Man of the Year: I'm Jimmy Carter, and...

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PEOPLE. Vice President-elect Walter Mondale admires —and wishes he could emulate—Carter's ability to express warm affection. Carter and his wife hold hands as naturally in public as though they were on a high school date. The Georgian has extraordinary empathy with children. During the campaign, he took time out to talk to grade school kids—about civics, peanut butter, civil liberties—and never talked down to them. Once Carter asked a correspondent about his family. The reporter mentioned that one of his children was suffering from an incurable disease—and turned to see tears running down Carter's cheeks.

Yet he can be cool, even with the people who are closest to him. "Jimmy's a hard person to get to know," admits Top Aide Hamilton Jordan. Says another: "His insides are made of twisted steel cable." He is notorious for not thanking staffers for their 18-hour days, and a harsh streak occasionally surfaces. When Hubert Humphrey was thinking of jumping into the primaries, Carter said that the Senator, then 64, was too old to be President, and, besides, he was a "loser." Later Carter apologized for that tasteless crack.

HIS DRIVE FOR POWER. Carters charmingly modest demeanor contrasts sharply with a lifetime of superachieving and his single-minded drive to reach the presidency. Even Congressman Andrew Young, a friend and Carter's chosen Ambassador to the U.N., has been put off at times by the cold way his fellow Georgian stalked power.

Carter's determination not only to better but to perfect himself was instilled by his taskmaster father, known as Mr. Earl, who put him in the fields at 4 a.m., and whipped him on six occasions with such thoroughness that Carter vividly recalls every one. Says he: "My father was very strict with me. But I loved him very much."

While still a boy, Carter began planning to escape Plains by going to Annapolis—one place where a farm lad with little cash could get a free education. Afraid that flat feet might rule him out, he used to stand on Coke bottles and roll back and forth to strengthen his arches. His mother—the formidable Miss Lillian—opened his mind to the world of books and ideas, and a schoolteacher named Julia Coleman saw the promise in the youngster and had him struggling gamely through War and Peace at the age of twelve.

At Annapolis, Plebe Carter was resolute enough not to sing Marching Through Georgia as part of the hazing process, no matter how often or hard his rear end was pummeled. Trying to reassure one campaign audience that he did not always want to be President, Carter said, "When I was at Annapolis, the only thing I wanted to be was Chief of Naval Operations."

As a young officer, he would not let his seasickness prevent him from standing watch: he simply carried along his vomit bucket to the bridge of the submarine. He fell under the spell of Admiral (then Captain) Hyman Rickover, and that celebrated authoritarian became the second most important male influence in his life. It was Rickover who provided the model of the perfectionist leader, one who seldom handed out compliments.

Carter's tenacity is extraordinary. Apparently defeated in his first try for the state senate in 1962, he fought to prove ballot stuffing by the boss of Quitman County, Joe Hurst. Governor-elect Carl