A Conversation with Jimmy Carter

good afternoon I'm Tom Putnam director of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and on behalf of Tomic knot executive director of the Kennedy Library Foundation and all of my library and foundation colleagues I thank you for coming let me begin by acknowledging the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library forms including lead sponsor Bank of America Boston capital the Boston foundation the Lowell Institute Raytheon and our media partners the Boston Globe NECN and WBUR I also want to thank our moderator award-winning journalist ray Suarez senior correspondent for the NewsHour on PBS an author of several books including most recently the holy vote the politics of faith in America sign copies of President Carter's new book are on sale in our bookstore and we will take written questions from the audience so please submit them to our staff during the forum this library will always have a special connection with President Jimmy Carter as it was during his presidency in October 1979 that the library was dedicated let's watch an excerpt from his speech on that historic occasion President Kennedy took office understanding that the texture of social and economic life of our nation and our people was changing and that our nation and our people would have to change with it changes the law of life he once said and those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future he had a vision of how America could meet and master the forces of change that he saw around him President Kennedy entered the White House convinced that racial and religious discrimination was morally indefensible later that conviction became a passion for him a passion that his brother Robert shared and his son has so well said carried forward as a southerner as a Georgian I saw at firsthand how the moral leadership of the Kennedy administration helped to undo the wrongs that grew out of our nation's history today the problem of human rights in the United States is shifting from inequality of legal rights to any quality of opportunity but the question of legal rights is not yet settled we're all Americans we're all children of the same God racial violence and racial hatred can have no place among us in the south or in the north [Applause] any spare moments I've had over the last couple of weeks have been spent reading President Carter's White House diary which is filled with insights into his character and his presidency including more than a few surprises we all recall the breath of fresh air the Carters brought to our nation's capitol at a pivotal moment in our history symbolized by their decision to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue as part of the inaugural parade preceded only by Thomas Jefferson in doing so who knew the suggestion came from Senator William Proxmire not for the symbolism that so perfectly captured the country's imagination and which President Carter anticipated but because Senator Proxmire hoped that by walking the president would send a message to the nation about the importance of physical fitness later that night president and mrs. Carter enjoyed their first meal in the White House with the diary notation explaining that before moving to Washington mrs. Carter spoke with a White House chef to ask if they could prepare the kind of meals their family had enjoyed in the south the cook replied yes ma'am we've been fixing that kind of food for the servants for a long time well not exactly what the kitchen staff meant through his life work both in and out of the White House Jimmy Carter has proven himself to be one of our country's most dedicated and tireless public servants who during his years in our nation's highest office and the words of Vice President Walter Mondale obeyed the law told the truth and kept the peace Lyndon Johnson famously described his presidential library is telling the story of our time with a bark off showing all the facts not just the joys and triumphs but the sorrow and failures too and the same could be said about President Carter's White House diary which recounts as many legislative and diplomatic successes including the Panama Canal treaty and the Camp David Accords as well as his bumpy relationship with the press travails of the 1980 campaign and the long ordeal of the Iranian hostage crisis in fact it is part of the same October 20th 1979 diary entry in which he discusses his appearance at the dedication of this library that President Carter describes the decision to allow the Shah of Iran to receive medical treatment in the United States one of the many factors that will later precipitate the hostage crisis through it all one is struck by President Carter's honesty with himself and with others his love of his family and country his sense of decency and firmly held beliefs I was reminded of a story told by mrs. Carter who spoke from this stage earlier this year she describes feeling calm in the morning of her husband's inaugural knowing that the man who was about to take the presidential oath that afternoon was the very same person who the day before had helped her mop up water in the garage of their home in Georgia after a water pipe burst from the cold though he faced extraordinary responsibilities and lived a life we could have never ever dreamed of she states we are first and always Rosalyn and Jimmy Carter from Plains Georgia and reading his diary I was also struck by this remarkable combination a man who one day could be on his hands and knees to clear his garage floor of water would the next be standing tall before the world delivering a clarion call on behalf of energy independence nuclear non-proliferation and human rights why should we be surprised then by his remarkable post presidency the most successful in our nation's history as he one day constructs Habitat for Humanity homes with his Georgian neighbors while interacting with world leaders the next earning the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts through the Carter Center to wage peace fight disease and build democracy throughout the globe Rosalyn and I have deep roots in Plains he writes in the final sentences of this new book but we never forget our profound connection to the millions of others with whom we share this earth and our hearts we have made a promise to do all we can to help those who have been less fortunate and in this way like so many other private citizens we are striving to do our part to help the