American Experience (1988) s15e01 Episode Script

1
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JIMMY CARTER:
I promised you four years ago
that I would never lie to you,
so I can't stand here tonight
and say it doesn't hurt.
About an hour ago, I called
Governor Reagan in California
and I congratulated him
for a fine victory.
I look forward to working
closely with him
MAN:
All his life he believed that
if you worked hard enough at it,
understood the issues,
mastered information,
then you would come out first.
I said to him,
"It must have been hard
to turn over the keys
to Ronald Reagan,"
and he said, "You don't know
how hard it was."
NARRATOR:
On January 20, 1981, after one
of the most humiliating defeats
in American political history,
President Jimmy Carter returned
home to Plains, Georgia,
to what he called,
"An altogether new, unwanted
and potentially empty life."
ROSALYNN CARTER:
He really was better than I was
when we came home
because, um,
I was so depressed about it
that he was always trying
to prop me up.
( crowd cheering, applauding)
NARRATOR:
Four years before,
he had stunned the nation.
( cheering)
MAN:
Going from total anonymity
to being president
of the United States
in less than 12 months
is unprecedented
in American history.
If it weren't for the country
looking for something in '76,
uh, Carter could never
have gotten elected.
MAN:
He offered a biography
of what we wanted to hear
A farmer,
Main Street values, Plains
And he carried
that message through.
It was the right message
at the right time.
CARTER:
Our commitment to human rights
must be absolute.
NARRATOR:
He had promised a new beginning,
to heal the wounds
of Watergate and Vietnam
A government as good
and decent and compassionate
as the American people.
( crowd chanting)
But events would overwhelm him
An energy crisis, inflation,
an Islamic revolution, and 53
Americans held hostage 444 days.
Carter came to be regarded
as a good and decent man
who was in over his head.
WOMAN:
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.
What he had was a moral ideology
and the issues
where he proved successful
The Panama Canal treaties,
the human rights crusades,
peace in the Middle East
Those were issues where
his moral ideology guided him.
In a nation
that was proud of hard work
NARRATOR:
"Carter was one of
the more exasperating men ever
to claim the White House,"
one journalist said.
"His tenacity, so admirable,
could shift to stubbornness,
"his religious faith
to self-righteousness.
His brilliant mind could be
bound up by intricate details."
Many times 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 didn't want to think that way
and he didn't want his staff
to think that way.
He wanted to know what's right.
MAN:
This is one
of the most highly ambitious
people you'll ever meet.
I mean, you don't make it
from Plains, Georgia,
to the White House
just on charm.
But what makes him complex
is he's got that kind
of hubris and arrogance
and also
this Christian humbleness
and that's the battle he's
constantly finding himself in.
NARRATOR:
"As a child,
my greatest ambition
was to be valuable around the
farm and to please my father,"
Jimmy Carter wrote
of his boyhood in rural Georgia.
"He was the center of my life
and the focus of my admiration."
MAN:
I can't believe that
Jimmy Carter ever felt lost,
in the sense that he didn't know
where his place was
in the world.
And a lot of that comes
from his father,
who not only was a
well-respected, powerful figure
in the community, but I think
had a real sense of who he was.
And that certitude
and self-confidence
was something that his son,
I think, absorbed unconsciously.
NARRATOR:
By the standards
of southwest Georgia,
Earl Carter presided
over a small empire.
A staunch segregationist,
he owned some 350 acres of land
where he planted corn,
cotton and peanuts,
employing more than 200 workers
at harvest time.
Five sharecropper families,
who depended on him
for their survival,
lived year-round
at his farm in Archery.
WOMAN:
Earl was the boss in Archery.
The workers were all black,
the maids who did the cooking
and took care of Jimmy
were black
and at the top of the system
was Earl Carter.
NARRATOR:
From a position of privilege,
Earl's children
Jimmy, Gloria and Ruth
Became acquainted with the ways
of the Jim Crow South.
"More than anyone else in my
family even my own father
"I understood the plight
of the black families
because I lived so much
among them," Carter later wrote.
He often ate and slept in
the homes of his black neighbors
and played with their children.
MAN:
The interesting thing
about the South
is that we played together,
black and white,
when we were seven,
eight, nine, ten,
but then when you got
to be a teenager,
all of a sudden, uh,
segregation set in.
NARRATOR:
"One day, my friends
and I approached a gate,"
Carter would later recall.
"To my surprise,
they stepped back
to let me go through first."
