 James Earl Carter: An Overview of His
AdministrationIn choosing Jimmy
Carter, the American voters gained a President about whom
they knew very little, and one who prided himself on
being relatively unknown outside his home state of Georgia. He had never
been a national candidate and had no significant
experience on the national scene or any close ties to
Washington. Given that the nation was still reeling from
the Watergate fiasco of a few years earlier, that lack of
ties is what undoubtedly got him elected, albeit by a
fairly close margin.
| Election
of 1976 |
Candidate
James Earl Carter, Jr.
Gerald Rudolph
Ford (Republican) |
Popular Votes
40,827,394
39,145,977 |
Electoral Votes
297
1 |
| |
| His
Vice-President and Cabinet |
| Vice-President |
Walter F. Mondale |
| Secretary of State |
Cyrus R. Vance
Edmund S. Muskie (1980) |
| Secretary of the
Treasury |
W. Michael Blumenthal
G. William Miller (1979) |
| Secretary of Defense |
Harold Brown |
| Attorney General |
Griffin B. Bell
Benjamin R. Civiletti (1979) |
| Secretary of the
Interior |
Cecil D. Andrus |
| Secretary of Agriculture |
Robert S. Bergland |
| Secretary of Commerce |
Juanita M. Kreps
Philip Klutznick (1979) |
| Secretary of Labor |
F. Ray Marshall |
| Secretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare |
Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
Patricia R. Harris (1979) |
| Secretary of Health and
Human Services |
Patricia R. Harris |
| Secretary of Education |
Shirley Hufstedler |
| Secretary of Housing and
Urban Development |
Patricia R. Harris
Moon Landrieu (1979) |
| Secretary of
Transportation |
Brock Adams
Neil E. Goldschmidt (1979) |
| Secretary of Energy |
James R. Schlesinger
Charles W. Duncan, Jr. (1979) |
| |
| Major
Domestic Events During His Administration |
| 1977 |
President Carter pardoned
Vietnam War draft evaders. |
| 1977 |
The Department of Energy was
established by Congress. |
| 1978 |
Carter invoked the Taft-Hartley
Act to end a strike by coal miners. |
| 1979 |
The United States established
diplomatic relations with the People's Republic
of China,
and cut formal ties with the Nationalist Chinese
government on Taiwan. |
| 1979 |
Carter and Soviet President
Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms
Limitation Treaty (SALT II) in Vienna. The treaty
was never ratified by the U.S. Senate, however. |
| 1979 |
The Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare was divided by Congress
into the separate departments of Education
and of Health and Human Services. |
| November 1979 |
Radical students in Iran
seized 66 American diplomats and embassy
employees in Teheran. |
| 1980 |
The U.S. Olympic Committee voted
to boycott the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow in
protest over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. |
| January 20, 1981 |
The American hostages in Iran
were finally released, just before Carter turned
the presidency over to Ronald Reagan. |
| |
| Major
World Events During His Administration |
| |
|
| 1979 |
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. |
| 1979 |
Egypt
and Israel
signed a treaty (which had been negotiated with
the help of President Carter) ending over 30
years of hostilities between the two nations. |
Questions or comments about this
page?
Presidents of the United States. Internet Public
Library. www.ipl.org/div/potus/jecarter.html
The American Presidency. Encyclopedia Americana.
ap.grolier.com/article?assetid=0078990-00
The American President. Miller Center of Public
Affairs at the University of Virginia. www.millercenter.virginia.edu/academic/americanpresident/keyevents/carter
The White House. www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jc39.html
Georgia
Gerald Rudolph
Ford
Walter F. Mondale
China
Department
of Education
Iran
Ronald Reagan
Afghanistan
Egypt
Israel
|
