They were a faithful Baptist family. Carter attended public school in Plains, followed by university study at two Georgia colleges before graduating from the United States Naval Academy in nineteen forty six. That same year, he married Rosalind Smith. The two grew

up just a few miles away from each other. They technically first met when he was three and she was just one day old, and married once they had both finished college. The'd go on to have four children together. During his time with the Navy, Carter served the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. As a submariner, he achieved the rank of lieutenant and was assigned to the nuclear submarine program, and then did graduate work in reactor technology and nuclear physics.

But upon his father's death in nineteen fifty three, Carter returned to Georgia to run the family farm and its supply company. Back in Plains, he became active in local political life, earning a seat in the Georgia Senate by nineteen sixty two, a running for governor and losing in nineteen sixty six, then winning in nineteen seventy, all before announcing his run for president in nineteen seventy four. As governor of Georgia, Carter was a progressive and a reformer.

He called for an end to segregation in his inaugural address and increased to the number of black staff members in the state government. He worked to improve the state government's wasteful bureaucracy, was pro environment, and pushed for more funding for schools. Carter entered the White House on January twentieth of nineteen seventy seven after defeating President Gerald Ford with campaign slogans like a leader for a change and not just peanuts. He inherited challenges of the post Vietnam era,

including rising inflation and unemployment. After four years, the Carter administration had increased the job market by nearly eight million jobs and decreased the budget deficit, though inflation and interest rates were still up before the article. This episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Sarah B. Snyder, a historian of US foreign relations and an associate professor

at the School of International Service at American University. She explained that during his presidency, Carter helped restore quote American faith in US government that had been eroded during the Nixon and Forward years. American people came to trust him, and by extension, came to regain their trust in the US government. Carter talked more openly than most about his faith and how it affected his worldview. The focus was on personal morality and the way that the United States

conducted policies. A. Snyder said it was something he was very comfortable talking about, and he linked his own faith to, for example, his support for human rights. Carter's foreign policy was driven by a commitment to human rights, which he

stated in his inaugural address had to be absolute. Generally, his administration did take steps to support regimes that advanced human rights and limit cooperation with abusive ones, though critics have pointed out that they sometimes overlooked violations and the

interest of forwarding diplomacy and national security. Some of Carter's important foreign policy achievements included the signing of the Panama Canal Treaties, which returned control of the canal to Panama and removed a significant irritant in US relations with the rest of the Americas. Carter is also known for the Camp David Accords, in which he helped negotiate a peace

between Israel and Egypt. He also signed the Salt to Nuclear Limitation Treaty with the Soviet Union, though it never really went into effect, and established diplomatic relations between the US and the People's Republic of China. Domestically, the Carter administration deregulated transportation industries and oil and natural gas prices,

leading to lower costs for both businesses and consumers. He championed energy security and sustainability and created the Department of Energy to handle existing suppliers and research new technologies in wind and solar power. His administration pushed for environmental protection in other ways, including doubling the size of the national park system and tripling the wilderness area through conservation programs

and places like Alaska. Carter also chanmed education as a fundamental right that's essential to democracy, and created the Department of Education to elevate for the first time, the access to learning to a federal cabinet level priority. He often struggled with Congress, but found successes like these and in other programs like raising the minimum wage, despite his recognized

skillet diplomacy. The final year of Carter's presidency was plagued by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran hostage crisis. This was a situation following the revolution that overthrew the US backed monarchy in Iran. The Carter administration granted the deposed king asylum in America for cancer treatment, and in protest, a group of students took sixty six Americans hostage at

the US embassy in Tehran, demanding the Shah's extradition. The crisis went on for four hundred and forty four days, with the final hostages only released on the last day of Carter's term. Failures to negotiate and to rescue the hostages became a political liability. It painted Carter as being weak or indecisive, and thus, despite gains and trust and jobs, Carter failed to win a second presidential term. Ronald Reagan

defeated him in a landslide victory. Reagan took four hundred and eighty nine electoral votes to Carter's forty nine, one of only ten incumbent presidents to fail to be re elected. Carter left Washington, d c. In nineteen eighty one, but his national and international humanitarian work was just beginning. Jimmy and Rosalind Carter established the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia,

in nineteen eighty two in collaboration with Emory University. The Center is a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization dedicated to, in their words, resolving conflict, promoting democracy, protecting human rights, and preventing disease and other afflictions. The building itself is coupled with the library and museum and opened in nineteen eighty six. During the summer, they host a local farmers market on weekends.

Haustuffworks also spoke with Deanna Kong Gilio, who was at the time the director of Communications for the Carter Center and president and Missus Carter's press secretary, As she said, when they left the White House, they weren't ready to retire. They were looking for some way to use the influence they had and continue working on the issues that were important to them. Since its establishment, the Carter Center has operated in eighty nations around the world and been a

pioneer on many fronts. Just for one example, their campaign to eradicate guinea worm disease has produced cases from three and a half million worldwide in nineteen eighty six to fewer than one hundred today. It's also observed more than one hundred and twenty five elections in countries abroad, working

to share knowledge of democratic processes and standards. The former president was also named a University Distinguished Professor at Emory in nineteen eighty two, and he spoke at classes and hosted town halls and luncheons every year since nineteen eighty four. President and Missus Carter were also known for their involvement with Habitat for Humanity International, which works to help people build, repair,

and finance affordable housing in the US and beyond. The image of a former president personally doing construction work changed the way that people thought about a post presidency and gave the organization a boost. In two thousand and two, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of extraordinary humanitarian work, of just one of four American presidents to receive the honor and the only one cited

for his work outside of office. Carter continued to teach Sunday school at a Baptist church in Plains up until he was sidelined by the COVID nineteen pandemic. Hou stuff Works also spoke with Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity. He said, it is all about service. He really has lived his faith in such a con assistant way. Reckford noted that he had been with Carter in situations with the most powerful people in the world and with the least powerful, and found him to be the same person

in all of those situations. One famous story about the Carter's first trip with Habitat for Humanity sums up the couple's character. In the volunteer housing, only one bedroom was available and it had been reserved for the Carters, But when they learned that a couple had decided to celebrate honeymooning by volunteering with habitat. The Carters gave the bedroom to them and slept in the common area with everyone else.

Rosalind Carter passed away in November of twenty twenty three, and her husband followed her a year later, surrounded by family in Plains. He was one hundred years old, making him America's longest live president. Today's episode is based on the article a Portrait of Jimmy Carter, America's oldest living President ever on HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Kerry Whitney. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with hostufforks dot

Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.