Menu
Idea

Carter Administration

67
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Photo of Jimmy Carter.

Carter and Chile: How Humanitarian was the President?

The 'human rights president' had some tough political decisions to make regarding Augusto Pinochet in 1979.
by Peter Kornbluh via Responsible Statecraft on January 10, 2025
Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy Carter at the Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, 1976.

How Jimmy Carter Lost Evangelical Christians to the Right

The Baptist Georgia governor won evangelical Christian voters in the 1976 presidential election. Next time around, those voters changed sides—for the long haul.
by Chris Lehmann via The Nation on December 30, 2024
Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Jimmy Carter Was No Friend of Union Workers Like Me

As a worker in the 1970s, I looked forward to a Jimmy Carter administration. By the end of his term in office, I felt betrayed.
by Chris Townsend via Jacobin on December 29, 2024
President Jimmy Carter seated at desk in Oval Office, hands steepled.

Jimmy Carter Held the Door Open for Neoliberalism

His unwillingness to take a radical stance forced him to respond to events by imposing austerity and doing little to strengthen labor.
by Sean T. Byrnes via Jacobin on December 29, 2024
Jimmy Carter speaking during his presidential campaign in 1976.
Exhibit

Legacies of Jimmy Carter

Historical reappraisals of Carter's legacies in foreign relations, the economy, the environment, and electoral politics.
Anwar El-Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin after the Camp David Accords.
partner

Jimmy Carter and the Israel-Hamas War

How America's failures in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis of the 1970s hurt U.S. security and contributed to the current war.
by Benjamin V. Allison via Made By History on November 17, 2023
President Jimmy Carter standing behind a podium.

Jimmy Carter's African Legacy: Peacemaker, Negotiator and Defender of Rights

Carter’s work in Zimbabwe forms a significant and underappreciated part of his legacy.
by Nancy Mitchell via The Conversation on March 9, 2023
Picture of President Joe Biden, left, and President Jimmy Carter, right.

What Historians Think of Joe Biden-Jimmy Carter Comparisons

Historical experts and former Carter advisers fact-check the critics who have compared Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter.
by Olivia B. Waxman via TIME on August 16, 2022
Cartoon of a large Ronald Reagan leaning on a small Jimmy Carter.

The Surprising Greatness of Jimmy Carter

A conversation with presidential biographers Jonathan Alter and Kai Bird.
by Jonathan Alter, Timothy Noah, Kai Bird via Washington Monthly on November 8, 2021
Zbigniew Brzezinski

The Coldest Cold Warrior

How a sharp-elbowed Polish academic with an unpronounceable name helped defeat the Soviet Union.
by Eric Edelman via The Bulwark on May 23, 2025
Students demonstrating against the Shah of Iran, Washington, DC, 1979.
partner

Indifferent to the Fate of Freedom Elsewhere

Jimmy Carter is known for his defense of human rights worldwide. But in 1979, he threatened to deport thousands of Iranian student protesters.
by Will Teague via HNN on March 11, 2025
Jimmy Carter in the 1970s visiting a town in Brazil that commemorates Confederate expats.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

As an individual, Jimmy Carter stood as a rebuke to our venal and heartless political class. As a politician, his private virtues proved to be public vices.
by Tim Barker via Origins of Our Time on January 1, 2025
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter address children at a Ghana hospital in 2007.

How Jimmy Carter's Global Health Efforts Elevated 'The Art of the Possible'

Former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, gave visibility to devastating health problems that are often invisible.
by Helen Branswell via STAT on December 29, 2024
President Jimmy Carter seated in the Oval Office of the White House, 1980.

How Jimmy Carter Became a Cold War Hawk

Jimmy Carter is associated with an idealistic “human rights agenda.” In reality, he was paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s aggressive anti-communism.
by Seth Ackerman, Aaron Donaghy via Jacobin on December 29, 2024
George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon at the Reagan Library opening.
partner

Jimmy Carter Was a Successful (Conservative) President

Common conceptions of Carter are all wrong because they don’t acknowledge a crucial reality: he was a conservative.
by Paul Matzko via Made By History on December 29, 2024
Jimmy Carter at a podium against the backdrop of an American flag.

Is Jimmy Carter Where Environmentalism Went Wrong?

Carter’s austerity was part of a bigger project. It didn’t really have much to do with environmentalism.
by Kate Aronoff via The New Republic on April 18, 2023
Illustrated cargo ship surrounded by a train loop.

How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded

Rail deregulation led to consolidation, price-gouging, and a variant of just-in-time unloading that left no slack in the system.
by Matthew Jinoo Buck via The American Prospect on February 4, 2022
A blurry pixilated image of Jimmy Carter on a television screen.

How the Ghost of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency Haunts Everything Biden Says About Supply Shortages

The last from-the-top critique of American overconsumption generated a massive backlash.
by Kevin Mattson via Slate on October 22, 2021

Joe Biden Is Not Jimmy Carter, and This Is Not the 1970s

The right’s facile comparisons of the two presidents miss the vastly different circumstances facing Biden and distort Carter’s record.
by Ed Kilgore via Intelligencer on October 16, 2021
Cover page of the August 1957 issue of Nation's Business, featuring a clamp tightening in on dollar signs.

Preferred Shares

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said America faces an economic crisis fifty years in the making. But how can we name the long crisis, much less explain it?
by Tim Barker via Phenomenal World on June 24, 2021

Climate Change Was on the Ballot With Jimmy Carter in 1980—Though No One Knew It at the Time

Gains made under Carter’s presidential leadership in the early 1980s might have bought the planet precious time.
by Jonathan Alter via TIME on September 29, 2020

We Used to Run This Country

Iran and surplus imperialism.
by Richard Beck via n+1 on June 22, 2020

Why It Took Congress 40 Years to Pass a Bill Acknowledging the Armenian Genocide

It has little to do with what happened in 1915, and everything to do with Cold War-era geopolitics in the Middle East.
by Eldad Ben Aharon via The Conversation on March 6, 2020

How Carter's '80 SOTU Unleashed America's 'World Police'

Forty years ago he announced a new American doctrine of aggressive Middle East interventionism that never went away.
by Edward D. Change via The American Conservative on February 4, 2020

Other People’s Blood

On Paul Volcker.
by Tim Barker via n+1 on February 26, 2019

How the U.S. Weaponized the Border Wall

The borderlands have “been transformed into a vast graveyard of the missing.”
by Greg Grandin via The Intercept on February 10, 2019
partner

How the Haitian Refugee Crisis Led to the Indefinite Detention of Immigrants

It wasn't always this way.
by Carl Lindskoog via Made By History on April 9, 2018

Why Are We in the Middle East?

America’s devotion to the Middle East did not make much sense in 2003, Bacevich argues; but it did in 1980, and the reason was oil.
by Richard Beck via n+1 on July 29, 2016
The White House.

Sociology and the Presidency

In 1979, Carter's "malaise speech," shaped by sociological insights, sought national unity but clashed with Reagan's appeal to individualism.
by Matthew Braswell via The Fifth Floor on October 25, 2013

The Carter Doctrine

Carter’s speech heralded a dramatic shift in foreign policy toward a policy of containment of Soviet influence.
via Voices & Visions on January 23, 1980
Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977

The Panama Canal Treaty Declassified

Kissinger warned: “This is no issue to face the world on. It looks like pure colonialism.”
by Peter Kornbluh via National Security Archive on February 3, 2025
View More
30 of
67

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History