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
Jimmy Carter and a distant cousin to the Carter family of musicians. Carter and Rosalynn Smith were married in July 1946. They have three sons, one daughter, eight grandsons, three granddaughters, and two great-grandsons. Mary Prince (an African American woman wrongly convicted of murder, and later pardoned) was their daughter Amy's nanny for most of the period from 1971 until Jimmy Carter's presidency ended. Carter had asked to be designated as her parole officer, thus helping to enable her to work in the White House. The Carters celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in July 2016, making them the second-longest wed presidential couple