Part One | Part Two

Narrator: From the peanut fields of Georgia, all the way to the White House, Jimmy Carter had accomplished one of the greatest triumphs in American political history.

Betty Glad, Political Scientist: He'd pulled off a miracle. In the fall of 1975, he was barely visible as a candidate, six months later he has the Democratic presidential nomination, now that is a miracle.

Douglas Brinkley, Biographer: He offered a biography of what we wanted to hear; Farmer, Main Street values, Plains ­ it was the right message at the right time

Narrator: He had promised the nation a new beginning. To heal the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam. A government as good and decent and compassionate as the American people.

Hendrik Hertzberg, Carter Speechwriter:What he had was a moral ideology. And the issues where he proved successful, the Panama Canal treaties, the Human Rights crusades, Peace in the Middle East, those were issues where is moral ideology guided him.

Walter F. Mondale, Vice President: The one argument that I would find would ruin a person's case is when he'd say, "This is good for you politically." He didn't want to hear that. He wanted to know what's right.

Narrator: But the man who had pledged to restore honesty and trust to government would find his own integrity attacked when his friend and budget chief Bert Lance was accused of financial improprieties.

Pat Caddell, Pollster: Until that moment, we had been driving the agenda. Everyone danced to our tune. After that, we danced to everybody else's tune. And that hurt us with the public, because now Jimmy Carter is not in charge.

Elizabeth Drew, Journalist: He's a very, very smart man. And very well intentioned. But feel, feel is very, very important in politics, especially in a president. And Carter just didn't have very much of it.

Narrator: Only nine months in office, Jimmy Carter was a President in trouble. The economy spinning out of control. A growing energy crisis. His agenda stalled in Congress. But Carter's greatest test was yet to come. Half a world away. In Iran. When 53 Americans were taken hostage by Muslim Fundamentalists.

Roger Wilkins, Journalist: The whole world saw these people stomping on images of Carter, burning American flags, and the most rancid sort of disrespect and hatred of the United States, on television, around the world, all the time.

Rosalynn Carter, First Lady No one can know how much pressure there was on Jimmy. And I would say, "Why don't you do something?" And he said, "What would you want me to do?" I said, "Mine the harbors." He said, "Okay, suppose I mine the harbors, and they decide to take one hostage out every day and kill him. What am I going to do then?"

Jody Powell, Press Secretary To react in a way that was strong and powerful would have set us off down a road that no man could say where it might lead.

Elizabeth Drew Fairly or not, it came to symbolize the question of whether Carter was a leader, whether he was competent, whether he was strong.

Narrator: On May 22 1977, Before the graduating class of the University of Notre Dame, President Jimmy Carter unveiled a new foreign policy for the United States.

Carter : Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of communism...

Narrator: Carter had come to office with no experience in foreign affairs, but was determined to make his mark. In his first year alone, he met more than 40 heads of state. Resumed talks on diplomatic relations with China. And with the Soviet Union on arms control. He launched a new peace process in the Middle East. And signed a new canal treaty with Panama, transferring, after 75 years, ownership of the canal to the Panamanians. But it was a principle straight from his heart that would redefine America's role in the world.

Carter : We have reaffirmed America's commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy.

Gaddis Smith, Diplomatic Historian: That was his greatest speech standing up for our own-own values, and expecting, that the world would appreciate that- that we would be (he didn't used this phrase, but it's an old phrase in American history) like the beacon on the hill, the beacon of-of freedom and liberty and democracy,

Betty Glad: He will be remembered for putting on the agenda hereafter the whole issue of human rights. We now assume that the goal of a State is not only to protect its national security interests. It has an obligation to try to deal with human suffering where it has the ability to do that.

Carter : I feel very deeply that when people are put in prison without trials, and tortured and deprived of basic human rights that the President of the United States ought to have a right to express displeasure and to do something about it.

Walter Mondale: His idea is that every child is a child of God. And based on his faith entitled to the stature and respect and the rights of what that means.

Narrator: Initially, human rights was applied aggressively to friend and foe. Carter asked Congress to withhold military and economic assistance from Latin American dictators -- in Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua -- and decried their human rights violations. Cold Warriors complained Carter was undermining American allies, paving the way for Soviet backed guerrilla movements to seize power. But they applauded when in an open letter to Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, Carter promised to seek the release of political prisoners held in Soviet jails.

Doug Brinkley: The human rights campaign was charging the Soviet Union with abuse of its own citizens. And they did not like that at all. And we now know, now that the Cold War archives are open, and from looking at Havel, in Czechoslovakia, or Lech Walesa in Poland, that it was the Carter's human rights policy that gave heart to the underground resistance movement.

Narrator: But the biggest challenge to Carter's Human Rights policy would come in the Middle East.

Carter : Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas in the world.

Narrator: Carter was aware of the brutality of Iran's secret police and of 2500 political prisoners held in Iran's jails. But the Shah, installed to the throne in a U.S. backed coup in 1953, had long been a trusted ally. New Years' Eve 1977, in Teheran, Carter reaffirmed America's support.

Gaddis Smith: Strategic considerations trumped human rights in Iran, because the perception of the United States was first that Iran was a secure source of oil (and it certainly was an important source of oil), that it had one of the most powerful military establishments in the world, which was nonsense, but the Shah was saying he was going to have the second most powerful Navy. Iran of course bordered on the Soviet Union.

Betty Glad: There are circumstances where you have to have a situational morality. You cannot go in with the notion this is an absolute value, we're going to push it all the time.

Carter : I would like to offer a toast at this time, to the great leaders of Iran, the Shah and the Shahvanu, and to the people of Iran, and to the world peace that we hope together we can help to bring . . .

