Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Main
jimmy carter
d29:53
r
rosalynn carter
d12:17
?
Voice
Speaker
Time
Text
unidentified
Senate, his 17 years of leading his fellow Republicans, and plans for his remaining two years in office as well as other topics.
Our guest for the program is Michael Tackett, Deputy Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Associated Press and author of a new McConnell biography, The Price of Power.
Join us for the career and legacy of Senate leader Mitch McConnell Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN is your unfiltered view of government.
We're funded by these television companies and more, including Cox.
When connection is needed most, Cox is there to help.
Bringing affordable internet to families in need, new tech to boys and girls clubs, and support to veterans.
Whenever and wherever it matters most, we'll be there.
Cox supports C-SPAN as a public servants, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Here on C-SPAN, we continue our programming on the life, presidency, and legacy of former President Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100.
The former president has appeared on C-SPAN over 200 times, including a sit-down interview with us in 1998, when the Carters spoke about their early years together and their life in the White House.
They also gave C-SPAN a tour of the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta.
This is about 50 minutes.
President and Mrs. Carter, as we tour your library, the museum, the Carter Center, is this a reflection of you, your lives?
Well, we tried to make it tell a really honest story, you know, not only of my administration, with the mistakes and the successes, with the challenges and achievements, but also the balance of it tells about our youth, our marriage, our experience as governor, and then the campaign, and then some of the key events that happened during the four years I was in the White House.
So I think it's a pretty good history of my life up to and including the time we left the White House.
unidentified
Let's start at the beginning, at least for the two of you, Mrs. Carter.
Everything we've done since we went home from the Navy in operating Carter's warehouse, operating the farms that we did, raising the family, running for office, serving in the governor's mansion, running for president, serving there and so forth.
We've been full partners.
And we're still full partners in operations of the Carter Center here in Atlanta, which is a spoken point of our lives now.
So I would say that we've been pretty much on an equal basis.
unidentified
How does the museum fit in with the library and what the Carter Center is all about?
In the White House, the last couple of years I kept a diary, I disciplined myself by putting a schedule on the corner of my desk, and I had my assistant leave spaces between events so that I would come in and fill it in.
And if they stacked up, I would know that I was behind, so I had to do it pretty regularly.
unidentified
President Carter, you point out in this museum that Admiral Rickover was your role model.
I was one of the earliest young officers who ever went into the nuclear program, and I was a senior officer in developing the second atomic submarine.
And when I was interviewed by Rickover, he asked me all kinds of questions.
Every time I answered a question, he would ask me a more difficult question until he finally proved I didn't know anything about the subjects that I had chosen, whether it was music or art or literature or current events.
So he finally asked me how I stood in my class at the Naval Academy.
And I told him I stood so-and-so in a class of 800 or something.
Very proud.
And he said, did you do your best?
I thought for a long time I didn't always study as hard as I could.
I finally told him in truth, no, I didn't always do my best.
And he said, why not?
And he turned around and ended the interview.
That was the last thing he ever said.
He didn't look at me again.
I sat there for a long time, not knowing what to do.
Finally, I got up and walked out of the room.
I didn't know where to go.
A couple of weeks later, I got a notice that I'd been accepted.
When I was five years old, if anyone had asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would say I want to go to Annapolis and be an officer in the Navy.
My father had been a first lieutenant in the Army, and this was during the Depression years.
No one in my father's family had ever finished high school, even since in a couple hundred years.
And daddy was very insistent that I go to college, even though we didn't have any money at the time.
And Annapolis and West Point were the two free universities in our country.
And I had a favorite uncle who was on active duty in the Pacific, in the Navy.
So I chose a Navy, and so Annapolis, Annapolis, Annapolis was what I thought about when I was growing up.
We had three children and here I was going back home where my mother and Jimmy's mother were there to kind of direct my life and I didn't look forward to it.
I had not planned to run for office until the Supreme Court struck down the county unit system in Georgia and made one person, one vote the prevailing rule.
