American Experience (1988) s15e02 Episode Script

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NARRATOR:
From the peanut fields
of Georgia
all the way to the White House,
Jimmy Carter had accomplished
one of the greatest triumphs
in American political history.
GLAD:
He'd pulled off a miracle.
In the fall of 1975, he was
barely visible as a candidate;
six months later,
he has the Democratic
presidential nomination.
Now, that is a miracle.
BRINKLEY:
He offered a biography
of what we wanted to hear
Farmer
Main Street values
Plains.
It was the right message
at the right time.
CARTER:
I'll never tell a lie
NARRATOR:
He had promised the nation
a new beginning
to heal the wounds
of Watergate and Vietnam;
a government as good
and decent and compassionate
as the American people.
HERTZBERG:
What he had
was a moral ideology.
And the issues
where he proved successful
The Panama Canal treaties,
the human rights crusade,
peace in the Middle East
Those were issues where
his moral ideology guided him.
The one argument that I would
find would ruin a person's case
is when he'd say, "This is
good for you, politically."
He didn't want to hear that.
He wanted to know what's right.
NARRATOR:
But the man who had pledged
to restore honesty and trust
to government
would find
his own integrity attacked
when his friend
and budget chief Bert Lance
was accused
of financial improprieties.
CADDELL:
Until that moment,
we had been driving the agenda.
Everyone danced to our tune.
After that, we danced
to everybody else's tune.
And that hurt us with the public
because now Jimmy Carter
is not in charge.
DREW:
He's a very, very smart man
and very well intentioned.
But feel, feel is very, very
important in politics
Especially in a president
And Carter just didn't have
very much of it.
NARRATOR:
Only nine months in office,
Jimmy Carter
was a president in trouble
The economy
spinning out of control,
a growing energy crisis,
his agenda stalled in Congress
But Carter's greatest test
was yet to come,
half a world away in Iran,
when 53 Americans
were taken hostage
by Muslim fundamentalists.
CARTER:
The United States of America
will not yield
to international terrorism
MAN:
The whole world saw these people
stomping on images of Carter,
burning American flags,
and the most rancid sort
of disrespect and hatred
of the United States, um,
on television
around the world all the time.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
No one can know how much
pressure there was on Jimmy.
I would go,
"Why don't you do something?"
Then he said, "What would you
want me to do?"
I said, "Mine the harbors."
He said, "Okay,
suppose I mine the harbors,
"and they decide to take one
hostage out every day
and kill him,
what am I going to do then?"
POWELL:
To react in a way
that was strong and powerful
would have set us off
down a road
that no man could say
where it might lead.
DREW:
Fairly or not,
it came to symbolize
the question of whether Carter
was a leader,
whether he was competent,
whether he was strong.
( cheering and applause)
NARRATOR:
On May 22, 1977,
before the graduating class
at the University of Notre Dame,
President Jimmy Carter
unveiled a new foreign policy
for the United States.
Being confident
of our own future,
we are now free of that
inordinate fear of communism.
NARRATOR:
Carter had come to office
with no experience
in foreign affairs,
but determined to make his mark.
In his first year alone, he met
more than 40 heads of state,
resumed talks on diplomatic
relations with China
and with the Soviet Union
on arms control.
He launched a new peace process
in the Middle East
and signed a new Canal Treaty
with Panama,
transferring, after 75 years,
ownership of the canal
to the Panamanians.
But it was a principle
straight from his heart
that would redefine America's
role in the world.
We have reaffirmed America's
commitment to human rights
as a fundamental tenet
of our foreign policy.
MAN:
That was his greatest speech,
standing up for our own values,
and expecting then that
the world would appreciate that,
and that we would be
He didn't use this phrase,
but it's an old phrase
in American history
Like the beacon on the hill,
the beacon of freedom
and liberty and democracy.
GLAD:
He will be remembered for
putting on the agenda hereafter
the whole issue of human rights.
We now assume that the goal
of a state
is not only to protect its
national security interests.
It has an obligation to try
to deal with human suffering
where it has
the ability to do that.
I feel very deeply
that when people are put
in prison without trials
and tortured and deprived
of basic human rights
that the president of the United
States ought to have a right
to express displeasure
and to do something about it.
MONDALE:
His idea is
that every child
is a child of God
and, based on his faith,
entitled to the stature
and respect and the rights
of what that means.
NARRATOR:
Initially, human rights
was applied aggressively
to friend and foe.
Carter asked Congress
to withhold
military and economic assistance
from Latin American dictators
in Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua,
and decried
their human rights violations.
"Cold warriors" complained
Carter was undermining
American allies, paving the way
for Soviet-backed guerrilla
movements to seize power.
But they applauded when,
in an open letter to Soviet
physicist Andrey Sakharov,
Carter promised to seek the
release of political prisoners
held in Soviet jails.
BRINKLEY:
The human rights campaign
was charging the Soviet Union
with abuse of its own citizens,
and they did not
like that at all.
And we now know now that
the Cold War archives are open,
and from looking at Havel
in Czechoslovakia
or Lech Walesa in Poland
That it was the
Carter's human rights policy
that gave heart to the
underground resistance movement.
NARRATOR:
But the biggest challenge
to Carter's human rights policy
would come in the Middle East.
Iran, because of
the great leadership
of the Shah,
is an island of stability
in one of the more troubled
areas in the world.
NARRATOR:
Carter was aware
of the brutality
of Iran's secret police
and of 2,500 political prisoners
held in Iran's jails.
But the Shah,
installed to the throne
in a US-backed coup in 1953,
had long been a trusted ally.
New Year's Eve 1977, in Tehran,
Carter reaffirmed
America's support.
SMITH:
Strategic considerations
trumped human rights in Iran,
because the perception
of the United States
was, first, that Iran
was a secure source of oil
And it certainly
was an important source of oil
That it had one of the most
powerful military establishments
in the world
Which was nonsense,
but the Shah was saying
he was going to have
the second most powerful navy;
Iran, of course, bordered
on the Soviet Union.
There are circumstances
where you have to have
a situational morality.
You cannot go in with the notion
this is an absolute value,
we're going to push it
all the time.
I would like to offer
a toast at this time
to the great leaders of Iran,
the Shah and the Shahbanou,
and to the people of Iran
and to the world peace
that we hope together
we can help to bring.