United States fulfill its destiny as a democracy worthy of its founders mr. president you honor us here today with your presence and on behalf of so many of our fellow citizens we thank you and mrs. Carter for your service to our country and for your tireless humanitarian efforts which evoke the best of the American spirit ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming ray Suarez and the 39th President of the United States Jimmy Carter well sir it's good to see you again most nice preview - right thank you let's talk about this remarkable and heavy when you were writing it yes jotting down notes at the end of a long day dictating portions of it into a tape recorder at that moment were you thinking someday somebody will read this no I didn't I thought it was just a private diary that I would retain for my family perhaps and share it with Rosalind but of seven or eight times a day I had a small tape recorder when somebody left my office or when I made a decision that I knew would not be reported through the new public repair press every week they give everything that their presence is in public but so I didn't include those things but if I didn't like somebody if I did like somebody if I made a difficult decision of course a doubtful about the future I just dictated my own personal thoughts into that tape recorder and when I filled up a tape of a thriller in out basket and put a new one in and my secretary of shooting plow when she had time would type those up I never read one of them until I got home and then I found that I had five thousand pages of diary notes so you forgot that's been heavy you want to see the original is this long and it's available by the way in the library later on and so this is a summary but not a change sentence I didn't change anything in it even if I didn't approve of what I wrote thirty years ago I didn't change it so it's a very frank picture of what a present feels in the Oval Office making it difficult and sometimes delightful decisions that relate to America some of the Frank as you say revelations remembrances of a day I probably would have been seen as sour grapes or a little rough or not really very presidential if you would publish this in 1984 or 1985 or 1986 does time take a little of the sting out of some of these reminiscences I think so I think it does father who might have forgotten a lot and need to be reminded of some interesting events whether they like it or not but it also makes it possible for me to comment on people many of whom are not still living with me and obviously folks can read this diary and my comments up to date on what I said back in those days and kind of get a perspective on history that you wouldn't get otherwise I don't think anybody else has ever done this of course President Johnson and Lyndon Lyndon Johnson and Nixon had a tape-recording some secrets I'm not so secret but uh but they they were according what they said to other people this is my own inner thoughts so I think it gives the most kind of a bird's-eye view of what the presidency is and what it means to an individual person who serves that than anything has ever been written the remarkable thing about this time is that in some ways World War two is very much with us in the 70s we're living in the long shadow of World War two they're still in East and West Germany there's still a very very hot cold war the embers are barely cool on Watergate at this time it is a terrible time I mean as I read this again I thought what a terrible time to be president did you realize this when you were writing well I didn't realize it but I was running much but I realized when I got there obviously and you're right the world war was still with me like it was with John Kennedy who came almost a generation ahead of me I was a Navy man like he was I served in the Navy twelve years in fact I served longer in the Navy to anyone except Dwight Eisenhower since the Civil War in the military so at a military background and I could see a lot from that perspective but it's hard for people in the modern day now particularly young folks to realize that we were still involved deeply in a cold war and every decision that I made no matter whatever decision the Congress made every news story from it from a newspaper or television program was shaped substantially by our competition with the Soviet Union who was then the duals superpower on earth now be the only one but then it was an equal competition they had the same nuclear capability that we did they had the same economic influence that we did and in every country in Africa or Latin America Asia we were constantly competing with the Soviet Union for access there who would be our trade partner who would vote with us in the United Nations so it was a competition everywhere and so almost every decision I made was shaped by that competition with the Soviet Union and the constant threat at that time above my head like it was John Kennedy was let's avoid at nuclear exchange because I knew that I might get a notice someday that the Soviet Union has launched intercontinental missiles toward the United States from the time of launch in Siberia until they landed in Washington New York was 26 minutes and I would have had to decide during that Twitter six minutes how and when to respond so that was a constant threat for me that doesn't exist anymore thank goodness the personalities in this book the countries of great interest to the United States during this period could fill up tomorrow morning that's a newspaper when the Soviets invade Afghanistan during your term the unwinding of that story is going on right at this moment exactly and the Middle East is still pertinent and and as you said that whole region of the world our competition with China is still there I was the first one after 35 years to normalize diplomatic relations with China and at that time China was a backward country that had zero economic growth and freedom no free enterprise system not really a competitor of ours and those kind of things but in the news today so I think a lot of the issues that we face then are still there what to do about Israel and the Palestinians that's and then although by the emerging countries in in Africa when I was president one of the major threats was from the perpetuation of apartheid and that's where I put my human rights program into the most vivid confrontation with those who insisted on racial discrimination of white supremacy in both Rhodesia then and