CSPAN - In Depth Jimmy Carter

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Dec. 30, 2024 23:00-02:31 - CSPAN

03:30:30

In Depth Jimmy Carter

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unidentified		Majority Leader.
		On Monday, January 6th, live from the House chamber, witness Vice President Kamala Harris preside over the certification of the Electoral College vote, where this historic session will officially confirm Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 presidential election.
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		President Jimmy Carter appeared on C-SPAN over 200 times, and in fact, C-SPAN was founded in 1979 during the Carter administration.
		President Carter was the author of dozens of books, mostly non-fiction, but some poetry as well.
		And in 2006, Book TV went to his home in Plains, Georgia, to do a three-hour long-form interview with him about his writings.
		When Jimmy Carter left Plains, Georgia in 1976 to become president, he returned over 25 years ago.
		And he is now in the house that he and Rosalind built in 1961 here in Plains, Georgia.
		Book TV is inside this home today.
		We are in the room where Jimmy Carter has written the majority of his books.
		This is in-depth, our monthly series where we spend three hours with the writer talking about their complete body of work.
		President Carter is going to be joining us in a few minutes to take your phone calls.
		He's going to stay with us until 3:30 Eastern Time, over three hours.
		But first, we want to introduce you to some of his earlier books.
		He's currently on a book tour for this book, Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid.
		And this book has become very controversial.
		You've probably seen him on television programs a lot in the last couple of weeks.
		But it's been over 30 years ago since Mr. Carter began his writing career, and that began when he published a book called Why Not the Best?
		Why Not the Best was published as a way to get the American people to know him better as he campaigned for the presidency.
		The second book was published while he was president with the jacket showing President and Rosalind Carter walking down Pennsylvania Avenue during their inaugural parade.
		This book was titled A Government as Good as Its People.
		Then when Jimmy Carter returned to Plains, Georgia in 1981, he started work on his presidential memoirs.
		Keeping Faith was published by Bantam Books in 1982.
		It includes his memories of Camp David, the Salt Accords, also Three Mile Island, and much more.
		Two years later, Mercer University Press in Macon, Georgia published the text of a speech that he gave there, and it was entitled Negotiation: The Alternative to History.
		That was followed a year later by The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East.
		In 1987, Rosalind Carter joined her husband to co-author Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life.
		Years later, at a book event in Seattle, President Carter talked about the pressure that writing that book put upon his marriage.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, a few years ago, Rosa and I wrote a book together called Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life, which Rosalind asked me to mention is still on sale.
		And it told about our setback when I lost the election, re-election for president.
		I found out I was in bankruptcy.
		Amy left home.
		It was a very difficult time in our lives.
		So we decided to write a book together.
		And it almost ruined our marriage.
		We could agree on 97%.
		But the 3% became paramount.
		We couldn't even communicate with each other about the book except by writing ugly notes back and forth on the word process.
		And Rosen writes very slowly, very carefully.
		Doesn't go to the next sentence until this one is perfect.
		I write very rapidly, and Rosen looks on my writing as rough draft.
		Rosen's writing is as though she had gone to Mount Sinai.
		God had given her this text.
		And any word just changed is painful.
		So we couldn't agree on the book, literally, and our publisher finally took those 3% of the paragraphs and he said, okay, I'm going to divide them up.
		This paragraph is yours, Jimmy.
		This paragraph is yours, Rosen.
		So if you buy the book, you'll notice that some paragraphs have a J and some paragraphs have an R.
		We never could agree.
		And we finally sent the book off to the publisher.
		We felt, well, our marriage is saved.
		And after that, we could not agree on anything.
		We go to bed at night.
		I was in the wintertown.
		Rosen would say, Jimmy, it's too hot.
		I would say, Rosen is too cold.
		And I finally went off on a trip and thinking our marriage was on the verge of destruction.
		I came back from the trip.
		Rosen met me at the front door with a smile on her face.
		She said, Jimmy, I think you've solved our problem.
		We had the electric blanket hooked up backwards.
unidentified		And this is a picture of Rosalind Carter in the president's office where he does all of his writing.
		And that's where we are as we are continuing our look at some of the president's books.
		Also, you might be interested in knowing that the president and Rosalind Carter celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this past summer.
		Back to the books.
		A year after that book, he published a book on his love of the outdoors, in particular hunting and fishing.
		It was called An Outdoor Journal, Adventures and Reflections.
		In 1992, Jimmy Carter stepped back and looked at the year 1962 and his campaign for the state senate in Georgia.
		That book was titled Turning Point, A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Comes of Age.
		Then he turned his focus to write for young adults.
		1993, from Dutton's Children's Books, the publisher, they published a book on his thoughts on conflict resolution, specifically for a younger audience.
		Talking Peace was the name of the book, and the subtitle was A Vision for the Next Generation.
		Two years later, he became the first president to publish a book of poetry.
		Always a Reckoning and Other Poems was published in 1995.
		By that time, he had been out of the presidency for 15 years.
		In an appearance on Book Notes that year, President Carter talked about his father, and he also talked about the struggles of getting his poetry published.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		President Jimmy Carter, what's the origin of the title of your book of poems, Always a Reckoning?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's extracted from one of the lines of a poem about my father and how he ran our farm and everything had to balance.
		There was no possibility in his mind to have anything on the farm, as I said in the poem, that you couldn't plow or didn't give milk or you couldn't get eggs from or that you couldn't find a rabbit or a quail.
		And so it meant that my father required a reckoning from all those who worked on the farm or whatever.
		I think that's kind of applicable to life in general when you put an investment in something, you get back a dividend.
		So I said it's kind of like an ocean wave going in and out.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		How long has your father been gone?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Daddy died in 1953.
		He had cancer.
		He was 59 years old.
		He was a member of the state legislature and a very fine, very stern disciplinarian who was honored in his community, who I think loved me very much.
		He was quite reticent about indicating his affection and who has always been one of my heroes.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Have you done things differently with your kids because of the way your dad was with you?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		You know, I don't think I did until my children got up a little bit older and began to be much more verbal in their criticism of the way I treated them.
		I was a naval officer for 11 years and I was a very stern disciplinarian.
		When I told my three boys to do something, they did it.
		If they didn't, they suffered the consequences.
		And then we waited about 15 years and Amy came along, but I never was nearly that stern with Amory.
		And my rationalization is that she didn't really need to be chastised.
		And in another poem that I wrote, I want to be part of my father's world to that extent, I realized when I was an adult and had sons of my own and was at my father's bedside during his death that there was a surprising parallel between my father's relationship to me, which I resented very much on occasion, and my relationship with my sons.
		And I saw that my father had implanted in me not only habits and attitudes, but also, I guess, genetic material that mirrored himself in me.
		And I wrote one of my most difficult poems about that.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		When was the first time you proposed to your publisher that you do a book of poems?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it was about four years ago.
		And they said no way.
		That they didn't think they wanted to publish a poetry book by me.
		And they said that my poems that I submitted were not suitable for a book.
		So I backed away for a while.
		As a matter of fact, I didn't exactly back away.
		I took a poem out of a current issue of New Yorker magazine, which to me was completely garbled.
		I mean, there was no redeeming feature that I could see in this poem.
		It didn't make sense.
		It didn't have any rhyme.
		It was not beautiful.
		The choice of words was not notable.
		So I cut the poem out and sent it to the publisher of Random House Times Books.
		And I told him if New Yorker could publish a poem like that, I saw no reason why they couldn't publish my poetry book.
		But I didn't push it anymore.
		But later I felt that I got three or four poems in final form.
		And I began to send my poems to different periodicals around the country, to quarterlies and to monthly magazines dedicated to poetry.
		And some of them are rejected and some of them were accepted.
		I asked them not to comment on the fact that I was a former president, just to put my name and not even say who it was.
		And increasingly, the poems got favorable reviews from inside those places.
		And I eventually got up the nerve to put about 45 poems together.
		And then when I resubmitted them to the publisher, they offered me a minuscule advance and decided to take a chance on the board.
unidentified		And back in the president's writing room, here is a picture of his mother and his father, Lillian Carter and Earl Carter.
		Continuing on with the president's writing that same year in 1995, President Carter teamed up with his daughter, Amy, for this book.
		It's called The Little Baby Snoogle Fleeger, and Amy Carter illustrated this book.
		The next book marked the fourth time that President Carter was published by the Times Books Corporation.
		Living Faith outlined his religious beliefs, and in this next video, he talks about the challenges of forgiveness.
		I know about your capacity for intelligent thought and your passion for love and affection and things like that.
		But also what I know about you is I wouldn't want you really mad at me.
		And I wonder, your son, you've mentioned this with your son, how do you deal with this very human thing of anger?
		What do you do?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That's not easy for me to do.
		And that's why I say that teaching a lesson on forgiveness, which I do every now and then, is very difficult for me.
		And usually when I teach a lesson, I try to think of someone against whom I have a grudge.
		It doesn't take too long.
		And then in my Sunday school class, I actually use that as an example and tell the Sunday school class what I'm going to do, which is usually write a postcard or give somebody a telephone call and say, you know, we've been estranged, we don't get along well, and let's try to resolve it.
		One of the most famous ones involved a reporter in Washington.
		His name was George Will.
		And when I was preparing to have a debate with Ronald Reagan, my only debate, someone in the White House stole my book of briefing, which described every question that I was going to ask or be asking, my answers to all the questions, and my response to things that I thought Reagan might say.
		They gave it to George Will, who used it to brief Reagan against me.
		And that was very difficult for me to forgive.
		And one Sunday morning I decided I would forgive George Will.
		So he had written a book about baseball, a very fine book about baseball, which I had bought on Reminder.
		It only cost a dollar.
		And I read the book, and I wrote George Will, and I said, I've had this grudge against you ever since the debate with Reagan.
		And I've read your book about baseball.
		I got a lot out of it.
		And now I feel like we're even, and I hope that we can be reconciled.
		And he wrote back and said he appreciated all of the letter except the fact that I didn't pay full price for his book.
		So we will reconcile, but I think quite often it's not a difficult thing if we, I would guess that almost everybody in here has someone against whom they might hold a grudge.
		And to make a telephone call and say, you know, I'd like to work this out.
		I'll write a postcard and say, I'm thinking about you and hoping we can be friends.
		Just a simple thing like that can really change people's lives.
unidentified		After Living Faith, the president stayed on with Times Books as his publisher.
		And he did a book called Sources of Strength, Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith.
		And that was followed by The Virtues of Aging in 1998.
		His next three books would be published by Simon ⁇ Schuster.
		First was called An Hour Before Daylight, Memories of a Rural Boyhood.
		And here what you have is what you can see is him being on the Diane Ream radio show that year.
		Now, you work side by side with blacks.
		Yes.
		You played with blacks.
		All of this before any kind of civil rights movement.
		You grew up feeling as though they were your friends, your companions, your co-workers, even as brothers.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
unidentified		And yet, you had to go to different schools.
		You took different paths.
		Quite a sort of bifurcated relationship with people you admired and who cared about you.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, this was during the Great Depression years, and I chose the years from my fourth birthday up until I went off to be in the Navy when I was about 17.
		And I didn't have any white playmates.
		All my neighbors on the farm were black kids.
		And so I fought with them, wrestled with them, played with them, made toys with them, went fishing with them, worked in the fields with them.
		There was an intimacy there that's almost indescribable.
		My mother was a registered nurse and had to be gone a lot all night long.
		My father was a hardworking man who had his duties.
		So many, many nights I slept on a pallet filled with corn shucks on the floor of the house owned by Rachel and Jack Clark, whom I mentioned in the book.
		And during the winter time, Rachel would let me move my pallet close to the open fireplace, but I ate at their table, and they really helped to shape my basic life, my beliefs, my priorities.
		And this was one aspect of a legal ruling that didn't really prevail.
		The Supreme Court at that time, for all the states in the nation, had ruled that separate but equal was acceptable, was constitutional, and no one questioned it.
		There were no black activists.
		There were no white liberals who challenged the Supreme Court ruling until 15 or 20 years after I left the farm.
		But we were certainly not separate, as I've just described.
		We lived an incredibly intimate existence with our black neighbors.
		And it was certainly not equal because, as you say, our black neighbors could not vote.
		They could not serve on a jury.
		They could not ride in the same car with us on the train.
		They could not go to our schools.
		They went to severely and embarrassingly inferior schools.
		So the separate and equal doctrine was one that troubles me very much now to look back on and say, why didn't somebody really challenge this system?
		It didn't come on until much later.
unidentified		And what about your father and his attitude?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, Daddy was, like every other adult that I ever knew in those days, was a segregationist.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		And even in our Sunday school classes and our men's brotherhood meetings, there were frequent people who would come and speak, kind of professional speakers, to emphasize that God's holy word also mandated that people of different races should live separate lives.
unidentified		Jimmy Carter, the author in 2001.
		Well, what we've been doing over the past 20 minutes is giving you an idea of President Carter's early books.
		And in a few minutes, you're going to have an opportunity to talk with President Carter about issues or about his writing.
		But first we want to show you another video clip from 1988.
		This was a book called The Virtues of Aging.
		And it was an on-stage interview that he did at the 92nd Street Y in New York City with Anna Quinlan.
		And he talks with Anna Quinlan about how he and Rosalynn consciously decided how to handle their retirement.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was filled with disappointment and consternation when the results of the 1980 election came in.
		Not only had I lost the opportunity to be reelected and to pursue things like the Camp David Accords in the Mideast, but I discovered to my amazement that my very fine and profitable business in Plains that I had put into blind trust was a million dollars in debt.
		I realized that we would spend the rest of our lives in a little town that had 600 people living in it.
		I didn't have a job.
		My last child, Amy, was leaving home to go to school, so all the things kind of descended on me at once.
		And I would guess that it's although I had been living in the White House and had a special category of lifestyle, perhaps, in the past, I was in the same boat with millions of Americans who are either retired because of age or involuntarily retired just because they were fired from a job.
		So I had to assess in effect what would I do with the rest of my life.
		It took me a few days to realize after I got home that at my age of 56, I had more than 20 years of life expectancy ahead of me.
		What in the world was I going to do with 20 years that were left?
		So I turned to, to some small degree, to Gerald Ford, who has become one of my closest and most intimate personal friends.
		We share ideas on the telephone and we are together as often as we can.
		And that was one source of advice.
		His advice to me was that you've got the worst few years of your life ahead of you.
		Because one of the duties of a former president was to raise money to build a presidential library in which are stored all the records of the administration.
		And for a defeated Democrat who doesn't ever expect to run for office again to raise $25 million to build a library was a horrible prospect.
		So Gerald Ford didn't help me much.
		My mother, though, was an element of stability.
		Plains is a hometown of both me and my wife.
		Our ancestors, who were born in the 1700s, are both buried in Plains.
		So our roots were very deep there.
		That was very much of a stabilizing factor.
		I'm an engineer and my graduate work is in nuclear physics.
		So I began eventually to assess what I had to offer.
		What were my talents, what were my abilities, what was my background, what was my circle of influence, which I thought was very small, and how could we spend those 20 years or more, 25 perhaps.
		And Rosa and I together began to methodically, methodically to plan how would we use our abilities.
		And eventually out of that came the Carter Center where we deal with conflicts in the world.
		We hold elections around the world.
		We immunize the world's children.
		Working with many others, we eradicate disease.
		We have 600,000 small farmers growing food grain in Africa, those kinds of things.
		So it was a matter of assessment of what I had and what I wanted to be.
		And I think that although we have been the first family of the nation, the challenges that we faced and the opportunities that we faced, whether we spend the rest of our life in our backyard or whether we spend the rest of our life traveling around the world, is basically the same question.
unidentified		And that was President Carter in 1998.
		This is the home in Plains, Georgia, where Jimmy Carter lives and has lived since he returned to Plains, Georgia.
		It's a house that was built in 1961 by Jimmy and Rosalind Carter.
		We're inside that house.
		We're in the room where President Carter writes, and President Carter joins us.
		Thank you very much.
		Thank you.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I've been looking forward to this.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		Have you gotten what you wanted from the retirement, what you were just hearing yourself say?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I think even more than I anticipated.
		And I wrote another book later on, Sharing Good Times, that emphasizes how the life that we have left has been enormously expanded by doing things together.
		Rosa and I give each other plenty of space.
		We try not to go to sleep at night without reconciling differences.
		But the main thing is we search out actively for things that we both share as an interest.
		Bird watching, we've become avid birdwatchers all over the world.
		We took up skiing when I was 62 years old.
		Rosen was three years younger.
		We have become avid and very accomplished, very accomplished to flyfishers.
		So, you know, we try to find things to do that we both can do together.
		Not only around our farm and walking in the woods and riding bikes and swimming and things like that, but also, of course, at the Carter Center.
		We are equal partners.
		She and I have long been the co-chairmen of the Carter Center.
		So everything that we attempt, it's an attempt, an effort by two people.
unidentified		So how do you, do you think that the United States does an adequate job in this new era of people who are your age being so active?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I don't think when you say the United States, I presume you're not talking about the government, but by individual people.
unidentified		Well, or government.
		Or government.
		Does government underscore people of your age to help them?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't think so, but I really don't feel that it ought to be the primary duty of the government.
		What we tried to express in Virtues of Aging in this book was the fact that any individual person, no matter how limited their scope of influence or activity might be, can expand their interest in life, excuse me, and can actually search out interesting, adventurous, unpredictable, gratifying experiences in which they can become involved.
		And one of the things I did mention earlier that we do together is to build houses for Habitat for Humanity.
		We just got back a few days ago from India where we joined $2,500 volunteers who came to India, most of them, with us, and we built 100 homes in four days for very poor families.
		Well, Habitat for Humanity now has programs in over 1,000 communities in America.
		So anybody, if they want to, can volunteer for a half a day or for an entire week or can devote part of their lives to help it build an entire house.
		So the point is that the opportunities are there.
		And in the book, it's spelled out pretty well.
		Everybody's in range of a junior college.
		And if you've ever had a long pent-up desire, say, to learn how to speak Spanish or to play the guitar or to write an essay or to write a biography of yourself to pass on down to your children or grandchildren, you can go back to college with minimal expense and do that.
		So the limits are almost non-existent on what we can do.
unidentified		The bulk of our time today is going to be spent taking phone calls from our viewers and I'm sure they're going to want to talk to you a lot about issues of policy and things that have happened over the years.
		So I am going to do something a little bit different with my little bit of time with you and talk to you about the writing process.