I was a chairman of a local school board, county school board, and our public school system was in danger because of segregationist commitments.
If a black child goes into a Georgia school, we'll close down the whole school system.
So I wanted to go to the Georgia Senate to protect the school system and eventually was elected.
I didn't even tell Rosen ahead of time, which is amazing to me now.
One morning I got up and put on my Sunday pants and Rosen asked me if I was going to a funeral.
And I told her, no, I was going to register to run for the Georgia Senate.
So I was eventually elected.
And then the only thing I asked for was to be on the education committee.
And from then on, I served two terms in the Georgia Senate, then ran for governor, and then after being governor, ran for president.
There were a group of bright young, moderate or more liberal governors elected in 1970 who were moderate on the race issue or progressive on the race issue.
And Time magazine at least chose me as the outstanding one to represent the New South.
And so they did a long cover story on me just a couple of months after I became governor.
In my inaugural address for governor, I announced that I knew the state better than any other person since I had campaigned for four years.
And I said, and I say to you quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over.
And that brief statement, I think, is what got me on the front cover of Time Magazine.
I have never ridden a motorcycle but once in my life.
And that was a photograph that was taken and used to kind of let people know I was a down-to-earth ordinary guy.
In fact, I came out of the peanut fields and got on a motorcycle.
One other time when we went, Rosa and I went to the Caribbean islands.
We rode our motor scooters, but I've never been on a motorcycle.
unidentified
The books have been written about the 1976 campaign, but Mrs. Carter, when he first started to think about a presidential bid around 1972, 1973, what were you thinking?
And in fact, when he told me he was going to run, that he thought that he would, and what did I think about him running for president?
He could hardly say the word.
And I couldn't, it was just hard to imagine.
And then when I started campaigning, I was afraid.
I had campaigned in Georgia when he ran for governor, but I was afraid to go out of the state because I didn't know what people would think in the other states or what the issues were.
And I went into Florida first and just drove with a friend.
And the issues are the same.
Everybody wants the same thing for their families and for their children, a good life and so forth.
But we would just come, go into a radio station, a newspaper office, a television station, say, my husband's running for president.
I would like for you to interview me.
And they would say, president of what?
President of the United States.
You've got to be kidding.
So it was a real interesting, exciting time for us.
The first day, after the first day, I made up a list of questions because if you go to a little radio station, they were so surprised that you were there and they didn't know what to ask you.
And I knew the points I wanted to make about him, so it was fun.
unidentified
As you put this museum together and looked through some of the material from 1975, 76, is there anything new that you didn't know that kind of came back to you as you're looking back at that campaign?
Yes, I think so because I would campaign in one place, Rosen in another place, my oldest son, Jack, and his wife in another place, my middle son and his wife in another place, my youngest son and his wife in another place, my mother in a different place and mother's sister in a different place.
So we had like seven campaigns going on every day.
And I only knew what was happening where I was.
And we didn't know all of the vast array of volunteers like in the Peanut Brigade, so-called, who went to New Hampshire, who went to Wisconsin, who went to other states in the nation and campaigned independently of us.
So the museum put together all of that material and for the first time I could see the panorama, you might say, of what was going on around the country in addition to what I personally knew about.
unidentified
At what point, President Carter, did you say to yourself, I can win this thing, I can get the party nomination?
A lot of subsequent campaigners have looked at that very carefully and have talked to me about it.
Nowadays, though, it's almost entirely how much money you can raise and how many 30-second TV spots you can broadcast and how much negative attack you can make on your opponent.
That was not, none of that was the case in 1976 when I was elected.
In fact, I never referred to my opponents except anyone except my distinguished opponent referring to Gerald Ford.
And even in 1980, when I ran against then Governor Ronald Reagan, it was always my distinguished opponent.
I think it would have been politically suicidal for me to run a series of negative TV campaign ads attacking my opponent.
Nowadays, it's how much money can you raise, how much can you destroy the reputation of your adversary?
