10 moments that defined Jimmy Carter’s presidency

A Georgia native, veteran of the US Navy, and lifelong Democrat, former President Jimmy Carter passed away on December 29, 2024 at the age of 100.

In the General Election of 1976, Jimmy Carter, the then governor of Georgia, defeated Republican President Gerald Ford.

President Carter served one term during a critical period in modern history. Although shorter than he would have liked, moments from his presidency continue to shape life in the United States and beyond. We have compiled a list of ten of these moments —five domestic and five international— that draw a direct connection between the politics of the Carter administration and the policy debates and positions that are heard and held in Washington today.

#1: The path to US energy ‘independence’

Presidents Carter and Regan were the last to be granted reorganization authority to establish, abolish, or combine agencies that make up the US federal government. All changes were subject to approval from Congress, who in the case of Carter, intervened to curtail some of the modifications he hoped to make.

For instance, Carter wanted to establish a Department of Natural Resources that would absorb the US Forest Service (which still sits under the Department of Agriculture) and the Department of Interior. Through this new agency, Carter believed that the federal government would be better equipped to manage the country’s natural resources through a more streamlined approach.

Still, the Carter administration left its mark on the federal government by including the creation of a Department of Energy in the 1977 Reorganization Act. As a candidate, Carter had campaigned on environmental issues and vowed to place these collective interests above profits and growth.

The Department of Energy, and particularly the people who President Carter tasked with running it, were far less interested in climate policy than in ensuring the country would have a sustained supply of fossil fuels. After the OPEC oil crisis, the federal government was looking to reduce its dependence on foreign oil, and that mission was achieved. The United States went from being an oil importer to an oil exporter in May 2011.

#2: The Frank Press Climate Change Memo

Soon after taking office, the first test of the Carter administration’s commitment to environmental issues was categorically failed.

The first Secretary of Energy appointed by President Carter was James R. Schlesinger, who previously served as Secretary of Defense under President Ford. A career public official and Republican, Schlesinger had been tapped by Richard Nixon to run the Central Intelligence Agency and was later moved to head up the Pentagon. For some, Schlesinger was an odd choice, considering the commitments on climate made by Carter when running against Ford. Paul Glastris wrote in the Washington Monthly in 1987 that Carter had met Schlesinger during the campaign and was impressed “with his brains, his high-level experience, […] and with secrets regarding the defense spending vacillations of his old boss, Gerald Ford, just in time for the presidential debates.”

Just as he began his new role at the Department of Energy, Schlesinger was asked to evaluate a memo detailing the latest science on the destabilizing effects of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere and environment.

The Carter administration’s chief science advisor, Frank Press, issued the warnings. “The urgency of the problem derives from our inability to shift rapidly to non-fossil fuel sources once the climatic effects become evident not long after the year 2000,” wrote Press. There was real concern within the scientific community that “the situation could grow out of control before alternate energy sources and other remedial actions [became] effective.” Such a predicament would require political leaders to respond and invest resources in advancing these technologies and other alternatives to fossil fuels.

But Schlesinger responded to the memo recognizing the scale of transformation it called for and said that “the policy implications of this issue are still too uncertain to warrant Presidential involvement and policy initiatives.” The Frank Press memo is a reminder that the scale of the challenge climate change presents has, for decades, felt impossible and out of reach. And rather than begin working to face those complicated questions and make the public investments necessary, Schlesinger wiped confronting global dependence on fossil fuels from the political agenda.

The same urgency and uncertainty palpable in climate reports today are present in Press’ message. The document serves as evidence that leaders in Washington knew the consequences of inaction on climate and still did nothing. Further, this inaction, which was continued by President Reagan and President Bush, gave the fossil fuel industry time to build up its lobbying capabilities, which continues to stall progress on climate action at both the domestic and global levels.

#3: President Carter puts solar panels on the White House

As a symbolic gesture to the environmental movement, President Carter had some thirty-two solar panels installed on the roof of the White House in the summer of 1979. President Reagan would have them taken down when he became the new occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just a few years later.