Narrator: One week after Carter's visit, anti-Shah demonstrations broke out. When Iranian secret police fired on the demonstrators and killed several students, religious leaders called the Shah's government anti-Islamic.

Elizabeth Drew: Iran was a very complicated situation. And the Shah was very useful to us. At the same time, something else was going on, something very powerful was going on in Iran. And as I recall, we kind of missed it.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor We knew there was some resentment, and we knew somewhat of the history of the country, but we were not conscious, nor were we informed, of the intensity of the feelings.

Narrator: Since the days of Plains and Peanuts, the marriage of Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter had blossomed into a full partnership.

E. Stanly Godbold, Historian: Some time before Carter became president he realized what a valuable adviser to him Rosalynn was. She was a major player in the campaigns and she did have a good rapport with the people. She of course was ambitious in her own right. She wanted to be more than a fashion plate and somebody who gave teas.

Rosalynn Carter: The first year Jimmy was in office I became so frustrated. Every night Jimmy would get off the elevator at the White House and I would say, "Why did you do this?" or why did you do something? And one day he finally said, "Why don't you come to Cabinet meetings? Then you'll know why we do these things." So I started going. It was always on my calendar. And I just listened. I didn't participate. But I listened. And then I knew why the decisions were made.

Narrator: The first child to live in the White House since the Kennedy years, nine year old Amy had the run of the place. She roller skated down the marble hallways, played in a tree house her father built for her, even got a new dog, named Grits.

Doug Brinkley: She was the apple of her father's eye. President Carter hadn't spent a lot of time with his three sons when they were growing up so he tried to put a lot of attention and energy into Amy.

Narrator: In keeping with Carter's populist image, Amy was sent to public school. The media made much of the fact that her best friend was the daughter of the cook at the Chilean embassy.

Doug Brinkley: She was such a shy, intelligent girl. It was very hard, always having that media glare. And I think after the White House, she's tried her best to, stay out of the limelight.

Narrator: One Carter did not shy away from the glare of the media. Back in Plains, Billy capitalized on his brother's fame. He made money on the talk show circuit and marketed his own brand of beer. The president tolerated his brother's antics. "He enjoyed the popularity," he wrote, "and presented the other side of the Carter family, full of fun and laughter."

Narrator: In 1978 the first signs of a gathering economic storm were becoming visible. The stock market was at its lowest point in three years, the trade deficit growing, unemployment on the rise

Carter : The most serious problem that our nation has is inflation. And it's getting worse. It's absolutely imperative that Americans commit themselves, all of us, to a common sacrifice to control this rapid increase in prices.

E. Stanly Godbold: Carter inherited a no win economic situation. I see him as the last presidential victim of the War in Vietnam. Every war this country has fought once it is over the economy has to readjust to a peacetime economy. And what always happens is runaway inflation.

Narrator: Carter implored labor and business leaders to keep wages and prices down, and pressured Congress to cutback spending. But inflation kept rising, his words falling on deaf ears.

James Laney, President of Emory University: He has this enormous determination to go after and do what he thinks ought to be done. The capacity to explain, persuade, inspire, mobilize, energize the whole country,

Carter : I do not have all the answers nobody does.

James Laney That was far more tenuous and uncertain.

Carter : But I want to let you know that fighting inflation will be a central. . .

James Laney: He thought people would just follow, but that didn't happen.

Carter : and I want to arouse our nation to join me in this effort. . .

Narrator: There were growing doubts about Carter's leadership. The President, most Americans believed was too mired in details. Was ineffective with Congress. Had attempted too much, and delivered too little.

Stuart Eizenstat, Domestic Policy Advisor: This is a classic case where first impressions often sets in with people. And the first impressions of that first year were too many things, lack of priorities, a lack of accomplishment// The fact is we actually had a good legislative record. But, we had thrown so much up that, in comparison to that, the accomplishments seemed to pale.

Rosalynn Carter: I would sometimes say, "Why don't we do this in your second term?" And he would say, "What if I don't have a second term?" And I think he felt that way the whole time that if something needed to be done, it needed to be done.

Narrator: With an approval rating of only 33%, TIME Magazine concluded, "He has the potential for growing in the officeŠbut he does not have a great deal of time left." Nestled in the mountains of Maryland, Camp David was Jimmy Carter's refuge. It was the place where he and Rosalynn repaired to on weekends to get away from the pressures of Washington. In September 1978, Jimmy Carter would enshrine Camp David, and himself, in history.

Walter Mondale: He had spent a lot of time studying the Middle East. He felt very deeply that we should try to find peace over there. And boy, he really bet his presidency on that.

Betty Glad He was already very low in the polls. He had practically nowhere to go but up. But he still, could possibly win a second term, and if he failed, that would­ that would certainly write him off.

Narrator: Since the creation of the State of Israel, every attempt to bring peace to the Middle East had failed. Refugees, land disputes, terrorism plagued the region. Four wars, the last in 1973, had left a bitter legacy of hate and mistrust. Everyone urged Carter to stay away from what seemed an intractable situation, but he would not be deterred. "I slowly became hardened and as stubborn as at any other time I can remember," he wrote.

Jody Powell: The Middle East for years had been and was then the place where you thought if we're gonna end up blowing up the world that's where it will start. If there's gonna be a nuclear confrontation between the super-powers it's gonna come out of the Middle East. So finding a way to temp that down was to him extremely important.

Narrator: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat took the first step toward peace in November 1977 when he became the first Arab leader to set foot on Israeli soil. Carter seized the opportunity. The following September, He welcomed President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David to negotiate treaty that would lay the foundations for peace in the Middle East.

