Why Was Jimmy Carter A Successful President

Jimmy Carter

People often regard Jimmy Carter as one of the most unsuccessful presidents. There are many reasons supporting this, but there are also a few reasons pointing the opposite way. After his presidency he has also done quite a few things for charities and other organizations. James Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Georgia on October 1, 1924. The Carter family owned a peanut farm, a store, and a warehouse in Plains. By the time Jimmy was born, the family was fairly prosperous. When Jimmy was born, the first president born in a hospital, he was taken back to a home that had no electricity or indoor plumbing. When he was ten he stacked produce from the family farm onto a wagon, hauled it to town, and sold it. He saved up

His plans changed when a Republican rival announced his candidacy for Georgia governor, and Carter decided to challenge him. This was a big mistake by Carter. The civil rights movement had created a conservative backlash in the South, ending the Democratic stranglehold on the South. Democrats like Carter was especially vulnerable. Although he campaigned hard, he finished third in the 1966 Democratic primary. The eventual winner was Lester Maddox, an ultraconservative that proudly would not let blacks into a restaurant that he owned. Carter was disappointed by the defeat and was hit with a substantial debt from it. He began to position himself for the 1970 gubernatorial election almost immediately. In the late 1960s Carter campaigned tirelessly up and down the state. He campaigned on a platform calling for an end to busing as a means to overcome segregation in public schools. Carter thought that in order to win he would have to capture white voters who were unsure about integration. He minimized appearances before African American groups and sought the endorsement of several open segregationists, including Lester Maddox. The Atlanta Constitution, one of the leading newspaper in the state, refused to endorse him and described him as an “ignorant, racist, backward, ultra-conservative, red-necked South Georgia peanut farmer.” The strategy worked and with the support of rural farmers, born-again Christians, and

He didn’t want to run an “imperial presidency” like that of Nixon and Johnson. The country desperately wanted the president to succeed, but he began with a few bold strikes. He pardoned Vietnam draft evaders, ended funding for the B-1 bomber planes, and pushed for a comprehensive consumer bill. His resistance to the traditional bill pushed by newly elected presidents was not received fondly by legislators he would later have to deal with. Carter proposed many successful bills but this was not quite enough to gain him a positive image. Bills such as the Energy Policy, which he received little credit for during his presidency, the Emergency Natural Gas Act, which would allow the government to assign interstate natural gas, and the Energy Security Act, which created the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corporation that provided around $20 billion in joint ventures with private