NARRATOR:
One week after Carter's visit,
anti-Shah demonstrations
broke out.
When Iranian secret police
fired on the demonstrators
and killed several students,
religious leaders called the
Shah's government anti-Islamic.
DREW:
Iran was
a very complicated situation.
And the Shah
was very useful to us.
At the same time,
something else was going on,
something very powerful
was going on in Iran.
And as I recall,
we kind of missed it.
We knew there was
some resentment
and we knew somewhat
of the history of the country,
but we were not conscious,
nor were we informed, of
the intensity of the feelings.
NARRATOR:
Since the days
of Plains and peanuts,
the marriage of Rosalynn
and Jimmy Carter had blossomed
into a full partnership.
Some time before Carter
became president
he realized what a valuable
adviser to him Rosalynn was.
She was a major player
in the campaigns
and she did have a good rapport
with the people.
She, of course, was ambitious
in her own right.
She wanted to be more
than a fashion plate
and somebody who gave teas.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
The first year Jimmy was in
office, I became so frustrated.
Every night, Jimmy would get off
the elevator at the White House
and I would say,
"Why did you do this?"
or "Why did you do"
something.
And one day, he finally said,
"Why don't you come
to cabinet meetings?
And then you'll know
why we do these things."
So I started going
It was always on my calendar
And I'd just listen.
I didn't participate,
but I listened.
And then I knew why
the decisions were made.
NARRATOR:
The first child
to live in the White House
since the Kennedy years,
nine-year-old Amy
had the run of the place.
She roller-skated
down the marble hallways,
played in a tree house
her father built for her,
even got a new dog, named Grits.
BRINKLEY:
She was the apple
of her father's eye.
President Carter hadn't spent a
lot of time with his three sons
so he tried to put a lot of
attention and energy into Amy.
NARRATOR:
In keeping
with Carter's populist image,
Amy was sent to public school.
The media made much of the fact
that her best friend
was the daughter of the cook
at the Chilean embassy.
She was such a shy,
intelligent girl.
It was very hard, always
having that media glare.
And I think
after the White House
she's tried her best
to stay out of the limelight.
NARRATOR:
One Carter did not shy away
from the glare of the media.
Back in Plains,
Billy capitalized
on his brother's fame.
He made money
on the talk show circuit
and marketed
his own brand of beer.
The president tolerated
his brother's antics.
"He enjoyed the popularity,"
he wrote,
"and presented the other side
of the Carter family,
full of fun and laughter."
NARRATOR:
In 1978, the first signs
of a gathering economic storm
were becoming visible.
The stock market was at
its lowest point in three years,
the trade deficit growing,
unemployment on the rise.
CARTER:
The most serious problem that
our nation has is inflation,
and it's getting worse.
It's absolutely imperative that
Americans commit themselves
All of us
To a common sacrifice
to control this rapid
increase in prices.
Carter inherited
a no-win economic situation.
I see him as
the last presidential victim
of the war in Vietnam.
Every war this country has
fought, once it is over,
the economy has to readjust
to a peacetime economy.
I call on the private sector
GODBOLD:
And what always happens
is runaway inflation.
NARRATOR:
Carter implored labor
and business leaders
to keep wages and prices down,
and pressured Congress
to cut back spending.
CARTER:
I believe the American people
will understand
NARRATOR:
But inflation kept rising,
his words falling on deaf ears.
MAN:
He has this
enormous determination
to go after and do what
he thinks ought to be done.
The capacity to explain,
persuade, inspire, mobilize,
energize the whole country
I do not have all the answers
Nobody does.
LANEY:
Uh, that was far more tenuous
and uncertain.
CARTER:
But I want to let you know
that fighting inflation
will be a central
LANEY:
He thought people would just
follow, but that didn't happen.
CARTER:
And I want to arouse our nation
to join me in this effort.
NARRATOR:
There were growing doubts
about Carter's leadership.
The president,
most Americans believed,
was too mired in details,
was ineffective with Congress,
had attempted too much
and delivered too little.
EIZENSTAT:
This is a classic case
where first impressions
often sets in with people
and the first impressions
of that first year
were too many things,
lack of priorities,
a lack of accomplishment.
The fact is, we actually had
a good legislative record,
but we had thrown so much up
that, in comparison to that,
it the accomplishments
seemed to pale.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
I would sometimes say,
"Why don't we do this
in your second term?"
and he would say, "What if I
don't have a second term?"
And I think he felt
that way the whole time
That if something needed to be
done, it needed to be done.
NARRATOR:
With an approval rating
of only 33%,
Time magazine concluded,
"He has the potential
for growing in the office,
but he does not have
a great deal of time left."
NARRATOR:
Nestled in the mountains
of Maryland,
Camp David was
Jimmy Carter's refuge.
It was the place he and Rosalynn
repaired to on weekends
to get away from
the pressures of Washington.
In September 1978,
Jimmy Carter would enshrine
Camp David,
and himself, in history.
MONDALE:
He had spent a lot of time
studying the Middle East.
He felt very deeply
that we should try
to find peace over there,
and boy, he really bet
his presidency on that.
GLAD:
He was already very low
in the polls
He had practically
nowhere to go but up
But he still could
possibly win a second term,
and if he failed, that would
that would certainly
write him off.
NARRATOR:
Since the creation
of the state of Israel,
every attempt to bring peace
to the Middle East had failed.
Refugees, land disputes,
terrorism plagued the region.
Four wars, the last in 1973,
had left a bitter legacy
of hate and mistrust.
NARRATOR:
Everyone urged Carter
to stay away from what seemed
an intractable situation,
but he would not be deterred.
"I slowly became hardened,
and as stubborn
as at any other time
I can remember," he wrote.
The Middle East, for years,
had been, and was then,
the place where you thought,
"If we're going to end up
blowing up the world,
"that's where it will start.
"If there's going to be
a nuclear confrontation
"between the superpowers,
it's going to come
out of the Middle East,"
so finding you know,
finding a way to tamp that down
was, to him,
extremely important.
NARRATOR:
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
took the first step toward peace
in November 1977,
when he became
the first Arab leader
to set foot on Israeli soil.
Carter seized the opportunity.
The following September,
he welcomed President Sadat
and Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin to Camp David
to negotiate a treaty
that would lay the foundations
for peace in the Middle East.