		Tell me about this room.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well right behind us is the computer that I now use to write my books.
		My first books were written with pen and ink on a scratch pad while I was traveling around campaigning and doing things like that.
		And then when I would come home, they would be typed up and then sent off to my publisher, who was actually the only one I could find that would take my first book, was a publisher of Baptist Sunday School books.
		And they didn't have a very big printing press, but they printed a few thousand and didn't have any advance to give me, but they gave me some free books.
		But then when I became famous on the campaign trail, I became very matter of interest.
		So eventually Benham took over and more than a million of those books.
		So since then, since I came back from the White House, I've had a computer.
		So I sent it to the desk behind me.
		And you notice a fairly good and extensive library around me.
		And when I'm working on, say, a novel about the Revolutionary War.
unidentified		Hornet's Nest.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Hornet's Nest.
		I might have 50 books that I've gotten from different libraries and that I've purchased about the Revolutionary War, all about actual events that took place, and autobiographies of, say, enlisted men and officers of the British forces and also American forces so that I can immerse myself in it.
		So that's what I generally do.
		And my father's name is on the library at the nearby university.
		So when we are overwhelmed with books, we send the extra ones over to the James Ordcarter Library at Georgia Southwestern University.
unidentified		I want to go into that library for a bit because in the writing of your most recent book, I presume that you have some books on your shelf that you used during that time.
		And in fact, in the middle there, you do have a section of books about the Middle East.
		I do.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That's my most recent book, yes.
unidentified		And what did you, what kind of books did you use in reading and keeping around while you read this?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, one of the foundations for this was a book I had written previously called The Blood of Abraham.
		And in that book, I describe my conversations with the leaders of the different nations that surround Israel and also the different political factions in Israel and the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
		So I had that as a primary reference about what actually had occurred in the past.
		And then, of course, the Bible, I went all the way back to the covenant with Abraham and gave people an up-to-date version of events that have happened since then, right on up to the last couple of months.
		And then in addition to that, I read books recently that had been written about the plight of the Palestinians, the essence of the basic wonderful democracy and freedom and equality of treatment inside Israel.
		And the main thing that I used was the fact that I had been all over the West Bank and occupied territories in the last 10 years helping to conduct elections.
		And we have between 40 and 60 people that we send all the way from Lebanon border in the north all the way down alongside Jordan and into the Sinai Desert of Egypt.
		And everything in that area, including East Jerusalem, we immerse ourselves in understanding what's going on.
		So that was the basic sources.
		Those were the basic sources of my book.
unidentified		There were a couple of the books I was interested in.
unidentified		Bruce Feiler, you have his book up there, also Richard Ben Kramer in his book?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I got several.
		Some of them had been published by my same publisher, Simon Schuster, and they knew I was writing this book.
		I signed the contract two years ago, as a matter of fact.
		And so when they found a book that they thought would be pertinent, they would send me a copy of it.
		And that helped me a lot as well.
unidentified		Now, I hope you don't mind, but I took a look at your computer.
		And you have a couple sayings in the front of your computer that I thought was for, as a writer, somewhat interesting.
		You have a writing, something that says, vivid and continuous.
		Particulars, not generalities.
		Each scene must turn, it must change.
		Characters must want something.
		Where did you come up with these?
		Who gave you those?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, when I started writing poetry, I had two great poetry professors at the University of Arkansas.
		And they sent me not only books of poetry by different poets, but also books about how to write poetry.
		And I did, and that's some of those origins, some of those quotes.
		And then when I decided to write a novel, which took me seven and a half years, I had a group of professors from mostly Georgia University, Georgia State, and Emory University and the University of Georgia.
		And I gathered them together with me one day and told them what I was going to do.
		And they assigned me a reading list, which was quite extensive from different famous authors and professors of creative writing.
		And so I copied some of those phrases out of that book as well to remind myself when I was trying to create dialogue between characters, things that I needed to avoid.
unidentified		Do they help?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, they helped.
		I hope so.
		If a book turned out well, I guess they helped.
		And then one of the main things I did when I got ready to publish the book, Simon and Schuster, my publishers, wanted to have a copy of a painting on the front by N.C. Wyeth.
		And they sent it to me, because he was a famous writer, mainly an illustrator of magazine covers and things of that kind, but famous Wythe family.
		And the painting didn't suit me at all because it was a painting of a black-haired frontiersman standing beside his canoe and holding a Revolutionary War-type rifle in the wrong place.
		And I just didn't want to use it because my character was blonde.
		He didn't have a canoe and that sort of thing.
		So I finally decided I would paint the cover myself.
		And to the consternation of my publishers, when I first suggested the thing, I actually painted the cover about my character who's blonde.
		He's got a pigtail in the back and he's holding a rifle properly.
		And he's actually firing his rifle at British soldiers across a creek.
		So I enjoyed getting embarked.
		That was really what encouraged me to get involved in painting once again, which I had done a number of years ago.
unidentified		Is there any significance in your desk?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, the desk belonged to my father.
		It was in his office downtown where he had a little insurance office and also sold fertilizer to farmers.
		And after he died, when I came home from the Navy, I had resigned from the Navy.
		I had been in the nuclear submarine program.
		And I came back home and inherited that desk in his office.
		And then when I converted this room from a garage that we used to drive in automobiles to house them into an office, then I moved that desk back to use as my desk.
unidentified		Speaking of your father, what did you learn about reading from your father?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, daddy had certain books that he really liked, and he read the newspapers and magazines avidly.
		My mother was almost, I'd say, a fanatic reader.
		She read every minute of a day that she wasn't nursing, and a lot of times when she was nursing and on household duty.
		But anyway, my father had a collection of Tarzan books, all of them.
unidentified		You're showing it.
unidentified		Yeah, well, we have one.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		They were nine out of ten.
unidentified		You got them?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That's Tarzan the Untamed.
		I inherited, I think I wound up with seven out of the 11.
		Maybe some of the other children got the other four.
		But my daddy had written in the front the number of the volume in order so that I wouldn't get confused.
		And his writing is still in the front of the book.
		And then he had a collection of other books, primarily about the outdoors and adventure.
unidentified		Elementary Physiology and Hygiene was the other one.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That was probably a class book of one of my parents.
		And I have a few of those left over.
		And then my godmother, who was the head nurse in Plains, gave me an entire collection of Victor Hugo's books and a collection of wisdom about the world.
		It was the main encyclopedia at that time.
		I was eight years old when I inherited the Victor Hugo books.
		Later, she gave me a collection of Guille Montpassant.
		And so I was one of the first people in Plains that ever read probably Victor Hugo and De Montpassant when I was a child.
unidentified		People, if they saw your bookshelf, would see that you have a whole series of a naval man, books from a naval man who's very popular these days.
unidentified		Who is he?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Patrick O'Brien.
unidentified		Yeah.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		By the way, when I let the professors know that my novel was going to be about the Revolutionary War period and asked them for some recommendations on what author would be the most pertinent for that era, and I wanted to get the language right and so forth, they recommended Patrick O'Brien, of whom I had not, I had heard everybody, but I hadn't read his books.
		And when I was on a current book tour, I went to what I consider to be one of the best, to be careful, bookstores in the world, that is a tattered cover in Denver.
		And I told them that I was looking for Patrick O'Brien books and asked them if I had any of them.
		And so when I got back in my car, they had given me a complete collection of his books up to that time.
		I think there were 19 of them.
		Later, there were 21.
		So I pretty well mastered Patrick O'Brien's books.
unidentified		So it really didn't come from your naval background?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		No, it didn't, except it precipitated my interest.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		But the language used and the historical events, which goes all the way from Napoleonic years through the Revolutionary War years, was quite pertinent to what I was writing about.
unidentified		You said some of your favorite books are about former presidents and biographies of former presidents.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, you probably know I've got a fairly good collection.
unidentified		You do have a fairly good collection.
unidentified		Whose do you think is best?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I really don't want to say whose is best.
		Actually, the best definitive biography is about Thomas Jefferson.
		And my assistant helped write that collection, Steve Hockman.
		And that, I think, is the most, it's a six-volume version of Thomas Jefferson.
		And I've got them all the way from George Washington through almost every president.
		And in my office at the Carter Center in Atlanta, I've got a much more definitive collection of those biographies.
		A few autobiographies.
		And then Dylan Thomas is my favorite poet.
		And I've probably, on one shelf there, I've probably got 35 or 40 volumes either about Dylan Thomas or by Dylan Thomas.
		And up above my desk on my left here that I used to tie flies for fly fishing, I've got a portrait of Dylan Thomas that was sent to me by people from Lauren, which is his hometown.
		When I was president, I went to London and visited Westminster Abbey in 1977.
		I had a big entourage of White House reporters with me.
		And I got in an argument with the Archbishop because they didn't have a stone to commemorate Dylan Thomas, whom I consider the best poet of it last century.
		And so later, I sent a long dissertation to the committee to ask them to include Dylan Thomas.
		The month I went out of office as president in 1941, they decided to commemorate Dylan Thomas.
		So I think I had some role to play in that.
unidentified		Your birds' books.
		Yes.
		What do you get from them?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, Rose and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in 1988.
		I remember because we got to the top on the eighth day of the eighth month of 1988, and we signed a book on top, I guess.
		And after that, we started looking at watching birds in Tanzania, Kenya, and other East African nations and began to keep a record of it.
		And now we're avid birders.
		Whenever we have a chance in the United States or in any foreign country, we go out for a few hours or sometimes a day or two to find new species of birds to observe.
		And so that's been an important additional element of our lives that we share.
unidentified		William Shakespeare, you have some Shakespeare here.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I do.
		I think Shakespeare, more than any other writer, shaped my early life on reading.
		We were required by Miss Julia Coleman, my teacher, to read Shakespeare and to memorize portions of it.
		And so there's no doubt that as a foundation for the English language writers, no one can partially equal.
unidentified		What's your favorite?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
		I would hate to say I like some of his sonnets, I think, best of all.
		And I have one sonnet in my book.
		It's about planes.
		And so the sonnet part is something that I enjoyed, but I think most people like the plays of Shakespeare best.
		I really prefer some of his poems.
unidentified		I want to go back to this book because it really, according to Douglas Brinkley, who wrote the introduction, was very key in your first and your presidential campaign.
unidentified		The whole issue of politicians writing books as part is not new, but how did you come to the decision to let the American people know more about you through writing a book?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		This is the paperback version that came out much later.
		The original version I wrote when I was campaigning beginning in December of 1974.
		And then I announced as a candidate in December of 74 and began the campaign.
		And all during 75, when I was at home or when I was on an airplane or a train or whatever, I would be writing this book, a kind of an autobiography, and telling why I should be considered as a president.
		And then finally had it published and later used the book as kind of a campaign handout.
		We would have a small group, increasingly in size, and at those rallies we would sell Why Not the Best for $5 to raise money.
		We didn't have much money.
		You can see that was an important part of our life then.
		And as I got more famous, having prevailed in New Hampshire and Florida and so forth, I wouldn't give a reporter an interview unless they read Why Not the Best first.
unidentified		They had to read the book first?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		They had to read the book before I would interview them because there wasn't any need for me to waste my time with them saying, what's the name of your father or what town were you born in or things of this kind.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		So they had to read at least the rudiments about my early life before I would talk to them.
unidentified		There is a memo from this very famous from 19, I think, 72 that outlined how you could become president.
unidentified		Was it Hamilton Jordan's memo?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Actually, Dr. Peter Bourne wrote the first long letter describing the fact that I might be president.
		That was immediately after the convention in Miami in 1972 when George McGovern was nominated.
		I wanted to be his vice president, and so did all the other southern governors, I might say, but we didn't make it.
		And so immediately after that, Peter Bourne wrote me a long dissertation, a seven-page letter.
		And then we began to have secret meetings with just four or five of us in the governor's mansion in Atlanta, my wife and just three or four people, including Hamilton Jordan, Jody Powell, Peter Bourne, and so forth.
		And out of those meetings, Hamilton Jordan kept notes, and he subsequently prepared, I would say, a plot to take over the White House that became the basis for our campaign technique.
		And it was extremely prescient.
		It was far-reaching.
		It was aggressive and ambitious.
		And it gave us what outsiders thought was a false sense of confidence.
		But we prevailed because of it.
		And Hamilton became my chief of staff and the leader of our group in the White House.
		Hamilton Jordan did.
unidentified		I asked that because one of the points was they said you have to write a book.
		And they said you should write a book or a column on some pertinent issue or topic with the focus of how a problem was confronted by your administration.
		And I asked that because that's not the book you came up with.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		No, it's not, but that was the original thought.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		Why did you move from that to more of a biography?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		To some degree, I describe what I did as governor.
		So part of that suggestion was included in Why Not the Best.
		But, you know, I'm my own author.
		Nobody has ever written a word in any of my books.
		I write every word.
		I don't have ghostwriters and so forth, except one that Rosa and I wrote together.
		But I have to make my own mind up once I get involved in the writing of a book, what I want to say, and the priorities of the points to be made in the order to put them in.
		But then when the book goes into the final stages, obviously the publishers nowadays, they provide me with an accomplished editor who proves to be compatible with me psychologically and personally.
		So they have been very helpful to me in giving me advice on the structure of books and that sort of thing.
unidentified		One of the things that's brought up in the introduction of this first book was that a discussion over whether the issue of your religion and your faith would be included in this first book.
unidentified		Did this make a difference in how you presented yourself for the whole campaign?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I was very careful as best I could not to inject my faith into the campaign.
		And I was successful until one night after I had become famous and when I had gotten a lot of momentum and was really leading the campaign.
		I was in somebody's backyard in North Carolina.
		They were having a little fundraiser for me.
		They were devout Baptists.
		And some of their guests that were being asked to contribute money to the campaign asked me a question, are you a born-again Christian?
		And since I was, I said, kind of like breathing, yes, I am.
		And they said, we're glad to hear that, Governor.
		And unfortunately, I guess for me, there were news reporters in the audience.
		And to them, at that time, a born-again Christian was a strange and weird character from outer space somewhere that thought he was endowed by God with some peculiar rights or privileges or insights from heaven.
		It created quite a stir.
		And I was really distressed by it.
		And I think that was probably the first time in any campaign that anybody has used the phrase born-again Christian.
		And then I had to go out of my way to make sure people understood that I was not putting myself above others.
		I was not having secret private conversations with God.
		I was not being ordained to take positions on secular issues and things of that kind.
		I went on the defensive after that.
		And while I was in the White House, I was very careful not to mix my private faith and worship with my duties as a president.
unidentified		Because some have said that you were the one, John Dean said it a couple weeks ago, I think, that it was actually you the one who opened the doors to evangelicals.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I consider myself to be an evangelical too.
		I would never close a door to evangelicals or to Jews or to Muslims or to non-believers.
		But I never had worship services in the White House.
		I never made speeches about my faith except in church.
		I taught Sunday school sometimes in the First Baptist Church.
		But my Sunday worship was completely separated from my life as a president.
unidentified		What was the Bible study this morning that you taught?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, this morning we have been studying 13 weeks on the covenants between God and different elements in the Old Testament, beginning with Abraham, where Abraham has a descendant.
		His first child, Ishmael, was the father of the Muslim Arab world.
		His second child, obviously, Isaac, was the father of the Jewish nation.
		And then where Paul explained to the early Christians that all of us Gentiles, who were not direct descendants of Abraham through blood, were descendants of Abraham in an equal way because Abraham had a covenant, not because of his ethnic background, but because of his faith in God.
		And since we share that faith, we are children of Abraham just as much as Jews or Muslims.
		So that was, we left that this morning for the first time after 13 weeks and began to study Christ from the New Testament for the next five weeks.
		This morning we had a lesson, very interesting lesson from Colossians describing the essence of Christ.
		What is Christ?
		Who is Christ?
		And then next Sunday the lesson will be, what did God say about Christ?
		And we'll have three more lessons leading up to Christmas.
unidentified		I want to invite our viewers to join us by telephone or by email.
		The phone numbers will be at the bottom of your screen.
		They are 2027-111 for Democrats, 222 for Republicans, and 202-628-0205 for Independents.
		If you would like to email a question in, you can do that also.
		Mr. President, we got some emails actually before we even began.
		So let me just ask you this.
		First one is, would you encourage a young American to volunteer for military service today?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I would.
		If that's the motivation of that person, I wouldn't want to ordain anything.
		But when I was six years old, the only thing I ever wanted to do was to go to the Naval Academy and serve in the military.
		And I did so for 11 years.
		And it was a great boon to my entire life.
		And I would say yes.
		There are other alternatives, of course, in volunteer service.
		For instance, the Peace Corps.
		My oldest grandson spent two and a half years in South Africa in the Peace Corps.
		And my mother, when she was 70 years old, was serving in India in the Peace Corps.
		So I say the Peace Corps or the military, yes.
		To serve your country, to serve others, and it only takes a short period of your life.
		And no matter what you do subsequently, it can open the doors to many wonderful adventures.
unidentified		Missy Mailer asked the questions, have nuclear weapons rendered war itself obsolete, particularly with uncontrollable proliferation taking place.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, war is not obsolete because we're now involved in the war.
		Unfortunately, we're involved in the war in Iraq, and we're not using nuclear weapons.
		As a matter of fact, the tremendous nuclear arsenals that we had and that the Soviet Union had was probably what prevented us having a world war during the Cold War region.
		Obviously, nuclear weapons add a new dimension of danger of what could be a global Holocaust in massive deaths.
		But we just, I just helped with an election in the Republic of Congo.
		We helped to hold a Carter Center did, the first election they've ever had, after 4 million people were killed in that war, civil war, in the last eight years.
		And we helped to bring peace to southern Sudan, where 2 million people were killed over 16 years.
		So horrible wars go on still.
		So I wouldn't say that nuclear weapons have prevented or caused wars.
unidentified		First call, Hayville, Massachusetts.
		Yes, it's an honor, Jimmy Carter, to speak to you.
		And thanks so much for writing this recent book because for so long we haven't had an honest, open, and civil debate about Israel and the Palestinians.
		It just seems like that issue is totally off the table with either party.
		And we really should have been on an honest broker between the two, between Israel and the Palestinians.
		I've got to ask you, I mean, I don't know whether it's AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, or what the fear is about having an honest civil debate because you can't even have a civil debate because it's just that you'll be accused of being anti-Semitic or what?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		So you're right.
		One reason I wrote this book is that there is no debate in this country.
