At the same time, to demonstrate to the common man that he would demystify the presidency, Carter denied himself one of the most helpful presidential perks by selling the presidential yacht Sequoia for a paltry $286,000. For decades it had been used to woo members of Congress into supporting the president’s programs, reward campaign donors and workers, and influence business or labor leaders during cruises along the Potomac River on balmy evenings. For even the most powerful in Washington these were prized invitations to sip drinks and eat snacks while rubbing shoulders with the president of the United States and his staff, who were not along for the ride but to win loyal friends and influence important people.
Carter even contemplated selling the presidential retreat, Camp David, but Rosalynn intervened to remind him that this mountain lodge would be one of the few places available for them to escape from the pressures of the White House on weekends.26 (Of course there would have been no Camp David Accords, his signature diplomatic accomplishment, if Camp David itself had been put on the auction block.) The difficulty of translating Carter’s post-Watergate turn away from the pomp of the presidency was a constant problem that Carter never quite mastered. During the very first days of his presidency he called me on my secure red phone directly connected to the Oval Office and began, “Stu, this is Jimmy.” I said, “No, it is Mr. President.’”
More significant was his decision during the transition to abandon the tradition of playing “Ruffles and Flourishes” and “Hail to the Chief” to signal his arrival at a formal White House ceremony. Watching Carter enter the East Room for a formal event with no fanfare, and reflecting on how stirred I had been to hear those themes when LBJ strode into the same room with his giant Texas steps, I joked to myself that it was hardly worth being president without being announced by these symbols of the power of the greatest elected office on earth. Presidents obviously thought so, too; Jacqueline Kennedy once laughingly observed: “Jack’s favorite song is ‘Hail to the Chief.’”27 For several weeks a number of Carter’s staffers, joined by no less than House Speaker O’Neill, appealed to him to relent, and he finally did so reluctantly.
Tip also got him to change one other thing. At the first Democratic leadership breakfast, he served coffee and some rolls in his frugal fashion. Tip, a giant of a man in stature and girth roared, “Mr. President, I have waited eight years to have a Democrat in the White House, and at the next meeting, I expect to have a proper breakfast!” The president got the message, and from then on Tip and his colleagues got the full treatment, from fruit and scrambled eggs to bacon and sweets. This normal hospitality was also extended to regular breakfast meetings with the Republican leadership. We also begged him to abandon his campaign habit of carrying his own luggage and warned it would be especially inappropriate on his first trip abroad as president. He agreed, although he often carried his own small briefcase.
Nixon had certainly carried the notion of the “imperial presidency” to absurd lengths, like his order to dress the marines in Gilbert and Sullivan–style uniforms for special occasions. Carter promptly ended that. But the American people revere the presidency, which is as close to royalty as we allow our Republic to approach. Aside from making him commander in chief of the armed forces, the U.S. Constitution gives the president precious few explicit powers. His influence comes from his ability to use the mystique and electoral legitimacy of the office to rally support from Congress, the American public, and foreign leaders. Carter was certainly elected to be a distinctly different president from Nixon, but the country did not want him to jettison the symbols of the office that help raise any president of the United States from being just another jumped-up politician to a figure who represents the majesty of our country.
CARTER UPGRADES TO FIRST CLASS
On November 6, 1976, only a few days after his election, Jimmy Carter graduated to a new level of luxurious travel, when he actually started work as the nation’s chief executive. A Boeing 707-26000 of the presidential fleet picked him up at Robins Air Force base in Georgia for a hard-earned vacation with his family on St. Simons Island, at the splendid Georgia estate of Smith Bagley, a prominent Democrat and supporter. The mansion, with its moss-laden trees and antebellum atmosphere, assured complete privacy. The selection of Bagley’s estate was a bit odd, since he was an heir to the Reynolds tobacco fortune, an industry Carter abhorred. When the chief steward, Air Force Sergeant Major Charles Palmer, brought him coffee, the president-elect said, “Sit down, I want to talk with you,” something that had not happened before with the other presidents he served. Palmer was at first taken aback. Both soon discovered they had a common connection; they were both natives of Georgia. Jody wandered in and made a remark to Carter that Palmer never forgot: “Well, just think, a couple of years ago we didn’t have a penny and now we are on Air Force One.”28 Riding on Air Force Once does come as close to royalty as the greatest democracy in the world can offer, but in an interconnected world, the plane has its essential uses.
This flight was designated a Special Air Mission (SAM), because these sumptuous planes, both the 26000 and 27000 series, carry the call sign of Air Force One only when a sitting president is on board. President Eisenhower, in his final months in office, was the first to have a specially designated president’s plane put at his service. Over the years it has become a majestic symbol of the power of the presidency and by extension of the grand global reach of the United States of America.
