Question

From 1970 on who would you consider to be your favorite president and why. What did he do that was more in Porten than any of the other presidents?

Answer 1

• Democrat Jimmy Carter served as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

• Carter was unable to solve most of the problems plaguing the country during his administration, including an ailing economy and a continuing energy crisis.

• Although Carter brokered the historic Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, relations with the Middle East broke down after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Iranian extremists seized the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 American hostages captive there for over a year.

Carter, as a breath of fresh air after the Nixon and Ford years, enjoyed an initial burst of popularity in 1977, but his ratings slipped as it became increasingly clear that Carter was unwilling to work with Washington to achieve results. He surrounded himself with advisers from his native Georgia and refused to delegate any authority whatsoever: in the first six months of his presidency Carter even personally reviewed requests for use of the White House tennis court.

Carter crafted legislation packages concerning crucial fixes to the energy crisis and the economy in secret, and then rained them down upon an increasingly hostile Congress. As a fiscal conservative, he alienated the liberal wing of the Democratic party by refusing to spend much money to invigorate the economy or to fund social programs. He alienated conservatives by pardoning some 10,000 Vietnam War draft evaders, negotiating the return of control of the Panama Canal to Panama, resuming diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, and halting the construction of new nuclear weapons.

The economy continued to slump in the late 1970s. Inflation soared to a staggering 13% and gas shortages once again plagued the country after violence erupted in the Middle East. After cloistering himself with advisers for days in summer 1979 in order to determine a solution to these woes, Carter emerged offering nothing more than a highly-critical speech that blamed Americans for causing the present 'malaise' through a loss of moral virtue