During a short speech made when unveiling the panels, President Carter did not mention the threat of climate change as a motivating factor. Rather than an urgent need to shift away from fossil fuels, “directly harnessing the power of the Sun” was presented as an opportunity “to replace our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.” President Carter continued to promote the belief, common at the time, that investments in renewable energies were needed because fossil fuel resources were finite and not because of the environmental risks they pose.

Carter’s political strategy continues...

These types of messages that posit climate action as an economic opportunity are still deployed today. In 1979, Carter released a proposal “to spend more than $1 billion in 1980 to stimulate solar and other renewable forms of energy.” He hoped to get the United States on track to receive twenty percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2000. In 2008, that figure was between six and seven percent; today, just over twelve percent of primary energy consumption comes from renewable sources.

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed under President Biden, includes more than $300 billion in subsidies to encourage investment in renewable energy technology. Democrats still tend to focus arguments for climate action as an economic opportunity instead of a moral necessity. But, nearly five decades later, it is pretty clear that the strategy of incentives to motivate private investment toward a clean energy future has failed.

#4: The Abandonment of a Universal Healthcare System

When President Carter took office, around seventy-seven percent of the public in the US had access to health insurance either through a private plan or public programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

One of candidate Carter’s promises had been to establish a universal national health insurance (NHI) system, which had formed part of the bipartisan legislation sponsored by the late Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. However, Carter’s interest in a fully public system cooled upon taking office. Seeing strong congressional opposition to a public program and hostility from older doctors and the American Medical Association, President Carter began to focus more on healthcare costs rather than coverage.

Ultimately, he would not achieve any advancements for the country on either front.

Healthcare prices reached the highest levels on record in 2022

As president, Carter recognized the relationship between ever-increasing healthcare costs and inflation. In his 1980 State of the Union address, he argued that “the health care reimbursement system [need to] be reformed.” President Carter was hoping to move towards a more European system where the government negotiates with private firms to establish a universal pricing system, which allows the government to control the pace at which costs increase.

Again, decades later, no such bill has been passed at a large scale in the United States.

The Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, is historic because it allows the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. The only problem is that it caps the number of prescription drugs that can be negotiated to five, the price caps won’t come into effect for another few years, and those who are not on Medicare do not benefit.

Often the issues faced by the public feel unique to the time. But in the case of healthcare in the United States, a review of the historical record shows that the power struggle between the government and the healthcare industry has been going on for decades. The lack of a universal healthcare system is not the fault of Jimmy Carter. Still, his unwillingness to fight for a public option charted a new policy path that would be followed by all Democratic presidents that came after him. Today, thanks to the Children’s Health Insurance Program passed under Clinton and the Affordable Care Act enacted under President Obama, more people have access to healthcare than ever before in the United States. Many are putting off seeking medical attention because of the cost. The downside is that they are paying the highest prices ever recorded for that care. On a per capita basis, the United States approximately $12,900 to provide healthcare to the public; in Germany, that figure is $7,383, and in Canada, it is less than half that spent in the US.

In 2017, President Carter published an op-ed in Time where he questioned why countries, some with fewer economic means than the US, can achieve higher levels of life expectancy and lower levels of maternal mortality.

“The answer is quite simple: commercial self-interest,” argued the former president.

President Carter called on “responsible leaders and citizens [...] to come together and fight for a universal healthcare system.” Open Secrets reported that in 2022 that there were 1,840 pharmaceutical and health lobbyists registered in the nation’s capital, giving every member of Congress a team of two or more. These lobbyists are working against that fight, and the industry is so profitable that they can spend millions of dollars to make sure that the faucet keeps running. These aren’t just random people in this sector; over two-thirds of lobbyists are former government employees.

#5: Deregulation of the trucking industry

The economic conditions inherited by Jimmy Carter were defined by persistently high inflation. Much of this inflationary pressure was a result of the transition from the Bretton Woods, or Post-War II framework, to the neoliberal global economic order we currently find ourselves under. The late president was an active agent in this process. Although he had long been inspired by the leadership of FDR and the New Deal, Carter was much more fiscally conservative than some congressional leaders of the Democratic party. In the end, the Carter faction of the Democratic party won the policy debate. Any remnant of the Keynesian or social democratic economic tradition would be completely abandoned by the time another Democratic president from the south, Bill Clinton, took office in 1992.