The iconic image of President Kennedy descending the steps of Air Force One with his elegant first lady helped elevate the mystique of America’s best-known airplane. Mrs. Kennedy played a key role in adding cachet and symbolism to the flying Oval Office, hiring one of America’s leading industrial designers to create the airplane’s distinctive livery. The top was painted white, with the front end a dark robin’s-egg blue extending to the cockpit. The fuselage was silver, with a gold-and-blue stripe from the midsection to the tail. The bottom was white to keep the temperature down when the plane was parked on a hot asphalt runway. On the tail was painted a huge American flag, and halfway back on the fuselage was the blue-and-gold seal of the president of the United States, an American eagle holding an olive branch in one talon and arrows in the other. Along the fuselage, televisual capital letters spelled out the words “United States of America.” At the time Mrs. Kennedy could not have imagined that the plane would be indelibly imprinted in our national psyche as a symbol of tragedy as well as glory, and then of continuity, when Lyndon Johnson rushed aboard to take the oath of office as president while the body of the slain president lay in the aft cabin and his shocked widow stood alongside her husband’s successor in her blood-spattered Chanel suit.
Senior members of Congress, chief executive officers of the world’s great companies, and even the most jaded celebrities act like kids in a candy shop when offered a ride on Air Force One. In accordance with his desire to avoid any possible image of special influence in the post-Watergate era, President Carter disallowed companies like Coca-Cola or Pepsi from providing free beverages and cigarette manufacturers from supplying free cigarettes, requiring the air force to pay for them out of its budget. However, he did give passengers souvenir gifts carrying the presidential seal and inscribed, “President Jimmy Carter’s guest aboard Air Force One.” Like his immediate predecessors he also passed out presidentially engraved gold-leaf cufflinks and tie clasps for men and stickpins for women. For special guests he reserved a small, personally autographed Bible with “Air Force One” embossed on the front. While wine was served with meals and liquor was available, the president himself never drank.29
The plane that Carter boarded as president-elect to St. Simons Island, Georgia, and all the other flights he took for the next four years as president, had Palmer in charge of eighteen carefully handpicked crew members. Its two pilots were among the best in the air force. A navigator, two flight engineers, four security guards, and a stenographer were also on board. A White House physician, Dr. William Lukash, accompanie
d the president fully equipped to deal with medical emergencies. The plane had a state-of-the-art communications center and carried equipment for sophisticated food preparation and elegant service. Before a trip Palmer would go to the White House chef to develop a menu for the president, and the stewards would cook and serve the meals. The president ate from official china, with concentric gold-and-green circles, and the presidential seal, which also adorned the glasses and goblets.
With its customized interior, Air Force One carried a maximum of forty-six passengers, not including crew. The interior was refitted into a presidential work and living space worthy of a private jet. There were two staterooms, one for the president, with a spacious desk and chair, and a couch that could comfortably hold three people, and an adjoining stateroom for the first lady. Behind the presidential quarters was a conference room with a small coffee table and couch for four people, along with a conference table that could seat six. The White House staff would sit in one of eight comfortable seats, four on each side, and there were compartments for ten Secret Service offices, and last, a compartment for ten members of the White House press corps.
Carter held his transition meetings and interviewed prospects for the cabinet and senior White House staff mostly in Plains or Atlanta, far from the Washington press corps and the buzz in the nation’s capital. During his immediate postelection vacation, Carter invited his incoming cabinet and White House staff to meet in Atlanta and then go to the Bagley estate in St. Simons, to get to know one another in a private, relaxed environment.
On the brief plane ride I got advice from two legendary Democratic figures. The first came from Ted Sorensen, Jack Kennedy’s alter ego, who had grown close to Carter as an early campaign supporter, adviser, and validator for suspicious New York liberals. Carter nominated him as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with a mandate to clean up the agency. He pulled me aside and said in a thoughtful voice, “Stu, if you do your job right, the policy people in the administration will think you are being too political, and the political people in the White House will think you are being too much of a policy wonk.” From the man who had kept his private thoughts only for the president while writing his public speeches, it was a most helpful preview of the tightrope on which I would be balancing for the next four years. Although neither of us knew it yet, his advice would prove deeply ironic: Sorensen was to find himself caught in a political buzz saw when the CIA’s bureaucracy joined senators with old grudges against the Kennedys to force him to withdraw because he had been a conscientious objector during the Korean War—a tragic loss of an enormously talented public servant.
The second conversation was more blunt and equally revealing. It came from Joe Califano, with whom I would be dealing in my new job—the same one that he had held at the White House under President Johnson in molding the Great Society, when he was my ultimate boss. Like LBJ, Joe was brilliant, indefatigable, tough, ebullient, and brusque; qualities belied by his cherubic face and engaging smile. I now would occupy the same spacious West Wing office that had once been his, directly over the Oval Office. Joe was determined that would be the only similarity. With that Califano wink in his eye, he said: “Stu, I am not going to let you and the White House staff treat me the way I treated the Cabinet under LBJ.” He was true to his word, developing his own positions, like his antismoking crusade, and on occasion lobbying quietly against presidential initiatives with which he disagreed, such as Carter’s decision to carve a separate Department of Education from his Department of Health, Education and Welfare and reduce his turf. When Carter later realized that Califano was operating as a semi-independent cabinet fiefdom he was fired over my objection, along with some others, when the president restructured his cabinet.
DOES THE PRESIDENT NEED TO KNOW EVERY DETAIL?