		There are intense debates about the same issue, which is of global importance.
		Inside Israel, there are hot debates in Jerusalem every day of the year.
		There are hot debates and discussions in Europe and everywhere else in the world, not in the United States.
		It's almost impossible in this country in the present climate to have any sort of decent or in-depth discussion about this.
		I would like to point out, though, that the book is not about Israel.
		There's nothing in the book about what goes on inside Israel.
		The whole book is about Palestine.
		And that is the occupied territories, where a horrible affliction is being perpetrated on the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupiers.
		And the word that I use there, apartheid, which has caused a lot of problems, certainly does not apply to the democracy and freedom and equality of treatment of people inside Israel.
		But inside Palestine, there is a horrible affliction of what I consider extreme apartness or apartheid.
		And that's what I try to address.
unidentified		This past week you've spent a lot of time on television talking to a lot of reporters.
		I think you were interviewed by Judy Woodruff at one point in time.
		And the PBS has gotten a lot of reaction from that interview, saying that it was too strong, that she was too strong in the interview.
		Would you have any reaction to that interview?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I didn't even think so.
		I like the tough questions that I get because they let me explain things that need to be promulgated in this country and are not.
		It's almost impossible to expect, say, a public official to take a balanced stand between the Palestinians who are suffering horribly and the Israelis.
		There needs to be a two-state solution which has been put forward.
		You can't imagine a member, a candidate for Congress saying, if I'm elected, I'm going to take a balanced position between Israel and the Palestinians.
		Or I'm going to demand that Israel withdraw from Palestinian territory.
		Or I'm going to demand that Israel comply with international law.
		You can imagine.
		It's unimaginable.
		Well, I think it's time for people to realize what goes on, not in Israel, but in Palestine.
		And so when somebody like Judy Woodruff or anyone else, Larry King, I don't care who that is, wants to ask very tough questions, I'm prepared to answer them.
		Everything in the book is accurate, and I think everything in the book is exactly fair.
unidentified		Your book hits the New York Times bestseller list this week, I think at number 11.
unidentified		Any idea how many books have sold so far?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		No, and those figures came before when the book was not hardly published.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		So I hope that this last week of intense campaigning will boost it up a little bit.
unidentified		Which book has sold the most?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of fact, the first book I wrote sold the most.
		As I mentioned earlier to you, why not the best?
		The publisher that had it originally couldn't print them fast enough when I began to win primary elections.
		So Banham took it over and they published more than a million copies very quickly in just a few weeks, literally.
		The last book I wrote last year, Our Endangered Values, the week that I started campaigning for it on a book tour, it hit the New York Times for the first time at number one.
		And it stayed on there for a number of weeks.
		So really all my books have done quite well.
		Even the portrait book has been a surprising bestseller.
		It's been one of the best-selling portrait books over the last 50 years.
		And I've been that's been the main source of my income.
		I don't serve on corporate boards.
		I'm not on the very lucrative lecture circuit.
unidentified		Why don't you serve on corporate boards?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I just, when I got out of the, well, when I was defeated, I started saying when I got out of the White House, before I got out of the White House, I had a press conference and I announced that I was going to emulate Harry Truman, who didn't use his former presidency to earn income.
		So I haven't done some of the things that others have done, which is quite all right.
		But I have to say that I don't doubt that my having been president has helped me sell books.
		So it's not quite a fair claim.
unidentified		Aurora, Illinois.
		Yes, Mr. Carter, thank you for making me a Republican.
		Because of your incompetence in handling the Iranians with stagflation and you're cozing up with every dictator, thug, and Islamic terrorist there is.
		But more importantly, I find it to be vile because you're black is hard.
		It's hard because you're an anti-Semite.
		And let me explain why I think you're a bigot, a racist, and an anti-Semite.
		No whole.
		I think, Color, that the name-calling is enough.
		Thank you.
		But these are the strong questions that are coming from people.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't quite understand it, but I think I can understand it.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Can I come in?
unidentified		Sure, please do.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think if you look at the history of my public career, the last 30 years, the preeminent goal that I've had in my mind is to bring peace to the people of Israel.
		And I've worked on this without cessation during my adult life in politics.
		I was the only one, by the way, who ended the series of wars, four wars in 25 years between Israel and Israel's major adversary, that is Egypt.
		I sat down with them and negotiated a peace agreement in April of 1979, not a word of which has ever been violated.
		No one else has done that.
		Israel's never had a day of war with a conflict with Egypt since.
		And this book is not cover at all anything inside Israel, as I pointed out earlier in this program.
		It's designed to cover the nation of the Palestinians.
		Palestine is the name of the book.
		And the next word in the title is peace.
		I hope for peace for Israel and the Palestinians.
		And then the last two words is not apart.
		I don't want to see any persecution or separation of Israelis and their neighbors inside Palestine.
		And that's where it is happening now.
		So I don't have to go any further.
		But for people to say that I'm against Israel when the book doesn't mention anything in Israel or that I'm against and that I'm an anti-Semite Semite is something that obviously I reject with enthusiasm.
unidentified		And callers, we're more than welcome to take any debate and any issue up.
		It was just the name-calling that was a concern.
		Next is College Station, Texas.
		Morning, Mr. Carter.
		Hello.
		My name is Michael Goodwin.
		I'm a Canadian, and I'm living in College Station.
		And before I ask my two-part question, I just wanted to say that it shocks me, as a Canadian, sometimes I'm shocked living here, when I hear comments that carry the kind of tone that we just heard.
		Politics here seems to be so much more riven by division.
		And as I say, it's shocking to me that someone could say the kinds of things that we just heard.
		But let me say before I ask my question that it's such a great honor to talk to you.
		I've just been thrilled sitting here for the last 20 minutes, hoping I might get on to speak to you.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Nihilus.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Have a question, okay?
unidentified		Yes.
		My question is, can you tell me what was the nature of your relationship with Reinhold Niebuhr?
		Or what significance did he play in your life?
		And also, what was the nature of your relationship with Pierre Trudeau?
		Thank you very much for taking my call.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, I was with Pierre Trudeau.
		I was at Pierre Trudeau's funeral.
		I was the only main representative there from America, although I went as a private citizen.
		And I went to pay my homage to him because I liked him very much as a statesman, as a personal friend.
		And in fact, I was with him coincidentally on my 50th wedding anniversary when my wife and I went to Niagara Falls, and he happened to be there with one of his very, very young children.
		And so Pierre Trudeau was one of a group of seven all the four years that I was in the White House, and he and I were almost completely compatible on the major issues of the day.
		So that's my relationship with Pierre Trudeau, one of friendship and admiration.
		Reinhold Niebuhr is one of the theologians whose works I have studied for a number of years.
		It was the first time that somebody gave me a book by a theologian when I first let it be known that I might run for president, before the general public did know.
		And he covered the relationship between religion and politics.
		And he pointed out, for instance, that the highest goal of a human being was agape love, that is, self-sacrificial love.
		This was not possible for a statesman.
		You can't have the United States of America practicing self-sacrificial love.
		The highest goal for a nation or government is justice, which is near to love.
		Justice.
		So that's one thing that I really admired about Reinhold Niebuhr.
		But his deep analysis of the proper relationship between the church and state, as we refer to it now, was very beneficial to me.
unidentified		Next is Portland, Oregon.
		Hello, Mr. Carter.
		First off, let me say that I too share a love of Dylan Thomas, and Fern Hill is absolutely one of my favorite forms.
		But my question is actually what I'm asking you to, if you will, comment upon past, recent, and present debates regarding creation science being taught in the schools.
		Thank you very much.
		Okay.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I covered this to some degree in my book that I wrote last year, Our Endangered Values.
		I have a chapter in there on separation of church and state.
		And I point out that I'm a devout Christian.
		I'm a born-again Christian.
		I'm an evangelical.
		I just got through teaching Sunday school a few minutes ago.
		I do that every Sunday that I'm at home.
		And at the same time, I'm a nuclear physicist.
		I studied nuclear physics back when I was in the Navy under Admiral Rickova.
		It would now be called nuclear engineering, but that was what we called it early in the day.
		So, you know, I don't have any doubt about the origin of the universe, the creation of the stars and heavens many millions of years ago, as a matter of fact.
		But I still don't doubt the fact that there is a creator, God.
		I think there ought to be a separation of church and state.
		I don't think that there should be any teaching in the public school classrooms of the fact of creationism.
		In fact, the Bible, if you interpret back, would let you figure that the entire earth was created in 4004 B.C., just 6,000 or so years ago.
		I think that's not the fact.
		The Bible describes that the earth is flat.
		The Bible says that stars can fall on the earth, things that are physically impossible.
		And some devout Christians, whom I admire, feel that those things are true and that this ought to be taught in the classroom.
		I think that the teaching of a biblical aspect of the origin of the universe ought to be kept for people like me in church, in Sunday school, and the teaching of science ought to be taught in the classroom based on the facts of physics and geology.
		I don't think the two are incompatible.
		I personally think that there is a great creator about whom I taught this morning, but I think that God created the universe in ways that are now being understood based on what the sciences that I've already mentioned.
unidentified		Los Angeles, hello.
		President Carter, did you receive the James Bamford Pretext for War book I gave you at Borders in Westwood last year?
		And also, did you get a chance to read it about how the Iraq War was for Israel?
		And also, the Merchant Wallpaper addresses what that lady just did to you so rudely regarding calling you an anti-Semite, I believe.
		It's smear process or tactics used to get away from the question of how much power the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, and similar, have on the U.S. political system when it comes to talking about the pressure put by Israel and the fifth columnists that support Israel in the U.S.
		And lastly, you had mentioned that Israel is not an apartheid state, yet there's a recent article in Al-Haratz that mentions that they're not allowing marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and the Israeli newspaper Al-Harats.
		And how many Palestinians are on the Israeli cabinet, President Carter?
		I respect your writing a great deal, but to ignore that Israel is practicing apartheid isn't exactly accurate.
		And lastly, why don't we, one more point, why aren't we hearing Paul Finley, the former Republican congressman who wrote the book, They Dare to Speak Out, about the pressure of the pro-Israel lobby?
		He's written several books, and I've never seen him on C-Stant's book TV once.
		Thank you, Collar.
		You have seen him.
		I mean, you haven't seen him, but he's been there.
		Go ahead, Carl.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know how to answer those questions.
		You know, when somebody gives me a book about an interesting subject, habitually I get the book from my staff who are madly handing me books to sign in the bookstore, and particularly one that was about Israel and its relationships.
		While I was writing my book, I admitted they studied all the books that I had available to me, so I would guess that I did that.
		Well, you know, I think that AIPAC, which is a lobbying group that's devoted to Israeli Americans, it's not American Jews, it's those who are supporting Israel, and some of the American Jews don't comply with that.
		So it's an Israeli lobby, and they have a perfect right to represent the policies of Israel in the United States.
		And I don't question that at all.
		But I think that the thing that is preventing now Israel having a chance for the peace that we all pray for, permanent peace, in their own borders, recognized by every Arab country and the entire world, living side by side in harmony with the Palestinians, that's what this book is designed to accomplish.
		And I don't think it's going to ever do that as long as there's no debate, no discussion, and people are intimidated from expressing their views, frankly, or from even studying that.
		I've been invited by professors, for instance, to speak in some of the most famous universities that deal with primarily Jewish students.
		I have not been permitted to go on those campuses to hold a lecture.
		And so the pressures are intense.
		But I think that the people of Israel want peace.
		The Palestinians want peace.
		The Jordanians want peace.
		The Lebanese want peace.
		Everybody, all the Palestinians also share that hope for peace.
		And I hope that this book will break the ice and at least people at least start looking at the facts inside Palestine, finding a way for Israelis to have peace.
unidentified		Can you give us an example of a recent time in which you were not allowed to make a speech because of your ideas and stands?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm really reluctant to mention specific places, but I have been given invitations to speak on college campuses by individual professors who might be more militant on the subject or more open-minded on the subject is a better word.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		But then when I inquire to the leaders of a university, I've been told that the issue is too controversial or that maybe we should wait till next year or something of that kind.
unidentified		Detroit, hello.
unidentified		Hello, how are you doing, Mr. President?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing fine.
unidentified		Essentially, what I wanted to call in and ask you, I guess it's a fairly tough question, something that's been plaguing me over the years as I've watched politics.
		Just wondering, how do we get more intelligence into politics instead of having politics be politics?
		Because the people I've met of both stripes, Democrat and Republican, have stricken me as liars or just generally incompetent.
		So, I mean, how do we as voters put smarter people in office?
		Thanks.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, first of all, I don't agree at all with your premise.
		I would guess that if you took the members of Congress or in the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, or if you took the average governor, or even state representatives, I was a state senator one time.
		On average, I would say they were well above the average as far as education and awareness of issues, and I would say even perhaps IQ, although that might be a brash thing for me to claim.
		So I don't think you ought to underestimate the character and the integrity of politicians.
		One thing you have to remember is that when one of them does go wrong, if one of them commits a corrupt act and is caught, or one of them commits an indiscretion sexually and is caught, the publicity is overwhelming.
		It's global publicity, and it tends to put the stigma on all of those others in the House or the U.S. Senate or other political office who really don't deserve that stigma.
		But I've served as a member of the state legislature.
		I've served as a governor.
		I've served as a president.
		I've dealt with all 535 members of the House and Senate when I was there.
		And in general, I would say that they are admirable men and women, very intelligent, and most of them eager to serve their constituents.
unidentified		Do you think there are more of these incidents happening, or is it the result of something that you did not have, which is the 24-hour news cycle?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think the revelations of improprieties are now much more heavily emphasized in the public mind because of the 24-hour news cycle, for one thing.
		The other thing that's happened since I was in office in ancient days is that when I was running for campaign, there was no such thing as negative advertising, say, running for president.
		I ran against Gerald Ford, a wonderful man, and later ran against Ronald Reagan, who was governor at the time.
		We never referred to each other as anything except my distinguished opponent.
		We treated each other with great respect.
		And if I had deigned to make any personal allegation against the character of my adversaries, it would have been political suicide for me.
		Now, habitually, people get elected by tearing apart the character of their opponent, mostly based on fallacious claims or tried-contrived claims or exaggerated claims.
		And so by the time one of them is finally elected, with a narrow margin perhaps, his character has been, or her character, has been severely damaged in the public minds by all the negative advertisements that have been heaped around his neck by his opponent who just got defeated.
		And then that animosity, this fairly new development in our country, carries on to Washington.
		And you have an almost very difficult time for Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with each other and to debate the issues openly on the floor of the House and Senate.
		And they were debated that way when I was president or when Gerald Ford was president or when Ronald Reagan was president.
		That's changed now.
		And one of the main reasons for it is the enormous amount of money that floods the political system and that permeates the campaigns.
		When I ran against Gerald Ford, to go back again to his old times, he and I both campaigned for president on the $26 million that came from the $1 per person checkoff on the income tax.
		Well, I think this last campaign cost something like $2 billion.
		And both John Kerry and President Bush rejected the public funds because they didn't want to be bound by any limits.
		So enormous amounts of money flooded in from special interest groups and others.
		And that's been part of the change.
unidentified		Speaking of Gerald Ford, when was the last time you talked with him?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		About last month.
		I call every now and then.
		Sometimes I don't bother him.
		And when he calls, he doesn't bother me personally if we're traveling or something.
		I talk to his staff members who give me a report on his physical condition.
		And the last reports I've got have been very good.
unidentified		Next call, Belgrade, Montana.
		Hi, President Carter.
		First off, my dad was like a nuclear engineer under Admiral Rickover, too.
		I just wanted to say that.
		But I want to thank you for that book, Our Endangered Values.
		It changed my life and how I looked at things.
		But my question is in regards to Cuba and our future relations with Cuba, because, you know, I was watching the United Nations General Assembly, and it seems like only three countries support the embargo, the United States, Israel, and Sweden, or something like that.
		And I just wanted to know what your thoughts on the matter would be.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I think it's ridiculous.
		I think it's an adverse reflection on our country to have sustained an embargo against the people of Cuba.
		It doesn't hurt Castro.
		It hurts the 13 million people of Cuba not to be able to have free trade and commerce, medicine and food that they might need coming in from the United States.
		And I think it's an adverse reflection on our country, too, for you and me not to be permitted to visit Cuba.
		You know, this is a restraint on my own freedom.
		I can visit almost any other nation in the world.
		My government won't let me go to Cuba.
		And so I think this is a very serious problem.
		When I became president, by the way, in 1977, the first thing I did, before I'd been in office a month or so, was to open up all trade to Cuba, all travel to Cuba, or travel, not trade.
		And then I was going to open up trade.
		Later, we opened up what we call interest sections in Washington, one in Havana, so we could have some kind of diplomatic discussions.
		As you know now, this administration has tightened up as much as possible to try to prevent any travel between us and Cuba.
		I think the best way to bring about democracy and freedom in Cuba is to let them have unimpeded access to people from a democratic and free country like ours.
		So I think it's a very serious mistake.
unidentified		Belton, Mississippi.
		Mississippi, go ahead.
		I think you mean Missouri.
		Ah, go ahead, please.
		Yeah, this, I'm very happy to get a chance to talk to you, President.
		I wanted to ask you, back in the early 80s, Fred Friendly, the late Fred Friendly, did a series on the Constitution, that delicate balance, and there were Harvard professors that moderated it and all people that were involved in the different hypotheses that were involved, like Agnew was there, and all the dislike Anna Quinlan, Archer Bill Cox, all the different things that kind of happened.
		And it ended up being sort of like a lesson in history, recent history.
		And I know that you say that you don't make any money off of your presidency or you don't take, you know, you don't do, I guess, lectures and things like that.
		But I found it very helpful to even understand issues about the recent past.
		And I just wondered if you were aware of those.
		I can't recall if you participated in it or not, because I know Gerald Ford did and Dan Rather and all the different news.
		Yeah, well, thanks, Kyler.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, I don't mean that I've never given lectures.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I've given hundreds and hundreds of lectures since I left the White House, including to colleges and so forth.
unidentified		And you're paid for them?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, some of them I'm paid.
		Some of them I just go and get an honorary doctorate or, you know, get honored or something like that.
		But by the way, the possibilities for my lectures on my new book, I made it clear that I didn't want any fee just to come to have a place on the college campus to present my views to the students and answer questions.
		But anyway, yeah, so I've given lectures, but I'm just not on the lecture circuit, and sometimes I am paid for those lectures.
