Jimmy Carter was the 39^th president of the United States and was also the Governor of Georgia for one term.

To allot of people, Carter was not a good president because he wasn’t a good leader. As a president, he broke allot of promises he made. For example, he promised to reduce the number of federal agencies and slash the number of employees by a big number. Carter called it "The worst, most confused, bloated, overlapping, and wasteful." But instead of getting rid of a big number of agencies, he added departments of energy and education to the Cabinet. And to top it all off, more government employees were hired during his term as president.

However, opinion polls show that the public liked Carter more as a person than a president.

Jimmy Carter was born on October 1, 1924 with the name of James Earl Carter Jr. He grew up on a farm along with four other brothers and sisters. His father was a peanut farmer and a storekeeper. And his mother was a housewife.

As a boy, Jimmy worked on his father’s farm. Jimmy’s hero was his uncle, his uncle and him sent each other letters while his uncle was away in the U.S. Naval Academy. Besides his uncle, Jimmy had no other heroes, but his dream was to join the U.S. Naval Academy.

After high school, Jimmy went to Georgia Southwestern College, then the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was the first of his family to ever go to college. He then went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis after college.

After he graduated, he married Rosalynn Smith. They had three boys and two girls. Rosalynn Smith was Carter’s high school sweet heart.

In late 1953, Carter resigned from the Navy and went back home to take care of the peanut farm. In 1954, Carter turned the peanut farm into a -big business, warehousing and shelling peanuts for other farmers in the vicinity.

In 1960, Carter won a seat on the local school board, it was his first elective office. Two years later he moved up to state senate. After two terms as state senate, he ran for Democratic nomination for governor of Georgia. But he did not win the nomination.

Carter took his loss very hard. After Carter lost the nomination, he had a religious experience. After his experience, he decided to dedicate his life to god, he spent more time in the church teaching and helping out.

Carter again ran for democratic nomination in 1970. The campaign had allot to do with racism because Carter was the only white man in Plains who refused to join the white citizens council, an organization devoted to preserving segregation. Carter received less than ten percent of black vote in defeating his opponent Sanders, and then won the general election.

While governor, Carter tried hard to protect consumer laws and banking regulation. In 1972, halfway through his term as governor, Carter decided to run for president. In 1975 he announced that he was a candidate in the president election.

When Carter announced he was running for president, he had no national reputation. That’s how he knew it was going to be hard.

Carter started to be known for being vague in 1976. In his campaign, he promised to restore morality in the federal government. Carter got most of his votes from blacks because blacks trusted him more than any other candidate. Carter won 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 241, and 40.8 million popular votes to Ford’s 39.1 million.

When Carter was the president in 1978, he met in Camp David, Maryland, with Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat for the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. During that time he proved to be a good negotiator. That was probably the most important thing that happened to Carter while president. Carter’s last major official action was to secure the release of U.S. hostages in Iran. And he was successful. On January 20,1981, the 53 hostages were released safely.

Jimmy Carter left office in 1981. He then became a spokesman for charity purposes. In 1982, Carter founded the Carter Center of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1994, he went to North Korea to Negotiate nuclear weapon problems.

Carter also became a book writer. Below is a list of the books that he wrote.

#1. Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President

#2. The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East

#3. Turning point: A candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age.

Till this day, Jimmy Carter is alive. He is now devoting his life to world peace. Jimmy Carter is still writing books, and he is still spending time in the church.

Bibliography

#1. Encarta 97’ Encyclopedia/Jimmy Carter

#2. Mr. Andre’s Home page/Jimmy Carter

#3. The American Nation History Book/Page 691,790