by Jimmy Carter
One enjoyable project that I began as governor was to make a special effort to bring moviemakers to Georgia, and it was highly successful. Some of the most well known of our twenty-six films were Deliverance, The Longest Yard, and Smokey and the Bandit. I traveled to Hollywood and New York to sell our state to producers, and on one of my trips I had my first introduction to a nationwide audience with an appearance on What’s My Line? No one recognized me, but after a number of humorous questions Arlene Francis and other panelists finally identified me as a governor. On another occasion I visited Radio City Music Hall and watched the Rockettes practice a routine that involved a submarine. They invited me to join their chorus line, and a photographer snapped a picture of me standing on one foot with my other leg as high as I could raise it. I returned to Atlanta late that night, and the next morning Rosalynn asked me what I did in New York. I replied that I worked hard all day trying to promote another movie to be made in Georgia. She said, “It was not all work,” and showed me a photograph in the morning newspaper, of me in line with the Rockettes and almost falling over backward!
National Office
My term as governor expired in January 1975, and almost immediately I began to make a few forays around the nation with Jody Powell to take advantage of state Democratic conventions and other speaking opportunities. We had very little money and shared a small hotel room only on the rare occasions when we couldn’t find some supporter with a spare bed for the night. It was very discouraging at first, because nobody knew who I was and few people were even thinking about the presidential election, which was still eighteen months in the future. A young man from New Mexico named Tim Kraft was hired as campaign manager in Iowa, and after spending a few weeks in the state we decided to have a press conference and reception in a Des Moines hotel. We rented a large ballroom and bought soft drinks and some sandwiches and cookies, but only one reporter and three inquisitive potential supporters came. I spoke to them briefly, and then Jody and I walked to the city hall and county courthouse and handed out my pamphlets in every office.
We visited more than 120 Iowa communities, arranged meetings in people’s homes and in college classrooms, and were thrilled when as many as twenty people attended. We were always looking for someone with a microphone or even a reporter’s scratch pad, hoping to get some news coverage. Jody snored a lot, and I usually managed to be asleep before he came to our shared room for the night. Once he woke me and reported excitedly that I would be on television early the next morning. He avoided answering my questions, just responding that he would explain later and that we had to be up at five o’clock. On the way to the TV station, he asked if I had a favorite recipe, admitting that I would dress up like a chef and be interviewed on a cooking show. I donned an apron and a floppy white hat, and gave the audience one of my favorite ways to prepare fillets of any kind of fish. I demonstrated how to cut them into strips the size of French fries, marinate them overnight in some kind of steak sauce, dip them in flour, and deep-fry them to be served hot or cold. After I began to win primary elections, the video of this session was resurrected and played over and over, along with reruns of What’s My Line?
Operating on a financial shoestring and not facing any serious opponents during those early months, we were never really discouraged by the lack of attention. Our strategic plan was clear, with the only serious change having been the decision by Kennedy not to enter the race after polls showed that too many people still remembered his role in the accidental drowning of a girl at Chappaquiddick. In addition to Iowa, we concentrated on New Hampshire, with New Mexicans Chris and Georgia Brown in charge, and Florida, with Plains native Phil Wise as state campaign manager. Accepting speaking invitations when possible, Jody and I visited all fifty states during the primary period. Since most of the other candidates were better known and had lined up the support of active Democrats, we recruited a wider and wider circle of young people and relative newcomers to politics. The few who worked for us full-time received small stipends and had to arrange for their own lodging, sleeping in their automobiles or in people’s homes, or paying for a cheap motel room from their own funds.
One of the earliest and most persistent questions when I began campaigning was “If elected, will you tell us the truth?” Having served as a legislator and governor, I knew how difficult it was to keep this promise, especially when facing influential constituents who held opposing opinions on subjects important to them. Nevertheless, I decided to make the commitment, and would tell my small audiences that I would make the same declarations to them and to all my other listeners. Often I would close by saying, “If I ever lie or even make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me.” Depending on the audience, I would talk about my experience as governor, my varied educational background, my service in the navy, my knowledge of farming, and my commitment to manage the federal bureaucracy with a technique known as “zero-based budgeting.” I always gave the audience a full opportunity to ask me questions, which helped me decide what to include in future appearances.
I received applause when I reported that I had been a submarine officer and was still a farmer—and not a lawyer. I sought out livestock sale barns in Iowa and other agricultural states, and often the auctioneer would let me say a few words to the assembled buyers and sellers of cattle and hogs. To them and to interviewers from newspapers and other media, I could answer questions about agricultural issues, including details of fertilizer prices, seed, and the current marketing of corn, soybeans, and pork. I soon realized that my opponents, mostly from the U.S. Senate, would address questions about welfare, health, education, or transportation by referring to Senate Bill 643 or another number and its proposed impact. I could describe how the same federal laws were helping or obstructing progress among the people at home in Georgia.
