| An Overview of Jimmy Carter's
Administration 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
240 |
| 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
Roberts 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
4, 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. |
WEB SOURCES
The American President www.millercenter.virginia.edu
Presidents of the United States
www.ipl.org
The White House www.whitehouse.gov
SEE ALSO
Georgia
Gerald Rudolph
Ford
Walter F. Mondale
Edmund S. Muskie
Patricia Roberts
Harris
China
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT
II)
Department
of Education
Iranian Hostage Crisis
Ronald Reagan
Afghanistan
Egypt
Israel
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