then also in South Africa so those kind of things are still going on in the world you saved Chrysler it needed saving again as it happened I mean that the emanations from this time played out over the next several decades and you were out of office to see most of it could you even pick up a newspaper in the 1990s and say oh this again here we go again it must have been to have that vantage point and shake your head some days we're still dealing with this exactly and of course the energy crisis then was my preeminent domestic issue and when I came into office we were importing eight point six million barrels of oil per day and I set about to cut that in half and I did in five years he was down to four point three million barrels per day and now it's back up to about ten million barrels per day that we import from foreign countries so the energy crisis is still right in front of us as a major issue and not only build that Chrysler bill that one other thing that was New York City and because headlines there was was Gerald Ford - New York City drop dead I carried New York and that's probably what put me in the White House was Billy was saving New York City but anyway I like that retrospective look in some areas but sometimes it's still a little bit painful I think the most painful for me was to know that I negotiated assiduously between Israel and Egypt to give full rights to the Palestinians and a peace between Israel and Egypt because they had four wars in 25 years and when I left office I thought everything was on track for a permanent peace in the Middle East and then it was basically abandoned by my successors and now we're back looking at Mideast as another threat well let's talk about the Camp David Accords the six-day war was barely a decade in the world's rearview mirror when the Camp David Accords were negotiated what was said in those negotiations about the future of Gaza and the West Bank well cidade when he came through to Camp David and we spent 13 days there with him in Bagan the only thing Sadat Warner was that Israel had to leave Egyptian territory which was a Sinai desert and the other thing was that the pen of Citians had to be given their full rights and those were the only two guidelines I had from Sadat and he was the most forthcoming member of the Egyptian delegation that on the other hand Menachem Begin was at least forthcoming Israeli in their 50 person delegation all of his cabinet members were ahead of him said let's go ahead and do it and it was the last day at Camp David that we finally got an agreement between Bagan and Sadat but the Israelis agreed at that time to withdraw their military and political forces from entire West Bank to stop building settlements and to let the Palestinians have what Bagan called full autonomy to run their own affairs basically well that's what existed when I left office but that hasn't happened as you know but the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt became six months after that in April of 79 not a word has ever been violated in 37 years so Israel and Egypt are still at peace and although engines now has a new government I don't believe that any violation will be and played by the new Egyptian leaders to throw away any of that peace agreement peace treaty that has kept them at peace now for 37 years but during that intervening 30 plus years it's sometimes been a pretty chilly piece is there a danger to that bilateral relation from the overthrow and departure of Hosni Mubarak no Mubarak was a personal ally of Israel in for instance keeping the Gaza one and a half million people in a complete prison he wouldn't let them go out into the Sun high desert and have communication with the outside world of course they can't go in northward into the West Bank and Israel either but I think that's one thing that will be changed under the new Egyptian leadership they've already committed themselves to open it up or Gaza and let the Gaza people have some degree of freedom that will change but the treaty between Israel and Egypt not to go to war although it's a cult it's a cold peace yes but that that warm peace on the last two or three years with the assassination of Sudan and in with the death of Menachem Vega and others there's been very little travel of Egyptians in to say Jerusalem an ambassador's there their embassies there and there's still a good many Israelis to go to Egypt for as tourists but not from Egypt into Israel and it's primarily because the Egyptian people disagree strongly with what Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians and what Mubarak has supported that that they interpret to be persecution of the Palestinians so Mubarak has been kind of a an anachronism or anomaly is a better word compared to the other Egyptian people and I think the new leaders of Egypt will now mirror very accurately that the Egyptians want to be friendly with the Palestinian people the West Bank has been in constant motion since the 1970s and at various points things have happened where people have said ah this helps clear the whether it's Jordan giving up its claims to what it was Jordanian territory before the 1967 war whether it's the PLO saying yes yes we recognize that Israel is an established fact and we know that the country is not going anywhere and yet there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens living in the West Bank harder and harder and more and more extensive infrastructure built out from Israel across the old sixty-seven border is unraveling that world that's grown up there since 1967 getting harder and harder by the day from your view I would say it was getting harder and harder every day until the so-called Arab Spring began but in my opinion that is the first step to it unraveling the trend that you just described is getting harder and harder I think there's much more likelihood now than there was say six or eight months ago that will see a peace agreement in the Middle East with Israel withdrawing basically from the West Bank they're now about five hundred thousand Israelis in Palestine if you include the pre sixty-seven line and the basic proposal endorsed by all 23 Arab countries is let's have peace that Israel withdraw to the 67 borders but let those borders be modified by exchange of territory which would leave about half of the Israeli settlers in what was previously Palestine near Jerusalem and then swap an equivalent amount of land to the Palestinians so that is a that is a deforming law