		So I really have enjoyed going to large and small colleges since I left the White House, perhaps more than making speeches to conventions and things.
		And those are quite often oriented toward the kind of, I'd say, academic subjects that you described.
		Also, I'm in my 25th year as a professor at Emory University.
		I teach in all the colleges of the university, political science, history, law, theology, religion, all of them, over a period of a year.
		And I really enjoy that.
		In fact, I'll be doing that at Emory University next year.
		So I have a chance to interrelate with students and to interrelate with other professors and scholars.
		Sometimes they bring in famous scholars to co-teach with me.
		Bishop Tutu has been one, for instance, that spent a long time at the Carter Center, and he and I taught together and worked together.
		So this is the kind of thing that I do and really enjoy.
unidentified		Our viewers heard earlier you talking about raising money for the presidential library once you had lost the presidency.
		And it was $26 million for the library.
		How's it doing?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's doing fine.
		As a matter of fact, the $26 million not only includes the library, but all of its furnishings and air conditioning and all like that.
		So we finally got it paid off many years after it was built.
unidentified		Is it fair for a president to have to go out and personally raise that kind of money?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a law now.
		It wasn't a law when I was there, but it was a custom.
		And since then, the law has been passed.
unidentified		But do you think it's fair?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would presume that if a president didn't want to do it, he wouldn't have to.
		I think Richard Nixon decided not to do it because there was a big legal argument about his papers, as you know, that's only recently been addressed.
		I wouldn't say it's unfair.
		It gives us a chance to have a place for all of the photographs and tape recordings and documents to be stored permanently and examined by scholars who come in there and also by the public.
		I'm glad that I was able to do it.
		And nowadays, the new enormous presidential libraries are costing maybe 10 times as much.
unidentified		Well, President Mind did.
		President Bush, the father, was $83 million.
		And Bill Clinton's, I think, was $165 million.
		And the New York Daily News has reported that current President Bush is saying he will raise $500 million for it.
		Is that out of hand?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		It's up to them.
		I wouldn't want to criticize them.
		And costs are greater now.
		And there's been an expansive desire on the part of outgoing presidents to distribute or display more of their mementos and things that, in effect, make their administration look good.
unidentified		I don't blame them.
		Carsonville, Michigan.
		Hi, President Carter.
		My name is Tristan Bright.
		I'm 21 years old.
		And I'm studying Richard Nixon right now.
		And what was your feeling about President Nixon?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, he turned out to be one of my best friends, as a matter of fact.
		And he was the first president I ever met.
		Also, I was a governor when he was president, so I went to the White House and was delighted to meet him as president.
		I was very, obviously disappointed when Watergate came along and he had to retire or resign in order not to be impeached.
		I was pleased with his choice of Gerald Ford, with whom I formed an intimate personal friendship for which I'm very grateful.
		When I was president, by the way, I called on President Nixon to help me with international affairs, both with advice and also to support the things that I was doing, like a nuclear arms control agreement with Russia, with the Soviet Union then, and also to help me with the Panama Canal treaties.
		He decided not to do that, but he did help me a great deal with the peace agreements that I worked out concerning Israel and her neighbors.
		And he finally said that I was giving him too many briefings.
		If I would cut back on not quite so many, President Nixon and I were friends.
		I invited him to the White House when I normalized diplomatic relations with China.
		He came, and we had a delightful evening then.
		He and President Ford and I flew over to Anwar Sadat's funeral together on one of the Air Force planes, and we had a chance to get personally acquainted better on that flight.
		So I had a very wonderful relationship with Nixon and believe he was one of the best authors and writers of history and biography that I've ever known.
unidentified		How did it come about that you have his gate or his gate outside of your circling your house here?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Oh, this was a fence that was used at Key Biscayne when President Nixon used that site as a presidential retreat.
		And so when I moved in to Plains, it belongs to the Secret Service.
		And as part of the security apparatus, they put the fence up around part of our house.
unidentified		Next, Madison.
		Is that Madison, Maine?
		Jimmy, I'm an admirer of yours from way back.
		I'm 77.
		There are two questions.
		The first is, if not one boy, bullet, or bomb had gone to Vietnam, considering the geopolitical media at the time, what do you think the result would have been worldwide?
		And secondly, have you read Brigitte Gabrielle's book called Because They Hate?
		It was published in 205.
		She's originally from Lebanon, and she's an Iron-American citizen.
		If you haven't read it, I would love to hear what you would say about it when the time comes that you do.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I have not read it, but I'll certainly remember that and it'll be on the record here.
		As far as Vietnam is concerned, had we not gotten involved in Vietnam as a nation, I think the outcome would have probably been the same with millions of people not killed.
		As you know, President Eisenhower had a very poor opinion of the French military.
		And when they were defeated in Vietnam and withdrew, there were tremendous pressures in this country put on John Kennedy to take up the mantle that the French had lost and to protect that part of the world from the incursion and domination of communism.
		And President Clinton, excuse me, President John Kennedy got us involved in Vietnam.
		And then President Johnson had quagmire on his hands, and he finally had a decision to make to basically start withdrawing massively to escalate our troops, and he increased our troops from about 80,000 to 500,000.
		And then after he left office, as you know, decided not to run again because of the Vietnam War being such a negative factor, then Hubert Humphrey was defeated, and then eventually Nixon came along and we withdrew from Vietnam.
		But I think the results would have been the same with less loss of life.
		And I think that, although many people deny it, there are a lot of parallelisms between Vietnam experiences and the ones that we are suffering now in Iraq.
unidentified		If you've just joined us, we're spending three hours today with Jimmy Carter, the former President of the United States, talking about not just his most recent book, but all of his books, over 20 of them.
		And you can join us if you would like by telephone or by email.
		Next call for you is from just outside of Washington, Falls Church, Virginia.
		Hello.
		Falls Church.
		Go ahead, please.
		Yes, I just wanted to thank you very much for writing this book.
		I think it's long overdue.
		And I'm wondering if you could elaborate a little bit about the wall that is on the cover of your book.
		And secondly, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the Palestinian prisoners, the large amount of Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, that are being held by Israel at this point.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, the photograph on the cover is of part of the wall.
		This particular part, as you can judge by the height of the Palestinians on this side, is about 25 feet.
		When I was there in January and trying to go from Jerusalem to Ramallah, the home of the Palestinians, and then down to Jericho in the Jordan River Valley, they were building a wall there that was 40 feet high, concrete wall.
		That's as high as a four-story building.
		And the wall winds deep into the heart of Palestinian territory, deep into the heart of West Bank, just designed, I think, to take more land away from the Palestinians.
		It was originally conceived by Prime Minister Rabin, who was assassinated because he wanted to bring peace, as a wall to go along the Israeli border.
		And international courts and all approved that.
		That was changed later on to make it a wall that doesn't divide Israelis from Palestinians.
		It divides Palestinians from other Palestinians.
		And it is a horrible imposition and a breakdown of freedom of speech and travel against the Palestinians.
		This is Typical of what's going on in Palestine now.
		There's been a furoy, as you know, in this country, and I share part of the grief about the one Israeli soldier that was taken, to answer your other question, when Palestinians who were locked up inside Gaza.
		There's a wall completely around Gaza with only two doors in it.
		But some Palestinians dug a tunnel underneath the wall and captured an Israeli soldier who's still been held, I hope, safe and alive at least.
		And that's a tragedy.
		But the reason that they did it, they claim, publicly, was because Israel is holding about 9,000 Palestinian prisoners.
		And what the Palestinians asked for was: we'll swap you this one soldier.
		If you'll just release some of the hundred women you're holding, about 100, or some of the little children you're holding, there are about 300 children, some of them as young as 12 years old.
		And the Israeli government refused to swap any of the women and children for this one soldier.
		So the soldier's being held.
		Instead, the Israelis invaded Gaza again, and since then, about 400 Palestinians have been killed.
		I think also about seven Israelis have been killed.
		So it's a terrible problem, these prisoners that Israel is holding, all of them taken prisoner, almost every one of them, in the Palestinians' own land.
		And they're tried in Palestine by military courts.
		And then they're taken most of them into Israel and incarcerated there, which is also against international law.
		The law says, the Geneva Convention says that if any prisoners are taken by an occupying military power, they must be incarcerated within their own territory.
		But since they're taken into Israel, then their families can't visit them because Palestinians can't go into Israel most of the time, and even lawyers can't visit them.
		It's a terrible situation, and it needs to be understood by all Americans.
unidentified		It has been over 25 years since you published your memoirs now.
unidentified		First of all, how did you do it?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was defeated in 1980 and went out of office in 1981.
		And I decided not to do much traveling that first year.
		I guess you would say I wanted to lick my wounds and I wanted to let the furor of the election die down.
		And I had, all the time I was in the White House, I dictated on a little tiny dictating machine my thoughts and comments that I knew would not be published in the weekly journal of all the things that the president says publicly.
		And when I would finish a tape, I would just throw it in my outbasket.
		And my secretary, Susan Clive, would take those tapes and she would type them up and put them in a book.
		And I never saw any of them.
		And when I got back home, they arrived here, in a closet right over there, 6,000 pages of diary notes.
		So that first year in writing this memoir, I went through those memoir notes of my diary and I marked things that I wanted to say about different subjects, and that was the origin of this.
		It took me a year to do it.
		It was published within a year after I left the White House.
unidentified		Do the tapes still exist?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I doubt if the tapes still exist, but there's one copy of my diary notes here in these cabinets.
unidentified		In print.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		In print, verbatim.
		And I've also sent a duplicate Zirach copy to the Presidential Library in Atlanta, the Carter Presidential Library, with instructions that they shouldn't be made public until I authorized them specifically or until after my death.
		Because a lot of the references in the diary notes are about members who are still serving in the House and Senate and about maybe a few leaders who are still serving in their nations.
		And some of the comments are quite frank and uncomplimentary, perhaps.
unidentified		At 82, are you thinking more about death?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, I think more about it, but I'm not concerned about it.
		I'm a Christian and I don't have any fear of death.
		But obviously I think about the fact that my life is approaching, is nearer an end than it was yesterday or than it was 25 years ago.
		Yes.
		And I try to plan my activities and shape my priorities accordingly.
unidentified		How's your health?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		So far as I know, my health is very good.
		My wife and I both get a lot of exercise.
		We swim every day.
		We ride bicycles.
		We hike and do other things.
		And then Rosen is an expert on nutrition.
		We try to eat right.
		We have very good health care at Emory University Hospital, University where I teach.
		So as far as I know, I'm in good health.
unidentified		You have a lot of cancer in your family, an issue that a lot of people face these days.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That was a shock, I think, to the medical world because five of us, my father, my oldest sister, my youngest sister, my youngest brother, and my mother all died with cancer.
		Four of them, all of them, ultimately, with pancreatic cancer.
		And pancreatic cancer is a fairly rare disease.
		Only about one person out of about 1,500 die with pancreatic cancer.
		And for four people in one family to die with it defies mathematical odds.
		So when that happened to two of my family members after I left the White House, they began a study of the familial traits or inherited traits of pancreatic cancer.
		And it was the first time it had ever been done.
		They later found a family in Japan that had three members who died of pancreatic cancer.
		So there's a broad study now.
		And as a result of that, I've been given a fairly thorough test with MRI and CAT scans and also with blood tests quite readily so that they might detect the first stages of pancreatic cancer if it should develop in my body.
		But there's only one difference between me and the other members of my family.
		All of them smoked cigarettes and I haven't.
		So maybe that is the difference, I hope.
unidentified		Is there a lot of research being done on pancreatic cancer in general?
		Many cancers are now.
		People live a long time.
		Yes.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		In fact, there's a special foundation that's been established about five or six years ago just to deal with pancreatic cancer uniquely.
		And I've made a public service announcement telling about my own family experiences, what I just described to you, you know, to raise funds for this.
		And they're making good progress, I understand.
unidentified		Have you made plans for your funeral?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we have.
		I don't do that.
		Rosen does with my staff and with people at the White House who have that as their assignment.
		There is an official body at the White House or signed at the White House that plans the funerals of all future presidents.
		And they began this as soon as I left the White House.
		And so all of those plans have been made.
		They have to be updated every year or so about who should sing the songs or what kind of instruments they should be or who would give this sermon because some of the people that I preferred at the beginning and Rosen consulted with me have passed away before I did.
		But yes, the plans are already made.
unidentified		Where will you be buried?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		In front of this house in Plains.
		Plains is special to us.
		You know, I could be buried in Arlington Cemetery or wherever I want, but My wife was born here and I was born here and I think as was mentioned earlier on this program, our ancestors who were born in the 1700s, both mine and Rosalind's are born here.
		In fact, when I was four years old in this small town, I lived next door to Rosalind, who was just one year old.
		And then I moved out into the country.
		And so Plains is where our heart has always been.
unidentified		Do you think you'll have a funeral in Atlanta or Washington?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I think there is planned a funeral in Washington and possibly a brief display of my body in Atlanta so that people that knew me when I was governor could come and pay tribute.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		But I have to admit to you that I haven't seen the detail of plans for that event.
unidentified		I ask you this partly also because of the poetry that you wrote in Always a Reckoning, specifically about your passing.
		Was it hard for you to write about on the Committee of Scholars Describe the Future Without Me?
		That's the title?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That's kind of a humorous poem.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		You want me to read it?
unidentified		Would you mind?
		I don't know if I bought the pastors.
		I don't think I did.
		I think I left the future.
		We'll get them maybe.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Can I borrow yours?
unidentified		Sure you can, that are bifocals.
		I don't know if you could do.
		Give it a try.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I don't mind if you do.
unidentified		Okay.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		This was when people at Emory were trying to plan for my demise.
		It says, a committee of scholars describes the future without me.
		Some shy professors, forced to write about a time that's bound to come when my earthly life is done, described my ultimate demise in lovely euphemistic words, invoking pleasant visions of burial sites with undertakers, friends, kinfolks, and pious pastors gathered around my flowery casket, eyes uplifted,
		breaking new semantic ground by not just saying, I have passed on, joined my Maker, or gone to the promised land, but making the lamented fact in the best and grandest terms that I, now dead, have recently reduced my level of participation.
unidentified		And where did that idea come from?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, as a matter of fact, when we were planning the relationship between the Carter Center and Emory University, which is kind of a partnership, there was a group of about 50 people who wanted to have an orderly transition and wanted to retain the independence and autonomy of the Carter Center, but have a good relationship with the scholarly and research characteristics of Emory.
		And they hated to say when President Carter dies or when President Carter goes to join his Maker or when he departs this world.
		So they use a euphemism there and instead of saying all those things, they say when he reduces his level of participation.
		So I saw that in one of their memoranda that they were circulating among themselves.
		I decided to write a poem about it.
unidentified		We showed our viewers this graphic right here, these sketches.
unidentified		What is it and who did them?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		All those were done in my portrait book by my granddaughter, who is an accomplished artist.
		She just did cartoons to illustrate the individual poems.
		And she's Sarah Elizabeth.
		She's a professional artist who lives in New York.
unidentified		Show one more here.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a pasture gate, I think.
unidentified		Next call is from Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
		Well, Mr. President, it's an honor to speak with you today.
		I was curious as to where you were on 9-11, how you heard about it, and were you given any input to the aftermath by President Bush and the committee as to what to do from that day forward?
		And if you could speak on the nuclear effect now that China is bringing forth the possibility of their attacking the United States.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Who attacked the United States?
unidentified		China.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		China.
		Well, as a matter of fact, I was in Mongolia in the desert area of Mongolia, and I came back and landed in JFK Airport in Washington and flew to Atlanta and then drove home the night before 9-11.
		And the next morning I got up early and I had to go back to Atlanta to teach at Emory.
		I was on the way from Plains, Georgia, back to Atlanta in the car.
		The Secret Service agents were driving the vehicle and they heard on their radio that a plane had struck the tower in Washington, I mean in New York.
		And they told me about it.
		And we were in the car and couldn't see any TV or anything.
		But we turned on the radio and listened.
		And by the time we arrived at the Carter Center, all the people there had the televisions turned on and we saw repetitive pictures of the car, of a plane hitting the towers and them collapsing.
		Of course, we were all horrified.
		And I went ahead and gave a lecture.
		As a matter of fact, that particular lecture was to the students at Emory in a town meeting when I meet with 2,500 or so students, the first of every calendar year, mainly to answer their questions.
		And they were all distressed about what was going to happen to our nation and if we were going to be hit next and if nuclear weaponry would be exchanged and I tried to reassure them.
		That was the event.
		And of course, very shortly after that, President Bush was kind enough or gracious enough to invite me to join him and the other former presidents and other dignitaries at the National Cathedral in Washington to participate in the memorial for the people who were lost in the 9-11 tragedy.
unidentified		An email question asks here about George Herbert Walker Bush and the whole story that continues that he, along with others, were responsible for delaying the hostages' release and therefore ensuring not only your defeat, but also the ability for the hostages to be released during your presidency.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I heard about that at the time.
		There was quite a heated discussion all over the nation.
		There were some books written about it, alleging that while President Reagan was in office, well, actually when President Reagan was running against me for office, that some representatives of his went to Europe and persuaded the Iranians not to release the hostages until after the election was over.
		Well, I never have had any evidence presented to me that it was true, and I never have commented on whether on my thinking it was true.
		The only thing I know is that during the last stages of my administration, I devoted full time to trying to negotiate with the Iranians to secure the release of our hostages.
		In fact, the last three days I was president, I never went to bed at all.
		I had ongoing negotiations through other Arab nations and through other governments and through the Bank of England and so forth with the Iranians trying to secure the release of our hostages.
		All of them were safe.
		I found out about 9 or 10 o'clock on inauguration morning that all the hostages were safe and they were all in a plane in the Tehran airport ready to take off.
		So I waited with bated breath, obviously, for them to take off and be free.
		And then I got in the car with President Reagan and we drove to the Capitol for the inauguration ceremonies.
		And I had the Secret Service and State Department officials there to give me information immediately as soon as the hostage took off.
		And it didn't happen until five minutes after I was no longer president.
		And that was one of the most joyous revelations of news I've ever had in my life.
		Every single hostage came home safe and free.
unidentified		But you never had any kind of evidence that there had been any other, anyone else in President Reagan's circle who had intervened?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		No evidence was ever presented to me.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		And I've never made any comment about whether I thought the published evidence was accurate or not.
unidentified		Next call is Baltimore.
		Hello.
		Oh.
		Hello.
		Hello, go ahead, please, Baltimore.
