Notes on the Carter Conference

Published in The Georgia GuardDawg, February 2007

It has become axiomatic that Jimmy Carter was a president whose good intentions were despoiled by the crudities of international politics. His detractors blame his naïveté for weakening America; his acolytes praise his idealism and rue the events that swept him from power. Jimmy Carter’s idealism has been a point of great debate, but in retrospect it seems, as William F. Buckley Jr. said, the costs became prohibitive as it approached reality. So prohibitive were they that when the former First Couple joined old friends and colleagues, distinguished guests, members of the press, and other politicos in Athens last month there was just a single term in office about which to reminisce. So I joined the Carter family and its entourage as we indulged in a wistful mixture of memory and desire: memory for all the tributes and anecdotes, some of which were quite touching; desire for the revision and what-ifs that occurred less than I anticipated but still too frequently for the conference to be considered truly objective. I didn’t really mind that though, because, despite what it was promoted as or intended for, the conference felt much more like a reunion than a symposium.

The Carter Presidency: Lessons for the Twenty-First Century was held at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education during the weekend January 19, 20, and 21—the thirtieth anniversary of Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. The tagline read “a dynamic, bipartisan dialogue on the lessons learned from the carter presidency and how those lessons apply to the major challenges facing our country today.” The luminaries in attendance I found particularly interesting were Madeleine Albright, Stephen Breyer, and Jon Meacham, all for different reasons and some unrelated to Jimmy Carter. Ms. Albright, adorned in her signature golden dove brooch and fresh off a book tour, delivered anti-Bush one-liners that delighted the crowd, including some I had heard her say on television. I could have quoted the rather silly phrases along with her, and I felt deprived of the suspense and glee that seemed to have struck much of the audience. Bush needs to take the road map to peace in the Middle East out of the glove compartment; “you have to have a president who actually knows where the place is”; we can’t say God is on our side because we have to be on God’s side. This last zinger, a rephrasing of the same fatuous idea, elicited applause which seemed almost cathartic and predictable: the audience yearned to clap in opposition to President Bush, and Ms. Albright played it like a virtuoso.

Justice Breyer was more cerebral and convincing. He dominated a panel entitled The Economy, Budget Issues, Deregulation, and the Role of the Federal Government with expertise and an anecdote to go along with every proposition. Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, moderated a discussion on the Middle East. Flanked on stage by huge screens displaying photographs of President Carter alone and with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, Mr. Meacham was a quick wit who at once asked the panelists if they had read Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Only one had, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security advisor. Later Mr. Carter jokingly admonished the other three, whom he said had been furnished with copies. It was a light note in a discussion that otherwise facilitated grim assessments of Iraq by Mr. Brzezinski (“sliding step by step into a deeper and deeper quagmire”) and excuses for the Clinton administration’s inaction in Rwanda by Ms. Albright (“you make decisions with the information you have”). I thought this was reprehensible, but then I thought again that maybe she didn’t know where the place was.

The luncheon honoring Rosalynn Carter on Saturday afternoon took place in the Magnolia Ballroom, and the floral theme was not lost on any who attended: the room was resplendent with the color of pink roses, from the upholstered chairs to the table setting to the silk napkins, folded intricately to resemble a blossomed rose. The former First Lady delivered the keynote address after a meal of wheat barley salad, chicken amaretto, marquis potatoes, a bougatiere of vegetables, and cappuccino torte for dessert. Her speech was filled with endearing stories about her married life and the four years in Washington. She spoke of picking up the phone at the White House and being able to speak to anyone in the world. When she told the operator to put Jimmy on the line, he replied, “Jimmy who?” Mrs. Carter relished the immunization of children she promoted, regretted the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, and recalled, her voice tremulous with affection, how one of her and Jimmy’s elementary school teachers used to say that anyone in the classroom could be president one day. These were very fond memories for her, and the audience appreciated them with sincere standing applause.

The Town Hall Meeting with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter later that day was the only unscripted part of the weekend, a time when the public was invited to ask questions of the pair. Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC Nightly News and an intern in the Carter White House, moderated for the afternoon. Watching him converse with Mr. Meacham, Michael Adams, and others before the event commenced, it struck me that every pose he strikes seems taken from a Superman movie or comic strip. Instead of a posture that any other person would adopt, he stood with his right arm akimbo, his left hand gallantly removing his eyeglasses, and his head turned toward the sky as if he would fly away and leave Messrs. Meacham and Adams behind with the rest of us non-superheroes. It never happened, of course, so Brian Williams introduced the Carters and read from a Sally Quinn article published in The Washington Post on January 21, 1977 describing the gala on the eve of the inauguration.