GLAD:
He brought all of his skills
and all the best sides of
himself to the whole operation,
and all of the potential
in Jimmy Carter
was out there at Camp David.
It was a really,
an extraordinary time.
SMITH:
He had studied things
so carefully.
He knew the population
of every village
in the West Bank and Israel.
It's hard to think
of a president in our history
who had that much capacity
to absorb and retain detail.
GLAD:
He made a mistake
at the very beginning.
"You know, we're just going to
bring together Begin and Sadat,
"and they'll talk and
they'll get to know each other
and they'll understand
each other."
Well, he got them there,
and it turned out,
they were practically
never talking to each other
and things were going
downhill very fast.
NARRATOR:
"It was mean,"
Carter later recalled.
"They were brutal
with each other.
Face-to-face discussions
became an impossibility."
On day three the expected
deadline for an agreement
Carter had accomplished nothing.
"There must be a way," he kept
saying, "there must be a way."
That night at dinner,
alone with Rosalynn,
he arrived at a solution.
If the two men could
not talk to one another,
they would have to talk
through him.
He decided that essentially
the Americans would draft
the proposal
and put the proposal
on the table.
You wouldn't have an Egyptian
and an Israeli proposal.
You would have
an American proposal.
NARRATOR:
"I must admit that I
capitalized on the situation,"
Carter later wrote.
"It greatly magnified
my own influence."
Carter devoted himself
to drafting an agreement.
With more than 50 issues
to be resolved,
the work was painstaking.
He was remarkably tenacious,
persistent, persuasive,
tough-minded,
tough both with Sadat
on some occasions,
and with Begin
on other occasions.
BRINKLEY:
That people trusted him
as an honest broker
came to play in a very magical
and important way.
He is seen as somebody
who is not a cheat or a liar.
He is somebody who puts
his money where his mouth is.
NARRATOR:
"My world became
the negotiating rooms,
"the study where I pored
over my notes
and maps of the Middle East,"
he recalled.
"Between sessions,
I craved intense exercise
and lonely places where I could
think, and sometimes pray."
ROSALYNN CARTER:
He had things scheduled
after the first week,
and I was going into Washington
to do some of the things
he was supposed to do.
And when I would leave to go in,
they would say,
"Don't smile, because everybody
will think it will be all right.
Don't look grim, because
they'll think it's failing."
That was hard.
It was from the depths
to the heights
all the time at Camp David.
One minute you would think
it was going to pass
and everything was so exciting,
and then
and another another time,
it would be just hopeless.
POWELL:
It always seemed to me that
the odds were against success;
it always seemed like
a long shot, and so I was
I spent a good bit
of my time thinking about,
"How are we going to deal with
this thing if it collapses?"
NARRATOR:
Shuttling back and forth
between Sadat and Begin,
Carter began to put together
an agreement
a framework for negotiations
in the Middle East,
which would address the fate
of the Palestinians
and the future of Gaza
and the West Bank
and a separate peace treaty
between Egypt and Israel.
Israel would return
the Sinai territories
occupied since the 1967 war.
Egypt would recognize the right
of Israel to live in peace.
On September 14, day ten,
Carter turned to the issue
he knew could derail
any progress made so far
The dismantling of Israeli
settlements in the Sinai.
BOURNE:
Carter was unable to get Begin
to make any concessions
that would really have locked up
an agreement,
to the point where Sadat
just got fed up
and said, "Well,
I'm going home," you know.
"I'm just not going to wait
any be here any longer,"
and and literally
sort of had his coat on
and was out the door.
NARRATOR:
Carter begged Sadat to stay,
appealing to their friendship
and mutual trust,
and reminding him
of Egypt's good relations
with the United States.
Sadat decided to remain
at Camp David.
Saturday, September 16,
Brzezinski wrote in his diary:
"The President is driving
himself mercilessly.
"He has single-handedly
written the proposed document
for the settlements
on the Sinai."
Carter presented
the formula to Begin.
At first he called
the demands on Israel
"excessive,"
"political suicide."
But in the end he relented,
agreeing to submit
the question
of the Jewish settlements
to the Israeli parliament.
Jimmy Carter saw a picture
of the three major
participants on his desk,
and he told his secretary
to find out the names
of Begin's grandchildren
and so then
he wrote little notes,
putting in the names
of all the grandchildren.
He went over to Begin and said,
"You know, this is not
just for us.
This is for our grandchildren,
and let me give this to you."
And Begin was
profoundly moved by this.
NARRATOR:
The Camp David Accords
were hailed
as a monumental triumph
of diplomacy.
( applause)
NARRATOR:
"With his brilliant success
and inspired leadership,
"Carter has taken
a first big step
toward realizing the promise
of his presidency,"
was the verdict of the press.
These negotiations provide
that Israel may live in peace
within secure
and recognized borders,
and this great aspiration
of Israel has been certified,
without constraint, with the
greatest degree of enthusiasm,
by President Sadat, the leader
of one of the greatest
nations on earth.
( warm applause)
BRINKLEY:
There will never be a history
in the Middle East written
without Jimmy Carter's name
in the index.
A hundred years from now,
200 years from now,
people will be talking
about the Camp David process
that began
in those Maryland mountains.
BOURNE:
Camp David was the plum
of his administration.
This was the crowning glory,
and it enshrined him in history.
CARTER:
To these two friends of mine,
the words of Jesus:
"Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be
the children of God."
( sustained applause)
NARRATOR:
Sadat and Begin
were awarded the Nobel Prize
for their contribution to peace.
Camp David became the touchstone
for all future negotiations
on the Middle East.
Yet Carter's great success
did nothing
to improve his standing
with the American people.
MONDALE:
There was something
about how we had slipped
in the eyes
of the American people
that prevented us from getting
what should have been
an enormous lift
out of this incredible
diplomatic feat.
We thought, "Boy, this shows
we can get things done.
It does bring peace
in a crucial area."
And there was
no movement at all.
It was very dispiriting.
WOMAN:
Say it's
only a paper moon ♪
NARRATOR:
At home, President Carter's
leadership was in question.
On the world stage, he kept
piling up accomplishments.
In January 1979,
he received Chinese Vice-Premier
Deng Xiaoping in Washington
to celebrate the establishment
of formal relations
between the United States
and China.
WOMAN:
If you believe in me ♪
NARRATOR:
In June, he met Soviet Premier
Leonid Brezhnev in Vienna,
to sign the SALT II
arms control agreement.