The enduring trend of deregulation

The economic conditions inherited by Jimmy Carter were defined by persistently high inflation. Following the trend of deregulation started by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, President Carter signed the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 just before leaving office. Speaking about the impact of the legislation, Carter said it would lower inflation by removing “45 years of excessive and inflationary Government restrictions and redtape.” The president argued that the new law would benefit consumers, shippers, labor, and the trucking industry itself. Consumers and corporate leaders gained the most from the law as it dismantled labor protections that had protected workers from having to engage in a race to the bottom in terms of wages. Very quickly after the law was passed, the government began to take note of its damaging effects on workers in the industry. A report from 1983 by the General Accounting Office reported 24,000 job losses from 233 company closures since 1980. By 1990, wages for drivers had fallen by 27 percent, or a little over $600 dollars, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Deregulation broke union density. In 1980 around fifty percent of the 900,000 truck drivers in the US were union members. Today that the number of total workers had risen to 1.4 million, and union density has fallen to twenty percent. And the conditions have continued to deteriorate, and now a shortage of truck drivers plagues US logistic operations and places greater pressure on drivers that have remained.

#6: Establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China

Now, we will transition into foreign policy and the impact the Carter administration made on the international stage.

Building off of the work of President Richard Nixon, Carter continued the United States on a path to diplomatic normalization with the People’s Republic of China.

Full diplomatic ties were established on 1 January 1979, with the United States recognizing leaders in Beijing, and not the political exiles in Taipei, as the legitimate government of China. However, the recognition of the One China Policy, which includes Taiwan as inseparable from Mainland China, did not last long. In April of that same year, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which established non-diplomatic but substantial informal relations between the US and Taiwan. The legislation also provided assurances that the United States would provide whatever arms necessary for Taiwan to defend itself. This law was signed by President Carter, and it undermined the normalization process as it gave China the impression that the United States could not be treated like an ally acting in good faith.

In late March, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was asked about the government’s opinion on a possible meeting between US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and “Taiwanese president” Tsai Ing-wen. Speaking on behalf of the Ministry, Wang Wenbin remarked that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and there is no such thing as “Taiwanese president”.

“We would like to reiterate that we strongly oppose any form of official interaction between the US and Taiwan, strongly oppose any US visit by the leader of the Taiwan authorities regardless of the rationale or pretext, and strongly oppose all forms of US contact with the Taiwan authorities, which violates the one-China principle,” added Wenbin. Diplomatic relations with China are premised on the one-China principle, and tensions are growing as US leaders disregard it.

#7: Funding the Mujahideen

In the spring of 1979, President Carter signed off on an order to begin funding Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan at the tune of $695,000 in non-military assistance. In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded their neighbor to the south, which prompted the US national security state to increase funding to rebels whose leaders and members would go on to form groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, had recommended preemptively funding Mujahideen fighters in case the USSR did invade. The book, ‘Zbig,’ dedicated to the legacy of the advisor, argues that the “approach” to funding anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan after the invasion was “devised and recommended by Brzezinski.” It is the opinion of the author that the military failures suffered by the USSR because of US support to Mujahideen fighters helped contribute to its collapse in the early 1990s.

In December 1979, Brzezinski sent a letter to President Carter warning him that a “Soviet intervention in Afghanistan poses for us an extremely grave challenge, both internationally and domestically,” and while “it could become a Soviet Vietnam,” there were short-term threats to the US posed by the invasion. Vietnam was a stain on the international record of the US, and some in the national security sphere saw the potential for the uSSR to suffer the same fate as a positive outcome of the invasion. However, to avoid these consequences that would further threaten the US interests, Brzezinski saw it as “essential that Afghanistani resistance continues” and that “more money, as well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice,” be approved. However, many within the Carter administration rejected comparisons between Vietnam and Afghanistan, calling the “view [...] simplistic and dangerous.” However, in early 1980, the intelligence community continued to interweave the narrative that the USSR could land itself in “a Vietnam-type conflict” in the president’s daily briefings.