It's so different now because it depends almost totally on television.
But when we were campaigning, nobody had ever seen the wife of a candidate or the family of a candidate out talking about their husband or their father or so forth.
It was just really something special back then.
It happens all the time now.
But mainly it's the television that makes a difference now.
unidentified
When you see this picture of the two of you walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, whose idea was that?
Well, it was a, we never had been involved in the Washington scene.
President Ford was nice enough to invite us up to look over the White House.
But we had a lot of things to do.
And I had a very clear concept of what I wanted to accomplish my first year.
So we began immediately to put into practice carrying out the campaign promises and to drafting laws and to getting acquainted with the members of the Congress and things of that kind.
But the first afternoon after the parade, after the inauguration and stuff, we went into the White House with our family and just kind of had a good time discovering the hidden doorway to the upstairs and lots of fun things.
And the next day, I think the first full day in the White House, we stood in line for receptions and just shook hands with, we invited people from all over the country to come.
So you would spend the night with folks, you'd drink a cup of coffee, eat some ice cream and cake, and you get to know them rather than just staying in a sterile motel room and watching TV.
So we had a reception for all the people in whose home members of my family had spent the night.
There were 700 people in whose home we had stayed overnight.
And we gave them each a little brass plaque.
Members of the Carter family slept here.
So that was one of the nice events we had the first day we were in office.
unidentified
A couple things behind you.
First of all, Mrs. Carter, the picture with you and the family, where was that taken?
The upstairs has a hall all the way down with rooms on the side, and the dining room was kind of across from our bedroom and dining room, a little kitchen there that I think Jackie Kennedy had had arranged before the presidents and their families went downstairs to much more formal dining room.
But it was called the family dining room.
It was not the big state dining room, but it was much more formal.
Some of them, we were told that there is now ate off of TV trays and things like that upstairs.
But when Jackie Kennedy was there with the little babies, she had a kitchen put upstairs in the dining room.
And that was just normal.
I see chips dressed up.
That was not always normal.
unidentified
In President Carter, the treehouse, and then it looks like you're chasing Amy on board Air Force, or Marine One.
Well, the treehouse, Amy was a typical nine-year-old child who went to the public schools and who would bring her classmates home.
We had beautiful trees in front, and Amy wanted a treehouse.
So I designed a treehouse, and they wouldn't let us nail it onto the tree, so I had to design it so it stood, it was self-supporting.
But Amy would spend the night out there with her friends, and our other grand and our oldest grandsons would stay out there sometimes, spend the night, all night with Amy in the treehouse.
And Amy was only 13 when we left the White House.
She was a very small child compared to, say, the Clinton's daughter, four years younger than Chelsea.
So Amy found the White House to be a natural home, including having pets and treehouse and bringing her classmates home with her and having people spend the night, things of that kind.
I think maybe this photograph right here, because it brings back so many memories of walking down Pennsylvania Avenue and how cold it was that day.
And I didn't even, I was so numb from the excitement that I didn't even realize it was cold.
So there are lots of things, though.
Jimmy gave me a compact that has ILYTG on it, which is kind of a nice code for our family.
I love you.
I won't tell you the rest of it.
And that's in the museum.
There are lots of interesting things that bring back things that bring back a lot of memories.
A little spoon that my mother had for me when I was a baby that I never did even know about until we were kind of looking around for things to put in in the library.
When we go to Willie Nelson concerts, we always sing a final hymn and Amazing Grace.
And Willie Nelson is always careful to move the microphone away from me and point it toward his lips so my voice doesn't come across too strong.
But I never was musically talented.
The only exception to that, by the way, was in Hawaii when we were stationed over there on a submarine, and Rosen was the best hula dancer among all the Navy wives.
The last few days that I was president, the White House photographer took voluminous photographs of exactly where everything was and what everything looked like.
And then when we reproduced the Oval Office for the Carter Center and for the museum here, we did it exactly the way it was.