From there, it was on to Tokyo
for a major economic summit.
CADDELL:
The country is having this
terrible domestic problem
and the president is somewhere
out on the other side
of the world,
and not for a couple of days
For weeks.
And I remember
getting on the phone and saying,
NARRATOR:
In one year, the American
economy had spun out of control.
Gasoline prices
had more than doubled,
mortgage rates pushed 20%.
Unemployment kept on rising.
LANCE:
There were just
so many forces at work.
When inflation becomes rampant,
interest rates are high
and the business cycle
is turning against you,
it becomes almost impossible.
NARRATOR:
Of all the problems
facing the nation,
most Americans now agreed
inflation was the most urgent.
In the Summer of '79,
fueled by rising oil prices,
it surged to 14%.
MAN:
Inflation makes you
doubt the future.
When you have inflation,
you don't see
as much building going on,
you don't see
as much investment going on,
you don't see
as much hiring going on.
People weren't seeing
their savings growing,
and as a matter of fact,
people were terrified
that inflation would impoverish
them in their old age.
NARRATOR:
Carter acted decisively.
To reduce the budget deficit and
bring inflation under control
he cut into social programs.
"New realities,"
explained the White House,
"must temper our nation's
commitment to the poor."
BOURNE:
It stirred up
a hornet's nest of opposition
from the Ted Kennedy people,
from the traditional
F.D.R. coalition.
They were very, very angry.
NARRATOR:
African-American leaders
felt betrayed
and vowed to wage an all-out
fight on what they called
"Carter's immoral, unjust
and inequitable budget cuts."
WILKINS:
The leader who most encapsulated
the goals that I wanted
was Martin King, at the end of
his life, saying to the country,
"We have to do something
about poor Americans.
"We're the richest country
on the face of the earth,
and we've got to do something."
Every time I vote for
a Democrat, I want that Democrat
to have Martin's spirit
about poverty in his soul.
Jimmy Carter ran away from that.
NARRATOR:
Across America, frustration
was reaching a breaking point.
In Levittown, Pennsylvania,
truckers barricaded expressways
to protest high fuel prices,
setting off riots,
which left 100 injured
and led to more
than 170 arrests.
CADDELL:
I thought in '79, we were
really headed down the tubes.
I now thought we were
in deep, deep trouble,
and I thought the president
was becoming irrelevant.
NARRATOR:
Polls showed Carter
falling behind Ted Kennedy
as the preferred candidate
among Democratic voters,
and even losing trial heats
to the likely Republican
nominee, Ronald Reagan.
WOMAN:
I don't think he has
control of the situation;
I think he's a very religious
man, a very nice man,
but I just don't think
he's capable of the job.
A lot of people think
he's shaky, you know,
and I'm one of them.
I think he's kind of shaky.
I think he's
a really floundering leader.
I don't see him as a leader,
and I don't look to him
for leadership.
NARRATOR:
President Carter's
approval rating was 25%
Lower than President
Richard Nixon's
at the time of Watergate.
"It all seems to be falling down
around me in the White House,"
he told a friend.
"I don't know what to do."
MONDALE:
I think he was losing
some of that essential nerve
that he has in such abundance,
but just for a brief
moment there.
It was really, uh
I was heartsick,
and I felt so sorry for him.
NARRATOR:
Carter groped for a way
to reassert his leadership.
One advisor suggested that he
give a major speech on energy,
and put the full blame
of the economic crisis
on the high price
of Middle East oil.
EIZENSTAT:
When we drew the outlines up,
he was really quite disgusted.
This is just more of the same.
It doesn't address
the basic problems.
People will see this as pabulum.
We need something more.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
Jimmy had made several speeches
on energy.
He was trying to impress
upon people
the fact that they
needed to conserve
and it just seemed to be going
nowhere with the public.
And so he just said, "I'm not
going to make the speech."
So he got on a conference call
with his senior staff,
and the way he put it,
very pungently, was,
"I just don't want
to bull ( no audio)
the American people."
NARRATOR:
Carter retreated to Camp David.
For the next ten days,
businessmen, labor leaders,
governors, pop psychologists
and clergy
were called to the mountaintop
to participate in one of
the most extraordinary episodes
of presidential soul searching
in American history.
HERTZBERG:
Basically this was
a kind of a self-psychoanalysis
by Carter
and the administration.
He sat up there and listened
to the most scalding critiques
of his presidency.
NARRATOR:
"They told me that I seemed
bogged down in details,"
"That the public acknowledged
my intelligence and integrity,
"but doubted my capacity
to follow through
with a strong enough thrust
to succeed."
Within Carter's own staff
a fierce debate raged
over what had gone wrong
and what President Carter should
say to the American people.
Carter's pollster argued
the president should address
a subject deeper
than energy or the economy;
that there was a crisis
of the American spirit.
CADDELL:
For the first time,
we actually got numbers
where people no longer believed
that the future of America
was going to be
as good as it was now.
Never in the history of American
polling had that ever existed
That Americans ever,
even if they believed it,
ever evidenced, would say,
"Oh, my children
will have it worse than I am.
"The country's
going to get worse.
We've already had our heyday."
And that really shook me,
because it was so anti
so anti-American.
I made the point,
and Mondale made the point,
that if there was a problem
with the American spirit,
it was because
of the underlying problems
not because there was something
wrong with the American people.
I argued that there were
real problems in America
that were not mysterious,
that were not rooted
in some kind of national
psychosis or breakdown;
that there were real gas lines,
there was real inflation,
that people were worried
in their real lives
CADDELL:
The vice president of the United
States was looking at me,
basically accusing me
of being insane.
So you had this real division
and then Jimmy Carter ended it
by saying
And this moment, I'll never
forget it he ends the thing,
saying, "I just wanted to hear
what you all said.
I'm going to do everything
that Pat said."
Good evening.
This is a special night for me.
NARRATOR:
On July 15,
after a ten-day retreat,
Jimmy Carter descended
from the mountains of Maryland
to deliver the most
controversial speech
I want to speak to you
first tonight about a subject
even more serious
than energy or inflation.
I want to talk to you right now
about a fundamental threat
to American democracy.
The threat is nearly invisible
in ordinary ways.
It is a crisis of confidence.
