Jimmy Carter came to office after the presidential election of 1976, which followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Carter’s campaign had him depicted as a Washington ‘outsider’ and a reformer, which connected to the American public following the incidents of the Nixon administration. Carter was the first presidential candidate elected directly from the Deep South since 1948.
On President Carter’s first full day in office, he fulfilled his most controversial campaign promise. Carter granted a full presidential pardon to all Vietnam-era draft resisters. The director of the Veterans of Foreign