Paul Ingles talks with Jimmy Carter (in 2002) and Carter’s former domestic advisor Stu Eizenstat

Paul Ingles: In 2002, we were allowed a short interview with him as he marked the 20th anniversary of his Carter Center, the center being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Jimmy Carter: One of the things that I’ve learned in the last 20 years since I left the White House much more clearly than I did when I was President is that there is no way to separate a commitment to justice and peace and freedom and democracy and human rights and environment quality and the alleviation of suffering.

That’s why we have seen that in order to maintain peace in a country, you really have to deal with the most abject facets of life because quite often, when people have no hope and no self-respect and no prospect for a bare existence, they tend to turn to anger and begin a civil war or lash out at their neighbors.

You can’t separate the alleviation of suffering or environmental degradation where they lose their lands and lose their streams from their inclination to despise their leaders or even to hate distant success stories like in America. They’re all interrelated. That’s a basic point.

PI: I wonder if you could recount one or two personal moments that are etched in your mind as emblematic that the good that the Carter Center has been able to do over 20 years. Do any faces or encounters stand out?

JC: A number of them. For instance, guinea worm is one of the most horrible diseases ever known on earth. When we started to eradicate guinea worm, and this has been one of the Carter Center’s projects, we found 3.5 million cases in 22 countries and about 23,000 villages. We’ve been in every one of those villages and taught the people what causes the disease. It’s drinking filthy water as a matter of fact. We taught them how to correct it and now we’ve cut that down from 3.5 million to about 70,000 which, as you can see, is a 98% reduction.

To go into a village and see people, maybe two-thirds of the population unable to walk around, lying on the ground with guinea worms coming out of their bodies and to teach them how to correct it and go back a year later and there will be zero guinea worms and those people, for the rest of their lives will never seen another case of guinea worm. This is a very gratifying thing.

One time I was riding in a big entourage with the leaders of a state in Nigeria and there was a big sign on the side of the road that I’ll always remember held up by little school children. It said, “Watch out guinea worms, here comes Jimmy Carter.” That really is a memorable thing that I remember.

We’ve done the same thing with other diseases including river blindness and trachoma that causes blindness. It’s very gratifying to me to go into those countries and see what a little bit of advice and a tiny bit of help will do to let them overcome their terrible suffering.

PI: President Jimmy Carter, thanks for your service to the world and thanks for talking with us today.

JC: I really enjoyed it. Good luck to you all.

PI: That’s my 2002 conversation with former President Jimmy Carter. I’m Paul Ingles.

Now we present our in-depth profile talk about the former President with Stuart Eizenstat. Stu Eizenstat is an American diplomat and attorney from 1977 to 1981. He was President Jimmy Carter’s Chief Domestic Policy Advisor and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff. Later he served as the United States Ambassador to the European Union from 1993 to 1996 and as the United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001. He’s author of the book Jimmy Carter; The White House Years published in 2018 by Thomas Dunne books.

I asked Stu Eizenstat what comes to the top of his mind when thinking about President Jimmy Carter.

Stuart Eizenstat: Well, the feeling that comes up is someone who accomplished an enormous amount as President, both in the foreign and domestic arenas which have gone largely unrecognized because of issues that occurred during the administration like the Iran Hostage Crisis and high inflation which clouded those accomplishments.

More broadly, what strikes me is that he came into office at a time when there was enormous distrust of the presidency based on Watergate and all of the surrounding scandals.

He ran an unblemished, honest presidency with great integrity. He created the modern vice presidency as we know it. He added new ethics laws and conflicts of interest laws. In a way he really helped reestablish, with all the difficulties he had, trust in the institution of the presidency.

PI: You were a young lawyer working on Mr. Carter’s gubernatorial campaign in Georgia in the early 1970s. You probably knew him before that campaign too. What do you remember about meeting Jimmy Carter for the first time?

SE: I met Jimmy Carter through an Atlanta friend, a longtime friend, Henry Bauer who said he thought I should meet this state senator running for governor. He insisted. Really, as much to satisfy him as anything else, I met with Jimmy Carter. I met him in the Hurt Building across from the Federal Courthouse in Atlanta in a very stark room, a couple of folding chairs. He was dressed in khaki pants work boots.