Betty Glad: He brought all of his skills and all the best sides of himself to the whole operation. And all of the potential in Jimmy Carter was out there at Camp David. It was really an extraordinary time.

Gaddis Smith: He had studied things so carefully. He knew the population of every village in the West Bank and Israel. Hard to think of a­ of a president in our history who had that much capacity to absorb and retain detail.

Betty Glad: He made a mistake at the very beginning. He thought and told his aides, "You know, we're just going to bring together Begin and Sadat, and they'll talk and they'll get to know each other and they'll understand each other." Well, he got them there, and it turned out after the first 3 meetings they were practically never talking to each other and things were going downhill very fast.

Narrator: "It was mean," Carter later recalled. "They were brutal with each other." Face-to-face discussions became an impossibility. On day 3, the expected deadline for an agreement Carter had accomplished nothing. "There must be a way," he kept saying, "there must be a way."

That night at dinner, alone with Rosalynn, he arrived at a solution. If the two men could not talk to one another, they would have to talk through him.

Betty Glad: He decided that essentially the Americans would draft the proposal and put the proposal on the table. You wouldn't have an Egyptian and an Israeli proposal. You would have an American proposal.

Narrator: "I must admit that I capitalized on this situation," Carter later wrote. "It greatly magnified my own influence." Carter devoted himself to drafting an agreement. With more than 50 issues to be resolved, the work was painstaking.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: He was remarkably tenacious, persistent, persuasive, tough-minded, tough both with Sadat on some occasions, and with Begin on other occasions.

Douglas Brinkley: That people trusted him as an honest broker came to play in a very magical and important way. He is seen as somebody who is not a cheat or a liar. He is somebody who puts his money where his mouth is.

Narrator: "My world became the negotiating rooms, the study where I poured over my notes and maps of the Middle East." he recalled "Between sessions I craved intense exercise and lonely places where I could think, and sometimes pray."

Rosalynn Carter: He had things scheduled after the first week, and I was going into Washington to do some of the things he was supposed to do. And when I would leave to go in, they would say, "Don't smile because everybody will think it will be all right. Don't look grim because they'll think it's failing." That was hard. It was from the depths to the heights all the time, at Camp David. One minute you would think it was going to pass and everything was so exciting, and then­ and another-another time it would be just hopeless.

Jody Powell: It always seemed to me that the odds were against success; it always seemed like a long shot, so I spent a good bit of my time thinking about: How are we going to deal with this thing if it collapses?

Narrator: Shuttling back and forth between Sadat and Begin, Carter began to put together an agreement. A framework for negotiations in the Middle East, which would address the fate of the Palestinians and the future of Gaza and the West Bank. And a separate peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Israel would return the Sinai territories occupied since the 1967 war. Egypt would recognize the right of Israel to live in peace. On September 14th, day ten, Carter turned to the issue he knew could derail any progress made so far: the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the Sinai.

Peter Bourne, Biographer: Carter was unable to get Begin to make any concessions that would really have locked up an agreement, to the point where Sadat just got fed up and said, "Well, I'm going home." You know. "I'm just not going to wait and be here any longer," and-and literally sort of had his coat on and was out the door.

Narrator: Carter begged Sadat to stay, appealing to their friendship and mutual trust, and reminding him of Egypt's good relations with the United States. Sadat decided to remain at Camp David. Saturday, Sept 16, Brzezinki wrote in his diary: "The President is driving himself mercilessly. He has single-handedly written the proposed document for the settlements on the Sinai." Carter presented the formula to Begin. At first he called the demands on Israel "excessive," "political suicide." But in the end he relented, agreeing to submit the question of the Jewish settlements to the Israeli parliament.

Betty Glad: Jimmy Carter saw a picture of the three major participants on his desk. And he told his secretary to find out the names of Begin's grandchildren. And so then he wrote little notes, putting in the names of all the grandchildren. He went over to Begin and said, "You know, this is not just for us. This is for our grandchildren. And let me give this to you." And Begin was profoundly moved by this.

Narrator: The Camp David Accords were hailed as a monumental triumph of diplomacy, "With his brilliant success and inspired leadership, Carter has taken "a first, big step toward realizing the promise of his presidency," was the verdict of the press.

Carter: These negotiations provide that Israel may live in peace within secure and recognized borders. And this great aspiration of Israel has been certified, without constraint, with the greatest degree of enthusiasm, by President Sadat, the leader of one of the greatest nations on earth." [applause]

Douglas Brinkley: There will never be a history in, in the Middle East written, without Jimmy Carter's name in the index. A hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, people will be talking about the Camp David process that began in those Maryland mountains.

Peter Bourne: Camp David was the plum of his administration. This was the crowning glory, and it enshrined him in history.

Carter : . . . to these two friends of mine, the words of Jesus: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be the children of God." [applause]

Narrator: Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to peace. Cape David became the touch stone for all future negotiations on the Middle East. Yet Carter's great success did nothing to improve his standing with the American people.

Walter Mondale There was something about how we had slipped in the eyes of the American people that prevented us from getting what should have been an enormous lift out of this incredible diplomatic feat. We thought, "Boy, this shows we can get things done. It does bring peace in a crucial area." And there was no movement at all. It was very dispiriting.

Narrator: At home President Carter's leadership was in question. On the world stage he kept piling up accomplishments. In January 1979, he received Chinese Vice-Premier, Deng Xiaoping in Washington to celebrate the establishment of formal relations between The United States and China. In June, he met Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev in Vienna, to sign the SALT II Arms Control Agreement. From there, it was on to Tokyo for a major economic Summit.

