00:00A peanut farmer from Georgia, Jimmy Carter was an unlikely U.S. president.
00:05Jimmy who?
00:06Jimmy Carter.
00:07Jimmy who?
00:08I don't know who he is.
00:10He took office in 1977.
00:12In the aftermath of Watergate and the Nixon resignation, America was a scandal-weary country.
00:17I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear...
00:19A deeply religious man, Jimmy Carter promised a new type of politics
00:22and reached out to other nations to help solve the world's problems.
00:25We need your experience. We need your wisdom.
00:28We need your active participation in a joint effort
00:31to move the reality of the world closer to the ideals of human freedom and dignity.
00:37But he was soon confronted with problems much closer to home.
00:40Amid an energy crisis and rising oil prices,
00:43the U.S. economy took a succession of hits, leading to long lines at petrol stations.
00:47On foreign policy, though, there was an unexpected success.
00:51The Camp David Accords that saw a breakthrough peace deal between Egypt and Israel.
00:55It remains perhaps America's biggest diplomatic achievement in the Middle East.
00:59And it provides that Israel may live in peace within secure and recognized borders.
01:05However, it was foreign affairs that would seal his fate as a one-term president.
01:09The Iranian revolution brought a hardline clerical anti-U.S. regime to power.
01:14In November 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was stormed,
01:17and 66 U.S. diplomats were taken hostage.
01:20To compound Jimmy Carter's humiliation,
01:22a rescue mission which he ordered ended in disaster
01:25and a crash in the Iranian desert that left U.S. commandos dead.
01:29The landslide election victory of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was no great surprise.
01:33But, leaving office at the age of 56, Jimmy Carter's best years were still ahead of him.
01:38His legacy as a social activist gave him deep respect.
01:42He was in his late 70s when he teamed up with Nelson Mandela and Bill Gates
01:45in the battle against Africa's rampant AIDS epidemic.
01:49In 2002, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning for the underprivileged.
01:53I have been blessed by graduating from the White House at an early age
01:59enough so that I could use the prestige and the fame and knowledge and experience
02:08from being president of the greatest nation in the world
02:12to have access to leaders and to understand the problems that Carter Center might address.
02:18But, he said, his humanitarian work was not about bolstering his image.
02:21If I was primarily interested in legacy,
02:24why would I be in the most remote villages in the world
02:28where there are not any news reporters, no television cameras, no photographers?
02:33I don't really feel that my legacy needs polishing.
02:38Faith was at the heart of Jimmy Carter's identity.
02:41He was the little boy from Georgia who reached the White House
02:44and, in his final greatest act, a humanitarian who rebuilt his reputation across the world.
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