that is also approved officially by the United States government and by the international quartet which is US government and the United Nations and European Union and Russia they all approve that as well so the Arab countries and the United States and the international community basically approves that formula but now the next step comes how do you induce Israeli withdrawal from their confiscation of the occupation of their settling of the West Bank in its almost in its entirety and I think that will have to come if Israel's going to have peace which has been my prayer for the last 30 years for Israel to have peace which means that you have to have peace for their neighbors as well as the so-called Arab Spring has continued we've seen that there's more than one way that this could go Tunisia was over fairly quickly yes the leader leaving the country to a well-funded exile but then in Yemen there's been resistance from the klique at the top in Libya there's been out announced civil war in Syria there's been brutal repression of public demonstrations and a secret police that's so dug into the population that you're not even sure you can express your opinion to your neighbor could this be snuffed out in the next several months no you certainly can't snuff out what's already happened in Tunisia or each issue the Carter Center will probably be monitoring both of those elections that we that's one of our practices is to monitor troubled elections and we've been invited into both of those there will be a 84th and 85th election by the way that we've monitored so I think that that's pretty well underway we don't know what's going to happen in the other countries yet is still doubtful about whether Bashar Assad will be successful in stamping out or controlling the uprising in Syria I think Yemen is more likely to see their leader go Bahrain has been stabilized by the influx of Saudi Arabian troops and support I think Bahrain is likely to be stable Saudi Arabia has not been threatened yet so I think that the major countries still are as I've just described them Libya is going to be a dicey thing I think Libya might wind up may be divided unless NATO troops of fully in airports are fully successful so what what has happened in the ancillary parts of the midis is very important I've already described what I think will happen to the Palestinian issue in the future they now will have much more support from Egypt than they have had in the past and as a result of the so-called Arab Spring and Lebanon is still a divided country I don't know we monitored the election in Lebanon April before last it was a it was an honest and fair election it was quite safe but here's what Hezbollah is still playing a major role as part of the government in Lebanon I think one of the good things has happened in the last few days in which the Carter Center was deeply involved has been the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and I never have seen a way for Israel to negotiate a peace agreement with half the Palestinians and now getting them together will be that they'll have a better chance to have successful negotiations and Hamas is willing to step back and that PLO in which they don't have a membership to do all the negotiations with Israel under Mohammed Mahmoud Abbas in my own advice if he reaches any kind of peace agreement with Israel Hamas has placed to me and publicly that they will accept the agreement provided the Palestinians approve it in a referendum so I think there are some chances now to see peace in the Mideast that I thought was pretty well dolmen and very discouraging last year hasn't the Hamas PLO Concordat created a difficult situation for the United States which is declared Hamas a terrorist organization well yes because there are lot of ways to look at this as you probably know Nelson Mandela was a terrorist in our country until last year because he was you part of the ANC in the past as a matter of fact we've monitored the election all three elections in Palestine the one of the most interesting one was in January 2006 when the United States and Israel supported Hamas having candidates running for office as you may remember and all the Hamas candidates pledged non-violence attitude if they govern the government the future to surprise of most people Hamas won the election and after they won the election then Israel and the United States declare that they were terrorists and couldn't take office and not only were they forbidden from taking office but all the Hamas candidates there were engineers and college professors and farmers and so forth who were elected and lived in a West Bank were put in prison by Israel for three years or more and now most of them are released someone was still in prison but so Hamas was basically a terrorist declared a terrorist because of some bad things they've done is no doubt about that but also because they won the election so I think now that Hamas in order to be accepted will have to basically agree first of all to acknowledge Israel's right to exist certainly within the 67 borders secondly to pledge ceasefire and they call it a hudner which might set they have said it can last 40 years no violence in Gaza and in the West Bank and third to accept as many of the previous agreements as Israel will do so those three things are basically what I believe can happen under the best circumstances and might very well happen in the future you've been pretty outspoken about the trajectory of that part of the world and how it looks to you and what the possibilities for peace are have you been surprised from time to time about the hurt feelings the backlash the criticism that's been directed at you for what you've had to say about the Middle East yes at some degree I've written two books about that recently one was Palestine peace not apartheid and the other one was we can have peace in the Holy Land and both of those describe my views about it which I think are acceptable to most Americans I think that most Americans who happen to be Jewish Americans and in the world I think it's a balance of approach but as you know it's not a very popular thing and I want you to say anything criticizes the policies of the incumbent government of Israel the Carter Center monitors this very closely we have full-time office in Jerusalem we have a full-time office in Ramallah in the West Bank we have a full-time office at Gaza as well so we have ability which very few Western organizations have