Pat Caddell: The country is having this terrible domestic problem and the president is somewhere out on the other side of the world. And it's not for a couple of days. For weeks. And I remember getting on the phone and saying you people got to come home now.

Narrator: In one year, the American economy had spun out of control. Gasoline prices had more than doubled, mortgage rates pushed 20%. Unemployment kept on rising.

BERT LANCE, Former Budget Director: There were just so many forces at work When inflation becomes rampant interest rates are high, and the business cycle is turning against you, it becomes almost impossible.

Narrator: Of all the problems facing the nation, most Americans now agreed, inflation was the most urgent. In the Summer of '79, fueled by rising oil prices, it surged to 14%.

ROGER WILKINS: Inflation makes you doubt the future. When you have inflation you don't see as much building going on. You don't see as much investment going on. You don't see as much hiring going on. People weren't seeing their savings growing and as a matter of fact people were terrified that inflation would impoverish them in their old age.

Narrator: Carter acted decisively. To reduce the budget deficit and bring inflation under control he cut into social programs. "New realities," explained the White House, "must temper our nation's commitment to the poor."

PETER BOURNE: It stirred up a hornet's nest of opposition from the Ted Kennedy people, from the traditional FDR coalition. They were very, very angry.

Narrator: African American leaders felt betrayed, and vowed to wage an all out fight on what they called, "Carter's immoral, unjust and inequitable budget cuts."

ROGER WILKINS: The leader who most encapsulated the goals that I wanted was Martin King, at the end of his life, saying to the country, we have to do something about poor Americans. We're the richest country on the face of the Earth, and we've got to do something. Every time I vote for a Democrat I want that Democrat to have Martin's spirit about poverty in his soul. Jimmy Carter ran away from that.

Narrator: Across America, frustration was reaching a breaking point. In Levittown, Pennsylvania, truckers barricaded expressways to protest high fuel prices, setting off riots, which left 100 injured and led to more than 170 arrests.

PAT CADDELL: I thought in '79 was we were really headed down the tubes. I now thought we were in deep, deep trouble and I thought the president was becoming irrelevant.

Narrator: Polls showed Carter falling behind Ted Kennedy as the preferred candidate among Democratic voters, and even losing trial heats to the likely Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan.

Voices of people on the street.

"I don't think he has control of the situation. I think he's a very religious man, a very nice man, but I just don't think he's capable of the job."

"a lot of people think he's shaky, you know, and I'm one of them, I think he's kind of shaky"

"I think he's a real floundering leader, I don't see him as a leader, and I don't look to him for leadership"

Narrator: President Carter's approval rating was 25%, lower than President Richard Nixon's at the time of Watergate.

"It all seems to be falling down around me in the White House," he told a friend, "I don't know what to do."

WALTER MONDALE: I think he was losing some of that essential nerve that he has in such abundance. Just for a brief moment there it was really uh I was heartsick and I felt so sorry for him.

Narrator: Carter groped for a way to reassert his leadership. One advisor suggested that he give a major speech on energy, and put the full blame of the economic crisis on the high price of Middle East oil.

STUART EIZENSTAT: When we drew the outlines up he was really quite disgusted. This is just more of the same. It doesn't address the basic problems. People will see this as pabulum. We need something more.

ROSALYNN CARTER: Jimmy had made several speeches on energy. He was trying to impress upon people the fact they needed to conserve and it just seemed to be going nowhere with the public. And so he just said I'm not going to make the speech.

HENDRIK HERTZBERG: So he got on a conference call with his senior staff, and the way he put it‹very pungently‹was, "I just don't want to bullshit the American people."

Narrator: Carter retreated to Camp David. For the next ten days businessmen, labor leaders, governors, pop psychologists and clergy were called to the mountain top to participate in one of the most extraordinary episodes of presidential soul searching in American history.

HENDRIK HERTZBERG: Basically this was a kind of a self-psychoanalysis by Carter and the Administration. He sat up there and listened to the most scalding critiques of his presidency.

Narrator: "They told me that I seemed bogged down in details, Carter wrote. "That the public acknowledged my intelligence and integrity, but doubted my capacity to follow through with a strong enough thrust to succeed."

Within Carter's own staff a fierce debate raged over what had gone wrong and what President Carter should say to the American people. Carter's pollster argued the President should address a subject deeper than energy or the economy.

That there was a crisis of the American spirit.

PAT CADDELL: The first time, we actually got numbers where people no longer believed that the future of America was going to be as good as it was now. Never in the history of American polling had that ever existed. That Americans ever if they believed it ever evidenced would say, "Oh, my children are have it worse than I am. The country's going to get worse. We already had our heyday. And that really shook me, because it was so anti, so anti-American.

STUART EIZENSTAT: I made the point, and Mondale made the point, that if there was a problem with the American spirit, it was because of the underlying problems of inflation and energy not because there was something wrong with the American people.

WALTER MONDALE: I argued that there were real problems in America that were not mysterious, that were not rooted in some kind of national psychosis or breakdown, that there were real gas lines, there was real inflation, that people were worried in their real lives about keeping their jobs.

PAT CADDELL: The vice president of the United States was looking at me, basically accused me of being insane. So, you had this real division. And then Jimmy Carter ended it by saying, uh, and, and this moment I'll never forget it. He ends the thing saying, he said, I just wanted to hear what you all said. I've decided. I'm going to do everything that Pat said.

Carter: Good evening. This is a special night for me.

Narrator: On July 15 after a ten day retreat, Jimmy Carter descended from the mountains of Maryland to deliver the most controversial speech of his administration.