Nevertheless, the Carter administration would approve nearly $700,000 to fund Mujahideen rebels resisting Soviet influence in 1979. More funds would be allocated in 1980, and by October of that year, the CIA reported to the White House the rebels had been sent “10 thousand AK–47 rifles with 13 million rounds of ammunition, 720 anti-tank rocket launchers (RPG–7) and 14 thousand rockets, 15 thousand land mines, 158 Soviet surface-to-air missiles, [... and] 200 heavy machine guns and 800,000 rounds of ammunition.” This was the beginning of Operation Cyclone, which would be taken over and scaled up by the Reagan administration. Over the next decade, some estimates put the value of the covert operation at $20 billion, most of which was channeled to the Pakistani government who distributed the funds and weapons to rebel groups. When the USSR eventually pulled out of Afghanistan, a new US-backed regime rose to power, only to be overthrown by the Taliban.

The attacks of September 11th, which were planned by al-Qaeda, at least in part, in Afghanistan, would take place a few short years later, prompting the US government to invade the country. Imagines from the withdrawal of US troops from the country in August 2021 were seen by many as a second Vietnam for the US. Writer Kit Klarenberg recalled a decades-long trend of US and coalition forces uncovering “Blowpipe missiles” and other weapons that were gifted to Mujahideen in the arms caches of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Klarenberg noted that some of these weapons were found as late as 2010, when “the mainstream media was reporting the shoulder-fired missiles were a major threat to US troops.” In other words, soldiers were being attacked with weapons that their government had given to their enemy decades earlier.

Today, after more than four decades of intervention, the fate of the Afghan people sits in the hands of the Taliban, an enemy of the United States that it helped to create.

#8: Relations between the US and the Shah before the revolution.

The conditions that led to the Iranian Revolution were formed far before President Carter took office. Politico reported in 2018 that CIA documentation shows that President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved the coup d’etat that saw the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh overthrown in 1953. The US-backed Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, would rule until he was overthrown during the Iranian Revolution, which coincides with the hostage crisis.

In 2016, newly released documents began to cast light on what exactly the Carter administration’s role in the revolution and the rise to power of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The documents, which were reported on in great detail by the BBC, follow communication between the Carter administration and the Ayatollah, evidence that the US government’s story that it never deviated from its support of the Shah may not be accurate.

The Shah, in addition to being a westernizing force in Iran, was also a dictator. He used the state to brutalize and kill political dissidents, all to uphold his corrupt regime. The constitution of Iran under the Shah enshrined the country as a constitutional monarch, a fact “unchangeable for eternity.” This posed a problem for Khomeini, who was looking to replace the Shah and thus needed to know whether or not the US would support a regime that did not uphold these “unchangeable” features of the constitution.

The US government responded: “We do not say that the constitution cannot be changed, but we do believe that the established, orderly procedures for making changes should be followed.” If Khomeini could secure the “integrity of the army,” his US government contacts assured him that “there is every prospect the leadership will support whatever political form is selected for Iran in the future.”

#9 Iranian Hostage Crisis

The Iranian Hostage Crisis began on 4 November 1979 and would not end until 21 January 1981, the day after President Ronald Regan’s inauguration.

When the Iranian Revolution began in 1979, the US Embassy was taken over, and sixty-six embassy staff and other US officials were taken hostage. While the Iranian government would release over a dozen hostages throughout 1980, the majority were not allowed to return home until January 1981 —coincidently one day after the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.

The crisis led the United States to cut off diplomatic relations with Iran, and to date, they have not been re-established. Any diplomatic communication between the two countries is run through each party’s protecting power, which in the case of the US is Switzerland and for Iran is Pakistan.

New revelations on the October Surprise

Recent reporting by the New York Times has reopened interest in the long-held belief by many Democrats of that era that the Reagan campaign colluded with the Iranians to tank Carter’s re-election bid. Ben Barnes, the former Lieutenant Governor of Texas, spoke with Peter Baker of the NYTs about what he described as “an injustice [that] had been done to Mr. Carter.”

