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Jan. 4, 2025 17:19-17:59 - CSPAN
39:54
Jimmy Carter Interview on His Presidency
Participants
Main
j
jimmy carter
d 12:23
Appearances
b
brian lamb
cspan 03:00
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
An equal treatment under the law for the weak and the powerful, for the rich and the poor, and that we had enabled our people to be proud of their own government once again.
I would hope that the nations of the world might say that we had built a lasting peace based not on weapons of war.
but on international policies which reflect our own most precious values.
These are not just my goals, and they will not be my accomplishments, but the affirmation of our nation's continuing moral strength and our belief in an undiminished, ever-expanding American dream.
Thank you very much.
C-SPAN interviewed former President Jimmy Carter in 1999, discussing his 1976 campaign, his experiences in the White House, and the accomplishments of his administration.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
President Carter, I saw a speech you gave four years ago in which you said that Harry Truman was the best president of the 20th century.
Still believe that?
unidentified
Well, I said he was my favorite.
I think in many ways he was one of the best, if not the best.
In the first place, I don't think Harry Truman ever told a lie.
I think he told the truth to the American people all the time, whether it was good or bad news.
I think he was the first real pronounced champion of human rights, at least in my lifetime.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And he demonstrated it in very difficult ways by bringing a successful conclusion to the Second World War, when we could have been abusive and condemnatory and destroyed the society of Germany and Italy and Japan.
Instead, it was his background wisdom and judgment to let all of these countries survive the war, not with destruction, but with a new breath of freedom and a commitment to democracy, which has persisted in all three countries.
unidentified
I think he was quite generous, too.
Obviously, the Marshall Plan, so-called, which was just announced by George Marshall, could have very well have been called a Truman Plan.
So he was generous to his cabinet officers.
I just have, you can see, a great admiration for him in many ways.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
When you were president, had you thought a lot about what you wanted to be as a president, what the office should be, and have you changed your opinion on that since now you can look back on your four years?
unidentified
Well, obviously, I thought about that a lot.
I began planning to run for president immediately after the Democratic Convention in 1972, when George McGovern was nominated.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And we began to assess every aspect of the campaign itself.
unidentified
What news media we should contact, the detailed history and laws of each individual state where I would be contesting other candidates.
My first presumption was that I would be run kind of in between George Wallace on my right and Ted Noody on my left.
I was disappointed when Kennedy withdrew from the race because my plans had been made accordingly and a lot of substitutes came in for him about nine or ten as a matter of fact.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And then of course when I went around the country to campaign, which I did assiduously, the different questions that were asked to me concerning the Middle East, concerning China, concerning Panama, concerning the free enterprise system in our country, concerning environment, concerning education and welfare and so forth made me mandatory start getting my thoughts in order.
And so I would say that by the time I was inaugurated, I had a very clear picture of what I wanted to do as president.
unidentified
And I have to say, not with too much ego, that we accomplished almost all of them.
We had a very good and productive relationship with the Congress.
A batting average that was at least equal to that of Lyndon Johnson, for instance, if you look at things statistically.
We had some very difficult issues to face, normalizing relations with China, breaking official ties with Taiwan, Mideast peace process.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
The Panama Canal Treaties was the worst by far political issue I ever had to face in my life.
unidentified
What to do about the young men who had gone to Canada during the Vietnam War.
There were a lot of things like that that I had to face, but I knew pretty well what I wanted to do.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Are you glad that you pardoned those people that went to Canada, the draft evaders?
unidentified
Yes, I am.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Why?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
Well, it was a festering soar and involved tens of thousands of young men who had the choice.
unidentified
In fact, I have three sons.
My oldest son was in Georgia Tech, a very fine school.
He thought the draft procedures were very unfair in that anyone who could afford to go to college didn't have to go.
And the poor kids or the minority kids were the ones who went.
He thought that was unfair.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And there were a lot of other people who he didn't object to going to war and he was three years in Vietnam.
unidentified
But I thought that it was time to get it over with.
I think the same attitude that President Ford had in giving Nixon a pardon.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So after I made my inaugural speech, before I even left the site, I went just inside the door at the National Capitol and I signed the pardon for those young men.
unidentified
And yes, I think it was the right thing to do.
One of the first speeches I made was to the American Legion Convention.
And my father was a legionnaire.
I was a veteran, too.
And there were a few legionnaires in the front row that refused to stand up when I walked in as President of the United States.
I knew there would be some adverse reaction to what I did.