Even including the views that you see through the windows, it looks like you're sitting in the Oval Office and you can see the White House over here and you can see the lawn over to the right of South Lawn.
It's exactly the way it was.
unidentified
Why in developing this museum did you decide to put the Oval Office here?
Because I wanted the entire museum to be authentic and I wanted it to appeal to visitors.
And I think the favorite thing that people like to see who come here to visit school children and older people is exactly the way the Oval Office looks because you hear about the Oval Office more than you do any other aspect of the White House.
unidentified
A couple things I want to point out.
There's a statue of Benjamin Franklin behind you.
There's a statue of President Truman.
There's a portrait of George Washington above the mantle.
Well, I served on Admiral Rickov in the Navy and when I was elected president, which I'm sure surprised Admiral Rickov, he gave me that little flag.
Oh God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.
So it was kind of a reminder to be humble and also to depend on God's guidance.
And the other was just to commemorate my admiration for President Truman and to remember that when an issue gets to the Oval Office, to that desk, it's too difficult or complicated for mayors or governors or quite often the Congress to address.
The president has the ultimate decision to make.
unidentified
How much time did you spend in the Oval Office as a working office?
I would read the secret reports from around the world from the State Department and from the intelligence services.
Then at 8 o'clock I would meet with the National Security Advisor, Dr. Brzezinski.
And then about 8.30 I would begin my daily sessions with cabinet officers, with members of my own staff, and with members of Congress and with certain visitors.
I stayed on a strict schedule, staying on time.
And then I would work here until about 5 o'clock in the afternoon during the days I was in Washington.
At 5 o'clock, though, I pretty well wiped it all out.
I would go out and run at that time six or seven miles.
I was running about 40 miles a week.
And then at night, I would spend with my family.
The first couple of weeks I was inundated with paperwork.
So we took a speed reading course, I and members of my family and my cabinet and others and the White House staff so we could get through those volumes of necessary paperwork in a hurry.
Until I finished that speed reading course, I had to take a lot of work over to the White House at night.
And I didn't want to work from 7 in the morning until late at night.
So I generally finished my work by 5 in the afternoon.
I remember the first day, the first day when he was after the inauguration, when I came walking in the door and he was sitting behind the desk was really impressive.
It was impressive.
And then I remember when the Panama Canal Treaties were signed and he called me when they got the last vote and I came running over to the Oval Office.
That was special.
But I was in and out.
The last day that we were in the White House, the day of the inauguration of President Reagan, I came over several times to tell him he had to come home and get dressed for the inauguration because he was working, still working on the hostage situation.
There were lots of momentous occasions in our White House life.
It was more difficult for me to get the Senate to ratify the Panama Canal Treaties than it was to be elected president.
It's the most difficult political challenge I've ever had in my life.
It was a very controversial issue that was acknowledged to be necessary beginning with President Lyndon Johnson.
And then he and President Nixon and President Ford all promised to have the Panama Canal Treaty negotiated and passed.
They all backed away because it was so politically charged with animosity.
I went ahead and negotiated the treaty and presented it to the Senate.
And it was like pulling teeth, or even worse, to get two-thirds of the members of a U.S. Senate to vote in favor of ratifying that treaty.
Had they not done so, we would have undoubtedly had a war in Central America.
It was the most courageous action, in my opinion, that the Congress has ever taken.
Of the 20 senators, for instance, who voted for the treaty, who were up for reelection that same year, 1978, only seven of the 20 came back the following year.
And the attrition rate was almost as great two years later because the people that were against the Panama Canal treaties were so dedicated and vehement and angry about it that they launched crusades to defeat any senator who voted in favor of the treaties.
unidentified
There's also a quote in the nuclear arms display from Soviet leader Brezhnev.
He says that if we do not succeed with the SALT II treaty, God will not forgive us.
And I ask you that in terms of what we're seeing today with Pakistan in India.
That quote is remarkable because I was sitting across the table from Brezhnev and Gromyko and other Soviet leaders who are all sworn atheists, as you know, in a communist system.
