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Carter was born the oldest of four children in the town of Plains, Georgia, to James Earl Carter and Bessie Lillian Gordy. He was the first president born in a hospital. He grew up in nearby Archery . He attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946, the same year he married Rosalynn Smith. Carter was a very gifted student and finished 59th out of his Academy class of 820. Vietnam POW and war hero Jeremiah Denton was one of Carter's classmates. Carter served on submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, and was later selected by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program. Carter loved the Navy and planned to make it his career. His ultimate goal was to be Chief of Naval Operations. Upon the death of his father in 1953, however, he resigned from the Navy and established a peanut farming business in Plains where he was involved in a farming accident which left him with a permanently bent finger. From a young age, Carter showed a deep commitment to Christianity, serving as a Sunday School teacher throughout his political career.
Carter started his career by serving on the Plains school board. In the 1960s he served two terms in the Georgia State Senate.
In his 1970 campaign Carter was elected governor on a pro- George Wallace platform. Carter's campaign aides handed out thousands of photographs of his opponent, the liberal former Gov. Carl Sanders, showing Sanders associating with black basketball players. On the stump, Carter pledged to reappoint an avowed segregationist to the state Board of Regents. He promised as his first act to invite former Alabama Gov. George Wallace into the state to speak. Old-line segregationists across the state endorsed Carter for governor.
But following his election, Carter said in speeches that the time of racial segregation was over, and that racial discrimination had no place in the future of the state. He was the first state-wide office holder in the Deep South to say this in public (such sentiments would have signaled the end of the political career of politicians in the region less than 15 years earlier, as was the case with Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen, who testified before Congress in favor of the Voting Rights Act), so his victory attracted some attention as a sign of changing times. Carter served as governor of the state of Georgia from 1971 to 1975.
When Carter entered the Democratic Party Presidential primaries in 1976 he at first was considered to have little chance against nationally better-known politicians. However the Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds, so his position as an outsider distant from Washington, DC became an asset. He ran an effective campaign, did well in debates, and won his party's nomination and then the election, receiving slightly less than a majority of the votes cast. Government reorganization was the centerpiece of his campaign platform. He was the first candidate from the Deep South to be elected president since Reconstruction.
As part of his government reorganization efforts, Carter separated the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. He also elevated the Energy agency into a new cabinet-level department, the United States Department of Energy.
The Carter Administration's foreign policy is most remembered for the Iran hostage crisis, for the peace treaty he brokered between the states of Israel and Egypt with the Camp David Accord, for the SALT II treaty brokered with the Soviet Union, for the Panama Canal treaty which turned the canal over to Panama, and for an energy crisis. He was much less successful on the domestic front, having alienated both his own party and his opponents through what was perceived as a lack of willingness to work with Congress — much as he had in his term as Governor.
On July 15, 1979, Carter gave a nationally televised address in which he identified what he believed to be a crisis of confidence among the American people. This has come to be known as his "malaise" speech, even though he never actually used the word "malaise" anywhere in the text:
Carter's speech, or rather sermon, was well-received. The country was in the worst recession since the 1930s, with inflation and unemployment at record levels. But the people who had hoped for more inspiring leadership were disappointed. Two days after the speech, Carter asked for the resignations of all of his Cabinet officers, and ultimately accepted five. With no visible efforts towards a way out of the malaise, Carter's poll numbers dropped even further.
Among Presidents who served at least one full term, Carter is the only one who never made an appointment to the Supreme Court.
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