Jimmy Carter is the only graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy to serve as President of the United States. Carter served in the US Navy as a submarine officer, and received training to serve on one of the first nuclear submarines. However, Lieutenant Carter left the Navy prematurely upon the death of his father, and returned to Georgia to take over the family peanut farming business. He subsequently became successful in both business and in politics, rising to become the 76th Governor of Georgia. From this position, he earned the Democratic nomination for President in the 1976 election and won in a close election. Throughout his Presidency and beyond, Carter stuck to his principles even when doing so made him unpopular. Carter granted immunity to those who had evaded the draft during Vietnam. Confronted with an energy crisis, he imposed national conservation measures such as a 55 mph speed limit on interstate highways. Internationally, he achieved a major success in negotiating a treaty between Egypt and Israel at the Camp David Accords, perhaps the most tangible success any administration has achieved in the Middle East. He was challenged, however, by an Iranian revolution that overthrew a US-backed regime and took over 200 hostages from the US embassy. Those hostages were not released until after Carter left office. Also, in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. In response, Carter ended the détente that had begun under Nixon, imposed a grain embargo on the Soviet Union, and led an international boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics. Carter lost the 1980 election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan. He has remained active in his post-presidency, and earned the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his role in co-founding the Carter Center, a not-for-profit organization with the goal of advancing human rights.
RSS Feed