Carter: I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.

HENDRIK HERTZBERG: The speech was more like a sermon than a political speech. And it had the themes of confession, redemption, and sacrifice. And he was bringing the American people into this spiritual process that he had been through, and presenting them with an opportunity for redemption as well as redeeming himself.

Carter: In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns. . .

JOHN A. FARRELL, Journalist: The speech unfairly was labeled "the malaise speech," because it talked about the fact that the country was in a difficult situation, which it was. But, Americans don't always want their public leaders to come to them and say, "Hey, we're in a bunch of trouble."

ROGER WILKINS: When your leadership is demonstrably weaker than it should be you don't then point at the people and say, "It's your problem." If you want the people to move, you move them the way Roosevelt moved them, or you exhort them the way Kennedy or Johnson exhorted them. You don't say, it's your fault.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: The op-ed pieces started spinning out saying there's nothing wrong with the American people. We're a great people. Maybe the problem's in the White House. Maybe we need new leadership to guide us. It boomeranged on him.

JODY POWELL: If you make a bold stroke like that you do have to think about how do you follow it up? What is day 3 and day 4 and day 5 look like. How do you translate that into additional steps? And we botched that.

Narrator: To give the impression of a fresh start, Carter asked his entire cabinet to submit their resignation. Five were accepted.

JOHN FARRELL: By firing the cabinet the way he did Carter just telegraphed to the country that he wasn't up for the job. It was a sign of panic. It looked like this was a President who was thrashing about looking for other people to blame.

Narrator: Carter's approval rating dropped even lower.

"After all the Camp David meetings, the dramatic speech on July 15, and the cabinet firings, he is back where he began, one analyst wrote, "a chief executive rejected by his ultimate constituency, the American people."

Narrator: That fall, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party finally broke with the President, throwing its support behind Ted Kennedy. The Senator from Massachusetts would wage a brutal campaign for the Democratic Nomination.

For Jimmy Carter, nothing seemed to be going right.

He collapsed while running a 10-kilometer race. It was taken as a sign of weakness.

He became the butt of jokes when a story broke that he'd been attacked by a giant rabbit while fishing in Georgia.

Even the Carter family, once thought fun and colorful, was becoming a liability. Billy was investigated for accepting a bribe from the Libyan government.

Furious, Carter distanced himself from Billy.

'"I have no controlŠover my brother and he has no control over me." He said.

On November 4, 1979, it would all seem trivial. A few days earlier, 3,500 Iranian students had marched toward the American Embassy in Teheran, threatening to overtake it.

Narrator: The anti-Shah movement which had began in early 1978 had grown into a full-fledged Islamic Revolution. The Shah was driven into exile, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, became the leader of a new and mysterious, Islamic Republic.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I never had any illusions about Khomeini. I didn't have much familiarity with fundamentalist Islam. But I knew he would be a menace.

GADDIS SMITH: If Carter had been more critical of the Shah, conceivably it would have been a little more difficult for the Ayatollah Khomeini to identify the United States as the great Satan, and to say everything that is wrong in Iran is basically the fault of the United States. Maybe the fact that the United States had been a significant player in Iran since 1945 was such that it was too late for Carter or anybody to change the deeply hostile nature of the­ of the Iranian revolution. But it might have made a difference.

Narrator: In the first few months of the Revolution, Carter had worked to build a relationship with the Khomeini regime.

But the history of U.S.-Iranian relations would soon catch up with him.

For months, the deposed Shah of Iran had wandered the Middle East, then Latin America. Ill with cancer, he asked permission to come to the United States for medical treatment.

WALTER MONDALE: There were several of us sitting around the table, talking about whether the President should permit the re-entry of the Shah. We had people tell us that if we let the Shah in, there could be a real negative repercussion in Iran. But the Shah was sort of pathetically flying around the world. And here's this great country saying, "Well, we won't even let you come to one of our hospitals." He went around the room, and a lot of the people said, "Let him in."

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I argued that he should be allowed in because we treated him as an ally in good times and I felt it was our responsibility to treat him as a former ally, but a friend in bad times. I felt American credibility was at stake.

WALTER MONDALE: And he said, "And if then this revolution moves in a way to take our employees in our embassy hostage, then what would be your advice?" And the room just fell dead.

The Shah arrived in the United States on October twenty second. Two weeks later, Iranian students seized the American Embassy.

53 Americans were to be held hostage until the United States returned the Shah to Iran.

Everyone awaited word from Khomeini. Seeing an opportunity to consolidate his revolution, the Ayatollah gave his blessing, calling the U.S. Embassy "a den of spies."

Carter: The United States of America will not yield to international terrorism or to blackmail.

PAT CADDELL: It was a defining event. This is the entire United States government captured, and held illegally under international law and being taunted everyday.

ROGER WILKINS: The whole world saw these images of these people burning American flags, stomping on images of Carter and the most rancid sort of disrespect and hatred of the United States, on television, around the world, all the time.

Narrator: "I would Šlie awake at night, trying to think of Šsteps I could take to gain the [hostages'] freedom, without sacrificing the honor and security of our nation," The President wrote.

Carter rejected all military options as too risky. "The problem," he said, "is that we could feel good for a few hours --until we found that they had killed our people."

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: He was determined to bring every one of those men back alive. You see the moralism of Carter, the Christianity affecting his foreign policy making. His belief in each human life having a great sanctity to it. His not wanting to have blood on his hands.

ROGER WILKINS: Successful statesmen have to balance risks, and sometimes, sometimes a risk to a relatively limited number of lives, down the road saves many, many more lives.

