Presidency of Jimmy Carter taken on the eve of the election showed a close race, Reagan won a decisive victory. In polls of historians and political scientists, Carter is usually ranked as a below-average president. Carter was elected as the Governor of Georgia in 1970, and during his four years in office he earned a reputation as a progressive, racially moderate Southern governor. Observing George McGovern's success in the 1972 Democratic primaries, Carter came to believe that he could win the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination by running as an outsider unconnected to establishment politicians in Washington, D.C. Despite scant backing from party leaders, McGovern
USS Jimmy Carter and the only submarine to be named for a living former president. The contract to build "Jimmy Carter" was awarded to the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation in Groton, Connecticut, on 29 June 1996, and her keel was laid on 5 December 1998. Original schedules called for "Jimmy Carter" to be commissioned in late 2001 or early 2002, but on 10 December 1999, Electric Boat was awarded a US $887 million extension to the "Jimmy Carter" contract to modify the boat for testing of new submarine systems and highly classified missions previously carried out by . During modification,