At the very heart and soul
and spirit of our national will.
HERTZBERG:
The speech was more like a
sermon than a political speech,
and it had the themes
of confession, redemption
and sacrifice.
And he was bringing
the American people
into this spiritual process
that he had been through,
and presenting them with
an opportunity for redemption
as well as redeeming himself.
In a nation that was proud
of hard work, strong families,
close-knit communities
and our faith in God,
too many of us now
tend to worship
self-indulgence and consumption.
Human identity is no longer
defined by what one does,
but by what one owns.
FARRELL:
The speech unfairly was labeled
the "malaise speech,"
because it talked about the fact
that the country was
in a difficult situation,
which it was.
But Americans don't always want
their public leaders
to come to them and say,
"Hey, we're in
a bunch of trouble."
When your leadership is
demonstrably weaker
than it should be,
you don't then point
at the people and say,
"It's your problem."
If you want the people to move,
you move them the way
Roosevelt moved them,
or you exhort them
the way Kennedy
or Johnson exhorted them.
You don't say,
"It's your fault."
BRINKLEY:
The op-ed pieces
started spinning out
saying there's nothing wrong
with the American people.
We're a great people.
Maybe the problem's
in the White House.
Maybe we need new leadership
to guide us.
It boomeranged on him.
POWELL:
If you make a bold stroke
like that,
you do have to think about
how do you follow it up.
What does day three and day four
and day five look like?
How do you translate that
into additional steps?
And we botched that.
NARRATOR:
To give the impression
of a fresh start,
Carter asked his entire cabinet
to submit their resignations.
Five were accepted.
FARRELL:
By firing the cabinet
the way he did
Carter just telegraphed
to the country
that he wasn't up for the job.
It was a sign of panic.
It looked like
this was a president
who was thrashing about, looking
for other people to blame.
NARRATOR:
Carter's approval rating
dropped even lower.
"After all the Camp David
meetings,
"the dramatic speech on July 15
"and the cabinet firings,
he is back where he began,"
one analyst wrote,
"a chief executive rejected
by his ultimate constituency
The American people."
That fall, the liberal wing
of the Democratic Party
finally broke
with the president,
throwing its support
behind Ted Kennedy.
The senator from Massachusetts
would wage a brutal campaign
for the Democratic nomination.
For Jimmy Carter, nothing
seemed to be going right.
He collapsed while running
a ten-kilometer race.
It was taken
as a sign of weakness.
He became the butt of jokes
when a story broke
that he'd been attacked
by a giant rabbit
while fishing in Georgia.
Even the Carter family,
once thought fun and colorful,
was becoming a liability.
Billy was investigated
for accepting a bribe
from the Libyan government.
Furious, Carter distanced
himself from Billy.
"I have no control
over my brother
and he has no control over me,"
he said.
On November 4, 1979,
it would all seem trivial.
A few days earlier, 3,500
Iranian students had marched
toward the American Embassy
in Tehran,
threatening to overtake it.
NARRATOR:
The anti-Shah movement,
which had began in early 1978,
had grown into a full-fledged
Islamic revolution.
The shah was driven into exile
and the Ayatollah Khomeini
became the leader
of a new and mysterious
Islamic republic.
BRZEZINSKI:
I never had any illusions
about Khomeini.
I didn't have much familiarity
with fundamentalist Islam,
but I knew he would be a menace.
SMITH:
If Carter had been
more critical of the Shah,
conceivably it would have been
a little more difficult
for the Ayatollah Khomeini
to identify the United States
as the great Satan,
and to say everything
that is wrong in Iran
is basically the fault
of the United States.
Maybe the fact that
the United States
had been a significant player
in Iran since 1945
was such that it was too late
for Carter or anybody
to change
the deeply hostile nature
of the Iranian revolution,
but it might have made
a difference.
NARRATOR:
In the first few months
of the revolution,
Carter had worked
to build a relationship
with the Khomeini regime.
But the history
of US-Iranian relations
would soon catch up with him.
For months,
the deposed Shah of Iran
had wandered the Middle East,
then Latin America.
Ill with cancer,
he asked permission
to come to the United States
for medical treatment.
MONDALE:
There were several of us
sitting around the table
talking about whether
the president should permit
the reentry of the Shah.
We had people tell us
that if we let the Shah in
there could be a real negative
repercussion in Iran.
But the Shah was sort
of pathetically flying
around the world, and here's
this great country saying,
"Well, we won't even let you
come to one of our hospitals."
He went around the room,
and a lot of the people said,
"Let him in."
BRZEZINSKI:
I argued that he should
be allowed in,
because we treated him
as an ally in good times,
and I felt
it was our responsibility
to treat him as a former ally,
but a friend, in bad times.
I felt American credibility
was at stake.
MONDALE:
And he said, "And if then
this revolution moves in a way
"to take our employees
in our embassy hostage,
then what will be your advice?"
And the room just fell dead.
( men shouting in Farsi)
NARRATOR:
The Shah arrived in the United
States on October 22.
Two weeks later,
Iranian students
seized the American Embassy.
53 Americans
were to be held hostage
until the United States
returnedthe Shah to Iran.
Everyone awaited word
from Khomeini.
Seeing an opportunity
to consolidate his revolution,
the Ayatollah gave his blessing,
calling the US Embassy
"a den of spies."
CARTER:
The United States of America
will not yield
to international terrorism
or to blackmail.
CADDELL:
It was a defining event.
This is the entire United States
government captured
and held illegally
under international law
and being taunted every day.
WILKINS:
The whole world saw these images
of these people
burning American flags,
stomping on images of Carter
and the most rancid sort
of disrespect and hatred
of the United States,
on television,
around the world, all the time.
NARRATOR:
"I would lie awake at night,
"trying to think of steps
I could take
"to gain the hostages' freedom,
without sacrificing the honor
and security of our nation,"
the president wrote.
Carter rejected all military
options as too risky.
"The problem," he said,
"is that we could feel good
for a few hours,
until we found that
they had killed our people."
BRINKLEY:
He was determined to bring every
one of those men back alive.
You see the moralism of Carter,
the Christianity affecting
his foreign policy making,
his belief in each human life
having a great sanctity to it,
his not wanting
to have blood on his hands.
The successful statesmen
have to balance risks,
and sometimes
sometimes a risk
to a relatively limited
number of lives,
down the road saves
many, many more lives.
