Jimmy Carter

At 99 years old, Jimmy Carter has this physical status:

From 1946 to 1953, Carter and Rosalynn lived in Virginia, Hawaii, Connecticut, New York and California, during his deployments in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. In 1948, he began officer training for submarine duty and served aboard USS Pomfret. He was promoted to lieutenant junior grade in 1949, and his service aboard Pomfret included a simulated war patrol to the western Pacific and Chinese coast from January to March of that year. In 1951 he was assigned to the diesel/electric USS K-1, (a.k.a. USS Barracuda), qualified for command, and served in several positions, to include executive officer.

In 1952, Carter began an association with the Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program, led then by Captain Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover had high standards and demands for his men and machines, and Carter later said that, next to his parents, Rickover had the greatest influence on his life. He was sent to the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C. for three month temporary duty, while Rosalynn moved with their children to Schenectady, New York.

On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown, resulting in millions of liters of radioactive water flooding the reactor building's basement. This left the reactor's core ruined. Carter was ordered to Chalk River to lead a U.S. maintenance crew that joined other American and Canadian service personnel to assist in the shutdown of the reactor. The painstaking process required each team member to don protective gear and be lowered individually into the reactor for a few minutes at a time, limiting their exposure to radioactivity while they disassembled the crippled reactor. During and after his presidency, Carter said that his experience at Chalk River had shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to cease development of a neutron bomb.

In March 1953, Carter began nuclear power school, a six-month non-credit course covering nuclear power plant operation at the Union College in Schenectady. His intent was to eventually work aboard USS Seawolf, which was planned to be the second U.S. nuclear submarine. However, Carter's plans changed when his father died of pancreatic cancer two months before construction of Seawolf began, and Carter obtained a release from active duty so he could take over the family peanut business. Deciding to leave Schenectady proved difficult, as Rosalynn had grown comfortable with their life there. She said later that returning to small-town life in Plains seemed "a monumental step backward." On the other hand, Carter felt restricted by the rigidity of the military and yearned to assume a path more like his father's. Carter left active duty on October 9, 1953. He served in the inactive Navy Reserve until 1961, and left the service with the rank of lieutenant. His awards included the American Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, China Service Medal, and National Defense Service Medal. As a submarine officer he also earned the "dolphin" badge.

Early political career (1963–1971)

Racial tension was inflamed in Plains by the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court anti-segregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Carter was in favor of racial tolerance and integration, but often kept those feelings to himself to avoid making enemies. By 1961 he began to speak more prominently of integration, being a prominent member of the Baptist Church and chairman of the Sumter County school board. In 1962, a state Senate seat was opened by the dissolution of Georgia's County Unit System; Carter announced his campaign for the seat 15 days before the election. Rosalynn, who had an instinct for politics and organization, was instrumental to his campaign. Early counting of the ballots showed Carter trailing to his opponent Homer Moore, but this was the result of fraudulent voting orchestrated by Joe Hurst, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Quitman County. Carter challenged the election result, which was confirmed fraudulent in an investigation. Following this, another election was held, in which Carter won against Moore as the sole Democratic candidate, with a vote margin of 3,013 to 2,182.

The civil rights movement was well underway when Carter took office. He and his family had become staunch John F. Kennedy supporters. Carter remained relatively quiet on the issue at first, even as it polarized much of the county, to avoid alienating his segregationist colleagues. He did speak up on a few divisive issues, giving speeches against literacy tests and against an amendment to the Georgia Constitution which, he felt, implied a compulsion to practice religion. Carter entered the state Democratic Executive Committee two years into office, where he helped rewrite the state party's rules. He became the chairman of the West Central Georgia Planning and Development Commission, which oversaw the disbursement of federal and state grants for projects such as historic site restoration. In November 1964, when Bo Callaway was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Carter immediately began planning to challenge him. The two had previously clashed over which two-year college would be expanded to a four-year college program by the state, and Carter saw Callaway—who had switched to the Republican Party—as a rival that represented aspects of politics he despised. Carter was re-elected in 1964 to serve a second two-year term. For some time in the State senate, he chaired its Education Committee; he also sat on the Appropriations Committee toward the end of his second term. Before his term ended, he contributed to a bill expanding statewide education funding and getting Georgia Southwestern a four-year program. He leveraged his regional planning work, giving speeches around the district to make himself more visible to potential voters. On the last day of the term, he announced his run for Congress.

In Carter's first run for the governor, he ran against liberal former Governor Ellis Arnall and the conservative segregationist Lester Maddox in the Democratic primary. In a press conference, he described his ideology as "Conservative, moderate, liberal and middle-of-the-road. ... I believe I am a more complicated person than that." He lost the primary, but drew enough votes as a third-place candidate to force Arnall into a runoff election with Maddox. Maddox narrowly won the runoff ballot over Arnall. In the general election, Republican Bo Callaway went on to win a plurality of the vote, but short of a 50 percent majority; the state rules empowered the Georgia House of Representatives, which had a Democratic Party majority, to elect Maddox as governor. This resulted in a victorious Maddox, whose victory—due to his segregationist stance—was seen as the worse outcome to the indebted Carter. Carter returned to his agriculture business, carefully planning his next campaign. This period was a spiritual turning point for Carter; he declared himself a born again Christian, and his last child Amy was born during this time.

In the 1970 gubernatorial election, the liberal former governor Carl Sanders became Carter's main opponent in the Democratic primary. Carter ran a more modern campaign, employing printed graphics and statistical analysis. Responding to the poll data, Carter leaned more conservative than before, positioning himself as a populist and criticising Sanders for both his wealth and perceived links to the national Democratic party. He also accused Sanders of corruption, but when pressed by the media, could come up with no evidence. Throughout his campaign, Carter sought both the black vote and "Wallace vote," referring to supporters of the prominent segregationist George Wallace of Alabama. While he met with black figures such as Martin Luther King Sr. and Andrew Young, and visited many black-owned businesses, he also praised Wallace and promised to invite him to give a speech in Georgia. Carter's appeal to racism became more blatant over time, with his senior campaign aides handing out a photograph of Sanders celebrating with black basketball players.

Carter came ahead of Sanders in the first ballot by 49 percent to 38 percent in September, leading to a runoff election being held. The subsequent campaign was even more bitter; despite his early support for civil rights, Carter's appeal to racism grew, criticizing Sanders for supporting Martin Luther King Jr. Carter won the runoff election with 60 percent of the vote, and went on to easily win the general election against the Republican Hal Suit, a local news anchor. Once he was elected, Carter changed his tone, and began to speak against Georgia's racist politics. Leroy Johnson, a black state senator, voiced his support for Carter, saying, "I understand why he ran that kind of ultra-conservative campaign. ... I don't believe you can win this state without being a racist."

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