I reported regularly on progress and discussed the issues that were being raised with some young lawyers who had helped me in the governor’s campaign, led by Stuart Eizenstat and Jack Watson. We studied Social Security laws, the farm bill, health legislation, and especially the controversial subject of abortion. I had to be careful to maintain the same position in conservative Iowa and more liberal states in the Northeast. Hamilton and others laid out our itinerary for the week after listening to my suggestions. Sometime in April, Rosalynn agreed to make a foray into Florida, and she campaigned as she had during my race for governor. She drove from one community to another, stopping at courthouses, newspaper offices, livestock sale pens, and especially radio stations. She would spot an antenna, go into a news room or the broadcasting booth, and tell a reporter or disc jockey that her husband was running for president and she wanted to talk about him. If, as often happened, he didn’t know anything about politics, she provided a written list of questions he could ask her, and she responded with her carefully rehearsed answers. In all, she was to spend seventy-five full days in Florida, visit 105 communities in Iowa, and expand her crusade into forty other states.
Campaign Techniques
When I began campaigning, it soon became obvious that there was a serious distrust of top political leaders in Washington. Our oldest son, Jack, had left his study of nuclear physics at Georgia Tech and volunteered for service in Vietnam. When he returned home on leave as an enlisted man, he was ridiculed by his friends and college classmates for being foolish and naïve, and chose not to wear his uniform. It was widely known that a stream of false statements was being promulgated from the White House and Department of Defense about the issues that had caused America’s involvement in that conflict, our massive bombing campaign, and our relative successes against the Vietcong. A general sense of alienation was, of course, exacerbated by the Watergate revelations and President Ford’s full pardon of Nixon.
After a few months, we had seven separate family campaigns going on, with Rosalynn; me; all three of our sons with their wives; my mother, Lillian; and her youngest sister, Emily Dolvin—all in different parts of America. Rosalynn and I usually met in Plains and shared
our experiences at our home on Saturdays, attended church on Sunday, and then went to Atlanta for strategy sessions that grew steadily in size. Hundreds of Georgians formed what was known as the “Peanut Brigade” and traveled to key states at their own expense to knock on people’s doors and explain why I should be elected president. As the other Democratic candidates began campaigning, almost all were still bogged down in the Congress or managing their states’ affairs, campaigning just part-time and focusing on a few key primaries where each thought he could do well. I was the only one who sought delegates in every state, hoping at best to come in first but at least to gain a few convention votes.
Some of my Democratic opponents from Northern states began to raise the issue of race relations, emphasizing my having come from the Deep South, where the tinges of racial segregation still lingered. On my first campaign trip to Massachusetts, I visited one of the Revolutionary War sites and permitted some news reporters to ask a few questions. The first was “Why should anyone from Massachusetts vote for a governor from Georgia?” I responded, “Well, when John Kennedy ran for president, he received a higher percentage of votes from Georgians than from the people of your state, and I expect the same treatment.” In a meeting in Washington of campaign leaders, there was a question about how well we were including black people in full-time positions on our staffs. Most of the others pointed out that they had either one or two, or were searching to find some who were qualified. When they asked Andrew Young about my campaign, he responded, “I don’t know exactly how many Governor Carter has now, but last month there were twenty-two.” I was questioned about the race issue frequently, and made a serious gaffe when asked about housing patterns in big cities, where families with ties to Italy, Greece, Ireland, or other European countries concentrated their homes. I said that, in general, I thought it was all right for people who shared the same languages, religions, and customs to choose to live near each other. There was an uproar in the news media about my espousing racially pure neighborhoods, but it died down when Daddy King, Andy Young, Benjamin Mays, and others defended me.
To everyone’s surprise except ours, we came in first in Iowa and New Hampshire and then concentrated on Florida, where the segregationist George Wallace was expected to repeat his 1972 victory and Scoop Jackson was certain to prevail among more conservative voters and Jewish citizens. Primarily to stop Wallace, Andy Young, the Martin Luther King family, and some of the more liberal labor unions endorsed me, and I carried the state. Then I went on to beat Senators Lloyd Bentsen, Fred Harris, and Adlai Stevenson III in their home states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Illinois, and to gain enough other support to give me a clear majority at the Democratic Convention.
Vice President
I decided that I needed a vice president who was familiar with Washington and the Congress, which eliminated other governors and local officials. I met with potential running mates before the convention; most of them visited at my home and toured Plains with me. These included Senators Ed Muskie, Frank Church, John Glenn, Walter Mondale, and Scoop Jackson. I watched how they related to my neighbors on the streets, and to the customers who gathered in my warehouse office. “Fritz” Mondale was the least well known but was quite compatible with me and had the most thorough and ambitious ideas about how the vice president could play a greatly expanded role. I chose him, and approved all his suggestions, many of which had evolved after his extensive meetings with Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Hubert Humphrey, his predecessors in the office.