POWELL:
To react in a way
that was strong and powerful
would have set us off
down a road
that no man could say
where it might lead.
People have
a hard time remembering
that this was before
the Cold War was over
and the possibility of
a superpower confrontation
in and about Iran
had always been there,
and now,
under these circumstances,
it was much higher.
NARRATOR:
The dangers of the Cold War
were driven home
when the Soviet Union
invaded Afghanistan
Christmas Day, 1979.
Three years earlier
at Notre Dame,
Carter had declared
the United States
"free of that inordinate fear
of communism."
But Soviet-American relations
had soured.
Afghanistan was the final blow.
REPORTER:
Have you changed
your perception of the Russians
in the time
that you've been here?
You started out, it seemed
to a great many people,
believing that if you
expressed your goodwill
and demonstrated it
that they would reciprocate.
My opinion of the Russians
has changed
most drastically
in the last week
than even the previous two-and-
a-half years before that.
It's only now
dawning upon the world
the, uh, magnitude of the action
that the Soviets undertook
in invading Afghanistan.
SMITH:
I think he had learned
that moral affirmation by itself
didn't necessarily get very far.
I think he felt that events
had built up and conspired
against him as they had
And that the Soviet Union
was, indeed, a real threat.
I've cut Soviet access
to high-technology equipment
and to agricultural products.
NARRATOR:
Carter leveled sanctions
against the Soviets,
boycotted
the Summer Olympics in Moscow
and withdrew his SALT II treaty
from the Senate floor.
Encouraged
by Carter's new toughness,
"Cold Warriors"
who had organized
into the Coalition
for a Democratic Majority
arranged a meeting
at the White House.
There was a quite
high-powered delegation
of the leaders of CDM,
who at that point
included Jean Kirkpatrick,
who was still a loyal Democrat.
People went into the meeting
thinking he'd say, "There's
a threat to world peace
"that requires
an American response,
"who will give me your support,
because you've been saying this
Instead, Carter came in and sort
of gave the group a lecture.
He said that he understood
that this group was interested
in human rights,
and that was great,
and he supported human rights.
We were all
terribly disillusioned,
and I think that
almost all of our group,
either publicly or in the
privacy of the voting booth,
decided we were going
to vote for Reagan.
CRONKITE:
Good evening.
The 100th day of captivity
for 50 Americans in Tehran
REPORTER:
The 100th flag
for 100 days of captivity
NARRATOR:
As spring 1980 approached,
the hostages had grown
into a national obsession,
their memory kept alive by
millions of yellow ribbons.
REPORTER:
and the nation shares
their ordeal.
NARRATOR:
No stone was left unturned
trying to bring them home.
While Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance
dealt with Iranian
government officials,
Hamilton Jordan met secretly
with anyone who held out hope.
( voices murmuring)
I think I have an infection
in this eye.
NARRATOR:
"Our lives became
a seesaw of emotions
as scheme after scheme fell
apart," Rosalynn later recalled.
"Every time we saw the hostages
on television, I counted them."
ROSALYNN CARTER:
No one can know how much
pressure there was on Jimmy
to do something about that.
And I would go, like,
"Why don't you do something?"
He said,
"What would you want me to do?"
I said, "Mine the harbors."
He said, "Okay, suppose
I mine the harbors,
"and they decide to take
one hostage out every day
and kill him,
what am I going to do then?"
( voices murmuring)
DREW:
Fairly or not,
it came to symbolize
the question
of whether Carter was a leader,
whether he was competent,
whether he was strong.
( clock ticking)
NARRATOR:
By April, pressure
was growing intense,
and the situation
increasingly hopeless.
"We could no longer afford
to depend on diplomacy,"
Carter was forced to conclude.
"I knew from
an intelligence report
"that there was little prospect
of the hostages' release
"for the next
five or six months.
I decided to act."
It was called "Desert I."
It required six
C-130 transport planes,
a 90-man rescue team,
two C-141 Starlifters,
eight helicopters
and nearly impossible logistics.
GLAD:
It was a highly risky operation.
The CIA even talked
about the number of people
Including the hostages
Who might be killed;
but it was doing something.
NARRATOR:
South of Tehran,
in the Iranian desert,
the rescue mission
turned into a disaster.
Two helicopters failed,
another crashed into a C-130
in a sandstorm.
Eight men died in Desert 1.
Three more were severely burned.
CARTER:
It was my decision to attempt
the rescue operation.
It was my decision to cancel it
when problems developed.
The responsibility
is fully my own.
POWELL:
I sort of thought at the time,
"Well, people will give the
president credit for trying."
But I also realized
that now the chances of being
able to get those people out
anytime in the near future
was very, very slim,
and that from
a political standpoint,
that was going to be
a heavy burden to bear.
NARRATOR:
In August 1980,
President Carter survived
the challenge
from Senator Edward Kennedy
for the Democratic nomination.
The campaign had been
bitter and divisive,
but in the end, Kennedy
had seemed too liberal
and too tainted by scandal.
( cheering)
EIZENSTAT:
The attack from the left
was extremely debilitating
and the fact that we had
a divided party
going into the general election
in 1980 against Ronald Reagan
was an additional albatross
beyond the hostage crisis,
and beyond inflation.
REAGAN:
Jimmy Carter's
administration tells us
that the descendants of those
who sacrificed to start again
in this land of freedom
may have to abandon the dream
that drew their ancestors
to a new life in a new land.
NARRATOR:
Republican candidate Ronald
Reagan launched his campaign
on Labor Day,
with a broadside attack
delivered before an audience
of working-class Americans.
Record is a litany of despair,
of broken promises, of sacred
trusts abandoned and forgotten.
WILKINS:
Reagan was
a very formidable fellow.
The combination of his beliefs
Which were not numerous,
but they were clear
Um, and his acting skills,
really made people
sit up and say,
"This is this guy means
and believes what he's saying."
NARRATOR:
Carter trailed Reagan
by more than 20 points.
With the Soviets in Afghanistan,
the hostages in Iran
and the economy in shambles,
he was vulnerable.
LANCE:
We were still going through
tough economic circumstances:
People were hurting,
interest rates were higher,
unemployment was higher,
inflation was greater.
ANNOUNCER:
When you come right down to it,
what kind of a person should
occupy the Oval Office?