And when Brezhnev said, God will not forgive us, it was a shock, particularly to the other Soviet leaders at the table.
I think that nowadays the issue between the rest of the world and India and Pakistan is the same one that I faced my last year in the White House when I refused to send nuclear fuel to countries that were reprocessing that fuel in order to create explosive material, plutonium.
This is a long-standing problem for the United States.
How do we maintain an enormous nuclear arsenal and still insist that other great nations like India not have one explosive?
So what I tried to do as President was to set an example, to reduce nuclear armaments as much as we possibly could, to adhere strictly to the nonproliferation treaty, to negotiate a comprehensive test ban to prevent any testing, and to set an example for the countries that were technologically capable like India and Pakistan, but looked to the United States to set an example.
So I was distressed when India exploded more nuclear devices and Pakistan followed suit.
I still think that we have a long way to go in our own country to ratify the comprehensive test ban, which we have not done so yet, and also to ratify the START II Treaty, which we've not yet ratified.
I'm worried about the future, not as much as I was back when we had a direct and constant confrontation with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The situation is not as bleak now.
But yes, I'm very worried about how the nuclear capability is being adopted or developed by nations that are extremely antagonistic toward one another, as are India and Pakistan over the issue of Kashmir.
They could possibly use nuclear weapons for the first time in anger since the end of the Second World War.
unidentified
Mrs. Carter, there's also a quote from your husband's inaugural address January 1977 in which he said, because we are free, we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.
Well, I think Jimmy's greatest achievement was his human rights policy, which calls for freedom for people and the rights that they have around the world.
And I think that since his presidency, that human rights policy has continued.
And so I think, as far as that's concerned, we're better off because our country changed the way we conduct our foreign policy.
We take human rights in these countries into consideration in our relationships with different countries.
So I think we are better off in that way.
As far as freedom around the world, there are lots of people that are not free.
And we have a lot of programs with the Carter Center agriculture and health programs in some of the developing countries of the world.
And we see that the people are not free.
And there are too many wars, too much suffering.
I think anything we can do to help people have a better and freer life, our country should do it, and we should do it, and we try to do at the Carter Center.
Well, I can't disagree with Rose, and everybody remembers the Camp David Accords and the normalizing relations with China and the deregulation of all America's industries and the SALT II Treaty and the Panama Canal Treaties.
But I think the human rights policy has been important for us and it's also been the focal point of the Carter Center's work since I left the White House.
Human rights in its broadest definition, the alleviation of suffering, the prevention of persecution, and the attempt to end and to prevent wars, all those things come under our human rights policy.
So it's been a commitment of mine, both in the White House and since we left.
unidentified
Mrs. Carter, there's a statue in the gardens called Sightless Among Miracles.
Well, one of the programs at the Carter Center is a disease eradication program.
And one of the things we're working on is controlling river blindness, which is a horrible disease that people get when a little black fly stings them.
And the black fly breeds in fast-communication water.
So there are lots of countries, particularly in Africa, some in Latin America, where people have river blindness.
And one pill a year will control river blindness.
We don't know whether it can be eradicated yet or not, but we're working on that.
One pill a year will control riverblindness.
In these villages that we go into, we see many older people being led by children because the older person is blind from river blindness.
And that's what the statue is, a child leading an adult who is blind.
No, I wasn't trying to set a moral example, but I don't think there's any doubt that the president of a country ordinarily is looked upon as the moral standard setter for the country.
As Theodore Roosevelt said, the White House is a bully pulpit.
It's not just a place to propound political theses or axioms.
A pulpit is also a place where you advise people on moral and ethical and other standards.
So I think that that's what the presidency should do.
We had a very unpleasant relationship with President Reagan.
There never was any friendship between us.
He had a tendency to blame any problem that came up on his predecessors, including me and President Ford both.
However, Decarter Center's work was done quite effectively through his national security advisors and through his secretaries of state, particularly George Schultz.
