A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

by Jimmy Carter

  I turned more and more to moderate Republicans, with minority leaders Senator Howard Baker and Congressman John Rhodes as key allies when my commitments were compatible with theirs. These included streamlining the government bureaucracy, tightening control over intelligence agencies, instituting zero-based budgeting, initiating free trade agreements, and cutting back on unnecessary weapons systems.

  Almost every substantive legislative act on domestic affairs was drafted in the White House under the leadership of Stu Eizenstat, a young Atlanta attorney who had headed the group that studied issues during my campaign. We invited Democratic committee chairmen and senior Republicans, or their staff members, to participate. Frank Moore, my top assistant as governor, coordinated relations between me and members of the House and Senate. These efforts were successful in getting multiple proposals passed by Congress, where I had a very high percentage approved, with strong support by both parties.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Issues Mostly Resolved

  * * *

  There were a number of issues I faced in the White House that were not passed on to my successors, either long-standing problems that I was able to resolve or matters that were transient in nature. Everybody warned me not to take on too many projects early in the administration, but it was almost impossible for me to delay things that I thought needed to be done.

  Syrian Jews

  Sometimes I got involved in matters beyond my constitutional duties or authority, such as this special request from a congressman described in my diary: May 4, 1977: “Met with Congressman Steve Solarz, who is primarily interested in the Syrian Jews being able to leave and in particular five hundred young women who are unmarried. Some of the young men have been permitted to immigrate to this country, but they can’t find wives, and the women who are still in Syria can’t find husbands. I’ll discuss this with President [Hafez al-] Assad when I get to Geneva.”

  Assad permitted the young women who could arrange marriages to come to New York, and a number of them found husbands here. I was invited by one elated groom to be his best man but was unable to accept the job. Assad later bragged about the majority having the good judgment to remain in their permanent home.

  Majority Rule in Rhodesia

  One of our major goals was to help institute majority rule in southern Africa and to strengthen the commitment to human rights throughout that continent. I chose Andrew Young as my ambassador to the United Nations because he was universally admired as a top lieutenant of Martin Luther King, Jr., and had a deep interest in Africa. When Andy made a tour of the region in February 1977, my instructions were to find out what the leaders wanted or needed from the United States, and to see what could be done to encourage democracy and human rights. He reported that the situation was “very confused” but that we should put heavy pressure on Rhodesian President Ian Smith and South African Prime Minister John Vorster to accept majority rule. He said the British had practically no remaining influence, but it would be best to keep them in the forefront of diplomatic efforts. I put his recommendations into effect and soon had a message from Vorster that Smith might be ready to consider a change, but that it was too early in South Africa.

  I wrote in my diary on March 3, “It’s a little frustrating to be dealing with Ian Smith through Vorster, and to be deferring to the British, who’ve shown a remarkable incapacity to put the thing together so we know which way to exert our influence.” On March 23, I wrote that “I decided to ask the Vice President to take responsibility for this southern African question, which is a complex matter. My own thought is that we might get ourselves, Great Britain, South Africa, and some of the frontline presidents—maybe [Samora] Machel (Mozambique), [Kenneth] Kaunda (Zambia), and [Olusegun] Obasanjo (Nigeria)—to agree on an overall approach to Rhodesia and Namibia, and then just ram it through and in the process get a commitment from South Africa to . . . liberalizing attitudes towards blacks, moving toward ultimate full participation by black citizens of South Africa.”

  In May I sent my vice president to meet with Vorster, and Fritz called publicly for “one man–one vote” in South Africa. When he returned, he reported that Vorster might help us with Namibia and that the government of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia would be based on majority rule. “Vorster retained his own long-standing commitment to apartheid, insisting that the blacks were a different kind of human beings.” I added a diary note: “My own guess, however, is that our quiet but persistent pressure along with other nations might force evolutionary changes in South Africa.”

  Joined by many other nations but opposed by some “white supremacists” in our own Congress, these efforts were eventually successful. Direct elections caused Rhodesia to become Zimbabwe before I left office. Namibian independence took longer, and it was thirteen years before South Africa had its first free elections and Nelson Mandela became president.

  Andy Young was a superb ambassador, who always supported freedom and human rights, and I trusted him completely. His opinions were compatible with mine, but he spoke loudly and publicly in New York and in foreign countries, often without approval or instructions from me or the State Department. On several occasions, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance came to the Oval Office to complain about Andy’s independent comments, and a white congressman from Georgia made an unsuccessful effort to have Ambassador Young impeached. After a couple of years there was a UN resolution that related to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with which Andy had to deal. In the process, he met with a PLO representative, which violated an official commitment that our government had made while President Nixon was in office: not to deal with the PLO until after they recognized Israel’s right to exist. I actually believed this commitment was misguided, because open negotiation seemed to me to be more likely to bring about desirable results. Nevertheless, while Andy did not in this case violate the commitment because he was acting as president of the Security Council, he did neglect to confer with me or the secretary of state before holding the meeting.