JODY POWELL: To react in a way that was strong and powerful would have set us off down a road that no man could say where it might lead. People have a hard time remembering that this was before the Cold War was over. And the-the possibility of a superpower confrontation in and about Iran had always been there. And now, under these circumstances, it was much higher.

Narrator: The dangers of the Cold War were driven home when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan Christmas Day, 1979. Three years earlier at Notre Dame Carter had declared the United States, "free of that inordinate fear of communism." But Soviet-American relations had soured, Afghanistan was the final blow.

Frank Reynolds: Have you changed your perception of the Russians in the time that you've been here? You started out, it seemed to a good many people, believing that if you expressed your good will and demonstrated it that they would reciprocate.

Carter: My opinion of the Russians has changed most drastically in the last week than even the previous two and a half years before that. It's only now dawning upon the world the magnitude of the action that the Soviets undertook in invading Afghanistan.

GADDIS SMITH: I think he had learned that-that moral affirmation by itself didn't necessarily get very far. I think he felt that events had built up and conspired against him, as they had; and that the Soviet Union was indeed a real threat.

Carter : I've cut Soviet access to high-technology equipment and to agricultural products. I've limited other commerce with the Soviet Union.

Narrator: Carter leveled sanctions against the Soviets, boycotted the Summer Olympics in Moscow, and withdrew his Salt II Treaty from the Senate floor.

Encouraged by Carter's new toughness Cold warriors who had organized into the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, arranged a meeting at the White House

JOSHUA MURAVCHIK, Coalition for a Democratic Majority: There was a quite high powered delegation of the leaders of CDM, who at that point included Jean Kirkpatrick, who was still a loyal Democrat.

People went into the meeting thinking he'd say there's a threat to world peace that requires an American response and I know you are the kind of people who will give me your support because you've been saying this about the Soviet Union all along. Instead Carter came in and sort of gave the group a lecture. He said that he understood this group was interested in human rights and that was great, and he supported human rights. We were all terribly disillusioned and I think that almost all of our group either publicly or in the privacy of the voting booth decided we were going to vote for Reagan.

News Voices

Narrator: As spring 1980 approached the hostages had grown into a national obsession.

Their memory kept alive by millions of yellow ribbons.

After 100 days the hostages are still in captivity and the nation shares their ordeal.

Narrator: No stone was left unturned trying to bring them home. While Secretary of State Cyrus Vance dealt with Iranian government officials, Hamilton Jordan met secretly with anyone, who held out hope

"Our lives became a seesaw of emotions as scheme after scheme fell apart," Rosalynn later recalled. "Every time we saw [the hostages] on television, I counted [them].

ROSALYNN CARTER: No one can know how much pressure there was on Jimmy to do something about that. And I would say, "Why don't you do something?" And he said, "What would you want me to do?" I said, "Mine the harbors." He said, "Okay, suppose I mine the harbors, and they decide to take one hostage out every day and kill him. What am I going to do then?"

ELIZABETH DREW: Fairly or not, it came to symbolize the question of whether Carter was a leader, whether he was competent, whether he was strong.

Narrator: By April pressure was growing intense and the situation increasingly hopeless. "We could no longer afford to depend on diplomacy," Carter was forced to conclude. "I knew from an intelligence report that there was little prospect of the hostages' release for the next five or six months . . . I decided to act."

It was called Desert I. It required six C-130 transport planes, a ninety-man rescue team, two C-141 Starlifters, eight helicopters, and nearly impossible logistics.

BETTY GLAD: It was a highly risky operation. The CIA even talked about the number of people, including the hostages, who might be killed. But it was doing something.

Narrator: South of Teheran, in the Iranian desert, the rescue mission turned into a disaster. Two helicopters failed, another crashed into a C130 in a sandstorm.

Eight men died in Desert 1. Three more were severely burned.

Carter: It was my decision to attempt the rescue operation. It was my decision to cancel it when problems developed. The responsibility is fully my own.

JODY POWELL: I sort of thought at the time, "Well, people will give the president credit for trying." But I also realized that now the chances of being able to get those people out anytime in the near future was very, very slim and that from a political standpoint that was going to be a heavy burden to bear.

Narrator: In August 1980, President Carter survived the challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy for the Democratic nomination. The campaign had been bitter and divisive, but in the end, Kennedy had seemed too liberal and too tainted by scandal.

STUART EIZENSTAT: The attack from the left was extremely debilitating and the fact that we had a divided party going into the general election in 1980 against Ronald Reagan was an additional albatross beyond the hostage crisis and beyond inflation.

Reagan: Jimmy Carter's administration tells us that the descendants of those who sacrificed to start again in this land of freedom may have to abandon the dream that drew their ancestors to a new life in a new land.

Narrator: Republican candidate Ronald Reagan launched his campaign on Labor Day with a broadside attack delivered before an audience of working class Americans.

Reagan : The Carter record is a litany of despair, of broken promises, of sacred trusts abandoned and forgotten.

ROGER WILKINS: Reagan was the very formidable fellow. The combination of his beliefs, which were not numerous, but they were clear, and his acting skills really made people sit up and say, "This is, this guy means and believes what he's saying."

Narrator: Carter trailed Reagan by more than twenty points. With the Soviets in Afghanistan, the hostages in Iran, and the economy in shambles, he was vulnerable.

BERT LANCE: We were still going through tough economic circumstances. People were hurting. Interest rates were higher, unemployment was higher, inflation was greater.

Ad: When you come right down to it, what kind of a person should occupy the Oval Office? Should it be a person who like Ronald Reagan has proposed. . .

