Democrat · 1977–1981
Jimmy Carter
Human-rights foreign policy, deregulation, inflation, and the Camp David accords.
Jimmy Carter was president 1977–1981. The party color on the chart is Democrat. Early presidents are not forced into today’s party names. The placement note is: Human-rights foreign policy, deregulation, inflation, and the Camp David accords.
The dot is economics -2 and authority -8. That is near the middle on economics. The other axis sits near the middle. Color and place are allowed to disagree. Theodore Roosevelt sits left of Grover Cleveland on economics.
What was said, and what the administration did, are filed separately. Said: A government as good as its people. Human rights, and an energy policy equal to the crisis. Done: Camp David and deregulation. Inflation and the hostages defined the follow-through the public remembered. Where those two sentences pull apart, the dot follows the governing record, not the slogan.
The nearest other presidents on these two numbers are Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809, +8 / -8) and John Quincy Adams (1825–1829, +2 / +6). A small distance can join people who would have disliked each other. The chart is a compression, not a claim that they were alike.
Presidents are not placed with the Voteview roll-call score used for the current Congress. Two axes cannot carry a war, a court, a tariff, and a civil-rights record as separate facts.