But yes, I think it was the right thing to do.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
How much impact did the little village of Plains, Georgia, have on the entire campaign?
I know, you know, all the networks set up their trailers there and it became a stage.
unidentified
I think it had a profound effect because, you know, I was genuinely not part of the Washington scene.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And when I went around the country, I could see the extreme disillusionment that existed among the people of our country, not only about the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandals and the revelations by the Congress that the CIA had actually committed crimes, including murder, and the fact that the people felt that they had been misled about the war and so forth.
So my basic approach was to project myself as an outsider who had experience as a governor, who had administered all the federal programs at the local and state level, who was at ease with the race issue.
unidentified
I had strong support from Martin Luther King Sr.
I had strong support from people like Andy Young.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So putting all those combinations together was a key to my ultimate success.
And I think that being from Plains proved vividly almost every day when the reporters were there and having that as a deadline, a byline, that I wasn't misleading anyone, that I was really an outsider.
And a lot of the things that I used for the campaign, my presence in the wheat fields and in the peanut fields, my pictures in my own woods or at my own barn, showed that I was really a farmer down to earth.
unidentified
The Plains Baptist Church became a focal point of a lot of photography.
So the things that I offered, I think, were attractive, which was proven by the final results.
The secret to my success, by secret, I mean secret for my opponents, and there were almost a dozen of them, very nice people, was that we had secret campaigns going on.
Everybody knew where I was.
But the same day I was campaigning, say, in Iowa, my wife would be in Florida.
My mother might be in Maine.
My oldest son, Jacques and his wife, might be in Pennsylvania.
My middle son might be in Wisconsin.
My youngest son might be in California.
And my mother's sister, Emily, would be in another state.
We had seven campaigns going on simultaneously.
We always went back to Plains on the weekend where we could report to each other.
This is what I heard in Maine.
This is what I heard in Wisconsin.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And I would make sure that they knew how to answer the basic questions.
unidentified
What are you going to do about this or that?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So we had a team that divided during each week, but got together on the weekends to share our experiences and to prepare for the following week.
At the same time, once the general election started, of course, Fritz Mondale and I never campaigned together because we had learned then the advantage of being in two places at once, at least.
unidentified
And so the only time we ever made a common appearance was in Flint, Michigan, the night before the final votes.
So I think we learned some things about politics that certainly paid rich dividends for us.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
How much time do you spend in Plains now?
unidentified
All I can.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
We've just gotten back from Mali in North Africa, and we have been on this trip to England, to Norway, to the Netherlands, to Switzerland, and to France.
But we go to Plains whenever we possibly can.
unidentified
We try to be there on the weekends in particular.
Rosa and I have a very deep involvement in our local community, including our church.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
I teach Sunday School Day when I'm home, and I just noticed that last Sunday, last year rather, I taught 37 times.
unidentified
So that's two out of three Sundays we're home.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
But quite often we get home Friday night or Saturday morning and then leave Monday.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
You know, the memo that was written back on November the 4th, 1972, Ham Jordan, your chief of staff, and I know you had a lot to do with the memo, but there was one paragraph I wanted to ask you about.
And it has to do with the media, because it goes back to the plains and the image.
Mr. Jordan wrote to you, like it or not, there exists, in fact, an Eastern liberal news establishment which has tremendous influence in this country all out of proportion to its actual audience.
The views of this small group of opinion makers in the papers they represent are noted and imitated by other columnists and newspapers throughout the country and the world.
I guess I wanted to ask you whether you think that's still true and what impact the media had on the image you had then and now.
unidentified
I think it's still true.
I wouldn't want to identify them, although we did in preparing the data that Hamilton wrote down and shared with us.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
But there were a few nationwide columnists, plus the regular reporters for the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times, whose writings, without acknowledgement, made a great impact on other reporters, including television reporters.
unidentified
And so we made an inventory, in effect, or a list of all of those people who we considered to be opinion shapers.
And this obviously included Face the Nation and Meet the Press interviews.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So we planned very carefully and in an escalating fashion how I would get to know these people.
Some of them were very eager to come down to Georgia and to meet with me and to meet with candidates who were running for president before the 1972 campaign.
And I would get to know them even as a relatively unknown governor of a small state.
And so by the time we were ready to go public, really, which would have been in Iowa, the Caucasus, I knew a lot more about these reporters and their publishers than they thought I did.