Narrator: Unable to run on his record, Carter went on the attack portraying Reagan as trigger-happy cowboy with his finger on the nuclear button.

Ad: "Occupation forces" to Rhodesia, and a destroyer to Ecuador to deal with a fishing controversy?

PAT CADDELL: We didn't have any cards to play because there wasn't any cards to play. We were now trapped by events, trapped by a government that couldn't come up with any ideas, and, and basically we were frustrating the hell out of people. But, they still trusted Jimmy Carter not to blow the world up. And that was our only hope.

Narrator: On October 28, 100 million viewers, the largest audience ever to watch a presidential debate, tuned in. The candidates were running neck and neck.

Carter : . . . very high medical bill then the insurance would help pay for it. These are the kind of elements of a national health insurance important to the American people. Governor Reagan again typically is against such a proposal.

Moderator: Governor.

Reagan : There you go again. When I opposed Medicare. . .

PAT CADDELL: He had won it in the first half-hour, by not being crazy. What had happened was you could see the shift in the beginning of the debate, over 90 minutes was a sense of he's not dangerous. That's all he had to do.

Dan Rather: Today, as the vigil of the hostages lengthens to one whole year. . .

Narrator : The Monday before election day played like a nightmare for Jimmy Carter.

News Voices

JODY POWELL: A good portion of that weekend leading up to it and all day Monday, Americans were literally having their nose rubbed in this embarrassing, irritating, humiliating situation.

Narrator : Carter campaigned all day and into the night‹in Mississippi, Oregon, Washington. He arrived in Seattle at 3 a.m. --the last rally, the last speech.

JODY POWELL: I had stayed on the plane, to finish up something. Before I could get off the phone rang. And it was Hamilton Jordan and Pat Caddell back in Washington. They had seen the tracking polls from that day, and they said, "It's basically over."

Carter: The people must decide this election. For your sake and for the sake of your children. Vote. Vote, for yourselves. Tomorrow vote for yourselves, vote democratic, help us, god be with you.

JODY POWELL: I went to hear his speech, thinking that I was the only person there who know that basically the election was over. And that- we had that we had lost.

Narrator: It was a landslide. Carter won only six states. For the first time in twenty eight years the Democratic Party lost control of the Senate.

On the last day of his presidency Jimmy Carter stayed up through the night. A deal with Iran had been reached. The release of the hostages was imminent. A crew from ABC News stood by to record the historic moment.

WALTER MONDALE: He wanted to get these hostages home on his watch. And this was not about getting re-elected anymore. This was about getting this done because he felt so deeply about it. We were in the Oval Office around maybe two in the morning. And nothing happening. Dead silence.

But we got to the time where it was nine in the morning and we had to be at the inaugural. The new president was coming in at eleven. And finally we all started running off. And we still had one officer back there with a phone, the hotline, in case there was any news.

Reporter: Is there any word about the hostages‹have they taken off?

WALTER MONDALE: And he was in contact with Carter all the way up the inaugural route and on the platform. So if there was anything that was positive or negative he'd hear about it.

And of course the story was that Khomeini released them the minute after Reagan was president.

Narrator: January 20, 1981, three thousand people gathered at the old train depot in Plains to welcome the Carters home.

BETTY POPE, Friend: There was a sea of umbrellas, out there in the public, standing in the cold and the rain, waiting for him. And it was a bittersweet day.

CHIP CARTER, Son: I think they reacted just like anybody else would, that just been rejected by 200 million people. It was one of the toughest times they've ever been through, I think.

ROSALYNN CARTER: He really was better than I was when we came home because I was so depressed about it that he was always trying to prop me up.

Narrator : The Carters faced trying times. Not only had their dreams been shattered, but the business they had spent a lifetime to build was more than a million dollars in debt.

BETTY POPE: There were some hard days that followed. They were withdrawn. They just wanted to go home and rest and make things better. They needed a healing time.

Narrator: Carter was only fifty-six, was already labeled "a has been," "a shooting star with not even a tail left to fizzle."

HENDRIK HERTZBERG: The things that they had once loved about him, his piety and his simplicity and his-his kind of moral goodness, they now despised as weakness and-and moral superiority. They just couldn't stand him.

JAMES LANEY: It wasn't just that he-he was unpopular. People avoided him. This is hard to say and hard to believe today, people didn't want to associate with him.

Narrator: "It seemed astounding," Rosalynn observed, "that after years of Š important events and decisionsŠthe most important thing could be whether the brick walk we were building from our house to the street was crooked or straight. . . "

CHIP CARTER: Dad had a woodworking shop and spent quite a lot of hours out there, working with a piece of lumber. He can make a piece of lumber sing. And a lot of it's just because of the meticulous care that he puts into everything he's done.

DAN T. CARTER, Historian: If there was ever a individual who the-the maxim of the idle­ "an idle mind is the devil's workshop," Carter would perfectly exemplify that. He's one of these people who simply never rests, and never has, I think. So the question-question was not whether he was going to do something after he left the White House. The question was what was he going to do.

Narrator: The Carters settled in to write their memoirs, and to make plans to build a presidential library. But Carter had little enthusiasm for building what he called "a monument to myself."

ROSALYNN CARTER: One night I woke up and Jimmy was sitting straight up in the bed. This is after we'd been home about a year. And I said, "What's the matter?" I thought he was sick because he always sleeps all night, even in the White House. He can turn things off and go to sleep. And he said, "I know what we can do at the library. We can have a place to resolve conflicts." And so that was the germ of the idea for what became the Carter Center.

Narrator: Inspired by his success in the Camp David Accords, Carter envisioned a place where he could host world leaders and mediate civil wars and political disputes.

