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The maverick politician from Georgia who rode the post- Watergate wave into office but whose term was consumed by economic and international crises A peanut farmer from Georgia, Jimmy Carter rose to national power through mastering the strategy of the maverick politician. As the face of the "New South," Carter's strongest support emanated from his ability to communicate directly to voters who were disaffected by corruption in politics.But running as an outsider was easier than governing as one, as Princeton historian Julian E. Zelizer shows in this examination of Carter's presidency. Once in power, Carter faced challenges sustaining a strong political coalition, as he focused on policies that often antagonized key Democrats, whose support he desperately needed. By 1980, Carter stood alone in the Oval Office as he confronted a battered economy, soaring oil prices, American hostages in Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.Carter's unpopularity enabled Ronald Reagan to achieve a landslide victory, ushering in a conservative revolution. But during Carter's post-presidential career, he has emerged as an important voice for international diplomacy and negotiation, remaking his image as a statesman for our time.

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Julian E. Zelizer is the author of Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security from World War II to the War on Terrorism, and a regular contributor to CNN.com, The Daily Beast, Politico, The Huffington Post, and other publications. He is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Editor's Note	p. xv
A Maverick Politician	p. 1
New Southern Politics	p. 7
The Outsider Wins	p. 31
A Year of Promise	p. 53
Conservatives Rising, Democrats Dividing	p. 73
Falling Apart	p. 88
The Last Year	p. 111
Pariah Diplomacy	p. 129
Epilogue	p. 147
Notes	p. 151
Milestones	p. 165
Selected Bibliography	p. 169
Acknowledgments	p. 175
Index	p. 177
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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1

A Maverick Politician

The ceremonial drive from Capitol Hill to the White House that follows a president’s swearing-in is, by tradition, a stately procession. Crowds line the approximately mile-and-a-half stretch as the presidential motorcade, accompanied by military bands and mounted units, wends its way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the new leader’s new home. On a crystal clear wintry day in January 1977, Jimmy Carter shocked the crowdsâ€”and the nationâ€”when he ordered his Secret Service agents to stop the limousine so that he, his wife, Rosalynn, and their nine-year-old daughter, Amy, could join the parade on foot. Stepping out onto the street, Carter thought about “the angry demonstrators who had habitually confronted recent Presidents and Vice Presidents, furious over the Vietnam war and later the revelations of Watergate.”1 Carter, the people’s president, was determined not to be seen as standing apart; he was, in fact, more comfortable walking among the citizenry than he was in the formal trappings of presidential power.

Standing in the frigid weather that had gripped the capital that week, the crowd was visibly elated as they watched Carter and his wife stroll the entire sixteen-block walk from the Capitol to the executive mansion. Amy skipped and danced alongside her parents. One man standing at the barricades sporting a long beard that made him look as if he came right out of the 1960s counterculture jubilantly yelled “Jimmy! Jimmy!” The president looked at the man, grinned, and waved his arm. “All right,“ the man screamed.2

Walking among his constituents, Carter appeared to be just the kind of leader a disillusioned nation was looking for. His message was simple: his presidency would be different.

Carter was in fact a genuine outsider who had arrived in Washington after having shaken up Georgia politics as governor. Part of a younger generation of southern politicians, Carter lacked strong ties to major interest groups in the Democratic Party and possessed a stubborn determination that moved him to take politically unpopular positions. His independence and lack of encumbrances were welcome relief just years after the Watergate scandal had weakened public confidence in the political system.

During his first two years in office, Carter did not disappoint. He took the issue of ethics and honesty seriously, supporting procedural and regulatory changes to clean up government. Carter’s average approval rating was 69 percent in the first quarter of his presidency (higher than Presidents Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan during this same time period). “Carter has changed the tone for the better,“ said one Democrat in an interview withTimemagazine about the first Hundred Days; “he is making the presidency relate to the people again.”3

The president’s popularity was supported by significant early legislative successes. Carter persuaded the Senate to ratify the controversial Panama Canal treaties in 1978, which gave control of the canal back to the Panamanians and signaled a new direction in U.S. policy toward the region. The Senate ratified the treaties by just one-vote margins, but it was a victory nonetheless. His administration also designed an ambitious energy plan, which though severely watered down by the Senate before passage in 1978 is to date one of the most aggressive efforts to come out of the nation’s capital to deal with America’s dependence on foreign oil and energy consumption. Working with allies in Congress, the administration elevated human rights as a defining issue in foreign policy, aiming to restore moral clarity after Vietnam had shaken Cold War certainties about involvement abroad.

Two years after his inauguration, however, the euphoria about Carter had vanished. This maverick presidency had gone badly. Nothing captured Carter’s political problems more than a bizarre story that broke in the summer of 1979 about the president and a Georgia swamp rabbit. Carter had privately recounted this story to a group of staffers who were sitting on the Truman Balcony on a warm spring day in 1979. Carter explained that as he was fishing in a canoe on April 20, a hissing swamp rabbit tried to make his way onto the boat. A photographer had captured the moment. Several months later, Press Secretary Jody Powell informally repeated the story to an Associated Press reporter, Brooks Jackson, over a cup of tea. The next day, Jackson wrote a small piece about the incident and sent it out on the wire, not thinking of the story as more than a humorous piece.4 The story broke on the front page of theWashington Poston August 30. “Bunny Goes Bugs: Rabbit Attacks President,“ the title read, mocking the unpopular president. What started as an innocent story turned into yet another political headache for Carter.

It was more than two and a half years into his presidency and Carter was in such bad shape that the story actually mattered. Republican senator Robert Dole, who planned to run for president in 1980, joked that Carter should apologize for “bashing a bunny in the head with a paddle. I’m sure the rabbit intended the president no harm. In fact, the poor thing was simply doing something a little unusual these daysâ€”trying to get aboard the president’s boat. Everyone else seems to be jumping ship.” The administration prevented the picture from being made public. “We’re afraid if we release the photo,“ Powell told reporters, “the rabbit controversy over the next two weeks will receive more ink than the SALT treaty.”5

This was just the tip of the iceberg. For the remainder of 1979 and 1980, the economy was in shambles, oil prices skyrocketed, Americans were held hostage in Iran, and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. As the Democratic primaries reached a conclusion and the general campaign of 1980 was about to start in September, the pollster Patrick Caddell warned the president that the race against Republican Ronald Reagan and Independent John Anderson would be difficult.

Caddell’s predictions turned out to be correct. Although Carter put up a strong fight in the final month of the campaign, Reagan won, and Republicans regained control of the Senate for the first time since 1954.