Search

Elected President on 2 November 1976, Jimmy Carter, was little known outside Georgia and was the first politician from the deep South to be elected since the Civil War and with the briefest record of public service since Woodrow Wilson. He presented himself as an outsider, not part of the Washington establishment, who would bring back an ethical, competent government. However, his devastating electoral defeat to Ronald Reagan in 1980, the worst for an incumbent since 1932, set the seal on what was widely regarded as a failed presidency. Carter's much praised humanitarian record since he left office in 1981 has not prompted any serious re-evaluation by historians. This study dissects Carter's domestic policies, re-evaluating the unresolved questions relating to Carter's character and ideology and to put his presidency in the proper historic context. I will begin by reviewing the relevant historiography, the important issues of the decade and his early political life, including his triumph in 1976. I will then seek to address Carter's leadership by analysing how his administration was organised, and exploring the key domestic policy issues, principally the economy, energy, health, welfare, labour and his approach to the social changes that dominated America in the 1970's. I will conclude with his failed attempt to be re-elected in 1980. In conclusion I will comment on Carter's overall effectiveness as a leader and how he should be ranked against other modern Presidents. This thesis is based on a wide range of sources including extensive use of collections from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Papers of the Presidents of the United States, oral history transcripts, published papers and numerous other primary and secondary sources covering political, economic and social issues.

This thesis will extend the current re-evaluation of the presidency of Jimmy Carter through a detailed examination of the enduring impact of his Southern Baptist Christian faith upon the modern American political discourse. It will show that the relationship between Jimmy Carter's deeply felt religiosity and his political vision is primary to an understanding of the lasting legacy of his presidency. Carter dramatically reconfigured the relationship between religious faith and the presidency. The first president to articulate forthrightly a highly intimate and deeply felt personal religious faith to the American electorate, Carter placed spiritual concerns at the centre of the American political debate. I will investigate Carter's relationship with the forces of conservative Christendom with regards to a number of interwoven policy issues deemed by the evangelical community to be emblematic of the increasingly liberal, secular humanist nature of the American public and political discourse. Specifically, I will explore the issues of abortion, the role of religion in private schools, the place of prayer in public schools, gay and lesbian rights, Christian family values and the Congressional ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. I will discuss how the policies of the Carter White House on these so-called 'hot button' issues for religious conservatives acted as a catalyst for Christian political activism during the 1970s, laying the basis for their key role in American political life thereafter. I will explain how, paradoxically, the most overtly evangelical president in American history not only failed to retain the support of the conservative Christian community but was integral in the emergence of the New Religious, or New Christian Right, as a key Republican Party constituency. Jimmy Carter successfully reawakened faith-based politics but because his faith did not exactly mirror the religious and political agenda of the disparate groups that make up the religious conservative movement within the United States, that newly awakened force within American politics ultimately used its power to replace him with Ronald Reagan, a president who more carefully articulated their agenda.