The Carter administration plowed through heavy seas during its first year. Jimmy Carter did not have the grace of John Kennedy, the congressional wizardry of Lyndon Johnson, the strategic vision of Richard Nixon, the charm and clarity of purpose of Ronald Reagan, the foreign-policy experience of George H. W. Bush, the supreme political skills of Bill Clinton, the toughness of George W. Bush, or the eloquence of Barack Obama. But he brought to the Oval Office his own unique intellect, inquisitiveness, self-discipline, political courage, and resilience in the face of setbacks. He disregarded the political costs of trying to make the nation and the world a better place in ways that transcended his presidency and often did not come to fruition until he left office. It is precisely because of his qualities that he was determined to confront so many difficult challenges and accomplished so much as we pressed ahead. Presidents also are tested by how they deal with the challenges thrown at them by unforeseen events, and he handled some better than others. But it must be also said that Jimmy Carter had more than his share of bad luck in both domestic and international arenas, from embedded inflation and a deeply divided Democratic Party to oil shocks and a radical Islamic revolution in Iran.
There is no job in the world remotely comparable to that of the president of the United States, where all decisions have worldwide impact. And speaking personally, I can say that no job anywhere matches the excitement of standing at the right hand of the president and sharing the camaraderie of hand-to-hand combat on his and our nation’s behalf seven days a week for four eventful years. The pressures of working in the West Wing of the White House are enormous. Every major decision that cannot be made elsewhere, from a city hall to the Congress of the United States to governments abroad, comes at you without surcease. Because the decisions presidents must make are so consequential, and the interests of those who have a stake in those decisions—business, labor, environmentalists, consumerists, foreign governments—are so intense and conflicting, there is no presidential decision that does not involve wicked trade-offs.
But it is precisely because every day is filled with endless meetings to resolve interagency disputes, handle congressional and interest group demands, and endure the pressures they generate from winners and losers alike, that I have tried to step back and appreciate what was done wrong and what was done right, with the perspective of almost forty years since leaving the White House. I intend to give an account not only of President Carter’s considerable strengths, which were so admirable, but also of his faults and idiosyncrasies, which were maddening to those closest to him in office.
Chief among them was his compartmentalizing of decisions. He decided during the transition to make a frontal assault on water projects, which were often costly and environmentally damaging boondoggles, but without recognizing their importance in greasing the legislative wheels to help pass his other legislative priorities. Carter also believed that he could and should know as much about every issue as the experts he had chosen to guide his decisions, and he drowned himself in detailed memos and background papers in what eventually became a form of hubris. During his critical first year he refused to set priorities among laudable reformist goals, burying his congressional supporters in a blizzard of presidential proposals, despite repeated pleas from House and Senate leaders to set clear priorities. He stuck with—and stood by—all of us in the Georgia Mafia for too long and only belatedly enhanced us with experienced Washington hands. The man whose campaign biography emphasized competence in its title, Why Not the Best? did not always insist on the best from those who served him, unlike his mentor, Admiral Rickover. And in seeking more than our divided political system could deliver, he made the best the enemy of the good, and clouded his own considerable accomplishments.
One of the most potent attacks on Jimmy Carter was his attention to detail, and there can be no question that he reveled in it. He would ask for detailed calculations on the throw weights of missiles or the estimates of world oil reserves in square miles. He would correct typographical errors or poor sentence structure in memos, and minutes of cabinet meetings from Deputy Cabinet Secretary Jane Frank (later Harman),30 and insist on seeing the background material to lengthy decision memorandu
ms. There is no doubt that reading such a fantastic quantity of material left him much less time to meet with members of Congress, leaders of interest groups, and the public.
But I did not find that his attention to detail blinded or even blurred his broader vision. His insistence on knowing everything about an issue before he made a decision was his quintessential method of governing, and he likened it to the way he performed other jobs before ascending to the presidency: “When I ran Carter’s Warehouse, I ran it; I knew what was going on, I knew which trailer had a flat tire, which employee was doing a good job. When I was on the submarine, I did the same thing. So when I became president and had to make the ultimate decision about an issue, I wanted to understand it.”31 There can be no doubt that without his attention to detail there would have been no Camp David Accords, no Panama Canal Treaty, no major energy legislation, no Alaska Lands bill.
But this can be done for only a select number of issues. The presidency is light-years different from running Carter’s Peanut Warehouse or serving as an officer on even a nuclear submarine, where one mistake can spell disaster. The breadth and complexity of issues, the excruciatingly difficult trade-offs, the enormous impact of presidential decisions, make the job unique. It is impossible and even unwise to try to master everything. Cabinet departments are repositories of vast expertise, albeit refracted to fit the interests they represent and the congressional committees that oversee and fund their programs—the so-called iron triangle. Cabinet government as a system of collective decision making and shared accountability cannot function in our presidential system as it does in a parliamentary democracy, and Carter did not try it. He did try to delegate power, but he did not develop close relationships with any of the cabinet, and rarely met individually with them or their deputies to discuss and oversee the execution of his priorities.
President Carter Page 11