Jimmy Carter turns 100, becoming first US president to reach milestone age
Happy birthday, Mr.President!Former President Jimmy Carter is 100 years old Tuesday — reaching a longevity milestone no US president has ever achieved.Born on Oct.
1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia, the soft-spoken peanut farmer was elected the 39th president of the United States in 1976, facing headwinds at every turn including energy shortages, Cold War drama and the Iran hostage crisis during his tenure as commander-in-chief.Though his single term in office was marked by upheaval and uncertainty both domestically and abroad, Carter achieved numerous significant triumphs during his presidency, including brokering the historic Camp David peace accords in which Israel and Egypt officially recognized each other’s governments.After serving as both Senator and governor of Georgia, Carter sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1976, running as a centrist reformer at a time when the country was still grappling with a crisis of confidence in government following the Watergate scandal.Carter and running-mate Walter Mondale of Minnesota defeated incumbent President Gerald Ford by a margin of 297 to 241 electoral votes.“I’ll never tell a lie.I’ll never make a misleading statement.
I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me.And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue,” he vowed at the time.Carter’s administration came at a time when the US was wading through an economic quagmire brought on by the OPEC-induced gas crisis of the early 1970s.
The era was marked by stubbornly elevated inflation, high unemployment, and stagnant demand — famously termed “stagflation.”Then dueling crises in 1979 helped shape perceptions of his administration.On Christmas Eve that year, Russia invaded Afghanistan, which prompted Carter to withdraw US participation from the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.A month earlier, Iranian students mobbed the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage and holding them captive for 444 days.A failed 1980 rescue...