constantly to understand what's going on within those three entities of the future West Bank and of course part of the Hamas delegation in Syria so we have been going to Syria in the past as well so that's one of the things that we do recently I've been in the Mideast our people have been that now this got back day before yesterday for three weeks helping with the Palestinian unity agreement rose and I just got back from Cuba I just got back from North Korea so when there's a some problems in the world sometimes we feel free to go there and try to work out peace and understanding in this book it it seems like you hardly sit still for for more than a few minutes at a time when the man in his 80s looks at this book and confronts the man in his 50s there we down where well nicely fired yeah well I think so and one of the things that uh that I emphasized I think accurately is that I haven't changed you know I think I'm still basically the same person with the same commitments that I made in my inaugural speech and when I got the Democratic nomination in 1980 and so forth I don't think I've changed as a person we still promote peace and human rights around the world and sometimes we do some things that are not very popular but I've made a policy in the last 30 years at the left the White House I don't ever go to a foreign place that's without notifying in advance the White House and the State Department and if the president ever decides he'd rather might not go there if he says don't go I don't go and that's happened a number times for different reasons and I always do a trip report meticulously on the way home and the day after I get back home I sent a trip report and it's entirely to the White House the State Department and sometimes to the security to the Secretary General United Nations just explained what the quarter center is doing and so we try not to ever you know get crossed up with the US government but but see the US government won't they won't talk to Hamas they won't talk to Cubans they won't talk to the North Koreans they won't talk to the to the number one party in Nepal for as the Santa Carter Center talks to them and then we relate what they say to the White House and State Department and sometimes the White House of State the problem a very bad to get the report I can't say harder for sure well you say is still the same man and I'm real willing to take that at face value are there were there passages that when you look back at it you thought oh I know better than that today better in 2010 when this was being edited then I understood this in 1978 when I wrote it well there are good many like that when people ask me what would I change most if I had one change to make when I was in the White House I always say I would send one more helicopter to rescue their hostages currently somebody heard you say that I think so yeah so that happened as you know just a wicked two ago when the first helicopter crashed and then they had to stand by it they could go in well we knew we had to have six helicopters and we expanded that to eight but three helicopters fail that we had left with five and we couldn't rescue all of our hostages and bring back to people who were trying to rescue them so we had to cancel that was a very sad occasion for me of course and not getting hostages out and so that's one of the things that I would certainly have changed if I had it if I do now what I know then I would have said one boy helicopter nobody knows what would happen I think I would have started the Carter Center four years later but nobody did so but I think the thing that I've learned most in the last thirty years is to understand the poverty-stricken and suffering and forgotten and neglected poor people on earth I had a hazy view of that when I was in the White House we tried to have foreign aid as much as we could using the argument that we were competing with the Soviet Union you know in Burkina Faso and in Mali and so forth if we don't go there and help them that the Soviet Union's are going to go there and and be their friends instead of us so we had a very strong foreign aid program but now Rosen I have programs in 73 countries in the world 35 of them are in Africa and we go to Africa often and we've gotten to know those people and help them primarily with tropical diseases what the World Health Organization calls neglected tropical disease they're not even known anymore in this country dracunculus is schistosomiasis trachoma a lymphatic filariasis on qussuk Isis those are diseases but they will flick hundreds of millions of Africans and so we work with pharmaceutical companies who give us free medicine and we deal with the diseases in that way but in the process we've gotten to know those people very well and I have learned well that they're just as intelligent as I am and just as hard-working as I am and just as ambitious and their family veterans of Justice get his mind they just need a chance in life and and this is what I've learned much more vividly and much more personally than when I was fortunate enough to be President so sometimes you're making policy in a kind of abstract way sure even when you're a well informed well briefed leader absolutely I think one of the things that benefited me when I was in the White House was I have I had a wife who had campaign independently all the time I campaign I had three sons who had campaigned independently of me and those and all the time I was cam penny and I had a mother who also campaigned independently we had seven campaigns running on every day to the surprise of our opponents when we came in first and and so they still shared with me every day what they learned about the nation as they continue to travel around so I had a some insight from own family members and to what Americans were thinking and what the ambitions were that I wouldn't have gotten from State Department briefings and that sort of thing but yes no matter who is in the White House that there's a vast area of things that need to be comprehended more deeply that are absent from a presence busy mind and that would be particular to say in the depths of our villages in the African jungles or African desert those kinds of things you just don't know I'm glad you mentioned Rosalind because I think by the lights of 2011 many of the things that she was doing as a matter of course day-to-day week-to-week don't seem all that remarkable but by the lights of 1977 in 1978 they were you depended on her a