The Oratory of Jimmy Carter

Abstract

Jimmy Carter, former peanut farmer and Georgia governor, triumphed in the 1976 presidential election, the first since the country’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War and the damaging Watergate scandal. Consequently, public disillusionment and distrust in government abounded. In Carter, many Americans thought they had turned not to an all-American hero bedecked with medals and honours, but a man from the country. He seemed relaxed, informal, and in campaign ads he dressed in a checked shirt and jeans while he strolled through the fields of his farm. His soft Georgia drawl fitted with his image of being a man of the people; a ‘regular guy’. Gaddis Smith (1986: 242) described Carter as ‘like a surfer who is in precisely the right position to catch the one wave of the day that will carry him all the way’.