It was not until Johnny Apple, surprisingly to us, New York Times, went out in the countryside in Iowa and talked to people, you know, teachers and policemen and I guess bartenders and others, and he sized up what we already knew about Iowa and wrote a headline in the New York Times.
unidentified
Did the other reporters ever dream that I might come in first in Iowa?
They were looking at me as coming in fifth or sixth because they very seldom got out of Des Moines.
They would stay there, you know, and enjoy themselves and talk to each other.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
But he actually went out and got opinions from people around the state and he projected that I was going to win, which I did.
unidentified
This amazed a lot of people and he focused attention on me, which is very beneficial.
And then we went to New Hampshire.
I was not supposed to come in near the top in New Hampshire.
I came in first.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
The big test for me early on was against George Wallace in Florida, who had done formidably well four years earlier all over the country, not just in the South.
And he was solid in the northern parts of Florida.
unidentified
Scoop Jackson was a very favorite of the Jewish community, say in Miami.
But I came in first in Florida too.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And when I won those first three major contests against all kinds of opponents, then I think the other candidates began to say, this is a guy we got to stop.
unidentified
But by then, it was almost too late for them.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
23, 24 years later, could anybody do what you do, did again?
unidentified
No, I don't think so.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Why not?
unidentified
Because nowadays the campaigning is done through television, which is enormously expensive, as you know.
And in these days, the raising of $20 million is almost mandatory if you hope to be recognized even by the reporters as a substantive candidate.
If you can only raise $7 million or $10 million, even up to this point, a year before the election, then you're kind of written off as incompetent or inadequate or unpopular.
Well, we didn't use any so-called soft money then.
We campaigned in the primary and also in the general election on hard money, which has very strict limits.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
It would be quite difficult now for anyone to do as we did and to campaign from schoolhouse to schoolhouse to courthouse and stand in line and hand out pamphlets and factory shifts early in the morning.
unidentified
meet with farmers, make speeches from the auctioneer's desk at hog sale barns in Iowa.
That's the way we ran our campaign.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And if I had faced then a candidate with $20 million in the bank who was able to dominate television in New Hampshire or in Iowa or in Florida, I doubt seriously that I could have won in those states.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
When you look back on your own presidency, I want to go through a bunch of things as quickly as possible just to get your take later.
You created the Department of Energy, you created the Health and Human Services, and then you spun off education.
Would you do that today again?
unidentified
Yes, because people forget it was not a creation of a Department of Energy.
It was a bringing together of 30 different agencies into one agency.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
That worked, though.
unidentified
That was manageable, yes, and I think it's impervious now to any major modifications.
It was very important then and still is.
It covered a gamut all the way from solar power to nuclear destructive power.
And it made it manageable.
And my background was in education.
I was on the Sumter County School Board during the integration years, and I was a chairman of the university committee in the Georgia Senate, and I was a key player in different ways about education.
And when I got to, well, even before I got to Washington, I could see that education was basically submerged under health and welfare.
There was no cabinet post for education.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And most of what the federal government then did on education was just to resolve lawsuits between the federal government and states and so forth, which was to me very, I'd say, almost disgusting.
So I thought that it would be better to have education stand by itself, to play the crucial role of the federal government in offering some frosting on the cake that dealt primarily with kids who were untreated well, not treated well at the state and local level, which I think Lyndon Johnson had done so well, say, with Head Start.
unidentified
But that way, I think the Education Department was very necessary.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
You deregulated the airlines.
unidentified
Well, that was, you know, I think in looking back, that was one of the most remarkable things that we did during the four years that has not yet been recognized.
I'm pleased that you have done it.
I was a businessman.
In fact, I was the outstanding young businessman of Georgia once.
That's my background.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And I deregulated, we deregulated, the airlines and the railroads and trucking.
unidentified
We deregulated banks and banking.
We deregulated communications, television, radio.
We deregulated oil and gas.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So in effect, we brought freedom to almost every aspect of the economic structure of America that never had been known before.
And the consequences of that are now accepted as routine, but they were revolutionary in character.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Why do you think people haven't paid much attention to that?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
Now people take for granted that airlines have to compete with each other and that truckers have to compete with each other and that banks can merge or that banks can offer savings and loan or even insurance capabilities or that the price of oil and gas is not ordained from Washington but has to find its own level in a competitive free enterprise system.
unidentified
Now people take that for granted.
But before I became president, none of the things that I've just said were true.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
As you know, it's hard to change anything in Washington.
Eventually the Interstate Commerce Commission was eliminated.
The CAB was eliminated, the Civil Air and Oxford.
How did you do it?