		Hello.
		Good afternoon, Mr. President.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		It's an honor to speak to you.
		And my family and I voted for you both times.
		You ran for president, but we felt like you were too good for Washington.
		And number one, I just want to say we're contributors to humanity, and we know you're a great worker for that, building houses for the poor.
		But you were always in good physical shape.
		When you were sworn in as president, you walked from down at the Capitol to the White House, you and your beautiful wife.
		Do you remember that?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Of course I remember it.
unidentified		Well, and I don't know.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Oh, is that your question?
unidentified		I think you're absolutely right in opening up relations with Cuba.
		It's really ludicrous not to recognize that nation.
		Thank you, and God bless you.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
unidentified		Next call goes to Ashton, Alabama.
		To where?
		Is this Ashton, Alabama?
		Athens, Alabama.
		Go ahead.
		This is Donna Lowe.
		I worked at one of the prisons in Alabama in the correctional system.
		I'm a mental health professional.
		And what I was wondering, you know, I've been a great admirer of yours, and your wife has done a lot of work in this area in mental health.
		And I wondered if you knew of any progress that was going to be made or work that was going to be done in the specific area of the correctional system, because there's more and more severely mentally ill who are in the correctional system, plus a great many HIV and AIDS patients who are in the correctional system and are, you know, segregated from all others,
		as well as having mental disorders and progressing into dementia and things like this.
		Thanks, Alabama.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I wish my wife was here because she's an expert on this.
		In fact, Rosen is, I would say, the number one citizen of the entire world that promotes mental health and points out that mental illness can, in most cases, be cured and people can live, or at least that they can live a normal life.
		She also makes many lectures on this subject.
		In fact, three days ago, she was in New York giving a lecture at Columbia University.
		She points out frequently about the evolution of treatment of people who are mentally ill.
		When I became governor and Rosen became an expert on mental illness, it was the custom then in Alabama and Georgia and other places just to incarcerate mental patients in mental institutions where they were kept for the rest of their lives and given practically no treatment but treated almost as animals because of reforms that were initiated by me and many others because of the influence of Rosen and also by, obviously, by Congress.
		The trend was to move mental patients out of those major institutions.
		We had 12,000 patients at Millersville in Georgia to community institutions.
		Nowadays, though, that trend has been reversed and the major place to incarcerate mental patients is in prison.
		The largest mental institution in the world is a prison in Los Angeles, California.
		In fact, the governor of California was discussing that on National Public Radio this morning.
		As a matter of fact, what are we going to do about these people?
		They're obviously just imprisoned.
		They're not given any psychiatric treatment.
		They're not even given any medical treatment.
		And this is a terrible reflection on our nation that we haven't had the insight or the compassion or the wisdom to work out a way to give those with mental illnesses proper treatment and proper care.
		Rosen is also a major advocate of equality of treatment about insurance, that there ought to be the same kind of insurance coverage for mental illnesses as there are physical illnesses.
		And she's proven without question among major corporations that have done this that the actual total cost of insurance goes down instead of up because many of the later physical illnesses are bred by the fact that early stages of mental illness are not treated and they can be treated by psychologists, by psychiatrists, sometimes even by trained medical doctors.
		And so this is something that is sadly being neglected and addressed improperly in our country.
		And I'm very thankful for your answer.
		And I know my wife is going to be thankful for your question, and my wife is going to be thankful as well.
unidentified		What do you do in particular, if anything, to keep a good mental health?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've been lucky, to start with.
		We've had a number of people in my own family who have suffered from depression or bipolar illnesses.
		I had one cousin when I grew up who was mentally incapable.
		That's something that you're born with.
		It's not really an illness, but it's a mental problem.
		And he was incarcerated in the state prison, you might say, for mental patients.
		And so I grew up with this.
		And I've had two uncles who were terrible alcoholics and spent most of their last years of life in prison.
		So I've seen the need for proper treatment for alcoholics and for drug addicts and for those who have mental illness.
		So my family has been touched by it very deeply in many different ways at different levels of age in our family.
		And I would guess that almost every single family in America, somehow or another, has been adversely affected by mental illness and is still not treated adequately.
		Rosen has written a book about mental illness.
		She mastered, I would say, the knowledge that was known by advanced medical scientists and by trained psychiatrists.
		And she put it in language that her mother could understand or that a peanut farmer could understand.
		And it's been very helpful to people to read how to care for a mental problem in their own family.
unidentified		Does she and you both agree or disagree with the use of antidepressants and actual medication to deal with it?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		She agrees thoroughly, provided it's properly administered by medical doctors.
		She has an annual meeting at the Carter Center every year where experts from around the world come in.
		It's the biggest event in the year to discuss the nuances of mental illness and what can be done about it.
		She's even gotten the World Health Organization finally to adopt mental health in addition to physical health.
		So she's been a pioneer in this.
		And this happens at her conference this year.
		It was on children and mental health.
		And one of the problems, to answer your question specifically, is the over-treatment, the overuse of strong medicines for little children who quite often don't need it.
		But since their parents don't get proper, sometimes fairly expensive, treatment from a trained psychiatrist, they will get medicine from other means so that the child is overly treated.
		Obviously, others don't get enough treatment, but the mistreatment, I'll say, in medical terms of little children in school, elementary school and high school, is one of the serious problems that Rosalind is trying to address.
unidentified		To Massachusetts now, Cambridge.
		Hello.
		Yes, it's an honor to speak with you, President Carter.
		And I have a request of you, Amy, first.
		It will help President Carter with my question.
		In his book, there is a map showing settlements.
		Would you mind holding that up to the screen?
		I think it will very much assist his answer and the audience.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a page?
unidentified		Do you know if it's in the front?
		It's listed in the table of contents under settlements, and it's the one with all the little dots on it.
		Why don't you go ahead and ask your question while I look for it?
		Yes, it's this.
		I'm a routine participant at the Kennedy School of Government, and last week there was a lecture by Stephen Walt, and many of the concerns that you've expressed, President Carter, came up during that lecture.
		And I also watched the two Tim Russett programs, one last night on cable here in Cambridge, and one this morning on Meet the Press.
		And a persistent fact strikes me as glaringly need of correction and also by way of helping to understand your thesis, and that is the physical reality on the ground that explains your notion of what you have called spider webs and the past system, which I completely agree with as objectionable.
		People must understand the implications of what the settlement system with its roads and interconnection systems and passageways and so on actually means to daily life, as you explained it at some length last evening with Tim Russett.
		And I think they can't do that without seeing that map.
		Color, I'm going to need to ask you for a little bit more help here because I'm going to have a table of contents in the beginning of the book.
		Yeah.
		Where it says maps.
		Yeah.
		Got it.
		There are several maps listed, and there's one that says settlements, and it's the one in the middle of the book with all kinds of little dots on it showing the dispersion of settlements.
		Hold on just a second.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		The book has page numbers in it.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Can you have the page?
unidentified		I'm afraid I don't.
		I don't.
		I don't have it in front of me.
		I just don't see it.
		Any map here that says.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Does it have Chiron's plan there?
unidentified		It's not.
		Is it what it is?
		Okay, let me see if I can find that.
		It's the one that can take dots.
		Okay.
		And I think we have to remember that apartheid, as distinct from other kinds of discrimination, it begins as a physical concept.
		And what's so important about your views, President Carter, is that people understand the physical reality on the ground that supports your thesis of not only hardship in life, but the...
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a question, by the way?
unidentified		It's asking you to explain that with reference to the map.
		Because there it is, and I don't think most Americans, including those I deal with at the Kennedy School, have no idea of what we are now looking at on screen.
		And it makes what you're trying to say in words very vague without actually seeing it.
		So if you were to say what you said last night on Tim Russett, that would be very helpful and leave the map on the screen.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Give me a chance.
		Okay, keep it on the camera if you don't mind.
		Well, what happened when Israel finally was granted the stages of its boundaries in 1967 after several wars, Israel was granted 77% of all the land.
		That's Israel on the left-hand side of the map in the light brown, light gray color.
		And the West Bank was only given 22% of the remaining land, a tiny amount.
		And that map is basically of that little 22%.
		And now the brown part, or gray part, inside the West Bank, is what Shiron's plan was, and that's the one that Prime Minister Olmer has adopted.
		And the white part is a part that Israel will control.
		You see, the entire Jordan River Valley, which is over to the right, is to be controlled by Israel.
		And the wall is to go around those tiny gray parts that are left in the heart of the West Bank and will completely encircle or encapsulate or imprison the Palestinians.
		And those dots there are the ones that Omert and Shiron intend to retain inside the Palestinian territory, along with the dots that they still have now in their own territory.
		So you can see the Palestinians have practically nothing left.
		And I couldn't show it on this map because it's too complicated.
		Between adjacent settlements, there are roads built to connect one settlement to another, and then to connect the settlements to Jerusalem.
		And the Palestinians in most places are not permitted to use those same roads or even to cross many of the roads, in addition to the wall being built, which I haven't yet described adequately.
		So that's what the Palestinians are.
		So apartness or apartheid, if you want to use that word, apartheid is a way they pronounce it in South Africa, is gross in Palestine.
		I mean, it's much worse in many ways than apartheid was in South Africa.
		And the Palestinians all have to have a past, just like the black people did in South Africa.
		And when the wall goes between a family's home and his family's garden or his pasture or his field, it's a gross deprivation because he can't cross.
		And the wall is built through a swath that's about 100 meters wide.
		And the Israelis go in first with chainsaws, and they cut down all the olive trees, some of them almost 1,000 years old.
		And then they bulldoze that area blank, and they dig a six-foot-deep trench on both sides to install their listening devices, and then they build this horrible wall in the middle of it.
		And I described it.
		The entire city of Bethlehem is encompassed in a wall where Jesus was born.
		And I described a cathedral there named after Martha, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
		Lazarus was raised from the dead right outside Jerusalem in Bethany.
		And they had a congregation of 2,000 Christians who were worshiping in this convent, in this cathedral dedicated to Martha, St. Martha.
		And the Israelis built their wall 30 feet high right through the garden of the church.
		And the church is now on the Jerusalem side, on the Israeli side.
		All the members of the church are on the Palestinian side, and they can't get to the church because the Israelis won't let the Palestinians go to Jerusalem.
		They can't go through this enormous wall.
		That's what's happening here, and nobody, very few people in the United States know it or will acknowledge what's going on.
		It's horrendous.
unidentified		When were you?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		And that's why I wrote the book.
		When was I last there?
		Earlier this year.
		And when we go to the Holy Land, we obviously, whenever I get off the airplane, first I meet with the Prime Minister of Israel, I meet with the Foreign Minister, the Defense Minister, as we're getting prepared, say, for an election among the Palestinians.
		And then we go into Palestine area.
		And as we prepare for the election, we go over the entire area of Palestine, not just parts of it.
		We go all the way from Lebanon border down to the Sinai desert of Egypt.
		And we try to cover the entire area.
unidentified		Do you meet with Palestinian leaders also?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I meet with Palestinian leaders.
		I meet with Israeli leaders, Palestinian leaders, all the candidates.
		This past election, because Hamas was candidates, in order to get permission to go, reluctantly I agreed that I wouldn't meet with any Hamas candidates before the election.
		So I kept that promise.
unidentified		That was the only way who, the American government would let you go?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Either the American government and the Israeli government.
		I couldn't become an observer of the Palestinian election unless I agreed not to meet with Hamas candidates.
		Well, I agree reluctantly.
		But immediately after the election, I did meet with Mahmoud Abbas, who's the head of Fatah and who's the president of the PLO and the government.
		And I also met with a medical doctor in Ramallah at the Cordova Center headquarters, election headquarters, who is a medical doctor and who was elected as one of the members of the parliament.
		He's in prison now, along with most of the other ones who were elected to serve in the government.
		If they're Hamas candidates and the leaders, they're in Israeli prisons now.
		But I met with him.
		And one of my main things was, why don't you recognize Israel and get this stigma away from you all?
		And why don't you, why do you have terrorist activities?
		And he pointed out to me facts that have not been disputed by anyone, that since August of 2004, Hamas has not conducted a terrorist act that resulted in the death of a single Israeli citizen.
		This was a self-imposed ceasefire, which they call a hudnah.
		And he said, we will extend this hudna two years, ten years, fifty years, if the Israelis will reciprocate.
		But to repeat myself, not a single Israeli has been killed by a terrorist act by Hamas since August of 2004.
		And when I say, why don't you recognize Israel?
		He said, which Israel are you talking about?
		Is it Israel that's occupying our land?
		Is it Israel that won't let us get to the holy places?
		Is it Israel that's surrounding our cities with the wall?
		He said, we can't recognize this Israel.
		Well, you know, obviously there are terrible atrocities that have been perpetrated by the Palestinians.
		There are terrible problems that have been created by the Israelis.
		But it's a matter that needs to be understood and discussed, and negotiations need to take place.
		And I might add one other thing, that despite the fact that the Palestinians have been eager for peace talks for the last five years, and when the United States and Israel personally endorsed the representative of the Palestinians, that is Mohammoud Abbas.
		He was called by President Bush the voice of moderation.
		He was prime minister three years while Arafat was president.
		He was not permitted to negotiate one day.
		Then he was elected president after Arafat died in January of 2005.
		So I felt when I congratulated him in Ramallah, we're immediately going to have peace talks.
		Still, not a single day of peace talks.
unidentified		Albuquerque, hello.
		Hi.
		Go ahead, Albuquerque.
		Hi.
		Good morning, Mr. President.
		It's an honor to be able to ask you a question.
		My question is this.
		I've noticed that in recent elections, it seems like religion, specifically like a Christian-based religion, is a key factor that a lot of the candidates seem to use as their badge of honor.
		However, it seems less and less authentic.
		And it seems like they're pushing more of a fundamentalist view that's not as authentic as yours might have been.
		And yours seems like it was put out a little more mildly.
		What's your opinion on that type of thing?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would be very reluctant to elevate my Christian faith above anybody else's Christian faith.
		That's something that I wouldn't think of doing.
		And I would guess that the people to whom you refer as fundamentalists are just as devout in their faith as I am.
		And I don't criticize anything about their Christianity or whatever it might be.
		But I do express concern in my book last year that I published Our Endangered Values.
		That was one of the values that I feel endangered.
		And that is the ancient commitment by the United States and even by religious leaders to avoid mixing politics with government on the one hand and religion and churches on the other hand.
		I think this was ordained by one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, who said we need to build a wall between church and state.
		And I think it even goes back to the New Testament when Jesus said, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.
		Well, that's my own interpretation, but I understand that other people can have different ones.
		But I think it's contrary to what I understand as ancient moral values of our country observed by all previous presidents, including George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford, as well as Democratic presidents, that we should not mix the two.
		And I think that too much in the last five or six years, those two have been mixed.
unidentified		We are going to take a short break and then be back to take another 90 minutes of your phone calls.
		But first we want to show you just a little montage of all of the books that President Carter has published over the years.
		Jimmy Carter has written 22 books.
		Here's a look at those 22 books in chronological order.
		Why not the best?
		His first is a campaign autobiography published during his run for the presidency.
		It sold nearly a million copies.
		A Government as Good As Its People came out during his first year in the White House.
		It's a collection of excerpts from Stump speeches, campaign trail interviews, the Carter Ford debates, and President Carter's inaugural address.
		Keeping Faith is Jimmy Carter's personal account of his presidency based on the diaries he kept while in office.
		The book includes his descriptions of the SALT II agreement, the Panama Canal Treaty, the Camp David Accords, Three Mile Island, his decision to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow, and his struggle to free American hostages in Iran.
		Mercer University Press published Negotiation, The Alternative to Hostility, the text of a speech President Carter delivered at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
		In 1985, Jimmy Carter expressed his hope for peace among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in The Blood of Abraham, Insights into the Middle East.
		Jimmy Carter's wife, Rosalind Carter, co-authored Everything to Gain, Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life.
		The book describes how the Carters coped with losing the 1980 presidential election and the decisions they made about building a new life after the White House.
		An outdoor journal describes Jimmy Carter's hunting and fishing experiences, first as a boy in Georgia and later as a world traveler.
		Jimmy Carter first ran for public office in 1962 in a contentious and ultimately successful campaign for the Georgia State Senate.
		He writes about the race in Turning Point, a candidate, a state, and a nation come of age.
		Jimmy Carter is the only U.S. president who's written a book specifically for young adults.
		Talking Peace is a primer on conflict resolution.
		Mr. Carter is also the only president to publish a book of poetry.
		Always a Reckoning in Other Poems was illustrated by his granddaughter Sarah, who was 16 at the time.
		Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy illustrated his picture book for children, Little Baby Snoogle Fleeger.
		Living Faith is a spiritual biography in which President Carter lays out his values and religious beliefs.
		Mr. Carter regularly teaches Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia.
		Sources of Strength is a collection of 52 of his Bible lessons.
		The Virtues of Aging provides advice for retired people and describes President Carter's own retirement activities, from founding the Carter Center to taking up downhill skiing at age 62.
		At age 76, Jimmy Carter published An Hour Before Daylight, Memories of a Rural Boyhood, about growing up in the segregated South during the Depression.
		He continued his hometown reminiscences in Christmas in Plains, published the same year.
		Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work in conflict resolution and human rights, both during and after his presidency.
		His Nobel lecture, delivered in Oslo, Norway, was published in book form by Simon ⁇ Schuster.
		The Personal Beliefs of Jimmy Carter is a compilation of two of President Carter's previous books, Living Faith and Sources of Strength.
		The Hornet's Nest is the first novel by a U.S. president.
		It tells the story of the Deep South's role in the Revolutionary War, featuring characters based on Jimmy Carter's own ancestors.
		Enjoying leisure activities with friends and family is the subject of 2004's Sharing Good Times.
		In Our Endangered Values, President Carter decries the current political influence of religious fundamentalists and argues for the separation of church and state.
		Jimmy Carter's Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid, criticizes Israel for occupying Arab lands in violation of U.N. resolutions and American policy.
		It was published in November 2006.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, we really felt immersed in the land and following the Civil War, the war between the states, there was a general and very accurate presumption that the only thing of any lasting value was the land.
		Because a lot of the wealth prior to the Civil War had been either in slaves or in Confederate money during the war.
		And at the end of the war, the slaves were free, of course, and the money was worthless.
		So the retention of land was looked upon as a preeminent source of permanent wealth.