  I was out running late one afternoon when Secretary Vance, his deputy Warren Christopher, Hamilton Jordan, and Jody Powell interrupted me to say that Andy could no longer serve. They said he had misled Vance about meeting with the PLO. This presented me with one of my most difficult decisions as president: between my secretary of state and my personal friend who was an ambassador. After meeting with Andy and some of my trusted African-American advisers from Georgia, I decided to let him resign. I have never been sure that this was the right decision. He made a public statement: “It is very difficult to do the things that I think are in the interest of the country and maintain the standards of protocol and diplomacy. . . . I really don’t feel a bit sorry for anything that I have done.” This unfortunate incident has never lessened our close and personal friendship.

  Idi Amin

  There is never any way for a president to avoid the twenty-four-hour-every-day responsibilities of the job, staying in communication with heads of departments and ambassadors from their posts around the world and subject to scrutiny by more than a thousand White House reporters during times of crisis. During our first weekend at Camp David, Idi Amin, the deranged and brutal president of Uganda, responded to my criticisms of his multiple assassinations and other human rights violations. After ordering all Americans living in the country to come to Entebbe to meet with him, he singled out the more than one hundred Christian missionaries and announced that he was going to execute them, one by one, until I apologized to him. He gave me a deadline, and I was in a quandary. I decided to call for help from the king of Saudi Arabia, who had great influence on Amin with potential financial gifts and as a fellow Muslim, and Amin then announced that the missionaries were free to leave Uganda. I was thrilled, but not surprised, when all of them refused to abandon their missionary duties and decided to remain in the country.

  Alexander Haig

  It had been customary in the past for the regional military commanders to confine their reports to the secretary of defense, but I
wanted to learn as much as possible about what was happening in their major geographical areas. I instructed Secretary of Defense Harold Brown to have them come by to see me when they were in Washington. The first to report was General Alexander Haig, supreme commander of our forces in Europe, including NATO. He had played the key role in negotiating between President Nixon and Vice President Ford concerning a full pardon for Nixon if he would resign. As he and I discussed issues in the European Theater, I had difficulty understanding what he was trying to say and was concerned about his partisanship and derogation of my policies emphasizing peace and human rights. After thinking about it for a few days, I suggested to Secretary Brown that Haig be removed from this command, which was highly political in nature. Reluctantly, and mistakenly, I yielded to Brown’s plea that this decision be postponed. Haig resigned in 1979 and entered politics on his own, later serving as Reagan’s secretary of state for a few months and then seeking to become the Republican nominee for president. During the campaign he called George H. W. Bush a “wimp.” Bush went on to be elected.

  Maine Indians

  One of the most interesting legal cases I had to address was a defensible claim by Native American tribes in Maine that they owned a substantial portion of the state. The area in question amounted to 12.5 million acres and was inhabited by more than 350,000 people, mostly of European descent. The Interior Department seemed to be siding with the Indian tribes, and the Maine congressional delegation wanted to pass legislation that would wipe out all aboriginal claims with a payment based on land values in 1796, no interest added.

  I asked William Gunter, a friend who had just retired as chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, to mediate the dispute. His proposal provided the basis for a final settlement that protected the rights of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot claimants. This was an important matter for the state, directly involving almost two-thirds of its area and about one-third of its people. Political candidates in Maine were drawn into the debate, and Senators George Mitchell, William Cohen, Ed Muskie, and Bill Hathaway had to handle it with great sensitivity to survive in office. I signed the legislation in October 1980, after the Congress appropriated $81.5 million in federal funds to purchase clear title to 305,000 acres of woodland, and to provide about $27 million in a trust fund for the Native American tribes. In effect, each tribal member received the equivalent of $25,000 and 275 acres of land. Since then, the trust funds have been wisely invested.

  Reorganization

  Building on my experience as governor, my first request to the Congress was to authorize me to simplify and streamline the federal government, subject to a subsequent veto by the House and Senate. No Democrat in the House would introduce the bill because the powerful chairman of the Government Operations Committee did not wish to share this authority with me and claimed it was unconstitutional. I convinced Republican members to sponsor the legislation, and it finally passed in April 1977. During my term I made eleven careful recommendations to make government more simple and effective, ten of which were accepted. I also proposed the creation of two cabinet-level departments to replace multiple smaller agencies that were confusing and unmanageable. The Energy Department was headed by former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, and the first secretary of education was former Court of Appeals Judge Shirley Hufstedler. I wanted this new department to be as free as possible from previous obsession with racial lawsuits, or domination by the teachers’ unions. Ronald Reagan promised during the 1980 campaign to abolish these departments, as have other Republican candidates since then, but both of them have survived.

