Comfortable birthday, Mr. President!
Former President Jimmy Carter is 100 years outdated Tuesday — reaching a long life milestone no US president has ever achieved.
Born on Oct. 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia, the soft-spoken peanut farmer was elected the thirty ninth president of america in 1976, going through headwinds at each flip together with vitality shortages, Chilly Battle drama and the Iran hostage disaster throughout his tenure as commander-in-chief.
Although his single time period in workplace was marked by upheaval and uncertainty each domestically and overseas, Carter achieved quite a few important triumphs throughout his presidency, together with brokering the historic Camp David peace accords during which Israel and Egypt formally acknowledged one another’s governments.
After serving as each Senator and governor of Georgia, Carter sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1976, working as a centrist reformer at a time when the nation was nonetheless grappling with a disaster of confidence in authorities following the Watergate scandal.
Carter and running-mate Walter Mondale of Minnesota defeated incumbent President Gerald Ford by a margin of 297 to 241 electoral votes.
“I’ll by no means inform a lie. I’ll by no means make a deceptive assertion. I’ll by no means betray the boldness that any of you had in me. And I’ll by no means keep away from a controversial problem,” he vowed on the time.
Carter’s administration got here at a time when the US was wading by means of an financial quagmire introduced on by the OPEC-induced gasoline disaster of the early Seventies. The period was marked by stubbornly elevated inflation, excessive unemployment, and stagnant demand — famously termed “stagflation.”
Then dueling crises in 1979 helped form perceptions of his administration.
On Christmas Eve that yr, Russia invaded Afghanistan, which prompted Carter to withdraw US participation from the 1980 Summer time Olympics in Moscow.
A month earlier, Iranian college students mobbed the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Individuals hostage and holding them captive for 444 days.
A failed 1980 rescue effort that led to the deaths of eight US service members kneecapped Carter’s credibility on nationwide safety issues heading right into a bruising main, the place he confronted a problem from inside his personal celebration courtesy of the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Carter would finally lose by a landslide to Ronald Reagan, 44 states to six, in one of many greatest margins of defeat in US election historical past.
After leaving workplace, the longest-living president devoted himself to humanitarian and charitable endeavors, maybe most famously his multi-decade dedication to Habitat for Humanity — which supplies housing for the poor — and the Carter Presidential Middle to advertise human rights.
In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his a long time of untiring effort to search out peaceable options to worldwide conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to advertise financial and social growth.”
“Nearly everyone agrees Carter’s post-Presidency was the best in historical past. As one Carter opponent as soon as informed me, ‘What he’s doing now [after the White House] virtually makes enduring his years as president price it,’” Larry Sabato, head of the College of Virginia’s Middle for Politics, informed The Publish.
Carter wrote a outstanding 32 books in his lifetime, his most up-to-date being “Religion: A Journey for All,” printed in 2018, which emphasizes the significance of spirituality in his life and on American historical past.
He celebrated his 98th birthday in 2022 by attending a parade thrown in his honor in his hometown, the place he lived in the identical home along with his spouse, former first woman Rosalynn Carter, since 1961.
In February of final yr, the Carter Middle introduced the previous president had determined to obtain hospice care at house quite than “extra medical intervention” following a “collection of quick hospital stays.” He stays underneath hospice care to today.
Rosalynn joined her husband in hospice care that November, passing away two days after her situation was made public.
“Rosalynn was my equal associate in every part I ever achieved,” Jimmy Carter mentioned in an announcement. “She gave me sensible steering and encouragement after I wanted it. So long as Rosalynn was on this planet, I at all times knew any individual cherished and supported me.”
At 100 years outdated, Carter has lengthy outlived his closest rival because the longest-living ex-president — former President George H.W. Bush died in November 2018 on the age of 94.
Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford each handed away on the age of 93, whereas John Adams and Herbert Hoover lived to age 90.
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