		So I think because we were so deeply immersed in it, plowing it, cultivating it, dependent on it exclusively for our income, and because it was all around us, you know, in dry weather, the land was just a powerful factor in our lives.
		I think one thing that has increased that awareness in my own case is that near Plains is land that our families have owned since 1833.
		About half of it and the other half my ancestors bought in 1904 and we, our family, still owns the land.
		Our, my grandchildren are the seventh generation on the same fields, the same woodlands, the same creeks, the same streams, the same springs.
		So the ties emotionally between me and the land is very strong.
unidentified		I can see it in your face.
unidentified		It is an emotional tie that does something perhaps to the way you feel about land in general and perhaps our land.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, in God's world.
		Several times during the year, in every church in Plains, we had 600 people, and we still have 11 churches in Plains.
		But there would always be one or two sermons during the year on stewardship, where we were reminded from very carefully chosen and emphasized verses in the Holy Scriptures that we were stewards of the land, and it was our duty as believers in God to take care of the land, as environmentalists.
unidentified		although environmentalist was not a word used in those days this is in depth and we are spending three hours with former President Jimmy Carter talking about his over 20 books that he has written over the years.
		Do you think that you will match Teddy Roosevelt's number?
		I think his is 26.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Oh I don't know.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		It depends on.
unidentified		Had you ever thought about that?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well I'll have two books coming out next year.
		I'm not trying to catch Terry Roosevelt anything.
		But one of the books will be just kind of a coffee table version, photographs of the furniture that I have designed and built in my woodshop.
		And earlier, when I was in the Navy even, I was building furniture.
		I still have some of those pieces.
		So I'm going to have the photographs on one side, very professionally done, with proper lighting, and on the left-hand side will be my description of how I designed the book, why I needed it, I mean why I designed the furniture, and why I needed it, what kind of wood I used, the techniques I exerted and how much I learned and things like that.
unidentified		I know that there's no way we can get, but this is, you made this, right?
		Yes, I made this.
		This table right in front of us?
		Yes, I did.
		And you do this just next door?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's about 20 steps over here.
		When I get out of writing, that's where I go.
		And then I may include a few of my paintings.
		That's one of the books that will come out next fall.
		And it happens to be the 25th anniversary of the Carter Center.
		So the other book will be the most vivid and dramatic and adventurous and I hope interesting events in our life at the Carter Center.
		Those are the two books.
unidentified		We're showing our viewers your woodshop.
unidentified		What do you get out of doing the woodworking and how does it connect with your writing?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I began woodworking when I was a high school student.
		Actually, before that, under my daddy's tutelage.
		And when I was a future farmer.
		And then when I was in the Navy, I didn't have much money.
		I was making $300 a month.
		And we were living in unfurnished apartments to save money.
		So I would go into the hobby shops that the Navy provided and make furniture enough for us to live.
		And then when I got out of the White House, my cabinet officers and White House staff wanted to give me a going away present.
		So they raised money enough to buy a Jeep.
		And my secretary told me what it was going to be.
		It was supposed to be a secret.
		I said, I don't want a Jeep.
		So they were in a quandary, and I said, what I need is to furnish my woodshop with woodworking tools.
		So they took the same amount of money.
		It was only $7,500 at the time.
		and gave it to Sis Roebuck and said, give President Carter everything he needs for his wood shop.
		So that has been a turning point in my life.
unidentified		So is woodworking a way you get away from writing or is writing the way you get away from woodworking?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I don't have enough days at home.
		I still am all over the world with the Carter Center and other things.
		And on the days at home, I get up early.
		I'm still a farmer at heart.
		And I read the email and do those necessary things.
		And then I start writing a book.
		And I write maybe from, say, 7.30 or 8 o'clock until 10 or 11.
		I get tired of the computer.
		And I can just walk out to my woodshop and start working on a piece of furniture that I'm building.
		And I have built about maybe 150 pieces of furniture since I left the White House.
unidentified		Where are they?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Different places.
		My children have a lot of them.
		Amy has about eight or ten.
		I've made cradles to encourage more grandchildren.
		And in one case, my most recent case, I made a special cradle for my great-grandchildhood.
unidentified		We were provided a photo of the new great-grandson.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Who's well above average already?
		He's only two months old.
		But I made a cradle for him.
		And then I liked it so much that I make it a duplicate cradle to give to the Carter Center to auction to raise money for the Carter Center.
		And I've done that almost every year.
		And while I'm making my furniture, I take photographs of myself with a time delay on my camera.
		So I make a photograph album that goes with the furniture so that 100 years from now, there won't be any doubt that a former president made this piece of furniture.
unidentified		So your books go from woodworking to campaign to presidential memoirs to faith to values.
		It's really quite wide.
		How do you decide what your next book is going to be?
		When you're moving?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, it kind of comes along.
		It kind of seems natural.
		Obviously, when I was campaigning, I did, you know, Why Not the Best, just so people get to know me.
		And then I loved my early days of outdoors, and that's been an expanded version dealing with fly fishing and turkey hunting and things like that.
		And I wanted to tell about my early childhood.
		That's an hour before daylight, from four years old until I was 16 years old and went off to college in the Navy.
		And then I realized that I hadn't written anything about subsequent years.
		So I kind of put that in Christmas in Planes to cover part of it.
		I wanted to write a book of poetry, so I got a lot of professors to help me with that, and then I did the portrait book.
		And then I have always been fascinated with the Revolutionary War.
		And when I was president, the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, made an appointment to come and see me.
		And they came to the White House, to the Oval Office, and I thought they were coming because the Mormons were in trouble in Africa, which they were quite often then.
		But they wanted to give me a definitive history of my family back 12 generations in this country to 1640 or something.
		And I didn't pay much attention to it at the time.
		But later I began to think about my family being involved in the revolutionary days.
		And so I decided to write a novel about the revolutionary times.
		And under pseudonyms, I included the members of my own family.
		And that was obviously hornet's nest.
unidentified		You returned to the issue of peace negotiation, diplomacy, all the way through many of your books.
unidentified		And in this one, I don't remember what year, this is for young people.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That was actually an expansion of a lecture I gave at Mercer University to come and dedicate the special section of Mercer dedicated to a former congressman.
		And they wanted me to make a leather-bound version of my lecture so they could set it and raise money for Mercer University.
		So I did.
unidentified		This is the one, I guess, I was talking about the youth.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		The publishing company that provides a lot of the textbooks in our country said there wasn't a textbook that was adequate for teaching conflict resolution, the causes of conflicts, and how they might be avoided, or how they might be settled for high school and college students.
		So I wrote a talking piece based on experiences that I had personally that illustrate those points.
unidentified		And why was it important for you to go back to 1962?
unidentified		This is 30 years later when you published this book, to talk about those early days in politics.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That is the best book I've ever seen, to be perfectly objective about it, fair, that describes the change in political affairs in the South brought about by the one-person, one-vote ruling and the end of segregation, the end of the one-party political system that we had for generations.
		And I had never thought about running for office.
		I was inclined just to be a businessman, to make money and to serve my customers.
		And then the one-person, one-vote ruling was passed, which I thought would give me a voice in the brand new Georgia Senate.
		And I was the chairman of a Sumter County School Board then.
		And the public school system was endangered because one of our most prominent governor's candidates, he represented, who was a Democrat, said his slogan was, no, not one, which meant that there would not be permitted a black child in a white school or the public schools would be shut down.
		In order to prevent that, or to deal with it, I decided at the last minute to run for the Georgia Senate.
		And that's what precipitated that election.
		The election was stolen from me.
		126 people voted alphabetically.
		Many of them dead or in prison.
		And I lost the election by about 60 votes.
unidentified		Who was responsible?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		It was a man named Joe Hearst who completely dominated a small county over on the Chattahoochee River, Quitman County.
		And he physically stuffed the ballot box even when I was watching him.
		He would fill out ballots and fold them up and put them in the ballot box with me watching.
		He was so impervious at that time to any sort of chastisement or punishment.
		And I went through a long and tedious legal process and eventually the truth of the election was known and I actually did win and that's how I got to the Georgia Senate.
unidentified		Let's get back to some more phone calls.
		Newton, Massachusetts.
		Hello.
		Hello, President Carter.
		Good afternoon.
		It's a privilege to talk to you.
		I've been called a while in coming.
		I wanted to let you know how proud our family is to have a president who possesses your integrity and your commitment and your intellect.
		And I want to share with you how I came to that conclusion.
		In the fall of 1975, I had a sabbatical.
		I was 30 years old.
		I was studying and had an open-ended sabbatical to study the city of Boston.
		And at that period of time, in 1975, was bussing in desegregation, studying the presidential election, and was studying education as well, as well as getting my master's at Boston University.
		It was a beautiful warm afternoon.
		I was walking along Commonwealth Avenue, and I saw that you were speaking at the law school.
		And we're over at the law school, and you came up to the front.
		You took off your jacket, you rolled up your sleeves, and you said, Hi, I'm Jimmy Carter.
		You can call me Jimmy.
		I'm going to be the next president of the United States, and that was my first introduction to you.
		When the event ended and you finished speaking, there was a reception, and you and Jody Powell went over to reception, and we spoke, and we spoke in depth about South Africa.
		And what I was struck by was by your curiosity and your listening skills.
		Not just that you didn't hear, but you listened, and you were curious and you wanted to know.
		I had just seen two plays called Says Wee Bonse is Dead in the Island.
		And both of those people who were in that had won the Tony Award.
		And when they went back to South Africa a couple of years later, they had been arrested and were put in prison.
		And on one of your press conferences, you had actually called for their release from prison.
		And it was at that point that I came to see the depth of your commitment to human rights and to calling for human rights.
		So part of this call is a Thanksgiving.
		I'm sorry, we need to keep moving to get a lot more callers in South Africa.
		Any reflections today?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, of course, it's been a glorious success with an end to apart and also with the fact that now South Africa does have a real democracy.
		Still a great deal of disparity between rich people and poor people, between white people and black people in South Africa, but it's being overcome as time goes by.
		In fact, I made a couple of speeches the first of 2000, the year 2000, when a new millennium dawned on us.
		I was asked to speak in Scandinavia and in Asia.
		And my subject was, what's the greatest challenge that the world faces in this new millennium?
		And my decision was a growing chasm between rich people and poor people.
		And that's still the greatest challenge.
		And it's not only a chasm that's increasing every year between rich and poor people in individual countries, but between the rich nations and the poor nations.
		And that's being overcome slowly in South Africa.
		But it was partially as a result of this encounter and others during my campaign that I became aware of the fact that as a former president or as a future president that I might elevate human rights to a high level in the government.
		So by the time I was inaugurated as president, I made it plain that human rights would be the foundation of our foreign policy.
		So I want to thank this gentleman for his support, but also for giving me some of the instigation, inspiration to adopt human rights as a major issue.
unidentified		2002, the Nobel Peace Prize.
		Yes.
		And this book that came out of it, which was your speech.
		How did you write the speech?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was called early one morning.
		I didn't even know it was a day to announce Nobel Peace Prize winners.
		And my wife and I were waked up in the bed by a call from the Secret Service who said that they had gotten a call from Norway and they wanted to talk to me in a half an hour about the Nobel Peace Prize.
		I didn't know if they were just going to tell me who won it or what, but obviously I was upset and nervous.
		So finally they did call and said I had won a Nobel Peace Prize.
unidentified		And had you ever, you had thought of it, that you might get it?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I might get it in 1994 when I went to North Korea and prevented what I consider a war.
		And then I went to Haiti that same year with Sam Nunn and Colin Powell and thought we might have prevented a war.
		So I thought if I was ever going to get it, it would be then.
		But it was eight years later and I had forgotten all about it.
		But anyway, I had time to write the lecture.
		And I read all the previous Nobel lectures since 1900.
		And I wanted to express the, this might be a little bit ghost, I wanted to express the essence of my beliefs in a very brief lecture.
		So I had to submit my lecture text to the Nobel Committee in advance.
		And I also submitted the same exact text to Simon and Schuster Publisher.
		So the day after I made the lecture and was given the prize, this book was on sale.
		And all this past week, when I've been selling the new book, primarily, quite often people will buy 25 or 30 copies of this book, first of all, because it's less expensive than most books, and secondly, because it's small enough to go out of stocking, I guess.
		They're a silly good seller.
unidentified		Newland, North Carolina, you're next.
		Go ahead.
		I am so happy to spend this Sunday afternoon with you, President Carter.
		And I still believe that greatness is in goodness.
		And I want to thank you and tell you how grateful I am that you have written what you have written for the whole world to read.
		And hopefully they'll do that, both on our endangered values.
		And now, what I've been puzzled about for years, someone of your caliber has spoken out for the Palestinians.
		And God bless you for that.
		And I want to tell you, in case you don't know, that our precious Betty Ackerman Jaffe passed away November 1st.
		And she loved every time we visited your Sunday school together.
		And the kiss you planted on her cheek was worth more than any gold could buy.
		Thanks, Carler, Mr. President.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		That's the kind of question I like.
unidentified		All politicians.
unidentified		Did you remember that woman?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can't say for sure because I couldn't quite understand her name.
		But I greet everyone who comes to our church.
		I teach Sunday school, and then there's an hour church service.
		And after the church service, I meet everybody individually and have photographs with them.
		And just special people, though, do I kiss on the cheek.
		So she must obviously be precious.
unidentified		Los Angeles.
		Yes.
		Hi, Mr. Carter.
		It's a pleasure speaking with you.
		I'm in great admiration for you ever since you were president.
		I really am glad that you are trying very hard to bring about peace.
		I have a question for you, even though I have never read your books.
		After this, I definitely will.
		Regarding the new one, I've noticed that many politicians and many people involved in the peace process am very much for the debate, so I really believe in that.
		But there's one blind spot, and I wanted to talk about that.
		I saw a very disturbing documentary about 12-year-old, 13-year-old girls who were talking to a narrator who was speaking with them, and they said, What a pleasure and how enthusiastically they talked about going to heaven and seeing a lot to blow themselves up.
		In the education system in the Middle East and throughout Palestine, these children are taught to hate the Jews, Americans, and the Israelis.
		And even the Hamas has admitted that they are not going to be happy until all the Israelis are off the face of the earth.
		Now, when you talk about the wall and you talk about all those things, it's a bad thing, obviously.
		But if I were living in Israel, I wouldn't feel safe.
		And there's so many people being blown up every day.
		I have cousins in Israel, and they tell me terrible things.
		And it's a war, all right.
		And what the question I have for you is: how do we address the children?
		How do we address the ignorant poor people there who believe what the Hamas is saying?
		That will never go away.
		And if the wall comes down, I really, really believe that it's not going to change until we get to the children.
		And that was my question.
		Thank you, Kelly.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, any sort of deaths, any sort of violent acts on either side are a tragedy and concern me very deeply.
		In the book, which I need not describe now, there are many more Palestinians killed in Palestine itself than Israelis in all.
		And there are over 700 Palestinian children that have been killed and 100 and something Israeli children.
		But the fact that more Palestinians die than Israelis is not important in your mind or even in mine.
		Any death is important, which I really deplore.
		The fact is that the actions and beliefs of Hamas have not been described accurately in this country.
		The prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority, their local government, is a man named Haniya.
		And Haniyah has said that he favors peace talks between Mahmoud Abbas, whom they call Abu Mazen, and the Prime Minister of Israel and hopes that those peace talks will commence immediately.
		As I said earlier, they haven't had any peace talks for six years now.
		And he said that if they do reach agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the Palestinians can have a chance to approve that agreement, then Hamas will accept the results.
		So it's not a hopeless case, is the point I'm making.
		This is not designed at all to excuse the terrorist acts that have taken place.
		But nowadays, as you can probably know, with rockets that are fired over the wall around Gaza, every rocket in the last few months that has fallen on this small Israeli town, and it's a tragedy, have been fired over a big wall that's built around Gaza.
		They completely surround Gaza.
		There's only two little doors in the wall through which Palestinians sometimes can escape their prison.
		And it's a tragedy, but the wall doesn't stop rockets.
		And also, as you know, the rockets would not stop when Hezbollah tragically launched them against the northern part of Israel.
		So a wall is not designed to stop rocket attacks and so forth between people.
		And as I pointed out earlier, this wall is not built between Palestinian land and Israeli land.
		No place does the wall touch Israel.
		The wall is entirely inside Palestine.
		And the wall is designed, as it's presently planned and being built, completely inside Palestine, not to protect Israelis, but to take Palestinian land.
		And all you have to do is look at the map.
		It's not just in my book, if you don't want to read my book, but in periodicals, or you can look it up on the internet.
		It shows the route of the wall.
		So I deplore any sort of violent acts against one or the other.
		And I would like to see the Israeli soldier released.
		I would like to see, just say, a couple hundred of the children released out of a lot more that the Israelis are holding.
		I'd like to see maybe half the women released in exchange for the soldier, or maybe even fewer.
		These kind of things need to be understood and addressed, and only, only by having peace talks and a withdrawal by Israel from Palestinian territory with modifications, the border can be changed.
		Can we ever have peace for Israel, which is what you and I both want?
unidentified		Irving, Texas.
		Hello, President Carter.
		It's a pleasure to speak with you.
		I actually have two questions for you.
		My parents are both in extremely bad health, and they believe that the government has gone downhill since you've left office.
		My first question is, my father is 77.
		He's got an extremely bad heart.
		My first question is, what would I need to do to get your autograph for him for Christmas?
		Would make him extremely happy.
		And second, why is it so difficult for our government to do the right thing in regard to our senior citizens when it comes to health care and medication?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'll try to answer those questions.
		I can answer the first one easily.
		If you'll send a letter to the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, that will be adequate for me.
		Then I'll be sure to send your father a personal autograph and make sure you refer to this program because on an average I get about 3,000 letters a month and I can't see them all, so people open them for me and make sure you put this so I get the letter directly and I'll send him an autograph.
		Well, obviously the government doesn't do enough for older people, for veterans and even for veterans coming back from Iraq now.
		I understand there's a delay of about 175 days before a returning veteran who might be seriously injured can get approval for full care from the government, including some subsidies for his family's income.
		That kind of thing ought to be addressed.
		And as you know, there was a Medicare bill passed a couple years ago that specified easier access by senior citizens with limited means for medicine.
		And there was a provision put in there by the pharmaceutical companies that the government can't bargain for cheaper prices for drugs.
		You can buy drugs about one half price if you have any way to access the same drugs exactly from pharmaceutical companies or pharmacies in Canada.