With Vice President Mondale in Rose Garden, April 13, 1978. Fritz Mondale was compatible with me and had the most thorough and ambitious ideas about how the vice president could play a greatly expanded role.
Before we began the frantic two-month general election campaign on Labor Day, Fritz and I hosted a series of all-day sessions on the most important topics of the time. Groups of the foremost experts we could identify would assemble in Atlanta and then come to Plains in chartered buses, and we would meet in my mother’s isolated Pond House for discussions about taxation, welfare, education, transportation, the military, and relations with the Soviet Union, Israel, China, and other countries. In addition to learning as much as we could, we had a chance to get to know these leaders and later to choose from among them the cabinet officers to serve with us. Many of them realized our dual purposes, and all of them were on their best behavior.
I had known Zbigniew Brzezinski as director of the Trilateral Commission when I was a member, and he helped brief me before the presidential debate on foreign affairs. Later—after my election and during the early months in office—he assisted me in preparing an ambitious agenda regarding other nations. It included the inevitable challenges but also a few that had not been at the forefront of the campaign issues or emphasized in the news media. I decided on a major effort for peace in the Middle East, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and majority rule in other nations; reduction of nuclear arsenals, normalization of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, open communications with Cuba, and resolution of the Panama Canal issue. This last was highly publicized, because in the Republican primary there had been a strong demand by Ronald Reagan that we “should not give away our canal.” I also decided that human rights would be the centerpiece of our foreign policy.
General Election
After President Gerald Ford narrowly overcame a right-wing challenge from Ronald Reagan and was nominated as the Republican candidate, he and I waged a vigorous but mutually respectful contest, and we both survived three national television debates. Ford had been hurt previously by political attacks from Reagan and by his pardon of Nixon, but I never raised this issue. During our debate on foreign issues, he had also insisted, inexplicably, that the Soviet Union did not dominate any of the East European countries that were occupied by Soviet troops. My own campaign suffered, perhaps even more, from an ill-advised interview I granted to Playboy magazine, in which I was explaining Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and stated that, like other men, I had “lusted” for women. I could not think of an effective way to further explain my blunder and decided just to live with it. Within a few days, I dropped almost 15 percentage points in public opinion polls.
Ford and I chose not to raise any campaign funds from corporate or private contributors but to finance our general election campaigns from the dollar each taxpayer could designate for this purpose. (That contribution has been raised to three dollars but has not been used by presidential nominees since 2004.) We had neither the money nor the desire to purchase negative commercials, which have more recently become the key tactic in winning elections. I respected Ford very much, for his integrity and his encyclopedic knowledge of the federal government and its agencies.
Our family and other close members of our political team assembled in Atlanta for election night and watched as returns began coming in from the East Coast and then moved westward, mostly by time zone. In general, I carried most of the Eastern states and Ford swept states in the West. We were almost tied until late returns from Mississippi came in last, to give me a slight margin of victory in popular votes and 55 percent of the electoral votes. The entire campaign was described in more than thirty books. Two of the most complete and accurate are Marathon by Jules Witcover and Running for President, 1976: The Carter Campaign by Martin Schram.
CHAPTER FIVE
Life in the White House
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First Family Life
My inauguration speech was one of the briefest on record for the first inauguration of a president. It began with thanks to Gerald Ford for “healing our nation” and expressed two of the major themes of my administration: keeping the peace and strengthening human rights. Even though I had been preparing to be president, I was genuinely surprised when the Episcopal bishop from Minnesota pronounced “blessings on President Carter.” The phrase “President Carter” was startling to me, but I was ready and eager to assume the responsibility, and we looked forward to life in the White House.
My first official act was to pardon the draft evaders from the Vietnam War.
I wrote in my diary: “The quarters at the White House are quite similar to those we enjoyed as the governor’s family in Georgia, but I have been constantly impressed—I almost said overwhelmed—at the historical nature of the White House, occupied for the first time by our second president, John Adams. When I see a desk or a writing cabinet or a book or a sideboard or a bed that was used by Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt or Truman or Kennedy, I have a feeling of almost unreality about my being president, but also a feeling of both adequacy and determination that I might live up to the historical precedents established by my predecessors.”
That first night we had a very relaxed and informal meal with our family. Earlier when Rosalynn had visited the White House some of our staff asked the chef and cooks if they thought they could prepare the kind of meals we had enjoyed in Plains, and the cook said, “Oh, we’ve been fixing that kind of food for the servants for a long time.” The meals in general were superb, but we were shocked to learn that for the first few days our food bill in the White House was six hundred dollars, and that the president pays for all meals for the family and personal guests.
On inauguration night we attended eleven parties, but we moved fast, danced a few times for our own enjoyment and that of tens of thousands of partygoers, met all our commitments, and got back home in time to go to bed about 1:30 A.M. Rosalynn had decided to wear the same evening gown that she had worn for my inaugural ball as governor. She was criticized by the news media for not choosing a new model from a famous designer, but I approved her choice and was very proud of her beauty and grace.