  Summit in England

  Even on official missions, we had some good times. To prepare for my first summit meeting with six other leaders in London, I studied five big briefing books on political and economic matters. I was especially concerned about measuring up in the fiscal discussions because the leaders of Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and Italy had all served previously as finance ministers. I accepted an invitation from Prime Minister James Callaghan to arrive in London a few days earlier than the others. My plans were to visit Laugharne, the Welsh home of Dylan Thomas, my favorite poet, but Jim pleaded with me to go instead to Newcastle upon Tyne. This was the ancestral home of George Washington and the site of a crucial election the day after I was there. The reception was enthusiastic, and I spoke to a crowd of about thirty thousand. (This was one of the few places where the Labour Party prevailed.) I planted a poplar tree descended from one at Mount Vernon planted by Washington, but I could see it had been frozen in the hold of Air Force One and was dead. (Later, Rosalynn’s brother replaced it with a live one.) By the time our G7 group assembled, I had become familiar with many of Britain’s domestic issues and received good publicity in the news media. I continued that early arrival policy for my other three summit meetings, in Germany, Japan, and Italy.

  On that Sunday we visited Westminster Abbey to worship, see where the King James Bible was produced, and to visit Poets’ Corner. I asked where Dylan Thomas was honored, and the archbishop responded that he was too disreputable to be included. We had an argument about the relative characters of Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, and others that was widely reported by the reporters with us, and Dylan’s widow, Caitlin, later wrote to thank me. Jim Callaghan warned me that any political influence on this subject would be counterproductive, but I wrote the archbishop and his committee a letter when I returned to Washington, extolling the poet’s remarkable works. During my last week in office, Dylan Thomas was accepted for commemoration, and I taped a message for the BBC that was played at the ceremony. Citizens of Laugharne later brought me a duplicate of the stone marker in Westminster for my presidential library.

  One foreign leader with whom I was having a somewhat contentious relationship was Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of Germany. I had met him when I was governor in 1973 and he was finance minister. I was trying to get Volkswagen to establish a manufacturing plant in Georgia and also wanted to set up a trading office in Bonn. We had a productive meeting because he was eager to have my assessment of the ongoing Watergate hearings. More recently, he had been critical of some of my policies as president, obviously thinking that my insistence on human rights in the Soviet Union was naïve and counterproductive. I wanted him to stop providing Brazil with equipment and technology for processing plutonium, and to stimulate Germany’s economy as the other Western leaders were doing to address a worldwide economic slump. I met with his foreign minister to try to resolve these issues before the June summit meeting. We eventually succeeded, but these irritants were always replaced with others during my term in office, including the size and composition of nuclear weapons in Europe, the degree of economic stimulus in the United States, and my strong reaction when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. In summary, I wrote in my diary in 1980, “He’s a strange man and a good leader of Germany. I’m afraid he has a problem in his attitude toward me. Privately to the news media and to others he’s constantly critical of the United States, of our resolve, our fairness, our commitment, our honesty, and so forth. He knocks me and Brzezinski and Vance and Muskie and others.”

  The G7 meeting (now expanded to G20) was interesting and productive. Among many items on our agenda, the two most difficult and time-consuming were human rights and nuclear nonproliferation, where we and the Canadians were criticized as too strong. I was impressed by how eager the other leaders were to have bilateral meetings with me and to associate their nations with ours. One very enjoyable event that caused me some pain a year or two later was a beautiful banquet with the British royal family. I sat with Queen Elizabeth, and we had a delightful chat about serious matters and also personal things. She complained about having seven different uniforms she had to wear on annual occasions and how difficult it was to fit into them when her weight tended to increase. We decided it might be good to shift to centimeters on everything except waistlines, which would continue to be measured in inches. After supper I was approached by the Queen Mother, and we discussed ho
w our families were affected by immersion into public affairs. As we said good night, I kissed her lightly on the cheek and she thanked me for coming to visit. More than two years later, there were reports in the British papers that grossly distorted this event, stating that I had deeply embarrassed her with excessive familiarity. I was distressed by these reports, but couldn’t change what had happened—nor did I regret it.

  B-1 Bomber

  During the 1976 campaign, both Jerry Ford and I had known that whichever of us was elected would have to decide whether to build the proposed B-1 bomber. As president, I set June 1977 as a deadline and worked on this issue for months, having numerous discussions with experts and interested parties on both sides of the question. Secretary Harold Brown, the joint chiefs, and I eventually decided that the extremely expensive new bombers would not be worth the cost and that our defense needs could be met for another fifteen or twenty years by the existing B-52s and other smaller planes, combined with the new and extremely accurate cruise missiles, which could be launched from land, submarines, surface ships, and airplanes. What we couldn’t reveal at the time was the top secret development of “stealth” technology that would make our planes invisible to radar. This would be incorporated into fighter planes and the B-2 bombers a few years later. House and Senate leaders supported my decision, but defense contractors were disappointed. When Reagan came into office, he got approval to build one hundred unnecessary B-1s, which cost about $200 million each. Although B-1s have been used in combat on rare occasions, upgraded B-52s are now expected to continue in service until 2040 and the B-2 until 2058. Making such long-term decisions about very costly military items is always a difficult task for presidents, especially when manufacturing jobs are carefully located or promised for constituents of powerful legislators.