NARRATOR:
Unable to run on his record,
Carter went on the attack,
portraying Reagan
as trigger-happy cowboy
ANNOUNCER:
and a destroyer to Ecuador to
deal with a fishing controversy?
CADDELL:
We didn't have any cards to play
because there wasn't
any cards to play.
Trapped by a government that
couldn't come up with any ideas,
and basically,
we were frustrating the hell
But they still trusted Jimmy
Carter not to blow the world up,
NARRATOR:
On October 28, 100 million
viewers, the largest audience
ever to watch a presidential
debate, tuned in.
The candidates
were running neck and neck.
Then the insurance
would help pay for it.
These are the kind of elements
of a national health insurance
important
to the American people.
Governor Reagan, again,
typically is against
such a proposal.
MODERATOR:
Governor?
There you go again.
When I opposed Medicare
CADDELL:
He had won it in the first
half-hour by not being crazy.
What had happened
was you could see the shift
in the beginning of the debate,
over 90 minutes was
a sense of "he's not dangerous."
And that's all he had to do.
ANNOUNCER:
Today, the vigil of the hostages
lengthens to one whole year.
NARRATOR:
The Monday before Election Day
played like a nightmare
for Jimmy Carter.
ANNOUNCER 2:
Today, the Majlis
spelled out conditions
for release
of the American hostages
now ending their first year
in captivity,
and the four conditions are
the same as those set down
POWELL:
A good portion of that weekend
leading up to it
and all day Monday,
Americans were literally
having their nose
rubbed in this embarrassing,
irritating,
humiliating situation.
NARRATOR:
Carter campaigned all day
and into the night
in Mississippi,
Oregon, Washington.
He arrived in Seattle
at 3:00 a.m
The last rally, the last speech.
POWELL:
I had stayed on the plane
to finish up something.
Before I could get off,
the phone rang.
And it was Hamilton Jordan and
Pat Caddell back in Washington.
They had seen the tracking polls
from that day,
and they said,
"It's basically over."
The people must decide
this election.
For your sake and for the sake
of your children,
vote.
Vote, for yourselves.
Tomorrow, vote for yourselves.
Vote Democratic, help us.
God be with you.
POWELL:
I went in to hear his speech,
thinking that I was
the only person there
who know that, basically,
the election was over
and that we had,
that we had lost.
NARRATOR:
It was a landslide.
Carter won only six states.
For the first time in 28 years,
the Democratic Party
lost control of the Senate.
On the last day
of his presidency,
Jimmy Carter stayed up
through the night.
A deal with Iran
had been reached.
The release of the hostages
was imminent.
A crew from ABC News stood by
to record the historic moment.
You're not sending
that film anymore.
MONDALE:
He wanted to get these hostages
home on his watch.
And this was not about
getting reelected anymore.
This was about
getting this done,
because he felt so deeply
about it.
We were in the Oval Office
around, maybe,
2:00 in the morning.
And nothing happening.
Dead silence.
But we got to the time
where it was 9:00
in the morning.
We had to be at the inaugural.
The new president was coming in
at 11:00.
And finally,
we all started running off.
And we still had one officer
back there with a phone,
the hot line,
in case there was any news.
MAN:
Here they are now.
WOMAN:
Is there any word
about the hostages?
Have they taken off?
MONDALE:
And he was in contact
with Carter
all the way up the inaugural
route and on the platform.
So if there were anything
that was positive or negative,
he'd hear about it.
MAN:
And the home of the ♪
MONDALE:
And of course, the story was
that Khomeini released them
the minute after Reagan
was president.
( man finishes anthem)
NARRATOR:
January 20, 1981.
3,000 people gathered
at the old train depot in Plains
to welcome the Carters home.
POPE:
There was a sea of umbrellas,
out there in the public,
standing in the cold
and the rain, waiting for him.
And it was a bittersweet day.
CHIP CARTER:
I think they reacted
just like anybody else would
that'd just been rejected
by 200 million people.
It was one of the toughest times
they've ever been through,
I think.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
He really was better than I was
when we came home,
because I was so depressed
about it
that he was always trying
to prop me up.
NARRATOR:
The Carters faced trying times.
Not only had their dreams
been shattered,
but the business they had spent
a lifetime to build
was more than a million dollars
in debt.
POPE:
There were some hard days
that followed.
They were withdrawn.
They just wanted to go home
and rest and make things better.
And they needed a healing time.
NARRATOR:
Carter, only 56, was already
labeled "a has-been,"
"a shooting star with not even
a tail left to fizzle."
HERTZBERG:
The things that they had
once loved about him,
his piety and his simplicity
and his kind of moral goodness,
they now despised as weakness
and and moral superiority.
They just couldn't stand him.
LANEY:
It wasn't just
that he was unpopular.
People avoided him.
This is hard to say,
and hard to believe today.
People didn't want
to associate with him.
NARRATOR:
"It seemed astounding,"
Rosalynn observed,
"that after years of important
events and decisions,
"the most important thing
could be
"whether the brick walk
we were building
"from our house to the street
was crooked or straight."
CHIP CARTER:
Dad had a woodworking shop,
and spent quite a lot of hours
out there,
working with a piece of lumber.
He can make a piece of lumber
sing.
And a lot of it's just because
of the meticulous care
that he puts into everything
he's done.
DAN CARTER:
If there was ever an individual
who the maxim of,
"An idle mind is
the devil's workshop,"
Carter would perfectly
exemplify that.
He's one of these people
who simply never rests,
and never has, I think.
So the question
the question was not
whether he was going
to do something
after he left the White House;
the question was
what was he going to do.
NARRATOR:
The Carters settled in
to write their memoirs
and to make plans to build
a presidential library.
But Carter had little enthusiasm
for building what he called
"a monument to myself."
ROSALYNN CARTER:
One night, I woke up,
and Jimmy was sitting
straight up in the bed.
This is after we'd been home
about a year.
And I said, "What's the matter?"
I thought he was sick, because
he always sleeps all night,
even in the White House.
He can turn things off
and go to sleep.
And he said, "I know
what we can do at the library.
We can have a place
to resolve conflicts."
And so that was the germ
of the idea
for what became
The Carter Center.
NARRATOR:
Inspired by his success
in the Camp David Accords,
Carter envisioned a place where
he could host world leaders
and mediate civil wars
and political disputes.