After holding onto the secret for more than four decades, Barnes told Baker that in 1980, his mentor John B. Connally Jr., who had served as Governor of Texas, worked to undermine Carter’s chances at re-election. Barnes and Connolly traveled to various Middle Eastern capitals in the summer of 1980 “to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.”

Upon the arrival of Connally and Barnes to the US after their trip, the details were reported to William J. Casey, who at the time was serving as the chair of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. Casey would later become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Reagan. Various congressional investigations into collusion between the Iranians and the Reagan campaign have been opened over the years, but none have discovered any hard evidence that such a conspiracy took place. According to Baker, Connally “did not figure in those investigations,” which, for Barnes, is what has allowed the secret to stay hidden for so long.

A 1992 bipartisan House investigation looked into claims that Casey had met with Iranian officials in Madrid in August 1980. At that meeting, Casey allegedly committed to selling arms to the new regime in Tehran through Israel if they waited to release the hostages until after election day. The House committee, which published a 968-page report, found “that Mr. Casey was not in Madrid at the time and that stories of covert dealings were not backed by credible testimony, documents or intelligence reports.” However, decades later, journalist Robert Parry uncovered a White House memo from 1991 by a lawyer for President George H.W. Bush that reported the existence of “a cable from the Madrid embassy” from the summer of 1980 “indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown.” These revelations raise new questions about the relationships the Reagan administration had with Iran before they entered the White House and if these events are connected to the Iran-Contra affair.

Historians look back at the election between Carter and Reagan and feature the hostage crisis as a major problem for the Democratic incumbent. Jimmy Carter had campaigned on a new vision for foreign policy, and while never implemented, was blamed for allowing American citizens to be taken hostage by another country. If Reagan’s campaign did collude with Iran, the blame that Carter was buried under may have cost him the election and changed the course of US history.

At the same time President Reagan was sending Jimmy Carter to Germany to meet the hostages after their release, he nominated Casey to head up the CIA. There, Casey was involved in Iran-Contra, and these revelations only bring to light a stronger connection between the Reagan administration and the Iranian regime.

#10: Camp David Accords

The Camp David Accords were one of President Carter’s greatest diplomatic achievements. The agreement was reached between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem and signed on 17 September 1978. The negotiations took place in secret at Camp David, and while they led to the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty, it was heavily criticized for not allowing Palestinian representation. While Sadat and Menachem were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a year after the signing of the agreement, the United Nations called for new peace talks “with the participation on an equal footing of all parties concerned, including the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

The Camp David Accords were flatly rejected by the Arab League because of the exclusion of Palestinian representatives, and Egypt had its membership suspended. Egyptian President Sadat was assassinated in October 1981, with his killers citing the agreement as a motivating factor. After President Sadat was killed, another ally of the United States, Hosni Mubarak, rose to power, where he would stay for thirty years.

While the office of the President of the United States is projected to the public as a powerful head of state that can lead the country in a new direction, the presidency of Jimmy Carter suggests the opposite is often true. President Carter had promised to work on building a stable peace and global order. As asserted by historian Jørgen Jensehaugen, President Carter “had attempted to break with traditional US policy.” But, by 1981, when leaving office, he “ended up fulfilling the goals of that [policy] tradition, which had been to break up the Arab alliance, side-line the Palestinians, build an alliance with Egypt, weaken the Soviet Union and secure Israel.”

In 2006, President Carter released a book, ‘Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,’ which argued for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Ten years later, as President Obama was preparing to leave office, President Carter penned an op-ed in the New York Times, calling on Obama to take “The simple but vital step [...] to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine.” No such recognition was given, and Donald Trump’s administration only worsened the prospect of peace by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Biden administration has shown very little interest in cutting any aid to Israel even though their armed forces have murdered numerous US citizens.

The legacy of Presidnet Carter

President Carter lived a long life, and his four years in the White House, while a critical part of his legacy, do not totally define it. His humanitarian work, his activism, his faith, his love for his family, and his dedication to service are all aspects those who admire him will remember him for. The ball that is globalization had just really started rolling when President Carter took office, and by 1981, its force, similar to the argument made by Jensehaugen, was too strong to counter, and those who came after him had no interest in slowing it down.