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Jan. 2, 2025 00:09-01:01 - CSPAN
51:41
1998 Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Interview
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jimmy carter
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Speaker Time Text
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Thursday to the Washington Cathedral for a funeral service.
Later in the day, the former president will take his last trip home to be buried at the Carter family home in Georgia.
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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 Mrs. Carter, as we tour your library, the museum, and 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 about 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.
Let's start at the beginning, at least for the two of you, Mrs. Carter.
How did you meet?
Well, we both lived in Plains, Georgia, and everybody in Plains knew everybody else.
But Jimmy's sister was my best friend, and I spent a lot of time at his house when I was growing up, except that he was always older than I was.
And he left home when he was 16.
I was only 13.
And so our first date was when he was at home the year before he was a first classman at the Naval Academy.
And did you know then?
I did.
She did.
As a matter of fact, I asked her for a date.
We went to a movie together.
And I never had been with her before.
She was so much younger than I was, I didn't pay any attention to her, really.
But then the next morning, I got up early and my mother was cooking breakfast.
And Mama said, what did you do last night?
I said, I had a date with, went to the movie.
Who with?
Rosalind Smith.
What do you think of her?
And I said, she's the one I want to marry.
There's as much Rosalind Carter here as there is Jimmy Carter.
Is that a reflection of your partnership?
Well, it was fun putting it all together.
And we've been involved in all of the things together.
We got married when we were very young.
And so I think maybe it is, don't you?
It is.
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.
How does the museum fit in with the library and what the Carter Center is all about?
I think the museum tells a very good picture, makes a good picture of what we did in the White House, what we did before the White House.
It doesn't cover the time of our lives after I was president.
That's basically part of a quarter center, which is next door to the library and the museum.
But it's a very extensive picture of our lives up through and including the White House time.
There are a number of things in the museum I want to ask you about.
First and foremost is a notation from your mother that says on your baby book that it's Jimmy now, but later it will become Jim.
That never happened, though, did it?
I was always Jimmy.
And my father's name was James Earle.
I'm James Earle Jr.
Everybody called him Earl, and they always called me Jimmy.
When I began to run for president, I had quite a hard time with some secretaries of state who refused to use my nickname on the official documents.
I had to go to court in two states, as a matter of fact, to get Jimmy on the ballot instead of James Earl Carter Jr.
But all the time I was president, I signed the official laws and documents with the name I've always used, and that's Jimmy.
A lot of letters back and forth to your family when you were in Annapolis.
Were you a prolific writer?
I think my parents would not agree that I was a prolific letter writer.
They always complained that I didn't write often enough.
My mother wrote quite regularly, and my father wrote, I'd say, every couple of months.
And I probably wrote home every two weeks, something like that.
But no, not prolific.
Did you both keep diaries?
No.
No.
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.
President Carter, you point out in this museum that Admiral Rickover was your role model.
Is that fair and accurate?
Well, I would say my father in the personal aspects of my life and Admiral Rickover in my professional life, yes.
Those are the two men that had the most impact on my own habits and moral values and my work projects and things of that kind.
Admiral Rickover was extremely demanding.
All the time I worked for him, he never said, good job, Lieutenant Carter, well done.
It was always, why didn't you do better?
Why didn't you do better?
Why did you do this and so forth?
But he was a driving force in my life and I think it heavily affected me.
Is that how you came up with the book title, Why Not the Best?
Yes.
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 a Naval Academy.
And I told him I stood so-and-so in a class of 800 and 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 the 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.
Now, you entered the Navy in 1943?
Yes, I had an appointment to the Naval Academy in 1943.
Why Annapolis?
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, Anapolis, Annapolis was what I thought about when I was growing up.
And why nuclear submarines?
Well, that came along later.
I wanted to go to submarines, which was the elite force, in my opinion, in the entire Navy.
So I was in the fleet-type submarines, the ones we used in the Second World War.
And then the Navy built its first ship after the Second World War, which was a little anti-submarine submarine.
I was the only officer assigned to it, the first officer assigned to it.
Then when a nuclear program came along, I immediately put in for it.
And every other submarine officer did as well, but I was one of the two selected in the entire Navy.
And I didn't know what it was, really.
It was a secret.
But I knew it was an ultimate best job in the whole Navy, and I was very lucky to get it.