great deal for intelligence from the field didn't you not only from the United States from 50 states but she had campaigned as I said independently of me all during the 70s campaign 1980 as well but I would send Rosen to foreign countries when I couldn't go myself and they soon learned that she could speak more accurately for me than the Secretary of State could or the National Security Advisor oh and she was a very strong-willed person for instance I sent her once on a 7 nation to and in Latin America and she was able to confront the dictator in Brazil and demand and he stopped purifying uranium to make nuclear weapons and she was able to go into Colombia until the president at his Secretary of Defense administer defense was taking bribes from the from the drug dealers you know were people ready for that I don't know what no I mean both both in the protocol office of the State Department and in those foreign capitals I would be ready for the wife of a leader to carry your proxy in that full way I don't know if they're ready or not but I was a president and and I thought it was important and of course the State Department was fully aware of what was going on because they plus the night security advisor staff briefed frozen before she went and unknown the TripIt I just described to you my Secretary of State's wife actually accompanied of Rosalind on the trip Saban's his wife did so it was not a secret but I think some of the foreign leaders were astonished when Rosen would refuse to spend her full time go into orphanages and hospitals and things of that kind he said I want to talk to you about about your nuclear program I want to talk to you about the drug production in your country I want to talk to you about your your violations of human rights she was very willing to do it to put it mildly and she used to get multiple briefings which she wanted in which I wanted her to have and finally one day as the roader why don't you just come on and sit in on the cabinet meetings in the background and then I don't want to spend half the week telling you what happened in the cabinet meeting so she sat in the background and as you may remember from those days she got a lot of chrism criticism well that's what I was I'm glad you brought it up instead of me bringing it up but but it was true that there were a lot of people in the United States and saw that and thought wait a minute we elected him yeah I know but not her but you know since then I'm not saying that Rosen broke the ice but she because Eleanor Roosevelt long before was a very prominent figure mostly after mostly after there but but I think that other presidents wives including the current one now plays a much more dynamic role in international and domestic affairs than ever would before so I was very proud of her because we were still in the era of debate over the ER a we were just a few administration's removed from far more ceremonial far more symbolic activities on the part of the first lady yes there was Eleanor Roosevelt but there was also Pat Nixon just a few years before with much more likely to land in Ghana and go to the state dinner in native dress and and that kind of thing than two and we'll finish Truman and others it didn't want to have anything to do with public life that's true well as opponent at one of my head one of my proudest moments in presidency was when Rosa was chosen as having among the 10 most beautiful legs on earth so that was she represents one of the 10 women or were her two legs like they were 20% of the most two of the 10 most beautiful legs or that's right oh that's right two of the 20 most beautiful two of the 20 most but you say that was a lot of laughter and closeness to which me and Rosen well that's good yeah it wasn't she was recognized for all her talents as she did that's where she was and she still concentrates on mental health but she did them including when I was governor eight years before I was like two freshmen we got to see your legs more than most other presidents do and there was comment at the time as well because Eisenhower for better or worse wasn't photographed jogging and the Secret Service agents who follow him around could probably smoke more because they knew they wouldn't have to run after the boss but you and I had a laugh at one point where you were freezing out on the C&O Canal trail because you see you sir your Secret Service detail couldn't pick you up as they were caught in traffic and then you admit that it's kind of your fault because you didn't want anybody to know where you were right yeah we'd never told anybody ahead of time and we were never discovered Bob we were jogging they said once when I happen to intercept CBS cameraman on the way out the C&O canal he went immediately and by the time I came back we saw all the cameras up on the bridge waiting for me to come underneath so we wanted to keep his cheek I was running I was a fanatic runner back in those days I was running about 40 miles a week which is a lot of running but I was sleeping in pretty good shape well that's why we're able to be here today because many of the leaders you mentioned in this book aren't able to run anywhere but you know as a reminder of what a pivotal time the 70s were for the world for the country a lot of legacy unhandled questions from previous decades and also pitching forward to the problems that would still plague us all these many years later that's true while you when you see for instance the Reagan staff dismantling the solar collectors on the top of the White House when one of the first things the president the new President did was end the basic educational opportunity grant which allowed a lot of poor kids to to go to colleges they never would have been able to attend did that make real in a way that simply the numbers and the electoral college didn't what it meant to lose how things could be undone in just a very short time I think so I don't want to be too personal about it but obviously when you work on the Middle East peace and you think you've got a comprehensive agreement there and then you leave office and is not this hardly a word said about Middle East peace for the next eight years all when you work for four years and get an energy policy that is reducing dramatically energy consumption in this country and building up alternative sources of energy and conservation particularly and see it totally not only abandoned but derided within a few days after President Reagan comes in office