NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: He builds homes for the poor and helps people settle their differences and now a Nobel Prize for Peace will help eclipse a presidency best forgotten. Joe Carroll profiles Jimmy Carter.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Jimmy Carter bears out the often-expressed view that he was "a far better ex-president than he was a president". Whether he would agree with that is another matter.
Certainly he ended his single four-year term in the White House in 1981 a disillusioned man, deeply disappointed over his defeat by the intellectually inferior Ronald Reagan and with "good riddance" from an American electorate which identified the Carter years with economic recession and energy crises at home and humiliation by Iranian revolutionaries abroad.
He also left the White House deeply in debt. His peanut business in Georgia, which had made him a millionaire had been put into a blind trust when he became president as part of his strict ethics in government rules.
But in those four years it had failed and now he was over $1 million in debt.
He got to work restoring the family business and in 1982 was able to establish the Carter Centre based in his home town of Plains, Georgia, which now has projects running in more than 65 countries. The centre, which he runs with his wife Rosalynn, works to resolve conflicts around the world, prevent human rights abuses, build democracy in former dictatorships, improve health and revitalise urban areas.
He goes out and helps build houses with his own hands under the Habitat for Humanity scheme and the centre has mounted a programme which has almost eradicated the Guinea worm disease which had afflicted millions of Africans.
Carter helped broker peaceful solutions to conflicts, most notably in Haiti in 1994.
Some would say the list of achievements since he left the White House 21 years ago far outstrips what he achieved during the "Carter Years" which many middle-aged and older Americans recall with a shudder.
Historians still wonder how the little-known governor of a poor southern state ever got to the White House. Since then another little-known governor of a poor southern state followed in his tracks 12 years later but Bill Clinton was re-elected in a landslide and presided over one of the most prosperous economic booms in US history. Carter, however, had shown Clinton how it was possible to go from virtual log cabin to White House in a media-driven age.
James Earl Carter jnr was born in 1924 in Plains, Georgia, where his father ran a peanut farm and a strict Baptist household. Jimmy, as he was always known, was put to work in the fields at 4 a.m. and was whipped six times by his father. He recalled each beating but later insisted "I loved my father very much." Escape from the peanut business came through winning entry to the Naval Academy in Annapolis where he graduated as an officer in 1946. He overcame chronic sea-sickness and served as an engineer on nuclear submarines.
After six years in the navy, he returned to Plains to run the family business but was also attracted to state politics. He was determined to clean up the corruption which infested politics under Democratic control in the southern states and implement civil rights for African-Americans - not likely to endear a politician to white voters in Georgia.
After losing an election for governor in 1966, he reviewed his life and became a "born again" Christian. "The presence of my belief in Christ is the most important thing in my life," he revealed later. "I'm not ashamed of it." In 1970, he attracted national attention when he was elected governor on a platform of environment protection, removal of racial barriers and efficiency in government. Within weeks of stepping down as governor, he announced his candidacy for president. When he told his mother, known as "Miss Lillian", that he was running for the presidency, she asked "president of what?" He also told her "I'm going to win." Hardly anyone believed him. His opponents for the Democratic nomination were well-known national politicians but he ran such a good campaign that by the time the primaries had ended most of his rivals had withdrawn. At the Democratic convention in New York in July 1976, he was nominated on the first ballot.
After the internal dissension caused by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, the US electorate was ready for Carter's moral crusade for honesty and efficiency in government and social welfare reforms.
But he faltered in the campaign against President Gerald Ford, who had replaced Richard Nixon.
Carter was 30 points ahead of Ford when nominated but just scraped in three months later. His campaign had not been helped by his admission to Playboy that "I lusted in my heart" after other women while having never been unfaithful to his wife.
From day one, Americans knew they had a new kind of president. After his inauguration in a lounge suit instead of morning suit, he walked down Pennsylvania Avenue instead of driving in the presidential limousine. He sold the Presidential yacht, got rid of the Cabinet motor cars He restricted the use of his official portrait in offices and suspended the playing of Hail to the Chief. He wore jeans and a sweater around the White House and gave TV fireside chats wearing a cardigan to promote energy saving. He also drew up lists of who could use the White House tennis court, an example to his critics of how he let himself get bogged down in details instead of seeing the big picture.
Carter appointed more women and African-Americans to government posts than ever before. He established stringent ethics guidelines for Cabinet members and high officials. He allowed his wife, Rosalynn, to sit in on Cabinet meetings and used her as an unofficial adviser.
In foreign policy, he brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt at Camp David, a diplomatic coup which Clinton tried vainly to emulate 20 years later.
Carter became the first US president to get involved in Northern Ireland when in 1977, against British Government opposition, he promised "job-creating investment" by his administration if a peaceful solution could be reached.
But on the domestic front, it was a string of disasters as Americans endured energy shortages and were reduced to queuing for scarce petrol.
Inflation and interest rates soared and Carter faced into an election year with the economy in a sharp recession. His brother, Billy, embarrassed him by having business dealings with the Libyan government.
Abroad, the Soviets,with whom he had negotiated the SALT 11 treaty on limiting nuclear weapons, invaded Afghanistan and the US boycotted the Moscow Olympics. In Iran, the Shah, with whom Carter believed he had a good relationship, was overthrown and students sacked the US embassy in Tehran and took the staff hostage.
The failure to release the hostages became a dominant theme in the Ronald Reagan election campaign. Iran released the 52 hostages on the day Carter left office. It was a bitter-sweet moment for the man who distinguished journalist, James Reston, said "never really learned to say hello until it was time to say goodbye . . . the people wanted style and that's what they got with Reagan."
But Reston added, "He is the best ex-president I ever saw. In fact his whole career seemed to be a preparation for elder statesmanship."