And Mrs. Carter, the story goes that you wanted to be a Navy wife.
You were interested in moving out of planes and seeing other things.
Is that right?
That's right.
I was excited about traveling around the world, getting to see new and different places, and loved it.
In fact, the duty that Jimmy had when he was in the Navy was very good.
He would never own really long cruises.
Some of the times he would go out and be gone during the week and home on weekends, but he had good duty, and we enjoyed it.
The longest cruise I had in that time was about three months away from home in the Pacific.
And that was when he was being transferred to Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, and I came home with a tiny baby and stayed a few months.
And so that was not like being left in a port somewhere with him gone all the time.
So, and the two of you still have the wedding dress in the outfit that you wore in 1947?
1946.
So you've been married 52 years.
52 years, that's right.
And they were packed away in the attic.
And when we got them out, I was amazed that my dress didn't just fall apart when it was clean.
But it's in good shape.
I'm proud of it.
Why did you decide to put that on display here?
Well, we had a lot of help with planning the library and the things that we would do and have in the exhibits.
And that was part of our life.
And here was my dress, and here was Jimmy's uniform.
And there was a photograph of us, and we just thought that was a good thing to have.
In one of President Carter's book, he talks about the tardiness issue with you and how he gave you a birthday present.
What's the facts on that?
Well, he always accused me of being late.
And I always said, I was never late, to go somewhere, to go anywhere.
And he would come in and watch me get ready the last five minutes or so.
And it distressed me very much because I always felt like I was on time and that he just anticipated that I was going to be late.
And so he did on my birthday once.
He gave me a little plaque that said.
This is, as you can probably tell, this has been a matter of argument with us for probably 35 years of our married life.
And one morning I woke up and went in and turned my computer on and the date came up, August 18th.
I said, oh, no, it's Rosa's birthday, and today's Sunday morning.
I can't get her present.
So I thought, what could I give her that would be most appreciated.
So I wrote a note to her and I said, Rosa, never again in my life will I ever refer to tardiness in a negative way.
And I signed it.
And for the last 15 years, I've kept my promise.
And it's removed one wonderful opportunity for constant arguments between my wife.
So we haven't had an argument about tardiness, at least for the last 15 years.
And I haven't been late, right?
Never late.
When you talked to Rosalind about coming back to Plains in 1953, what was that like?
There wasn't much conversation.
After my father died, I went, I had been home during his deathbed period.
And I came back on the way, drove up from Plains to Schenectady, New York.
And on the way back, I decided, to my amazement, that I would like to resign from the Navy and go back to Plains.
And when I informed Rosen, there was nothing but an absolute total explosion.
And then a very deep and bitter division between us.
But I persisted, and we loaded the kids in the back end of a Plymouth station wagon and drove from Plains, from Schenectady home to Plains.
Never said a word for 700 miles.
And it took us several months to get over, but she was very much opposed to my resigning from the Navy.
So this was a serious problem between us.
But eventually we found a good life in Plains.
I was very independent.
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.
When did you first start talking about politics?
We didn't talk about it.
Not too much.
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.
But you lost when you ran first in 1966?
I lost when I ran for governor the first time.
I was elected to the Senate the first time, finally, and served two terms.
And when I ran for governor in 1966, I lost.
And I never stopped running.
And in 1970, I won.
Was this part of a plan?
How did it all evolve?
Not really.
Each time I held an office, eventually I decided that I could do a good job in a higher office.
So it was kind of an incremental thing.
I never did have any plans when I was in, when I was a farmer and a warehouse operator in Plains to be a state senator.
When I was state senator, I never thought about being governor.
When I was governor, at least for a couple years, I didn't think about being president.
So it was an incremental step-by-step escalation in my political ambitions.
You have a copy of Time magazine from, I believe it was May of 1971, you're on the cover.
Was that your first national exposure?
Yes, it was.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
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.
unidentified
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 didn't know you rode motorcycles.
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.
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?
I couldn't believe it was happening to us.
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 there 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.
Sometimes the radio announcer, the TV announcer would say, well, I don't know what questions to ask.
And Rosa would say, well, I happen to have a few questions here.
So she would give this disc jockey the questions, and he would ask her questions about me.
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.
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 my 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.
At what point, President Carter, did you say to yourself, I can win this thing.
I can get the party nomination.