As the audience eagerly queued up to ask their questions, Mr. Williams threw the former president a curve ball to be answered as the final question: “What is something you can tell us that we don’t know that will enrich the historical record?” All the questions that flowed from the crowd were fairly predictable and mundane. Do we still function as a republic? “I was hoping Rosalynn would take that one,” Jimmy Carter quipped before adding that President Bush “has parted from basic Constitutional principles.” Why have the Georgia Democrats fallen into decline? Jimmy Carter, remembering the Solid South as “the good ole’ days,” attributed the Republican ascendancy to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign. He called Hummers “disgusting automobiles,” agreed partly with the No Child Left Behind Act, praised leftist Congressman Dennis Kucinich for being “on the cutting edge of heroism,” urged the Democratic Party to adopt the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, and remembered 1980 as “the most grievous year of my life.” Unsurprisingly yet dramatically the controversy of Mr. Carter’s new book was raised several times, once by a Holocaust survivor and Polish underground fighter and another by a German-born woman who loathed her country’s Nazi past. The man who lived through the Final Solution upbraided Mr. Carter for his use of the word “apartheid;” he answered that he meant it not in a racial way. The German woman wondered why he had not mentioned the Palestinian record of hate-mongering and indoctrination; he answered by saying Palestinians support a two-state solution more than the Israelis do and by condemning brainwashing and hatred.

The time was up, and Mr. Carter had had an hour to come up with an interesting, unknown piece of information. He conceded his story was not unknown but rather underreported. During the Camp David Accords of September 1978, then-President Carter sequestered the Israeli and Egyptian leaders at the Maryland retreat to broker a peace treaty. After three days, Mr. Carter separated President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin. The situation seemed to have no resolution, and so Mr. Sadat, clad in a leisure suit, called for a helicopter to take him back to Washington and from there back to Egypt. The American heard of this breakdown in negotiations, went into his cabin and changed from his casual clothes into a suit and tie, and knelt in prayer. Mr. Carter asked God for strength, he told the audience as his voice shook with emotion and tears streamed down many faces in the crowd. He got up, determined his efforts should not fail, and demanded Mr. Sadat remain: it would be a personal betrayal if he left, and American-Egyptian relations would fall under great stress. History records how this trying affair was resolved, with peace finally achieved between Israel and Egypt after many more days at Camp David. Mr. Carter is the only one of those three men not to have been gunned down or blown up, and his moving narration visibly affected the audience.

The pièce de résistance of the weekend was the Inaugural Anniversary Dinner on Saturday night at the Classic Center in downtown Athens. It was the most extravagant occasion I have attended, and it appeared the conception of the evening—recreating the bleak and icy blues and whites of winter in Washington, D.C. thirty years ago—obliged the facilitators of the gala to spare no expense. The bars were made wholly of ice slabs, and snow lightly tumbled from the ceiling as you entered the ballroom—even the urinals in the men’s restroom were filled with ice cubes. Portraits of the Carter family and friends adorned the corners of the reception hall, surrounded by placards with quotes regarding the blistering cold of that inauguration day.

On the walls were projected lights in the form of snowflakes, made bright by the long shadows of the dim, opulent scene. On tremendous monitors film footage was running quietly of the First Family and its guests at the various ceremonies in January 1977, grainy and warm in its hues and unmistakably like a home movie. On stage behind the podium stood a replica of the Arch, its dark form delineated by fluorescent lights. The settings of the round tables were resplendent with stemware and cutlery and sylvan candelabra that resembled bare branches in the dead of winter. We were served chilled shrimp cocktail on hexagonal sheets of ice complemented with a miniature white orchid. The main course consisted of bacon wrapped quail, filet of beef Danielle, haricot verts bundles, stuffed Roma tomatoes, rosemary herbed potatoes, and sweet potato and petite angel biscuits. This dazzling and delicious meal was crowned by a mango coconut mousse torte. While we sated ourselves, The University of Georgia Opera Ensemble performed songs in a set called American Medley Performance.

Former Vice-President Walter Mondale introduced his old boss in brief, cordial remarks, and Jimmy Carter took to the podium in a black-and-white checkered blazer amidst uproarious ovation. He delivered his speech comfortably and conversationally, although in an occasionally halting manner that seemed to preclude contractions and natural cadence. He touched on many subjects, some political, some personal, and he wended through funny and touching stories about trips to Japan and China, botched jokes and humanitarian successes, and his relationships with other presidents: superb with Ford and the first Bush, polite with Reagan, unfriendly with Clinton, and antagonistic with the current one, although he and Mrs. Carter were among the very few Democrats at President Bush’s 2000 inauguration. He spoke of the establishment of the Carter Center in 1982, his travels around the world, and the institution’s efforts at alleviating poverty and sickness. Jimmy Carter closed with a shining vision of what he thought the United States should strive to be: a beacon of peace, a protector of international law, a champion of human rights, and a defender of democracy. I was gladdened by his words, but they are only words, and, without the vision for achieving these noble ambitions, mentioning these lofty concepts becomes facile and mundane.

The weekend celebrating Jimmy Carter’s inauguration thirty years ago was filled with reminiscence and nostalgia and largely sheltered from the controversy over Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid or the larger debate, raging twenty-six years now, over the Carter legacy. There was plenty of discussion, but it appeared the panelists were more intent on rehabilitating the thirty-ninth president’s record than presenting opposing views. I didn’t really mind that, though. What was most valuable to me about this rare occasion were the stories that brought the audience and the speakers to tears, the pieces of information shared fondly by the Carters that gave you a hint of what four years in the White House was like for an unassuming peanut farmer and his wife.