What device did you use to do it?
unidentified
Well, I had some good advisors, first of all, who knew the inner workings of the ICC and the CAB and those other agencies that you mentioned.
And there was a kind of an unpublicized willingness, I'd say, I wouldn't say eagerness, within the Congress to make the changes that I proposed.
For me, it was a high priority.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And for the Congress, there was an element of dormancy about it.
unidentified
These were not highly controversial issues.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
Even some of my best supporters from Georgia, like Delta Airlines, didn't like my deregulating all the airlines.
unidentified
But of course, they have prospered since then.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And there has been some adverse consequences in a way because with a monopoly on a particular route, which existed before deregulation, say Eastern Airlines could say, okay, we fly from Miami to Atlanta and then on up to New York.
unidentified
If our pilots or if our workers want a 15% raise, we won't argue with them.
We'll just give them to it, give it to them, and then we'll pass it on by a 20% increase in fares.
This is the way things were done before.
But I thought that was wrong.
And I think the main reason we were able to get it passed, to repeat myself, is that we were intensely interested in it, and the Congress wasn't all that interested in it.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Did you think much about your speechmaking back in those years?
Did you work at it?
Did you write your own speeches?
unidentified
Well, yeah.
The most unpleasant relationship I had with people who worked with me in the White House were with speech writers who disagreed with my major input into my speeches.
You know, before I went to Washington, I had never had a speechwriter.
I wrote my own speeches on my own typewriter.
And I still do, by the way.
But in the White House, it was expected that professional speechwriters would do the writing and that a president would basically make a few editorial changes and then read them on a teleprompter.
That was not my way of doing things.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So I had a couple of speechwriters who resigned in anger, and one of them wrote negative stories about the White House life under me because I didn't accept what they wrote for me.
But I had to be involved in the words themselves and not just in the delivery of it.
unidentified
I can make a lot better speech now than I used to when I was president.
I've learned how to make speeches.
Now I'm more relaxed with it and I've made a speeches, but I make one every now and then.
But now I choose my subjects to be the subjects I choose are ones in which I have a deep interest.
But speechmaking didn't come easy to me.
I think, however, to be objective about it, when I was campaigning around the country and speaking to 20 people or maybe 100 people, I think my sincerity did come across.
And when I said, I will never lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don't vote for me.
I think people responded to that kind of statement.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
In retrospect, the walking from the Capitol down to the White House Inauguration Day, the carrying of your own bags, the imagery that you created, would you do that again?
unidentified
Yes.
Well, the carrying of my own bags is something I still do, and I always did.
That was not a contrivance or an artificiality that was suggested to me by media experts.
I got by easily for five days of campaigning.
I would have a little suitcase which I still have, very small.
Every night in the hotel, if I stayed in a hotel or in a private person's room, I washed out my socks and underwear and tried to get them dry during the night, a device of my own.
And I had one extra coat and a pair of pants that I carried in a leather carriage, which I still have.
I carried my own bags naturally.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
The walking from the Capitol to the White House was really suggested to me by Senator Proxmire from Wisconsin.
He wrote me a note and he said that there was such a vast chasm in trust that existed between the people of the nation and Washington that he thought I might do something to break that tradition and maybe even expose myself more directly to the American people, or words to that effect.
unidentified
Rosa and I talked it over and we had this bright idea of getting in the limousine, driving around the Capitol and then getting out and walking down Pennsylvania Avenue.
And then we broached that with the Secret Service responsible, obviously, for our safety.
Then they said, well, if you can keep it completely secret and don't let anybody know in advance that you're going to do it, we think the surprise element will probably be an additional protective factor.
So in effect, you know, we walked down Pennsylvania Avenue like any other people going to a fair or something with thousands of people on both sides and exposed to people if they felt like hurting us.
But it was such a surprise that I never did feel in danger.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
This is out of the blue, but it gives you a chance to talk about the Iranian thing.
What was your reaction when Cyrus Vance resigned after that landing of the helicopters in the desert in Iran?
Is that why he resigned over that issue for some reason?
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
Three times before that, Cy Vance had come to my office and threatened to resign about different little issues.
Cy was one of the Secretaries of State and there are others that I won't name now who were very protective of the State Department.
unidentified
And I looked upon myself as a descendant of Thomas Jefferson as a president.