		But our government has prohibited that negotiation, obviously with the heavy influence of pharmaceutical companies.
		And the other thing that I should point out is that the Veterans Administration does have a law that permits them to bargain for all kinds of medicine.
		And their prices are 35 to 50 percent as much as the 100 percent cost that the pharmaceutical companies get from the government for Medicare because we can't bargain for price.
		So those are the kind of things that can be changed.
unidentified		So you don't have any problem with Americans going across the border to buy?
unidentified		No.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		If I were, I have plenty of money, my books of income and I have income as a professor at Emory.
		I have an adequate income.
		I can pay for medicine.
		But if I were with limited means and I had to have a drug maybe three pills a day or three pills a week that was highly costly, which some of them were, and I could get it half price in Canada, then I would take the telephone and call Canada and order it.
		And that's legal.
		But people that get Medicare can't get drugs from the same pharmaceutical companies at the same price because we prohibit bargaining for only price.
unidentified		Do you get any health care benefits as part of a presidential pension?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		No, but I get benefits from Emory University as a professor.
		I get a pension from my service in the White House, the same as all previous presidents do, but no medical benefits.
		But in my professorship at Emory, I get a salary, and also I have a health plan that I have pay for, but yes, I get benefits.
unidentified		And what is the presidential pension amount these days?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		It's the same as a salary for members of the Congress and for cabinet officers.
unidentified		So their pension is mirrors president's pension.
		Exactly the same.
		Next call is San Diego.
		Hello.
		Hi, Mr. President.
		It's a pleasure to speak with you.
		Thank you.
		I had two questions for you.
		The first one is, I'm interested in visiting your presidential library.
		Could you tell me a little bit about that?
		And then secondly, what do you think we should do about North Korea?
		I think it's a huge threat to our security, but I'm not really sure that we have a grasp of that particular situation.
		How do you feel about that, sir?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, the Presidential Library is in Atlanta.
		It's part of the Carter Center.
		They're all in the same complex.
		We have about 30 acres there.
		And it's within walking distance of downtown Atlanta.
		In fact, my wife and I jogged to downtown Atlanta and back.
		It's about three miles around trip.
		So just come there, and we'd be delighted to have you visit the presidential library.
		It has about 23 million documents that I had when I was president.
		It has about 4 million photographs and news reel tapes and that sort of thing.
		And a very good display of the major issues that I faced when I was president.
		So it's no problem to come there.
		We'd be glad to have you.
		As far as North Korea is concerned, as you may remember, or you may not, back in 1994, we had a confrontation with North Korea and a war was impending.
		In that, Kim Il-sung, the dictator of North Korea, whom I had despised because I was on a submarine during the Korean War.
		But he sent me a repeated request to come to Pyongyang to negotiate between him and the United States.
		And the United States then had a policy of not communicating with North Koreans.
		But I finally got permission from President Clinton.
		I went to North Korea.
		I negotiated with Kim Il-sung.
		My wife and I did.
		And we returned to the United States with complete agreement that he would put all his nuclear weapons under international inspections, that the fuel rods that he had would not be processed into plutonium and make explosives, that he would have a summit meeting with the South Korean Prime Minister and a whole bunch of other things, 12 things in all.
		He confirmed his personal agreements with me to President Clinton, and this was President Clinton's policy when the last few years of his administration from 1994 until he went out of office for six years.
		When President Bush came into office, he reneged or canceled all those agreements.
		And as you know, since then, North Korea has started reprocessing those same fuel rods, and now they've exploded a nuclear device, we think, and they have room for seven others.
		I think now what to do, I think we ought to have direct talks with the North Koreans, to sit down across the table with them with our Secretary of State or some official representative from the United States and negotiate as I did in 1994 and as President Clinton and his staff did after that and reach an agreement with the North Koreans, let them know what we will do for them.
		I know what they want.
		I've met with them a few times since.
		They want an official declaration by the United States that we will not attack North Korea militarily so long as North Korea has peace with its neighbors.
		And they want a declaration that the United States will work with North Korea to remove our embargo against their people that have been there more than 50 years and let North Korea have a normal life.
		And what we want from them is for them to put their international, put their nuclear program under international control or observation and not produce any more nuclear weapons and so forth.
		So that can be done.
		But we've refused to do that except under kind of an umbrella of six-nation talks.
		And the clear premise is that we will not sit across the table and negotiate nation to nation with North Korea.
		I think this is a mistake.
		It's the same policy, by the way, we have with Syria and with Iran, which I also think is a mistake.
		But that's a decision for our President to make and Commander-in-Chief, and I'm sure he has good reasons, which he has explained to the public.
unidentified		So do you think that we should acquiesce to the North Koreans regarding the issue?
unidentified		If you were sitting in the presidential chair right now and you were to sign an agreement that we would not bomb any country, could you do that?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends on what I wouldn't say just blank, point blank, I wouldn't just sign a paper and say we will never bomb another country.
unidentified		Isn't that what they're asking for then?
unidentified		No.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I went through four years.
		We never dropped a bomb on another country.
		We never fired a missile.
		We never fired a bullet against another country.
		But I'm not saying that other presidents should do the same thing.
		And I'm not saying that I could do the same thing if I was in office now.
		But I do think that when we have a serious problem, which we have with North Korea, that are now building atomic weapons with the fuel rods that I negotiated that they would never use, then I think it's time for us to discuss the matter with them and see if they won't agree.
		We will not process any more fuel rods.
		We will not develop any more nuclear explosives.
		We will let the international inspectors come in and guarantee that we're telling the truth, in return for which, what the North Koreans want is a declaration by the United States, we will not attack you militarily as long as you remain peaceful with your neighbors.
		That seems to me a perfectly legitimate and reasonable request.
unidentified		Casa Grande, Arizona.
		Yes.
		President Clinton, I voted for you as President, and thank you for talking to me today.
		I have an article out of the newspaper that when President Clinton was in office, you went over to North Korea and then you also went on a trip with Madam Albright.
		And you negotiated and you donated millions and millions of dollars to them.
		And it was for to North Korea.
		Uh-huh.
		And it ended up, they said, feeding the Korean armies.
		Can you tell us about that?
		Mr. President.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		It sounds like a joke.
		In the first place, I've never been on a trip like that with Madam Albright.
		She was President Clinton's Secretary of State, and she did go to North Korea after I went and negotiated with the North Koreans.
		And I don't have millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars.
		In fact, I've never given one dollar to the North Koreans.
		So I don't know who wrote that newspaper article, but it's obviously written by someone who's either deliberately misleading readers like you or just doesn't know what the facts are.
unidentified		Email, is there any one president that has been more influential to you in your ideas and commitment in your writings and as you lead the nation, as you led the nation's?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I wouldn't say writings, but my favorite president in this past century and the favorite one in my lifetime has been Harry Truman.
		And Harry Truman has had more impact on my life than any other particular president.
		I served under him as a submarine officer.
		He was my commander-in-chief.
		And I inherited some of his beliefs, one particularly concerning civil rights.
		Harry Truman was my preeminent hero on civil rights.
		When I was still in the Navy in 1948, I was just a young officer, Harry Truman ordained, over tremendous condemnation, that all racial discrimination would be ended in the military service, in the submarine force, the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, Coast Guard, and so forth.
		This was more than 10 years, 12 years maybe, before Rosa Park sat down in the front of a bus in Montgomery and before anybody knew who Martin Luther King Jr. was.
		And Harry Truman was the one that did it.
		And obviously later, President Lyndon Johnson was another hero of mine who signed into law prohibitions against racial discrimination in the schools and so forth.
		But Harry Truman, to answer your question, was the one that had most influence on that.
unidentified		And so this emailer wants you to look to the future.
unidentified		Who are you watching in 2008?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I'm watching all of them.
unidentified		I don't think that's what they mean.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know, but I wouldn't want to say in advance, you know, whom I prefer because I don't yet know for whom I will vote, so I wouldn't want to guess.
		I never have gotten involved among Democratic candidates who are running against each other.
		I'll always support the Democratic candidate when it's over.
		But right now, obviously, Ms. Clinton is leading the public opinion polls, possibly because her name recognition is greater.
		But the thing I'd like to point out is that a year and a half before most elections, Republican or Democrat, nobody has the slightest idea who's going to be the next nominee.
		When I ran for president a year and a half in advance, I remember George Gallup had a poll saying, whom do you prefer for president?
		There were 32 names on it.
		My name was not on the list.
		George Gallup's name was on the list.
		Mine wasn't.
		And 18 months later, I was elected president.
		The same thing happened with Michael Dukakis.
		Nobody dreamed that Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, would become the nominee for president.
		Nobody dreamed ahead of time that Bill Clinton would be the nominee or the successful candidate for president.
		The only ones that are predictable are when you have a vice president, as was the case with Hubert Humphrey under Lyndon Johnson or with Fritz Mondale under me.
		Then you can pretty well predict, or El Gore under Bill Clinton.
		You can predict pretty much then they have the best chance to be the nominee.
		So I just wouldn't want to guess.
unidentified		Do you believe that the country is ready for a woman president?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Oh yes.
		I think so.
		I think the country is now, they've seen that we have had women presence in the largest democracies in the world, That is India, where I visited lately to build some homes.
		Also, the largest Muslim country in the world has had a woman president, that is, Indonesia.
		One of our greatest democratic friends, Great Britain, has had a woman, as you know, prime minister for many years.
		In this hemisphere, we've now had a woman president just elected recently in Chile.
		We had a woman president who replaced the Santinistas in Nicaragua.
		So women have served in the top positions of leadership in countries around the world.
		We just had a woman elected in an election that we is present in an election that we held and monitored in West Africa in Liberia.
		The first woman president elected in Liberia, Ellen Johnson Surley.
		We were there and helped monitor the election.
		So the answer to your question is yes.
		I think the United States is at least as enlightened against discrimination against women as Nicaragua or Chile or India or other countries that I've named.
unidentified		Tucson, Arizona, hi.
		Good morning.
		Good afternoon.
		Thank you for taking the call.
		Just a question for President Carter.
		I was curious about his relationship with Tip O'Neill and the Congress after leaving Georgia and the Georgia legislature.
		And also wanted his views or wondered how close he was to any other former presidents besides President Ford.
		Thank you for taking the call.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I had a good relationship with Tip O'Neill personally when I got to the White House.
		I had been governor.
		I had dealt with the Congress.
		Obviously, it's much more complex for a president to deal with the Congress than for me to deal with my legislature in Georgia.
		Tip O'Neill was helpful to me in many ways.
		He was committed to Ted Kennedy when Kennedy decided to replace me as a Democratic nominee.
		And so later in my term, I didn't have as close a working relationship with the extremely liberal Democrats as I did the moderate Democrats and the Republicans.
		And so I depended heavily on Republican support in the House and Senate.
		And so that maybe answers your question.
		But every two weeks, regularly, I had breakfast with Tip O'Neill, work with him on every possible issue very harmoniously.
		I admired him very much.
		And he was a great speaker of the House.
		And I forgot the other question.
unidentified		Gee.
unidentified		Any other leaders, any other presidents beside President Ford?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, I get along well with other presidents.
		As a matter of fact, President Clinton and I have gotten fairly close, certainly since he left the White House.
		He's investigated thoroughly what I did in the Carter Center, and he's creating a wonderful role for himself as a former president, quite different from what I do, but in a very harmonious way.
		In fact, earlier this year, this summer, I went up to New York City during, I think it was in September, October, early October, to appear with President Clinton on his annual event that he now has in New York.
		So I have a very good relationship with him.
		I was at his dedication of his library.
		I was at the dedication of the libraries for George Bush Sr. and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
		So I have a good relationship with some of them.
		But my closest and most intimate friend has been Gerald Ford.
		He's helped me with projects at the Carter Center.
		I've helped him with projects that he's undertaken.
		And it just has happened that we have developed a very close personal relationship between the two of us and between his wife Betty and my wife Rosalind.
		Betty works on drug abuse and alcohol abuse.
		My wife works on mental illnesses.
		So they have a lot in common, and they even have gone to Washington to lobby it together as two former ladies, which was a very effective lobbying team, as you can see.
		So we have good relationships with former presidents.
unidentified		What's on your bedstand right now?
unidentified		What books?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've been reading lately the books that were important in my shaping this one.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		But since I finished this book, I just read a book called Blink.
unidentified		Malcolm Galdwell.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Michael Galdwell.
unidentified		Gladwell, rather.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I've just read a book called Omnivore's Dilemma.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		It's about the different chains of food that come down from the farm and the feedlots and pastures to the table, which is a very interesting book.
unidentified		Michael Palmer.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		And I've read the very famous book, State of Denial.
unidentified		Mr. Woodward?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		By Mr. Woodward.
		And I read J. Curve.
		And I've read, let's see, a couple more.
		I've read 1% Doctrine on a kind of analysis of the Iraqi war.
unidentified		Do you read any fiction these days?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, as a matter of fact, I'm now reading some fiction by a man named James Nelson who wrote a series of books similar to the one we mentioned earlier by Patrick O'Brien.
		That was about the British Navy.
		This is about the American Navy during the Revolutionary War period.
		And one of my sons, who's read all the Patrick O'Brien books, found this series, so he sent it to me.
		And on this trip that I just took to New York and Washington and to other cities to sell books, during my spare time, I read that book.
unidentified		Are you still a big Faulkner fan?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I am.
		I have a good collection of Faulkner books, as you probably noticed, in my bookshelves.
		And of all the southern writers, he's by far the best.
		And obviously, I like to read biographies and history as well.
unidentified		Next is East Haven, Connecticut.
		Hello.
		Hello, President Carter.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		My name is Joel, and I am not Jewish.
		I feel that the Jews in the world are hated more than any other people.
		Why shouldn't the Jews have their own land?
		The Middle East is almost all Arab, except for a sliver of land.
		Why should Israel accommodate a people who hate them and want their destruction?
		And that is a fact.
		You may, you know, you tone that down, but it is a fact.
		And you do not talk about the fact that the Jews who live in the rest of the Middle East, how they've been treated by the Arabs.
		I'll hang up and listen to your comments.
		Thank you.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you want to go back to ancient days, five, six hundred years ago, or even more recently, just before Israel was created as a nation, the Muslims have treated the Jews quite well.
		They treat Christians also as people of the book, so-called, and as a special place in the Muslim faith to single out Jews and Christians as brothers in belief in the same God.
		This was a result of the anointment of God through his covenant with Abraham.
		It's derived from that.
		And the Muslims had a much closer relationship with Jews than they did Christians because the Christians were powerful enemies of the Muslims in trying to take control of Jerusalem during the Crusades and very strong in evangelical work, that is, trying to convert Muslims to be Christians or to fight them if they didn't.
		The Jews never did that.
		So in earlier times, the Jews were welcomed in countries that surround what we would call the Holy Land.
		That is the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
		And when Israel was founded as a nation, there's no doubt that the Arabs rose up almost as in a unified effort to overthrow the new nation of Israel.
		Israel prevailed.
		The United States and others subsequently joined forces with Israel to give Israel a powerful military.
		And now there are no remaining Arab military forces that would threaten Israel.
		The only possibility is Egypt.
		And as I mentioned earlier in this program, I negotiated a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt that has never been violated.
		When Israel was fighting the Arabs right after 1948-49 and prevailed, Israel expanded its territory.
		And then when they were attacked in 1967 in the Six-Day War, Israel occupied much of the territory of the surrounding Arabs.
		And Israel was given 77% of all the Holy Land.
		And 22% went to West Bank and 1% to Gaza.
		So Israel was given the overwhelming portion of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
		The Palestinians just had a tiny bit in the West Bank, 22%, less than a fourth.
		It's that 22%, though, that the Israelis have insisted on colonizing and confiscating, and within which the persecution that I describe in my book is described.
unidentified		Los Angeles, hello.
		Mr. Carter?
		Yes.
		I'm a pleasure to meet you.
		I met you and Borders in Los Angeles when you were selling your book over there and I bought it.
		I think you were an excellent writer.
		And I really would like to know one thing.
		What do you think of Mer Sheimer and Walt's view on this subject?
		I'm sorry, Color.
		Could you repeat the question?
		Because neither of us understood you.
		Okay.
		This is the question part.
		Thank you.
		I'll ask Mr. Carter what Mer Sheimer and Walt sent it to England to be published.
		We couldn't publish it here.
		And I was wondering the last issue of books, and I would like to know what he thought of it.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I haven't read the whole thing because, as you say, it wasn't published here, and I haven't taken the time to call it up on the internet, which I presume I could.
		But I've read about it.
		And it's been quite controversial.
		What they allege is that there's a powerful and very effective lobbying effort in this country on the part of an organization called APAC, which is really American friends of Israel.
		And I have no quarrel with the facts that they presented, with which I'm not thoroughly familiar, but I also have no quarrel with any groups right in this free nation to express their views and to exert their influence.
		And APAC does indeed have a powerful influence in Washington, and I'm sure in even state elections and so forth.
		It was a major factor when I ran for office as president and when I served as president and still exists.
unidentified		Did you receive a lot of money from APAC?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I never received receiving any money from APAC, but I have to say that when I ran for office in 1977, I was running against some very famous people who were deeply committed to Israel's rights.
		And Scoop Jackson was the main one.
		And he was a darling of APAC.
		And he deserved to be.
		As a matter of fact, I nominated Scoop Jackson for president at the convention in 1972.
		He was a close friend of mine.
		And when I finally ran against me in 1977, and when I was finally got most of the delegates, he gave me all his delegates.
		So I had a good relationship with him.
		But the point is that whether these professors have had every fact right or not, I don't know since I've not read the entire long treatise, but they have a right to express their views, and AIPAC and others has a right as an organization to use their maximum influence.
unidentified		And speaking of views, here's one from the incoming Speaker of the House who has listened to you on your book tour.
		And she had this to say.
		She said, with all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel.
		Democrats have been steadfast in their support of Israel from its birth, in part because we recognize that to do so is in the national security interests of the United States.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, as a matter of fact, the incoming speaker made that comment before my book was ever published.
unidentified		Before your book.
unidentified		Okay.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		And she was referring to the title of the book only.
		That's all she knew.
		And what Nancy didn't realize was that the book is not about what's happening in Israel at all.
		Not a single sentence in it refers to what's happening in Israel.
		What the book refers to is not Israel, but what the title says it is, and that is Palestine, which is not Israel.
		It's the land of the Palestinians, and it refers to...
unidentified		But can you divide the two?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, they are divided legally and through everything that we've ever had.