I was immediately struck both by his intelligence and his youthful vigor. From my perspective, more importantly, here was somebody from Southwest Georgia, a rural area, who understood urban problems; rights issues, mass transit issues, housing issues. I thought, and he argued, it could serve as a bridge between the traditional divide in Georgia between rural and urban areas of the state.

It was then that I started working for him as his policy director on a part time basis. That was my first association with him. I was struck by his youthfulness, his vigor. Frankly, he looked like a Southern version of John Kennedy. He was very handsome, but more importantly, he had this capacity to reach out between urban and rural Georgia.

PI: Those qualities make one think of the title of John Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage. What are some things during Jimmy Carter’s term in office that might have earned him that title of a profile in courage in general terms?

SE: His presidency was really fascinating from a general standpoint and we will get to the specifics of his accomplishments, which are really quite enormous.

He had a very interesting approach to the politics of governing. He was a ferocious campaigner, but when he came into office, in an unusual way, he dropped the politics. Ham Jordan, his top aide and later Chief of Staff, used to joke that the worst way to convince President Carter to do anything is to say it would be politically advantageous.

He just determined that if he did the right thing from his standpoint and explained it to the public, taking on often times very tough issues; the Middle East, energy where there was hardly anything to be politically gained a lot to be lost with those groups who held onto very important positions outside of the White House for those issues, for Israel, for the energy industry. He was willing to break his pick on those issues and not to worry about the politics of governing. That was his strength because it meant that he wasn’t timid.

This notion that somehow he was a weak President is just ridiculous! If anything, he was too strong and too stubborn to take on these issues. Even Rosalynn would say about the Panama Canal, “Jimmy, wait until the second term to do that. You could lose a lot politically.” He said, “I may only have one term. I’m going to do everything I can now.” His notion was that he would ultimately be rewarded by voters for seeing that he did take these issues on and accomplish things.

It’s an interesting bifurcation between the politics of running for a position and the politics of governing.

PI: What’s another example of that, “Don’t do this. It might be bad politically” suggestion where he contradicted that warning from his staff?

SE: He was given similar advice, Paul on two occasions in the Middle East peace process. One was a decision to go to Camp David to bring the two leaders, [Anwar] Sadat and [Menachem] Begin following Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem.

Their efforts at bilateral negotiations with Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel had completely stalled. Secretary Vance had tried to bridge the gap. He had met separately with each to try to bridge the gap.

He decided to take an enormous risk and that was to invite these two leaders who were miles apart on issues to Camp David for a summit. It ended up lasting 13 days. It’s an extraordinary act of personal diplomacy on the part of the President, unprecedented before or after. It was great political risk. It caused angst in the Jewish community, it hurt Jewish support. It hurt Sadat in the Arab world.

Again, almost all of his advisors told him not to do it. Likewise, after Camp David and the success with the Camp David Accords, Camp David was a framework, it wasn’t a binding treaty.

Again, the two parties, Israel and Egypt were at loggerheads of how to take the next step and convert it into a binding treaty. There were a whole host of thorny issues like the fact that Egypt had dozens of mutual defense agreements with its Arab neighbors that obligated them to in effect fight against Israel if there was ever a conflict between say Israel and Syria or Lebanon. That had to be resolved and they couldn’t.

Again, over the objection of his staff, he flew to the region. He spent four to five days there in an extremely risky proposition. The chances of failure were so great that Ham Jordan joked that if we didn’t make it, he ought to just take Air Force One and land back in Albany and stay there for the rest of his administration.

Yet he decided to go forward and we have a treaty that is now over 35 years old. It’s never once been violated. It’s the basis of U.S. policy in the region. It has been to Israel’s enormous advantage which meant the redeployment of forces and troops to other areas away from the front.

Every Egyptian President, even when President Morsi was elected, he pledged to support Camp David and the treaty.
Those are examples of deciding that the politics be damned, I’m going to do what I think is the right thing.

On the domestic side, another example was in the energy area. He decided to make energy a major priority. It was a thankless job. The conflicting pressures between the oil and gas industry on the one hand, the environmental community and consumer community on the other on deregulating the price of natural oil and natural gas and taking on the environmental issues with coal, we’re enormously politically charged and yet he said, “I’m going to do it.” And he did it. There were three major energy bills which totally transformed the whole energy future of this country.

PI: Stu Eizenstat, in your writing about the President, you maintain that President Carter’s Presidency was much more significant than most people give him credit for while acknowledging that he’s mostly thought of as overseeing a number of not quite realized initiatives.