those things too all hurt and the most controversial thing that I would did the most difficult political challenge I've had in my life was the Panama Canal triggers and signing those with President Reagan then Governor Reagan constantly sniping at me for giving away our canal and then having to get 67 votes in the Senate was the most difficult challenge I've had much more difficult than running for office for being elected but uh but I think in the long run some of those things have panned out okay appearances the Panamanians who were derided then as drug addicts who couldn't manage you know their own affairs now have five times as much revenue from the Panama Canal treaty as we did when we turn it over to them and now they're building a second channel there which we double they are to traffic on through so some of the things we did have turned out quite well and I think our human rights policy is another one well you have to remember how how controversial some of those things were because before I became our president the United States presidents were habitually in bed with the dictators particularly in Latin America all over the world that's that's been shown up lately in the so-called Arab Spring how we've been in bed with all of those dictators they've now been overthrown but before I came in office this was a case in almost every country in Latin America without almost like exception South America was dictatorships and and we would trade with the dictators to make sure we got first crack at bauxite and ten and steel and copper and and pineapples and bananas and so the American corporation would harvest great benefits from our being cozy with the dictators so if anybody challenged them it's a native Indian Americans down in those countries wanted to have freedom of speech or human rights or if the poor people want to rise up and have better things then we could say we just automatically been edema stairs or communists and so we stamped out the colonies and we would send in US Marines or army troops sometimes to spend several years to take the dictators so we changed all that and it was very unpopular it's hard now to remember how on pot first on the Las Vegas world and yet there's a certain stylish admiration of hard-headed unsentimental leadership that would just say look we need the tin we need the block side to make the aluminum I don't care who's running the show in Santiago in Bogota in Sao Paulo I heard that from everywhere you know the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable all them would come forward and say look you're destroying by damaging the American economic system but it turned out to be good because because shortly after I left office every country in South America had become addicted become a democracy we have time for a couple of questions okay very good and and they're good ones okay I'm sure how can the immobilizing partisan politics of today's Washington be overcome I thought I'd start with an easy I to be supple about it to try to get out of politics the unwarranted infusion of money when I so that's a simple answer but it's hard to do but when I ran for office all we had was the $2 per person check off that that President Ford and I divided and then we had the same thing four years later when President rate then Governor Reagan and I divided and we didn't get any other contributions for a general election it all came from the taxpayers and we didn't have enough money to spend it on negative advertising now there's a tremendous influx of money that pours in in the hundreds of millions of dollars for presidential candidate and the Supreme Court made the most stupid decision they've ever made taking nothing here ruling the corporation's were people so now American corporations some of them own partially at least by foreigners can give an unlimited amount of money to candidates and you don't even know where the money came from so this is going to even greatly exacerbated a bad situation now as you know in almost every campaign for governor for Congress for president a large part of the advertising budget which is almost unlimited is spent to tear down the reputation of your opponent to destroy his character in the public mind and and they both of them do it and the American people that we don't like negative advertising but it works so by the time the election is over the general public field for both of those guys really weren't qualified to hold office and when the winner guess of Washington he's so highly polarized in animosity for the other party that don't even talk to each other anymore I got I got just as much support from Republicans that I did Democrats the last two years of my in my in office because a lot of my things were quite a very conservative support and that sort of thing will go to detail about that here but uh but you you had a better relationship with Howard Baker in the Senate and Bob Michaels in the house then presidents normally have to the opposite party leadership in legislatures well I'll go ahead and mention even in the Kennedy Library you know when I was in office two years Ted Kennedy decided to run against me and he was very popular here and obviously he was popular with the very Liberal Democrats so the last two years I had to go to a more moderate or conservative Democrats and to the Republicans to get support for my programs and and that was one of the problems but the point is that there was a harmony then between Democrats and Republicans in Washington that that doesn't exist anymore and I don't think it is any easy way to do away with unless of Congress ultimately sees that this is so bad that they will make public financing of the campaigns a part of American political system that's done in almost every other country in the world so it's not an impossibility it's an easy thing to do the courtesan of month as I said we've already monitored 83 elections we wouldn't monitor an election if it was based on the same principle that America has did the richest candidates are the only ones that can confined an ability to be candidates so we don't do that anymore so I think that's very important to remember what do you feel was the most positive thing you did as president well I think generically speaking it was probably to promote human rights even when it's revention early it was not a popular thing to do we did that inside Russia of Soviet Union we did it all over Latin America and we did it throughout the world and and we