[President Jimmy Carter addresses a Joint Session of Congress, announcing the results of the Camp David Accords, with Vice President Walter Mondale and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill seated behind him]

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Carter, a Democrat from rural Georgia, devotional Baptist, was a peanut farmer. He served seven years' service as a naval officer and two terms as a Georgia State Senator, from 1963 to 1967, and one as the Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975. He was elected President in 1976, defeating President Gerald Ford in a relatively close election. On his second day in office, Carter pardoned all evaders of the Vietnam War drafts. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. He confronted persistent "stagflation", a combination of high inflation, high unemployment, and slow growth. In the Middle East, through the Camp David agreement of 1978, Carter helped bring amity between Egypt and Israel. He succeeded in obtaining ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. Building upon the work of predecessors, he established full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and completed negotiation of the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union. The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In response to the Soviet move, he ended détente and led the international boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. By 1980, Carter's popularity had eroded and he lost the general election in a landslide to Republican nominee Ronald Reagan, who won 44 of 50 states. "We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war."