Jimmy Carter of his home in Plains, Georgia. Carter noted in 2006 that a funeral in Washington, D.C., with visitation at the Carter Center was planned as well. In the wake of Nixon's Watergate scandal, exit polls from the 1976 presidential election suggested that many still held Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon against him. By comparison, Carter was viewed as a sincere, honest, and well-meaning Southerner. Carter began his term with a 66 percent approval rating, which had dropped to 34 percent approval by the time he left office, with 55 percent disapproving. In the 1980 campaign, former California Governor Ronald Reagan
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,