stuck with it although it was it was sometimes not popular and the other thing was to concentrate on peace we maintained peace for our country despite some very difficult times as you've already pointed out we never dropped the bomb and never launched the missile we never fried a bullet while I was in office I am and instill still I had a military background I was prepared to do it if I had to and we reached out to people that had been our adversaries like in China know President Nixon went to China in 1972 had to Shanghai delicate decoration there's only one China but he wouldn't say which one so and neither would his successors but I find it normalize relations with China we had peace with China and peace with within the Middle East and peace with us with others so I think through few human rights and peace what insight did you find upon compiling the book version of your entries well I think the complexity of things and how they are interrelated now you can't deal with Helmut Schmidt in in Germany without directly or indirectly touching your relationship with France and the Great Britain in particular with then with the Soviet Union versus Helmut Schmidt who was in a way my friend we were kind of competitors but we won't think that he was his friend when you read a book but but go ahead those kind of complexities that show how people that things are intertwined really make all surprising to read over when you get through and see I didn't quite know how those tied together but now after 25 or 30 years of history I can see how they were related as you've thought about it to the degree that you've thought about it were their style things that you might have done differently as president that would have showed yourself to the people in a slightly different way it made the papers when you carried your own luggage it made the papers and obviously the image was beamed around the world when you walked the inaugural route there seem to be after the imperial presidency of Richard Nixon an idea that you could be first citizen of the United States rather than a quasi monarch you know I felt like wicker that the American people won't kind of a monarch and what I had two of the most unpopular things I ever did was doing away with hail to the chief every time I walked in the room with state banquets I didn't try to do away with it but when I did away with hail to the chief there was almost unanimous condemnation of me that I was derogating the importance of the White House and the other one was when I sold the Secoya which was the presidential yacht the people thought I was not being reverent enough to the office as I was holding that I was too much of a peanut farmer not enough of a aristocrat you know something like that so I think that shows that the American people want something of an element of image of monarchy in the White House well maybe because we have a head of state who's also the head of government or a head of government was also the head of state the president embodies the state in a way that where those jobs are divided that doesn't happen that's sort of true maybe you shouldn't be a regular guy well that wasn't you actually what I've made a mistake that was a mistake I made I think I would have been more not Curtis that so much if I had just maintained the trappings of the president let the people know I really enjoy occupying this exalted place that you Revere so much I mean getting rid of the trumpets was probably a good idea that was that was always a little off-putting the trumpets but you know that as I was reading this again I'm thinking about that that may be what bothers people or take some adjustment from people about having Barack and Michelle Obama living in the White House because the president embodies the state we have to think about that embodiment in a slightly different way now that we do you know I found that out when I started campaigning because I really didn't realize when I decided to run for president what a stigma my part of the country had and because of the race issue I think I was the first one since nineteen in it since 1840s it was elected president from the deep south then the Johnson was from the West and he and he didn't even campaign in the deep south was running for election as you know in 64 but I came to Boston I remember I went to one of the historic sites out here later I wrote about in a novel called the hornet's nest still on sale well and I had a TV cameraman yet he came out where I was I call a press comment on a one TV camera came and they said how do you think you good Georgian is going to get any votes in Massachusetts and I said well when John Kennedy ran for president he got a higher percentage of votes in Georgia than he did Massachusetts and I've expected the Massachusetts folks to pay me back and he did by the way but you know in the way the country's changed a lot of those Democrats that voted for Kennedy are now Republicans or their children are you don't have to tell me very surreal so Lyndon Johnson's prophecy even the manager even in this case about the future trajectory of the south has turned out to be true but is it is it permanently true no I don't think so I don't think so my impression is that the Republicans are overstepping themselves there's a radicalism about a Republican photograph but I don't think it's me is going to be permanently endearing to the American people I think there's going to be a reversion of what happened two years ago and I think that reversion will start in 2012 that soon I think so I feel very very confident now they will have a Democrat reelected in 2012 but the in the midterms the House and Senate swung I know hard in the other direction I know I saw that and my my grandson was elected by the way he's a Democrat and he's our he's in the state Senate now so maybe he's Jennifer omen of the future is very young but but he won overwhelmingly and so I don't think the tide has changed permanently never has in the past that's one thing you can depend on in America the tide is going to change the book is White House diary the author is Jimmy Carter please thank him there's a focus thank you again you

Channel: JFK Library

Views: 8,397

Rating: 4.8378377 out of 5

Keywords: John, F., Kennedy, Presidential, Library, and, Musuem, president, jimmy, carter, politics, white, house, diary, memoir, PBS, american, history

Id: r0-SFnTAVQo

Length: 61min 29sec (3689 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 09 2018