These days, it's common to see candidates for office bill themselves as a "political outsider." And those candidates all have something to owe former President Carter.
Carter wasn't the first to boast outsider credentials, but he was almost completely unknown when he ran for president in 1976, and he made that a central part of his campaign pitch. In the aftermath of Watergate and the messy end of the Vietnam War, voters had lost trust in Washington, and that made them more receptive to a little-known peanut farmer from Georgia.
But there's another reason Carter was able to succeed as a political outsider: In the early 1970s, changes to the presidential nominating process gave voters more power than party officials.
Carter recognized that, and far outworked his rivals in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire — visiting both over and over, knocking doors himself. He's largely credited with putting the Iowa caucuses on the map.
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