At a cost of 28 million dollars, the Carter Center would span 35 acres, include an arboretum, a lake, and room enough for a staff of more then a hundred.

JAMES LANEY: When he set up the Carter Center, he shared with me his vision and I thought, oh no that, that's so grandiose. Frankly, I was embarrassed for him. He was at the nadir of popularity.

ANDREW YOUNG, U.N. Ambassador: Jimmy Carter was told that it would be impossible for him to get into the Naval Academy. He was told that it would be impossible for him to get elected governor. And when he announced for the presidency, even the Atlanta Constitution had a headline saying, "Jimmy is running for what?" So all of his life, he had done the impossible. And this was just another challenge.

Narrator: Carter's political resurrection began unexpectedly with a quiet act. Just a few miles from Plains, building houses for the poor through an organization called Habitat for Humanity.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Carter became surprised at the success of Habitat. He loves to build. He's a carpenter; it's his hobby. So, it fit naturally to his own inclination. Then he started getting great press.

Narrator: In the Summer of 1984, when he and Rosalynn led a busload of Georgians to New York City to rebuild a tenement on the Lower East Side, it was front page news in The New York Times.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: It was in stark contrast to kind of the so called greed decade of the 80's to see somebody not looking to make big speaking fees, not looking to sit on corporate boards. It's just something about an ex-president being so humble, in blue jeans, with a hammer, sleeping in cots and building houses for the poor. It's an image seared on our imagination.

ANDREW YOUNG: When you're there as a private citizen, and when you're there because of your faith, there's something nice and fresh and humble about that. And it's a language people understand.

Narrator: Four years after his humiliating defeat, the image of Jimmy Carter the failed president, was giving way to Jimmy Carter, the committed Christian in the service of the poor.

Reagan: So it is when we dedicate this center Mr. President we dedicate an institution that testifies as does your life itself to the goodness of God and to the blessings he bestows upon those who do their best to walk with him.

Narrator: In 1986, at the inauguration of the Carter Center, President Reagan expressed the growing respect many now felt for the man they had once rejected.

Through the Carter Center, Jimmy Carter would launch his new career as an elder statesman, monitoring elections throughout the world.

Carter: I examined the documents myself in the presence of election officials. They were patently counterfeit. They had nothing to do with the...

Narrator: His prestige restored he returned to the role that had given meaning to his presidency: Peacemaker.

JAMES LANEY: Carter has a profound, almost innate commitment to peace. It's in his bones. He really believes Theodore Roosevelt's adage that one should walk softly and carry a big stick. But don't be afraid to walk into the lion's den. And he does that. He's done it repeatedly.

Narrator: In Haiti, Carter convinced military strongman Raoul Cedras to step down in favor of the democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Carter believes that there's goodness in all people. And that even the biggest sinner, today's brutal dictator can take Christ into their heart and be born again tomorrow. They can be saved.

CARTER: We are very glad to be back in Haiti. A country obviously dedicated to peace, human rights and democracy.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: So even Cedras who was considered a brutal thug by the US government, Carter felt that he could appeal to his sense of what is right and what is wrong. This caused Carter a lot of criticism, coddling dictators around the world.

Narrator: In May 2002, Jimmy Carter went to Cuba: the First American President to visit the island in over 40 years.

Carter: In Spanish

In an address broadcast throughout Cuba, he defied President George W. Bush, by calling for an end to the decades old U.S. trade Embargo. :

Carter: In Spanish

Carter: (answering question)

I don't know what's going to happen with . . .

But he also challenged Cuban President Fidel Castro to institute democratic reforms.

Carter: I think it would be very good if your officials would decide to publish the entire document and let there be a free and open debate in Cuba.

Narrator: In his travels throughout the world, Carter has championed the cause of the poor and disenfranchised

DAN CARTER: He speaks, often eloquently and angrily, about the growing gap between rich and poor, and black and white. This very cautious and conservative, fiscally responsible President ­ you hear him sometimes now and you think we've got the last socialist in America.

Narrator: With the Carter Center, the President and Mrs. Carter have created programs to fight disease -- river blindness, guinea worm -- and alleviate hunger.

CHIP CARTER: They have so much to give, and they feel like so many people depend on them. And they'll come in and see somebody that has nothing, and-and think, "Hey, I can change that life."

HENDRIK HERTZBERG: Being a good post-president doesn't retrospectively make you a better president. What a post-presidency can do though is to illuminate which aspects of a president's character were real and which were phony. All of his strengths‹perseverance, dedication, integrity, those have all turned out to be very, very real.

BERT LANCE: He never lied to the American people. He kept the peace. He brought the hostages home without loss of life. All the things he said he was going to do. It was a time when we needed that sort of person as president, that people could put some faith and trust in.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: What was Carter? He never had a kind of nutshell program. He had no interest in either the new deal tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, or the New Frontier tradition of John Kennedy, or the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson. He never crystallized a great agenda of what he wanted to do. He simply tackled issues as they confronted him one by one by one.

ROSALYNN CARTER: We have not had time to look back and regret things, although I still the­ the country would be better off if Jimmy had been President for another term. But then if he had been President for another term, we might not have had the Carter Center.

WALTER MONDALE: He's been at it full-time, around the clock, with that same dedication, that same laser-like concentration, until finally now the American people are seeing all of this happen, and people say. Hey, here's a really good man.

HENDRIK HERTZBERG: I think history is going to look at him in a kindlier light than his contemporaries did. His values, his devotion to peace and human rights, keep on resonating in a way that his failures and weaknesses don't.