Carter Brokers Peace: Camp David Reshapes Diplomacy

Jimmy Carter grew peanuts in Plains, Georgia, and ended up brokering the Camp David Accords, the agreement that brought Egypt and Israel to the negotiating table and produced a peace that has held for nearly fifty years. Born in 1924, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, served on nuclear submarines under Admiral Hyman Rickover, and returned to Georgia to run the family peanut farm after his father's death. He entered politics through the state senate, won the governorship in 1970, and declared in his inaugural address that "the time of racial discrimination is over," surprising a state that had elected him with segregationist support. He won the presidency in 1976 as a Washington outsider in the aftermath of Watergate, defeating Gerald Ford by a narrow margin. The Camp David Accords in 1978, which he personally mediated over thirteen days of negotiations between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, remain his greatest diplomatic achievement. His presidency was damaged by the Iran hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days and dominated his final year in office, and by stagflation that eroded public confidence. He lost to Ronald Reagan in a landslide in 1980, and his approval rating when he left office was thirty-four percent. His post-presidency lasted forty-three years and arguably exceeded his presidency in impact. He founded the Carter Center, which monitored elections in disputed countries and led campaigns that brought Guinea worm disease to the brink of eradication. He built houses with Habitat for Humanity into his nineties. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 and died on December 29, 2024, at one hundred years old.