They looked upon themselves as a descendant of Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So if anything happened that might cause discomfiture to an employee, a worker in the State Department, Cy would come to see me in the Oval Office and with very hurt feelings would threaten to resign.
unidentified
So that was the fourth time and he actually resigned.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
Cy had been involved in the meetings in the cabinet room, only I think seven of us present, when we decided to go ahead with the rescue operation.
unidentified
And when he was absent, which was on occasion, the Secretary of State has to be gone, his deputy, Warren Christopher, was there.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So we did not take Cy Vance by surprise.
When I made the final decision that this is the time to go in, after we had all been briefed on how it might be done, it was a very complicated procedure, Cy happened to have been away from Washington.
unidentified
He came back and I called another meeting of a security council and we had another thorough discussion of the issue and then unanimously, except for Vance, we all decided to go ahead with the rescue mission.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
After that, I was surprised and disappointed and somewhat angry when Cy announced that he was resigning.
unidentified
If the mission had been successful and he resigned, I would have taken it with a lot more equanimity.
But when he was unsuccessful, I was kind of peeved when he resigned when I was strained at best.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Would you do anything differently today looking back on the whole Iranian hostage crisis?
unidentified
Yes, I would send one more helicopter in.
We figured that it would take five full helicopters to bring all of our people out, including the rescue team and every hostage.
If we didn't have five, we would have to leave some Americans behind who would very possibly be executed.
So we had an extra helicopter and then another extra helicopter.
One, for some reason never yet ascertained, turned back to the aircraft carrier instead of going through with its mission.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
One went down in the desert in a sandstorm.
unidentified
And we had one extra one then.
We had five on the ground ready to go.
And when they got ready to take off, they ran into each other.
They hit a DC, an airplane.
And it only left us with four helicopters, which could not have brought our people out.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
So the people in Iran and those in Egypt who were monitoring and Secretary of Defense all unanimously said that we have to cancel the operation, so we did.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
What do you want your legacy to be?
unidentified
Well, you mean in addition to being a good grandfather and so forth?
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, all that.
unidentified
Well, if I had, you know, I would like to be remembered as being a champion of peace and human rights.
We established human rights publicly and globally as the foundation of our inter-foreign policy.
And I think that commitment has resulted in a lot of ending of human rights abuses and democratization and freedom in countries even going on today.
It's a notable thing.
And the other one was a commitment to peace.
You know, I was a professional naval officer.
I went through Annapolis.
I was ready to give my life to defend my country as a career.
I was a submarine officer.
And I strengthened the military establishment tremendously while I was in office, primarily because of the brilliance of Harold Brown, who was my Secretary of Defense, and he was a president of Caltech, and he was worthy to receive a Nobel Prize for Physics.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And all of the modern-day weapons that were used, say, in the Gulf War were developed under Harold Brown while I was president.
But I thought that it was better not to use our military strength, to have it as one of the persuasive factors, but to use my influence and the influence of the great United States of America to bring peace to people.
unidentified
So we went for four years, despite some very serious challenges and opportunities.
We never fired a bullet.
We never dropped a bomb.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
We never launched a missile against anyone else.
unidentified
And at the same time, I think we accomplished our goals of bringing peace to other people, keeping our nation at peace.
So I think peace and human rights would be the two things.
I've kind of rambled.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
For a moment, talk about the American presidency, the office of the president.
Would you change anything if you could?
unidentified
And is it as powerful as it should be?
Well, the American Presidency is extremely powerful in the arena of foreign policy.
For instance, when I decided to normalize diplomatic relations with China, the Constitution gave me unilateral right to do so.
The Congress had no role to play in that decision.
If I had wanted to send troops into battle, I could have done so, as has been done many times since I left office, without consultation with or getting permission from the Congress in advance.
So in foreign policy, the president is it.
In domestic legislation, almost all the legislation that was passed during my four years originated in the White House.
I can't remember a single major bill that originated in the Congress.
The Congress expected me to present to them, this is what I want you to do about these subjects.
And we had a very good batting average, as I said.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
The thing that the President has practically no control over is the economics of the nation.
unidentified
He has an equal role to play with the Congress in taxation.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
But the Federal Reserve Board, you know, really determines the rate of inflation and the tightness of money, which results in the growth of the economy.
unidentified
Even greater than that, though, is the free enterprise system of our country.
What the conglomerate mass of major corporations do, General Motors and IBM and so forth.
I need not name the others.
And the other factor over which the president has no control is the international situation.
You know, if a war erupts or if you have a so-called Asia crisis, which we've had lately, the President of the United States has nothing to say about that.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
When Nixon was in office as president, I was governor, and we had the formation of OPEC and the oil embargo against anyone who traded with Israel.
unidentified
And we had long gas lines and the price of oil went sky high.
