Jimmy Carter: I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you. So I can't stand here tonight and say it doesn't hurt. About an hour ago I called Governor Reagan in California and I congratulated him for a fine victory. I look forward to working closely with him...

Dan Carter, Historian: All his life he believed if you worked hard enough at it, understood the issues, mastered information then you would come out first. I said to him, "It must have been hard to turn over the keys to Ronald Reagan." And he said, "You don't know how hard it was."

Narrator: On January 20, 1981, after one of the most humiliating defeats in American political history, President Jimmy Carter returned home to Plains, Georgia to what he called, "an altogether new, unwanted and potentially empty life."

Rosalynn Carter: He really was better than I was when we came home, because I um, was so depressed about it that he was always trying to prop me up, [laughs].

Narrator: Four years before he had stunned the nation.

Pat Caddell, Pollster: Going from total anonymity, to being president of the United States in less than twelve months, is unprecedented in American history. If it weren't for the country looking for something in '76, Carter could never have gotten elected.

Douglas Brinkley, Historian: He offered a biography of what we wanted to hear; a farmer, Main Street values, Plains -- and he carried that message through, it was the right message at the right time.

Carter (archival): Our commitment to human rights must be absolute...

Narrator: He had promised a new beginning: to heal the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam; a government "as good and decent and compassionate as the American people." But events would overwhelm him: an energy crisis, inflation, an Islamic revolution and 53 Americans held hostage 444 days. Carter came to be regarded as a good and decent man who was in over his head.

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.

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

Carter (archival): In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families...

Narrator: "Carter was one of the more exasperating men ever to claim the White House," one journalist said. "His tenacity, so admirable, could shift to stubbornness; his religious faith to self-righteousness. His brilliant mind could be bound up by intricate details."

Walter Mondale, Vice President: Many times 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 didn't want to think that way and he didn't want his staff to think that way. He wanted to know what's right.

Doug Brinkley: This is one of the most highly ambitious people you will ever meet. I mean you don't make it from Plains, Georgia, to the White House just on charm. But what makes him complex is he's got that kind of hubris and arrogance and also this Christian humbleness. That's the battle he's constantly finding himself in.