So we had a good working relationship with the Reagan administration.
I had a better relationship by far with George Bush, and particularly with Jim Baker, who was his Secretary of State.
Very close.
My best personal friend among all the previous presidents has been Gerald Ford.
He and I work intimately with each other.
Our families are friends.
Rosen and his wife Betty are friends.
This week we were with one of his sons and their children.
We just happened to meet him on a trip.
So I would say that as far as personal relationships are concerned, mine with Gerald Ford has been maybe even unprecedented in American history.
unidentified
And my last question for the both of you: this museum reflects a lot of your public life.
Is there a memorable personal moment that the two of you shared during your White House years?
I think if you're talking about, if we're thinking about something that happened that we did, that Jimmy did as president, or that I did, I think the evening he came back from Camp David was probably the most emotional one that we spent in the White House.
I remember standing, I had come in for an event, and Jimmy called me and told me not to come back to Camp David because they had a settlement.
And so Mrs. Begin and I was standing in the door facing the South Loan when the helicopter landed and the men came, and Mrs. Begin, when Prime Minister Begin came walking in, he said, Mama, we'll go down in history for this.
And she looked at me and she said, look at that cold fish dying.
Even his one eye is weeping.
It was just a really, really wonderful, exciting time.
On the way back from Camp David, by the way, we had a telephone, and I called President Gerald Ford, former president, and I told him that we had success at Camp David.
And both Begin and Sadat got on the phone and also reported to President Ford.
But I think that was obviously one of the great highlights of our time here.
Well, not too long ago, I was interviewed on my 70th birthday, and the interviewer with a different network asked me, what is the best time of your life?
You've been a naval officer, you've been a submariner, you've been a businessman, you've been a governor, you've been a president.
What's the best time of your life?
And I thought for a few minutes, and I finally said, no, it's the best time of my life.
We have all the advantages of having served as the leaders of the greatest nation in the world.
And we have an intimate relationship with people who are suffering.
In 35 African nations, the Carter Center has projects there.
We help to promote democracy and freedom and to end conflicts.
And we have a very good personal life with our family now, enough time to spend with our kids and our grandchildren.
Well, the Carter Center has given us a forum to work on those issues that we were interested in a long time.
And I have a really good mental health program, along with the other things that we are doing that are really satisfying.
When we go to these countries where we have health programs and agriculture programs and see people who are raising crops because of the Carter Center, when they were barely subsisting earlier, we see people who don't have a guinea worm anymore because we have a guinea worm eradication program.
All of those things are really rewarding, and it is a good time of our life.
The Carter Center has developed into something we never ever dreamed it would be when we first began planning for it.
And so, as Jimmy said, with our family, with our grandchildren, it's just a good time for us.
After becoming the longest serving party leader in Senate history, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is stepping down from his leadership position this week.
Watch C-SPAN Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern as we explore the life and career of Senator McConnell.
He shares his views on the importance of the Senate, his 17 years of leading his fellow Republicans, and plans for his remaining two years in office, as well as other topics.
Our guest for the program is Michael Tackett, Deputy Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Associated Press and author of a new McConnell biography, The Price of Power.
Join us for the career and legacy of Senate leader Mitch McConnell Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
The C-SPAN Book Show podcast feed makes it easy for you to listen to all of C-SPAN's podcasts that feature non-fiction books in one place so you can discover new authors and ideas.
Each week, we're making it convenient for you to listen to multiple episodes with critically acclaimed authors discussing history, biographies, current events, and culture from our signature programs about books, afterwards, booknotes plus, and QA.
Listen to C-SPAN's bookshelf podcast feed today.
You can find that C-SPAN Bookshelf Podcast feed and all of our podcasts on the free C-SPAN Now mobile video app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website c-span.org/slash podcasts.
The house will be in order.
This year, C-SPAN celebrates 45 years of covering Congress like no other.
Since 1979, we've been your primary source for Capitol Hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, taking you to where the policy is debated and decided, all with the support of America's cable companies.