That was not Nixon's fault.
He didn't have anything to do with it.
So the President gets blamed for economic changes if they're bad.
He takes credit for them if they're good.
But for all practical purposes, I would say the president plays maybe a 10 or 15 percent role in the nation's economy.
So foreign policy, the president is it.
Domestic policy, 50-50.
Economy, very little.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Last, you and your wife, Rosalind, have been married for how many years?
unidentified
53 and a half.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Your children, four of them, are how old and where are they?
unidentified
Well, our oldest son was born just a year after we were married.
He's in Bermuda.
He's a very successful banker.
Our second son, Chip, was born in Hawaii in 1950 when I was in the Navy, Submarine Force.
He's a vice president of the Friendship Force, which is a massive exchange program of Americans and others going back and forth to live in homes of foreigners.
He's now working on Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Cuba.
And our youngest son, Jeffrey, got a degree in geography and computer science.
Now, he helped to develop some very successful software programs and to start some very fine, successful companies.
So he's retired at a very early age, and he's spending a lot of his time raising three of my grandsons.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
And Amy?
unidentified
Amy has finished her graduate work at Tulane in art history, married to a fine young man who's a webmaster for a southern company.
And we just enjoyed having lunch with and admiring one of the most extraordinary little grandsons in the world, who's now two and a half months old.
So Amy is a mother now, mostly.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
And how many grandchildren do you have?
unidentified
Ten.
Ten grandchildren.
My oldest grandson, by the way, is in the Peace Corps in South Africa.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
And his grandmother, his great-grandmother, Lillian, my mother, was in the Peace Corps.
unidentified
So we have a strong tie to the Peace Corps.
I have very good grandchildren.
And we have a harmonious family.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼
We have 20 of us now in all, counting sons and daughters and their spouses and all of our grandkids and Rosalind and me.
unidentified
And we go off somewhere every Christmas holiday, two days after Christmas, we go somewhere different.
So to bring our family together so they can have a good time with each other, get to know each other better if they live in different places.
And my wife and I work a lot during the year to raise enough money to pay for the vacation.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Mr. President.
unidentified
It's been a pleasure.
President Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States and the nation's longest-lived leader, passed away last month at the age of 100.
Join C-SPAN for live coverage of the state funeral.
On Sunday and Monday, the public will have the opportunity to pay their respects as President Carter lies in repose at the Carter Center.
On Tuesday, his journey continues to Washington, D.C., where he'll lie in state at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda with a service attended by members of Congress.
The public will again have the chance to honor him on Wednesday as his body remains in state at the U.S. Capitol.
On Thursday, the national funeral service will take place at Washington National Cathedral, followed by his final resting ceremony at the Carter Family Home in Plains, Georgia.
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The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum hosted a number of conversations on civil rights and individual freedom.
Next, former President Jimmy Carter talks to a former Ugandan war refugee who's now the CEO of the National Civil and Human Rights Center.
This is about an hour.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Welcome to a lovely day.
I want you to specifically thank President Carter for giving us this wonderful opportunity.
And he's healthy.
Look at him.
But I'm not as well-dressed as you are.
We'll talk about that.
My name is Derek Kayongo, and I'm the CEO for the Center for Civil and Human Rights.
And I'm very proud to be here.
We're going to do a couple of things.
We're going to do some quick housekeeping.
Please take off your cell phones if you have one.
Into Vibrate, I think is what they call it these days.
And when we are done with the program, if you could still wait a little bit for me and the president to walk out, that would be lovely as well.
And then we'll have some QA after our little discussion.
So if you have any questions, write them down and pass them along and we will have them answered.
President Carter, we are so delighted to talk to you today, but there's a lot of things going on, as you can imagine.
I've heard about it.
And today's conversation is around rights and justice.
It's a national conversation that is really, really serious because we see a lot on TV right now.
And particularly around the Bill of Rights, which some of them include the 14th Amendment, which is civil rights.
And I was curious to see and hear from you what you think about civil rights today versus yesterday.
Well, recently I've been reading about the founding fathers.
I read a book about James Madison and Jefferson and Washington later just to see again, after many years of study a long time ago, about those early days of our own country.
And as you all may know, the first draft of the Constitution did not include the Bill of Rights.
But they couldn't get enough states to ratify the Constitution of the United States until the Bill of Rights were added.
And so that was a very major undertaking.
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