Carter: An Intentional Presidency While there have been many presidents who rose from abject poverty to the political arena, Jimmy Carter's upbringing as a peanut farmer certainly established a precedent of presidential origin. Carter's upbringing in Plains, Georgia is where his honest and well-intentioned attitude is first seen and later seen very frequently throughout his presidency. In the end, despite everything Carter had tried to do, his brutal honesty did not please the American public as much as he expected, and although he had presidential successes, his presidency became the presidency of good intentions. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One of Carter's best-known efforts was the Iran hostage crisis. In 1979 Iranian students stormed the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran, in what would be the most embarrassing and publicized breach of embassy security until the Benghazi crisis. The students took fifty-two Americans hostage, only six managed to escape to safety. It is at this point that Carter is the first to sign up to the American ideal of a non-negotiating pact with terrorists. This idea of non-negotiation was not well received by the American people. Given America's low exposure to terrorism at this point, the American public wanted everything possible to be done to rescue the hostages, and Carter's non-negotiating stance was inadequate. To make matters worse, on April 24, 1980 the Carter administration attempted a rescue mission called Operation “Eagle Claw” which failed miserably. As a result, eight American soldiers died in a vain attempt to rescue the hostages who ended up remaining imprisoned in Iran for a total of 444 days. Although the hostages were freed, the public did not attribute the hostages' release to Carter. The hostages had been released while Carter was attending Reagan's inaugural ceremony after he had already lost the 1980 election; Carter's political career had been interrupted by the crisis. One of the factors most directly related to government approval is the economy. Even with Carter's problems on the foreign front, the economy was suffering. Nixon had recently taken the country off the gold standard, opening the floodgates of inflation in the American economy. Since Carter was a Democrat, he tried to control the economy by spending more. This policy dramatically backfired by causing inflation to rise to 13% during Carter's term, leaving Americans to sit back and watch as their money became less and less valuable each year. In addition to the economic problem Carter was facing, there was an oil crisis and the price of gasoline was increasing incrementally. The proposed solution to this problem was gasoline rationing that forced Americans to wait in large lines just to fill their tank another five gallons. These two crises caused Carter's approval rating to continue to decline until it stood at 34% when he left office. Carter may have had his failures in trying to manage domestic and international crises, but he was undoubtedly a master of foreign negotiations. This becomes prevalent in the “Camp David Accords” between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli President Menachem Begin. Carter not only successfully brokered peace between the two countries, but also established precedents that America would be willing to play a role as a peacekeeper in the world and that its..
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