1984 Democratic Party presidential primaries 1924) that the Democratic Party nominated a private citizen for President (i.e., not serving in an official government role at the time of the nomination and election). Mondale was the last private citizen to be nominated for President by the Democratic Party until former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. Except former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia in 1976, all the other four of the private-citizen Democratic nominees mentioned (Davis, Stevenson, Carter, Mondale and Clinton) lost their general elections. (Republican private-citizen nominees include former Vice President Richard Nixon in 1968, former Governor Ronald Reagan of California in 1980, former
Presidency of Jimmy Carter as a below-average president. A 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Carter as the 26th best president. A 2017 C-Span poll of historians also ranked Carter as the 26th best president. Some critics have compared Carter to Herbert Hoover, who was similarly a "hardworking but uninspiring technocrat." Robert A. Strong writes: Jimmy Carter is much more highly regarded today than when he lost his bid for reelection in 1980. He has produced an exemplary post-presidency, and today there is an increased appreciation for the enormity of the task he took on in