In the fall of 1972.
We always depend on the four years before the election.
I never was doubtful about it.
A lot of people were, but we made meticulous plans, a step-by-step progression on what we would do in different states.
We knew every state and what its rules were, what its laws were, the political makeup of the constituency.
We went all out in, first of all, in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Florida.
We thought we would come in second or third, at least, in those three states.
I came in first in Iowa, first in New Hampshire, first in Florida.
And after that, I felt like no one could catch me.
I was thinking in Pennsylvania, wasn't it, that we final?
That was the final one that said, now we know we have it.
But we thought from the beginning we could do it.
Are there any lessons that historians can take away from that campaign in the way you ran it?
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.
When you see this picture of the two of you walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, whose idea was that?
It was.
It was mine, really.
And then we discussed it with the Secret Service first and told them to keep it absolutely quiet.
They were uncertain about it.
No one had ever done it before.
But I insisted.
And so we did it with the understanding that it would not be announced in advance.
And so we got in the limousine just behind the Capitol and we drove around about 100 yards and we got out of the limousine and walked.
So nobody knew about it except me, my family, and the Secret Service who were providing protection for us.
Remember your first full day at the White House?
Oh, yeah, sure.
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 and after the inauguration and so forth, 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.
We had, I think, two days we did that.
You had to meet with all the members of Congress and their families.
You had to meet with all of the members of the cabinet and their families.
We met with all the armed service leaders and their families, both enlisted men and officers.
And one of the most interesting things we did during the campaign, we didn't have any money compared to others.
So I laid down a rule that anyone who slept, who was working for me and who slept in a motel or hotel had to pay their own fee.
So this put pressure on my supporters to find a private home in which we could spend the night.
And that included my family as well.
And found good supporters that way.
That's right.
So you would spend the night with folks, you'd drink a cup of coffee, eat some ice cream and cake, and you'd 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.
A couple things behind you.
First of all, Mrs. Carter, the picture with you and the family, where was that taken?
That's in the upstairs dining room at the White House.
Typical of family dinner at the Carter White House?
Yes.
Yes.
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, the dining room, a little kitchen there that I think Jackie Kennedy had had arranged before the presidents and their families went downstairs to big state dining room, but it was much more formal.
Some of them, we were told that there are 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.
In President Carter, the treehouse?
And then it looks like you're chasing Amy on board Air Force, or Marine One.
I don't remember the chase.
What about the tree house?
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.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
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.
unidentified
Well, she was only three when Jimmy was elected governor and lived in the governance mansion in Georgia, which has a fence around it and tourists in.
And then we went to the White House.
So it was all kind of natural for her then.
Mrs. Carter, is there a favorite object in this museum?
I don't know.
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 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.
Special.
It's special.
The wedding clothes are important.
And my Naval Academy class ring is in the exhibit.
And some of my early report cards that my mother saved, she gave to the museum.
There are a lot of those very early, you know, personal mementos that mean a lot to us.
A number of A's, but a couple of B's in the C's in your sixth grade report card for music.
I never did have any musical talent.
I'm vocally afflicted.
I move my lips, but I don't sing.
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 of that, by the way, was in Hawaii when we were stationed over there at a submarine, and Rosen was the best hula dancer among all the Navy wives.
And I pretty well mastered the ukulele.
I could play the songs to which she danced.
That was fun.
There's also a replica of the Oval Office, if we could go in there.
Very good.
We now sit here in what is a replica of the Oval Office.
President Carter, how true to life is this?
It is exactly true.
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.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
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.
unidentified
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, South Lawn.
It's exactly the way it was.
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.
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.
Why did you select these?
Well, they are my great heroes.
My favorite political leader in this century is Harry Truman.
So I not only have his portrait, but also have a copy of the Buck Stops Here, which was a sign that he put on his desk.
I tried to get the original, but I finally had to get the copy made.
And of course, George Washington, the founder of our country, and an admirable leader on a global scale.
And Benjamin Franklin, because I think his wisdom added a lot to what our nation's founders finally decided should be in the Constitution.
In this little memento here, oh God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.
Where did that come from?
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.
How much time did you spend in the Oval Office as a working office?
Oh, a lot.
I came over here every morning at 7 o'clock.
I would read the secret reports from around the world from the State Department and from the intelligence services.
