ABSTRACT
Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential election on December 12, 1974, and began his full-time campaign. Jimmy Carter also proposed budget reform within the state government through what was referred to as his zero-based budgeting plan. This plan redesigned the method by which budget proposals were structured. The themes Jimmy Carter used in his successful gubernatorial campaign in Georgia in 1970 would find strikingly strong resonance in his 1975–1976 campaign for the presidency. Jimmy Carter recognized correctly that the president is the symbolic head of American government. According to the cited presidential scholar James David Barber, the presidency is "the focus for the most intense and persistent emotions in the American polity." Jimmy Carter was a detail-oriented person who prided himself on his ability to master the intricacies of public policy.