SE: Well, what happened is, if you look at the initiatives, I’m going to say to you, and I’m willing to have anyone dispute it, that it was the most consequential and important four year Presidential term that we’ve had in modern American history and perhaps in all of history.

Let me just go through a few of these and come back to why he wasn’t rewarded for it.

First, he created the modern Vice Presidency, which had been a total laughable job. No one took it seriously. He and Walter Mondale created what is now the modern Vice Presidency, engaged in every decision, one on one weekly meetings with the Vice President, integrated of the staff, making it a real office.

In foreign policy, the Middle East peace process, [Carter negotiated] the first treaty between an Arab state and the State of Israel (the Israel Egypt Agreement) based on Camp David.

The normalization of relations with the People Republic of China. Just think where we would be without that with all the tensions we’ve had. They’re one of our biggest trading partners and we have a dialogue, a capacity of dealing with them because of normalization.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger deserve enormous credit for breaking the ice on that, but they did not normalize because they did not want to alienate the Taiwan lobby. Here again, he was willing to take on another interest and say, “We’ve severing our relations with Taiwan. China will be our recognized interlocutor.”

Human rights, he injected human rights into foreign policy. That was not just rhetoric. You can talk to any small “D” democrat in Latin America who threw off military dictatorships and they will tell you that it was the championing of human rights and cutting off arms to military dictators in places like Chile and Argentina was transformative.

Unfortunately for Jimmy Carter, the benefits of that occurred during the Reagan Administration but he put that policy in place.
The same with the Soviet Union. Former Secretary of Defense Gates said, “One of the great accomplishments of Jimmy Carter was his human rights campaign in respect to the Soviet Union attacking the soft underbelly of the Communist Regime.
In terms of dealing with the Soviet Union, he negotiated a SALT arms control treaty which reduced nuclear arms on both sides. While it was never ratified by the Senate because of the Afghanistan invasion, it was maintained by President Reagan and by the Soviets as if it had been ratified for all eight years of the Reagan Administration.

One of the transformative events in the Soviet relationship was the Afghan invasion. This convinced him that there was no chance of dealing with the Soviet Union on some of the other issues. Things like the Olympic Boycott, the Grain Embargo, other sanctions, arming the Mujahideen, the freedom fighters which President Reagan continued to enhance really ended up bogging the Soviet Union down in Afghanistan for more than ten years and was one of the reasons for the unraveling of the Soviet Union.

On domestic policy, three major energy bills were transformative. We ended price controls on natural case and crud oil encouraging domestic production.

He created a conservation ethic through the gas guzzler tax, fuel efficiency standards for cars, tax credits for insulation which have made us much more energy efficient and conservation oriented.

It was his initiative in these three energy bills that alternative energy; solar, wind, geothermal, which we take for granted now, that’s where it started. He was the greatest conservation President since Teddy Roosevelt. He doubled the size of our total national park system with the Alaska Lands Bill itself taking on Alaskan interests in the oil and gas industry.

He created the Super Fund, which cleans up chemical sites, which we take for granted.

He put in tough regulations for coal-fired power plants and took on again a thankless political job, these water projects, which were environmental damaging and very costly.

Then on transportation, he deregulated airline, truck, rail and bus transportation. All of these are enormous accomplishments.

PI: In a moment, more with our guest Stu Eizenstat, author of the 2018 book Jimmy Carter: The White House Years.
Mr. Eizenstat was right there with the President as his executive director of the White House Domestic policy. Sharing his memories of those years, including Mr. Carter’s landmark address to the nation July 15, 1979 call the Crisis of Confidence speech.

Jimmy Carter: Just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past. In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.
But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote.
The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

PI: Part of President Jimmy Carter’s address to the nation July 15, 1979. I asked his Domestic Policy Advisor from those years and our guest today on Peace Talks Radio, Stuart Eizenstat about those remarks.

SE: Well, he started off his major energy speech unlike any President has ever addressed his public by saying, “I want to have an unpleasant talk with you today.” He talked about how we had grown increasingly dependent on OPEC. He saw himself almost as the bearer of bad news in order to convince the public to face up to things.

Inflation clouded the mood and the other thing that clouded the mood and made his messages more difficult was Iran and the Hostage Crisis. Four hundred and forty-four days and the inability to get those hostages out during his term literally until the inauguration. [Ayatollah] Khomeini stuck one last dagger in us by not doing it before the election or the inauguration.