And at 8 o'clock, I would meet with the National Security Advisor, Dr. Brzezinski.
And 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 day as 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.
And he would call me about 4.30 and say, we're going to jog in a little while.
We're going to play tennis or something.
And so I had to stop planning anything after 4.30.
And in the afternoon, we would just take some kind of exercise.
If it was raining, we'd go down and bowl in the bowling alley downstairs in the White House and just have some time together.
Mrs. Carter, as you sit in this office here, is there a moment that you remember in the time that you spent in the White House coming here?
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.
Yes.
And then I remember when the Panama Canal Treaty was 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.
The last two nights I was president, I never went over to the White House.
I stayed here in the Oval Office for three full days negotiating with the Ayatollah Khomeini through the Algerians to get the hostages released.
And the inauguration morning at 10 o'clock, we had been completely successful.
All the hostages were in an airplane at the end of the runway in Teheran, waiting to take off, and I kept anticipating a message that they were free.
But the Ayatollah didn't let the plane take off until about five minutes after I was no longer president.
So that was the most dramatic time in the Oval Office for me.
What can you tell us about the desk that you used?
This is a desk that's made out of oak that was given to the president by Queen Elizabeth, I think.
There was a British icebreaker, a sailing ship that was locked in the ice in the North Sea.
And all of the crew members perished.
Later, an American icebreaker went up there and found the ship and returned it to England.
And so this wood was taken out of that ship by the Queen of England and given to America.
And this particular desk right here, that wood that you are looking at, came out of a British icebreaker that was lost during sailing ship times.
Mrs. Carter mentioned the Panama Canal Treaty, which is one of a number of displays here in the museum.
Why was that so important?
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 re-election 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 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.
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 non-proliferation 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.
Are you worried about the future?
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 cake 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.
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.
20 years later, how are we doing?
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 it, 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.
Mrs. Carter, there's a statue in the gardens called Sightless Among Miracles.
What is that?
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-tunning 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.
Last year we gave this tablet to 21.5 million people.
This year will be 24 million people in 29 African countries and seven countries in South America.
One of the remarkable things is that a great pharmaceutical company, Merck and Company, gives us a medicine free of charge.
So for every villager in those 36 countries who have any stage of verbal blindness, Merck will provide free medicine in perpetuity.
And the Carter Center has been in charge of this program on a global basis.
In our remaining minutes, let me ask you a couple of brief questions.
When you were in the White House, do you think young people looked up to you?
Do you think you were a moral leader?
Well, that's a hard question for me to answer.
I think yes, but that's a proper role for a president to set a moral example for the nation.
I think we thought about it at the time.
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.
Can the same be said true for President Clinton?
Well, the allegations against President Clinton have been very disturbing to us.
I think it's very proper for Americans to remember that the allegations have not been proven.
They're just accusations, some of them inspired for political reasons.
And until we know all the facts, I don't think it's appropriate to assume that President Clinton is guilty of anything.
I agree with that.
Let me ask you just about a couple of presidents and how you would describe them in your relationship with them.
First, Ronald Reagan.
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, the Carter 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.
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, 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.
And what about you?
Well, that's obviously one of the highlights.
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.
Are you enjoying life these days?
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.
So I think this is the best time of life.
Mrs. Carter, I'll give you the last word.
Well, the Carter Center has given us a forum to work on those issues that we were interested in for 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 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.
Thank you both very much.
Thank you.
We've enjoyed it.
Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100.
Here are some of the events and services that will lead up to his burial.
On Saturday, the Carter family will be part of a motorcade that goes first to Atlanta for a stop at the state capitol and then on to the family home in Plains.
On Sunday and Monday, the former president will lie in repose at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
Tuesday, the family travels to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., where the former president will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
The public will be allowed to pay their respects starting at 7 p.m. Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday, President Carter will again lie in state at the U.S. Capitol before being transported Thursday to the Washington Cathedral for a funeral service.
Later in the day, the former president will take his last trip home to be buried at the Carter family home in Georgia.
We'll show these events live on the C-SPAN networks, streaming online at c-span.org and on the free C-SPAN Now video app.
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Next, a conversation with retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on his judicial philosophy and interpretation of the law.
He's the author of the book, Reading the Constitution, Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism.
From the University of Virginia's School of Law, this is just over An hour.
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