Carter's logical mind and thirst for information led him deeper into the workings of government than virtually any other modern President.
"No detail was too small for him not to be interested in it," said Dr. Stanley Godbold, a Mississippi State history professor who is writing a biography of Carter.
In perusing the handwriting file, Godbold found notes from Carter complaining that the White House grounds weren't neat enough. He noticed that Carter corrected the grammar in some of his staff's memos.
But he also spotted a note from Carter asking a staffer simply: "What can we do about world hunger?" He said the staffer wrote a detailed response and, from then on, the Administration consistently included world hunger issues in its foreign policy agenda.
Carl Biven, an economics professor at Georgia Tech, attributes Carter's preoccupation with details to his training as an engineer. Carter studied at Tech for a year in the 1940s before getting his bachelor's degree from the U.S. Naval Academy.
"What is wrong with a President being involved in detail? Supposedly, it takes his mind away from the broad conceptualizing. I'm not sure that was true with Carter," said Biven.