		They're divided by the United Nations when Israel was established.
		They're divided by all the official policies of every administration in this country that has served, every president that has served since Israel was founded as a nation.
		They were divided by agreements that the Israelis negotiated and honored at Camp David with me and later with the Norwegians with Oslo.
		And those agreements for Israel to withdraw from Palestine territory were confirmed by the Israeli Parliament and the Cabinet, the official documents that are still there.
		So I didn't divide them.
		They've been divided for years.
		And by the way, they also are divided by the International Quartet, which has developed the so-called Roadmap for Peace, which, as you know, is strongly endorsed by President Bush.
		And the introduction is quoted in my book.
		It was given because the United States and the United Nations and the European Union and Russia comprise that quartet.
		And Kofi Annan read the document which said that Israel would withdraw from occupied territories.
		So the basis for the Quartet policy on roadmap for peace adopts the same boundaries, established in 1967.
		So there's no argument about the international boundaries.
		And the word apartheid, apartheid, doesn't refer to anything in Israel, because Israel is a wonderful democracy, which I acknowledge, which I visited many times, and where there's absolute equality legally between Arabs who live in Israel and Jews who live in Israel.
		This book is about Palestine.
unidentified		Fairfax, Virginia.
		Yeah, I have a question.
		Mr. Carter just referred that Muslims have treated all minorities well.
		I'm from India, and as far as I know, there used to be DGR tax on all the minorities.
		They had to survive by paying poll tax kind of thing.
		And even today, in any Muslim country, if I'm even saying that I'm not a Muslim, or I want to change my faith from Islam to Christianity or any other, I will be by law, I will be killed actually.
		So, and I don't see any reaction from you about this kind of bartheid by Arabs and Muslims all over the world, actually.
		Mr. Carter.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, I don't mean to say that Muslims treat Jews and Christians the same as they do treat Muslims, because obviously in countries like Saudi Arabia, to proselytize or to try to change a Muslim into a Christian or Jew is a crime and is totally prohibited.
unidentified		No, no, as a matter of fact.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		If you'll let me finish, if you'll let me finish, then you can come in.
		And in India, I've just come from India, as a matter of fact, and India is against the law in many places to try to convert a Hindu to a different religion.
		And I recognize the nation's right to have those kind of policies, but I deplore them and I condemn them.
		In our country, it's not against the law.
		If you're a Christian, to be converted to a Muslim, or vice versa.
		Or if you're a Jew to be converted to a Christian, or vice versa.
		That's okay.
		But I certainly wouldn't allege that in India, or where they have some Muslims, mostly Hindus, or in Saudi Arabia, or in Sudan, where I spend a lot of time, that Christians are treated the same, or Jews are treated the same.
		Obviously, they're not.
		And any person, any person in the world, because of their religious faith, in my opinion, is a direct violation of human rights, which I condemn.
unidentified		Phoenix, Arizona.
		I'm sorry, Color, we can't understand you.
		Could you try again?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, President, for taking my call.
unidentified		Sorry, Colin.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sure.
unidentified		Can you try again?
unidentified		Thank you, President, for taking my call.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad.
unidentified		Actually, I'm an asylum from Bhutan.
		I stayed in Nepal for 14 years.
		Finally came to the United States two years back.
		I'm sorry, Color.
		You're going to have to.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to ask you a question if you don't mind.
		I understand.
		I've been to Nepal and we have programs there.
unidentified		Unfortunately, what it is is he has his volume on his television set up.
		We're going to put him on hold and see if we can get him to take that down so that we can hear him better.
		Let's go to Cardova, Alaska.
		Hello.
		Thank you, Cardova, Alaska.
		Thank you.
		Can you hear me?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I hear you very clearly.
unidentified		Great.
		Well, thank goodness for C-SPAN and thank goodness for Jimmy Carter.
		I hate to change the subject because it is extremely fascinating what you're talking about.
		But I come from a state that has the heavy hand, both good and bad, of the oil companies.
		And I would like to hear President Carter's views on national energy policy, because I can't help but think if we had turned down our thermostats, as he requested when he was president to 65, that we would not be in Iraq killing people for oil.
		What do you think, Mr. Carter?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, I appreciate the question.
		When I became president, we were afflicted with terrible problems concerning energy.
		When I was governor, President Nixon was in office.
		And OPEC had just been formed, and OPEC was declaring embargo against the United States because of our relationship with Israel.
		And while I was governor, I saw the long gas lines and so forth, and I was determined when I got to be president to try to do something about it.
		And I spent four years working on it to try to find every possible way to conserve energy, but also to develop replaceable or renewable forms of energy from the sun indirectly and so forth.
		Well, that's what I did, and we were very successful, as a matter of fact.
		When I became president, we were importing about 9 millions of barrels of oil every day, which I thought was excessive.
		So, ultimately, because of the programs that I was able to implement, we got down after about five years after I left office, three years after I left office, to 5 million barrels a day.
		That was just about cutting it in half.
		Now, we are importing 12 millions of barrels a day.
		So, to summarize, from nine down to five and back up to 12.
		And that puts us in a position of subservience.
		That's maybe too strong a word.
		It puts us in a position of having our foreign policies heavily shaped by our eagerness, our dependence on foreign oil.
		And some of this oil comes from people who just don't agree with us on anything.
		One of them, the most highly publicized, is maybe Venezuela, Nigeria, which is a very corrupt government, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
		I need not name them all.
		But obviously, it puts us in a position of having very heavy influence on the policies of the United States, which I think is a tragedy.
		They can also threaten to cut off oil to us, again, as they did under President Nixon.
		That could bring about serious economic tragedy to our country.
		The other thing is domestic oil companies.
		There's no doubt that in the last six years, the domestic oil companies, because of the intimate relationship that the Vice President particularly has had with oil companies and others that I need not mention, the oil companies have had a major role in shaping the policies of our government concerning energy.
		They have not wanted to have efficiency of automobiles, for instance.
		And so the efficiency of automobiles manufactured in America are much less than automobiles used in other parts of the world.
		And this has really been one of the causes, in my opinion, of the near bankruptcy of Ford and Chevrolet, General Motors, who produce American cars because they've been hiding under the umbrella of you can produce hummers that gobble up gasoline, you don't have to comply with efficiency standards.
		So I think it's a very serious problem when we don't impose very strict conservation measures, as I did when I was in the White House on automobiles, on trucks, on home insulation, on the efficiency of electric motors and refrigerators and stoves, and the utilization of solar power and of things other than oil to produce electricity.
unidentified		Do you feel you've gotten a raw deal from, I guess it's short-term historians on the energy policies of your administration?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, they very seldom refer to it anymore because it fares well in comparison.
		And they can't deny the figures that I just gave.
		I mean, they are official figures of the government.
		But I had to do a lot of very controversial things to get this done because I called in all American automobile manufacturers to the White House.
		At that time, there were five of them.
		Most of them have not survived.
		And I told them that I was going to impose a legislation on them.
		I didn't have authority as president.
		That would mandate greater efficiency of automobiles.
		When I was inaugurated, the average gas mileage in a car was 12 miles per gallon.
		That was the average for the entire fleet of automobiles.
		And we set in law that it would increase very rapidly to 28.5 miles per gallon.
		And the Congress passed this law.
		There were a couple of loopholes in it.
		And I have to say that when I went out of office, my successors in office, whom I need not name right now, used some of those loopholes, and the efficiency of American automobiles didn't go up as rapidly as I had hoped.
		And now there are a lot of loopholes concerning SUVs and the weight of automobiles and that sort of thing.
		But yeah, I feel proud of what I did.
		And the early criticisms of my very strict energy policies, I think, have pretty well died away.
unidentified		One more question on energy.
unidentified		With your background as a submariner and your background in nuclear energy, do you support nuclear power, expanded use of nuclear power now?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		I do, and always have.
		I've been involved in the early design of the very first nuclear plant to produce any kind of power.
		Sometimes they would only light up a few light bulbs.
		And later they became, as you know, producers of a good bit of our power.
		And other nations have gone into nuclear power with no danger to the people around them.
		France, Japan, many others.
		There have been a few accidents.
		We had an accident at Three Mile Island, as you remember, in Pennsylvania when I was president.
		Nobody was hurt.
		Nobody was killed, although there were a lot of horrible threats written in the Washington Post and so forth.
		The next day, my wife and I went to Three Mile Island and we went into the control room with TV cameras just to reassure frightened Americans that it was okay.
		And after that, I appointed a committee headed by Admiral Rickova, one of the strictest men I've ever known in my life.
		And they prescribed even stricter rules on the monitoring of, you might say, electric power companies to have safety precautions.
		So yeah, it's perfectly safe.
unidentified		Hickory, Pennsylvania.
		Hello.
		How are you doing?
		My name is Phil Fi Mara from VA.
		I'm the senior vice commander for the Disabled American Veterans Organization.
		And I feel a lot of veterans have been discriminated.
		A lot of veterans from Vietnam, especially, have been put in jail because of drug problems and stuff that occurred from being over in Vietnam.
		And they were never properly treated.
		Also, I've been trying to figure out why veterans have to pay these co-payments and all this other stuff.
		I thought when we served our country, we could give...
		And what's your question, caller?
		Well, I want to know why this occurred and what veterans could do about this, because I see a lot of waste in the VA system where you have duplicated services not only in the VA system, but a lot of departments and government, too.
		Okay.
		Thank you very much.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Answer your question earlier.
		I think that there have been a lot of comments made about this.
		I just read a speech that Bill Moyers made, I think at Harvard University.
		No, at West Point.
		And one of the sections of his speech was concerning the mistreatment of veterans by the present administration and how quickly veterans could get benefits and how many of their families couldn't get pension funds until long delays and things of that kind.
		And I deplore that very much.
		And I think that one of the best ways to address it is for all the veterans administrations, organizations, disabled American veterans and others, to combine your efforts and to let your members of Congress know or send delegations to Washington to speak for the veterans.
		I faced this when I became president because at that time, if you're a Vietnam veteran, you know that Vietnam veterans were not heroes.
		They were looked upon as foolish because they had volunteered to go to Vietnam and fight when they didn't need to go and the war was condemned and so forth.
		Well, my son, my oldest son, went to Vietnam and I was very proud of him because of it.
		But I knew that the Veterans Administration then was not treating the veterans fairly.
		So I appointed a Vietnam veteran, a triple amputee named Max Cleland, to be the director of Veterans Affairs.
		And he understood the plight and the need and the neglect of veterans, including Vietnam veterans, and he brought tremendous reforms to the Veterans Administration.
		Well, and I elevated him, by the way, to a full cabinet post.
		That has now been changed.
		So in many ways, there is a kind of a quiet desire on some top officials not to acknowledge how costly the Iraqi war has been and to kind of not publicize how many wounded veterans they are, physically and mentally, and to keep it kind of under wraps.
		And you know, there's even, I think, a law now, certainly a directive, that no caskets coming back into Dover, Maryland, Dover, Delaware, can be photographed.
		And you rarely see any news media of a veteran being buried.
		So I think that this is a new era in our country when the needs of veterans and the plight of veterans and the sometimes neglect of veterans is not getting adequate attention.
		And I hope that because of your comment and maybe this C-SPAN interview and maybe speeches like Bill Moyer's made at West Point and just recently, as a matter of fact, these kind of things will be corrected.
unidentified		An emailer asked, we remember fondly reading material written by Matty Stepanek, and we understand that you were a hero of his.
unidentified		If you would please talk a bit about Maddie, including how his mother has been doing since Maddie's passing.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, his mother is getting along, I think, fairly well, although she has the same disease that caused Maddie and all of his siblings to die at an early age.
		Maddie was just about between 12 and 13 when he died.
		He was my hero as well.
		I spoke at his funeral.
		I made the main speech at his funeral.
		And I said then that I had met leaders around the world.
		I had met famous scientists.
		I had met Nobel laureates.
		I had met famous writers and poets.
		And the most extraordinary human being that I ever met in my life was Matty Stepanik, whom I got to know when he was about nine years old.
		He was a poet.
		He was a philosopher.
		He was dedicated to peace.
		He was an extraordinary writer.
		I was partnered with him in his last book, Just Peace.
		He and I planned that book together when he was still alive.
		And he left detailed instructions with his mother and with me that after he was dead, he wanted this book published.
		He wanted me to write the foreword to the book.
		And he wanted me to write what he called an afterword, which was look into the future after he died.
		And he exemplified, in my opinion, the highest possible moral values and every other kind of valuable human being.
unidentified		Okama, Michigan.
		Yes.
		President Carter, it's an honor to speak with you.
		I want you to know I voted Republican all my life, except I voted for you and I've never regretted that choice.
		All right, thank you.
		Here's my question.
		In a democracy, we need a very strong free press.
		And what is your view on large multinational corporations that own most of our news organizations today?
		How can a press be free from its master when they spend so much money to influence politicians today?
		And I think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a good example.
		It is always broadcast as a one-sided story in the United States.
		Thank you for my question.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		Well, I would guess that most of the news media are adequately free.
		They certainly are influenced by public opinion, and they quite often are influenced by the owners and publishers of the periodicals, magazines, newspapers, and radio television.
		And increasingly, as you say, they are owned by the same people.
		And this causes me concern.
		Most issues are pretty well discussed on both sides.
		One issue that's not discussed on both sides is the one that I address in this book, and that is what's happening in Palestine.
		And what is the only avenue for Israelis to have peace in their own territory?
		I think the best newspaper in the world is the New York Times.
		The New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and almost all other periodicals, as you say, habitually give one side to the issue.
		I mentioned earlier that the most highly publicized prisoner in the Middle East is a one soldier that was captured by the Palestinians when they dug a tunnel under the wall and captured an Israeli soldier and brought him in.
		You won't read anywhere in an objective way that this compares to 9,200 prisoners that the Israelis are holding, including about 100 women and 300 children, some of them as young as 12 years old.
		So it's a subject that needs to be understood and debated.
		But the reason for this bias and this closure of opportunity for, I would say, eager American citizens to know both sides, I can't explain those reasons.
		But your question is certainly pertinent and a partial answer to what can be done is to read this book.
		I'm not just trying to sell books, but if anybody wants to know the facts, undisputed, about what's going on in the Mideast now, Palestine, peace, not apartheid, has the facts.
unidentified		In reading over some of the reviews of all of these books over the years, some reviewers have taken you on quite strongly.
		In 1987, Jonathan Yardley, who's criticized your book several times, was talking about everything to gain.
		He said it was a stuffy, self-righteous book.
		Even though you mean well, and we are both grateful and respectful of you, it remains that everything is to gain is no more to offer than any level-headed article in a supermarket magazine.
		How do you deal with the criticism of your writing as we're sitting here in this room, the writing product?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, it used to hurt when I read negative reviews like this from dopey reviewers.
		I don't know him, but I presume he's not quite a balanced, you know, objective reviewer.
		Some of them make it clear in their views that they despised me as a politician or something like that.
		They express their bias in their view.
		Others don't.
		And the worst review I had of my poetry book was from the Washington Post who scoffed at the poem in there about Rosalind, my wife.
		It turned out that in balance of all the hundreds of reviews that I got, the favorite poem was the same one about Rosalind.
		And so you have to roll with the punches.
		And I would say that over a time, I've become about as immune to the criticisms as I was when I was a candidate.
		And people didn't like the prospect that I might be state senator or governor or president.
unidentified		Staying with the poetry, there is another poet that you like very much besides Dylan Thomas.
unidentified		Who's that?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's Miller Williams.
		Miller Williams is, he was a poet of the year.
		I've forgotten exactly which year, early in the 90s.
		He gave the inaugural poem when Bill Clinton was inaugurated the second time.
		He's from Arkansas.
		He's a personal friend of mine.
		And he came here to Plains, Georgia, one night in a cafe, to read some of his poems.
		And I sat with him during the meal, and I told him I had written some amateurish poems.
		And he said, how would you like to write some more adequate poems?
		I said, I'd like it very much.
		He said, but would you be willing to go through the discipline of a rapid college course, a university course on poetry writing?
		I said, yes.
		So he organized another one or two poets at the University of Arkansas and they put me through terrible discipline and sometimes scoffing at my efforts.
		The only rule I had was that they couldn't write a single word in a single line of my poems.
		So I would send my early versions to them and they would take great pleasure in criticizing what I had written.
unidentified		Did it help your writing?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, eventually I wrote poems.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		I'm very proud of the poems in my book and as I say the book's been a good seller and ultimately got some good reviews.
unidentified		He wrote a poem for you when you moved back to Plains, Georgia, as you well know, for President Jimmy Carter on his homecoming was the name of the poem.
		And part of it says this, they have begun to recognize and measure how carefully you watch the hours strike into the future where we live and die, how carefully you were responsible and seemed, of course, to be astonished by a world outrageous in its vanity, world unsurprised by greed so terrible it would desire complete catastrophe.
		Is the world still outrageous in its vanity, and do you agree?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are elements of the world that still is plagued with vanity or superiority or the derogation of people who are different, which leads to Scorn and criticisms, ultimately to abuse, and in extreme cases to depriving the other people of a right to live.
		And vanity is one of the causes of this attitude toward life, which is obviously contrary to the basic beliefs of every religion on earth and every ethnic, I mean, ethnic standard on earth.
		So he was quite generous in his poem.
		I didn't know Miller Williams when I was elected president.
		So James Dickey, another southern poet, wrote the poem for my inauguration.
		So I've been influenced, I should have mentioned James Dickey as another one of my favorite poems, but I've retained a correspondence with Miller Williams, who after I left the White House, he became the publisher of books from the University of Arkansas Press.
		So now when my books in hardcover go out of print, we try to get the rights transferred to the University of Arkansas Press, and they continue my books out in paperback indefinitely.
		So now, he promised that to you, right?
unidentified		That he will keep all your books in print.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		He's not any longer the publisher, but his successor has done that.
		So when I got ready to write this book about Palestine, obviously I knew that I would use some things out of the older book that I had written, The Blood of Abraham.
		So I had to let the publisher of the University Press know that I would give them credit for it.
		And also I promised as a quid pro quo that I would write a new afterword for the paperback version of Blood of Abraham, which I have done.
unidentified		Thank you so much for joining us for three hours and thank you for your hospitality here in your house.
		This is in depth, where every month on the first Sunday of the month, we interview an author on his or her full body of work.
		Thanks.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		It's been a great pleasure.
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