At a cost of $28 million,
The Carter Center
would span 35 acres,
include an arboretum, a lake,
and room enough for a staff
of more then 100.
LANEY:
When he set up
The Carter Center,
he shared with me his vision,
and I thought,
"Oh, no, that"
You know, "That's so grandiose."
I was
Frankly, I was embarrassed
for him.
He was at the nadir
of popularity.
YOUNG:
Jimmy Carter was told
that it would be impossible
for him to get
into the Naval Academy.
He was told
that it would be impossible
for him to get elected governor.
And when he announced
for the presidency,
even the Atlanta Constitution
had a headline saying,
"Jimmy is running for what?"
So all of his life,
he had done the impossible.
And this was just
another challenge.
MAN:
Now lift it up
and I'll screw it down.
NARRATOR:
Carter's political resurrection
began unexpectedly,
with a quiet act
just a few miles from Plains,
building houses for the poor
through an organization
called Habitat for Humanity.
BRINKLEY:
Carter became surprised
at the success of Habitat.
He loves to build,
he's a carpenter as his hobby,
so it fit naturally
to his own inclination.
And then he started getting
great press.
( people talking and applauding)
NARRATOR:
In the summer of 1984,
when he and Rosalynn led
a busload of Georgians
to New York City to rebuild a
tenement on the Lower East Side,
it was front page news
in the New York Times.
BRINKLEY:
It was in stark contrast
to kind of the so-called greed
decades of the '80s
to see somebody not looking
to make big speaking fees,
not looking to sit
on corporate boards.
It's just something about
an ex-president being so humble,
in blue jeans, with a hammer,
sleeping on cots and building
houses for the poor.
It's an image seared
on our imaginations.
YOUNG:
When you're there
as a private citizen,
and when you're there
because of your faith,
there's something nice and fresh
and humble about that.
And it's a language
people understand.
NARRATOR:
Four years after
his humiliating defeat,
the image of Jimmy Carter,
the failed president,
was giving way to Jimmy Carter,
the committed Christian
in the service of the poor.
REAGAN:
So it is that when we dedicate
this center, Mr. President,
we dedicate an institution
that testifies,
as does your life itself,
to the goodness of God,
and to the blessings He bestows
upon those who do their best
to walk with Him.
NARRATOR:
In 1986, at the inauguration
of The Carter Center,
President Reagan expressed
the growing respect
many now felt for the man
they had once rejected.
( applause)
NARRATOR:
Through The Carter Center,
Jimmy Carter would launch
his new career
as an elder statesman,
monitoring elections
throughout the world.
They were patently counterfeit.
They had nothing to do
NARRATOR:
His prestige restored,
he returned to the role that had
given meaning to his presidency:
peacemaker.
LANEY:
Carter has a profound, almost
innate commitment to peace.
It's in his bones.
He really believes
Theodore Roosevelt's adage
that one should walk softly
and carry a big stick.
But don't be afraid to walk
into the lion's den.
And he does that.
He's done it repeatedly.
NARRATOR:
In Haiti, Carter convinced
military strongman Raoul Cédras
in favor of the democratically
elected president,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
BRINKLEY:
Carter believes that there's
goodness in all people,
and that even
the biggest sinner,
can take Christ into their heart
and be born again tomorrow.
They can be saved.
We are very glad
to be back in Haiti.
( woman speaking French)
A country obviously dedicated
to peace, human rights,
and democracy.
BRINKLEY:
So even Cédras,
who was considered a brutal thug
Carter felt that he could appeal
to his sense
of what is right
and what is wrong.
This caused Carter
a lot of criticism,
coddling dictators
around the world.
( announcer speaking Spanish)
NARRATOR:
In May 2002, Jimmy Carter
went to Cuba,
the first American president
to visit the island
in over 40 years.
( crowd cheering)
( speaking Spanish):
NARRATOR:
In an address broadcast
throughout Cuba,
he defied
President George W. Bush
by calling for an end
to the decades-old
US trade embargo.
I don't know
what's going to happen
with the Varela Project,
which you said
NARRATOR:
But he also challenged
Cuban President Fidel Castro
to institute democratic reforms.
I think it would be very good
if your officials would decide
to publish the entire document,
and let there be a free
and open debate in Cuba.
NARRATOR:
In his travels
throughout the world,
Carter has championed the cause
of the poor
and the disenfranchised.
DAN CARTER:
He speaks, often
eloquently and angrily,
about the growing gap
between rich and poor
and black and white
This very cautious
and conservative,
fiscally responsible president.
You'd hear him sometimes now
and you think we've got
the last socialist in America.
NARRATOR:
With the Carter Center,
President and Mrs. Carter
have created programs
to fight disease
River blindness, guinea worm
And alleviate hunger.
CHIP CARTER:
They have so much to give,
and they feel like so many
people depend on them.
They'll come in and see
somebody that has nothing
and think, "Hey,
I can change that life."
HERTZBERG:
Being a good post-president
doesn't retrospectively make you
a better president.
What a post-presidency can do,
though, is to illuminate
which aspects of a president's
character were real
and which were phony.
All of his strengths
Perseverance and dedication,
integrity,
those have all turned out
to be very, very real.
LANCE:
He never lied
to the American people,
he kept the peace,
he brought the hostages home
without loss of life
All the things
that he said he was going to do.
It was a time when we needed
that sort of person as president
that people could put
some faith and trust in.
BRINKLEY:
What was Carter?
He never had
a kind of nutshell program.
He had no interest in either
the New Deal tradition
of Franklin Roosevelt,
or the New Frontier tradition
of John Kennedy,
or the Great Society
of Lyndon Johnson.
He never crystallized a great
agenda of what he wanted to do.
He simply tackled issues
as they confronted him,
one by one by one.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
We have not had time
to look back and regret things,
although I still think
the country would be better off
if Jimmy had been president
for another term.
But then if he had been
president for another term,
we might not have had
the Carter Center.
MONDALE:
He's been at it full time,
around the clock,
with that same dedication, that
same laser-like concentration,
until finally now,
the American people are seeing
all of this happen,
and people say,
"Hey, here's really a good man."
HERTZBERG:
I think history is going to look
at him in a kindlier light
than his contemporaries did.
His values, his devotion
to peace and human rights,
keep on resonating
in a way that his failures
and weaknesses don't.
Captioned by
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