James Earl Carter,39th President of the United States
In 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. |
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
Egypt
Israel
China
Department of Education
Ronald Reagan
Afghanistan