Essential Question

Essential Question

• What were the important events of the Carter

presidency?

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter• Grew up in Plains, GA

• Studied nuclear physics in the Navy – trained to command nuclear subs

• Upon his father’s death, he resigned from the Navy and returned to Plains to run the family peanut business

Jimmy Carter• Served two terms in

the Georgia Senate

• 1970 – elected as governor of GA

• Ran as a Washington outsider for president

1976 Election

• Republican - Gerald Ford/Robert Dole

• Democrat – Jimmy Carter/Walter Mondale

• Victory for Carter

1976 Election

1970s Economy

• Downturn in the U.S. economy

• Dependent on imported oil from OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries)

Yom Kippur War

• Egypt and Syria invaded Israel

• Israel won after receiving supplies from an emergency American airlift

• Arab countries resented US actions

Arab Oil Embargo

• Long lines at US pumps

• Oil became a political weapon

• Prices per barrel of oil rose dramatically

U.S. Response

• National speed limit of 55 mph

• Fuel efficient cars (many foreign made)

• Economic inflation

Nuclear Energy

• Controversy over building nuclear reactors to generate power

• Environmentalists cautioned against nuclear meltdowns

Three Mile Island

• March 1979

• Near meltdown before plant closed

• Win for the environmentalists

Carter’s Challenges

• Turmoil in the Middle East raised gas prices

• Inflation rate of 11 percent

Carter’s Challenges

• Favored human rights and peacemaking in foreign affairs

Camp David Accords

• 1978

• Israel’s Menachem Begin met with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat at Camp David

• Signed a peace accord

USSR• 1979 – Soviet Union

invaded Afghanistan

• Carter placed an embargo on wheat shipments to the USSR

• Boycott of the Summer Olympics (1984) in Moscow

Iran

• 1979 – Shah of Iran forced into exile as an ally of the U.S.

• Ayatollah Khomeini came to power

• U.S. admitted the Shah into the country for cancer treatments

Iran• In response, Iranian

students seized the U.S. embassy in Teheran

• 66 Americans became hostages

• U.S. refused to return the Shah to Iran for trial

Iranian Hostage Crisis

• Hostages remained for fourteen months

• April 1980 rescue effort failed

• After the Shah’s death, Iranians agreed to release the hostages – on the day Carter left office

Election of 1980

• Republican – Ronald Reagan

• Democrat – Jimmy Carter

• Reagan victory