Jimmy Carter was running for President in 1976, many suspected, because he couldn't win a second term as Georgia Governor. However, he endeared himself to Iowa evangelicals by visiting households and small groups for a full year before the state caucuses, telling them, "I will never lie to you.” He defeated his closest challenger by a 2-1 margin on the way to winning the Democratic nomination and the 1976 Presidential Election over Republican Gerald Ford.
Until he was 11-years-old, his rural home lacked plumbing and electricity, but he managed to win appointment to the Naval Academy and become a nuclear engineer, leading the cleanup effort at the world's first nuclear energy reactor accident in Canada in 1952. Leaving service after the death of his father, he returned to run the family's peanut farming business in Plains, Georgia. Keeping his support for civil rights largely unspoken, he won two terms in the state Senate before winning the Governorship. His lack of national political or foreign policy experience, along with his toothy smile, were politically advantageous in the wake of Watergate and the debacle of Vietnam. But serious challenges awaited this relative newcomer to national affairs in the White House.
Source: PBS: American Experience: Jimmy Carter. Commenting in the clip are journalist John A. Farrell and historian and Carter biographer Douglas Brinkley.
2 окт 2024