It created an extremely negative mood and an almost impossible election situation although going into the last week of election. People forget the last poll by Lou Harris had us actually slightly ahead and then on the Sunday before the Tuesday election, he made a decision which I wish he had not made to come back to Washington because he had gotten news that there might be a breakthrough. That revived the whole hostage issue again and put it right in front of people just as they were preparing to vote.

PI: Stu Eizenstat, I’m wondering if you can relay a personal or professional encounter that really cements Jimmy Carter’s place in your heart as this man of decency and integrity and courage.

SE: One is that in 1974, he asked me to develop policy papers in his position while he was governor as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Congressional Campaign Committee. It was really his way of getting himself known nationally.

I did the policy papers for it. In return, he invited myself, my parents and my visiting in-laws, Fran’s parents to a lovely lunch at the Governor’s Mansion. It was very thoughtful. Took us on a tour. Took us to the Greenhouse.
Second, he allowed his senior staff and their families, unlike any President before or since to use Camp David from time to time on weekends, even if he wasn’t there.

One particularly touching experience when he was there is he asked my oldest son Jay, who would have been all of eight or nine years old at the time, if he would like to jog with him. He came over also to Holly Lodge when both boys were there to say hello and to take pictures and to let them come into his own lodge. That’s a personal touch.

In addition, I remember being on Air Force One coming back from our last campaign stop in 1980 from Seattle back to Atlanta and then the planes where he could vote. Pat Goodell, his pollster called and said, “All the movement is to Reagan. We’re going to lose this. The Hostage Crisis has come back up again.”

I remember he came out and I embraced him and cried and said, “We’ve let you down.” He said, “No, you didn’t let me down. We did the best we could.” There were those kinds of personal instances.

One other personal incident. He was sometimes viewed as a very cool personality. Let me give you an example. I had worked, as I mentioned, with Vice President Humphrey when he was running for President. I was his Policy Director in 1968. Humphrey lost, but then ran for the Senate and was elected and became part of the leadership.

We had weekly leadership breakfasts. Humphrey had then developed stomach cancer. He was going to the NIH (National Institute for Health) for radiation and chemotherapy. President Carter would reschedule the times of the leadership breakfasts so that Hubert could get his cancer treatments.

Then when he was clearly failing, Jimmy Carter did something quite amazing. He said to then Senator Humphrey, “I understand from Vice President Mondale that you’ve never been to Camp David.” He said, “I can’t believe that! You were Vice President for four years with Johnson.” He said, “Mr. President, I’ve never been to Camp David. Johnson never invited me. Never have I been.” He said, “Well, you’re going to go now.” He arranged for him to come to the Oval Office. He had him sit behind the President’s desk and he said, “You should have been sitting here yourself.” They took a helicopter up to Camp David and they spent the day and evening at Camp David together. It was the first and only time Humphrey was ever at Camp David. It showed his humanity.

PI: Finally, Stu our program is about peacemaking and non-violent conflict resolution and strategies and key figures in that tradition throughout history. How do you view Jimmy Carter through a peacemaking lens?

SE: Well, he took great pride in the fact that no soldier died in combat in his term. He actually built the military up after Vietnam. He had 3% real increases in defense spending, but he was very careful about not injecting American troops where they could not be helpful and took great pride in that.

He negotiated the Salt Treaty, the Panama Canal Treaty, the Middle East Treaty. All of these were great peacemaking efforts. He was a peacemaker. He followed that in his post-Presidency. If there is one word that would describe the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter, it was peacemaking. Peacemaking with Panama. Peacemaking with China normalization. Peacemaking with Egypt and Israel.

All of these really exemplified his emphasis on peacemaking and he won a Nobel Prize for this, I think belatedly, but he won it.

PI: Stuart Eizenstat was President Jimmy Carter’s Chief Domestic Policy Advisor and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff during the Carter Presidency. He’s author of the book Jimmy Carter: The White House Years published in 2018 by Thomas Dunne books.

Stu Eizenstat, thanks for sharing your memories of President Carter with us today on Peace Talks Radio.

SE: Thank you Paul for your interest in doing this. He’s really a great man and for a President who was much more successful than people realize and had a very consequential four years in office.