( gate creaking)
"It was a small act,
but a deeply symbolic one.
Things were never the same
between them and me."
MEN:
I got a road ♪
You got a road ♪
All of God's children
got a road. ♪
NARRATOR:
"A strong memory in my mind
is coming home
and my mother not being there,"
he wrote.
DAN CARTER:
There's a very deep tradition
in southern society
of the caretaker mother figure
who is responsible not only
for her family
but outside of it, as well.
Well, those
those people exist
in almost every southern,
rural community,
but Miss Lillian took it
a step further than that.
NARRATOR:
Carter's mother, Lillian, was
an avid reader, loved traveling
and was known to enjoy
a sip of bourbon.
She put in long hours
as a nurse at a nearby hospital,
and devoted much of her free
time to helping sick neighbors,
regardless of race.
She got paid in chickens
and vegetables
and that kind of things
because she really helped
and felt called to help those
that had less than her,
and I think she instilled that
in all of her children.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
She was the only person
in Plains
who would take up
for Abraham Lincoln
if he was ever brought up.
Today it's unbelievable
to think about that,
but back then it
was just a way of life,
and we never thought anything
we never thought it
was really wrong.
NARRATOR:
Lillian set for Jimmy the
example of service to others.
Earl put the steel
in his character.
GLAD:
He was very demanding.
He expected his, uh, children
to be the very best,
and, um, and in some ways they
all had that built into them.
NARRATOR:
"I never remember him
saying 'good job'
when I did my best to fulfill
his orders," Jimmy later said.
"The punishments he administered
remain vivid in my memory."
A short distance
from the Carter farm
was Plains, Georgia
Population 600
The only place for miles
to get a cup of coffee,
a haircut, buy or sell goods.
It is the place Jimmy Carter
always called home,
where as a child he went
to the all-white Baptist church
on Sundays
and where he attended
the all-white public school.
DAN CARTER:
Everybody knew
that he was special.
He was somebody different,
smarter than,
worked harder than,
did more than,
ceaselessly working at improving
himself, even as a child.
NARRATOR:
Jimmy made all "A" s.
He played basketball and joined
the book lover's club,
read Shakespeare's King Lear,
Ben-Hur,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
He dreamed of joining the navy.
His uncle Tom Gordy
had excited his imagination
with tales of adventures,
and postcards and gifts
from exotic, faraway places.
Earl encouraged Jimmy
to pursue his dream.
GLAD:
It was a way
that many young southern men
got the polish,
got the education
that would make them a part
of either the local elite
or the national elite.
NARRATOR:
Jimmy reviewed
the strict requirements
of the U.S. Naval Academy
at Annapolis
and worried
he wasn't good enough.
He thought his feet were flat
and rolled them over
Coke bottles
to strengthen the arches.
He thought he was too thin,
and went on a banana diet.
He even went to a local college
for two years
to study the required courses.
"He just wouldn't quit,"
Jimmy's uncle Alton
would later say.
"That boy just wouldn't give up
on anything."
In June 1943, at age 18,
the farm boy from Plains
was admitted to the U.S.
Naval Academy at Annapolis
The first Carter ever
to leave Georgia
to pursue a higher education.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
Jimmy's sister Ruth
was my best friend
and she had a picture of him
on the wall in her bedroom.
I just thought he was
the most handsome young man
I had ever seen.
One day I confessed to her
that I wished she would let me
take that photograph home,
because I just thought
I had fallen in love
with Jimmy Carter.
NARRATOR:
Rosalynn Smith was shy,
a dedicated student,
read the Bible daily
and went to church on Sundays.
Her mother once described her
as a girl who could wear
a white dress all day
and keep it clean.
MAN:
She was very bright.
She was a reader.
She liked to look at maps.
She was always interested
in seeing the world
and, uh, she always wanted
to get away.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
I went to a meeting
at the church
and I was standing outside
and Jimmy drove up with Ruth
and her boyfriend,
got out of the car and came up
and asked me to go to the movie.
He kissed me good-bye.
I was thrilled to death, and
then we started corresponding
and, uh, by the time Christmas
came, I was swept off my feet.
NARRATOR:
One month after his graduation
from Annapolis,
Jimmy and Rosalynn were married.
She was 18, he was 21.
The Carters began married life
in Norfolk, Virginia,
where the navy lieutenant
first reported for duty.
The children arrived
in quick succession
Jack one year after
their wedding,
James Earl, or Chip, less
than three years later in Hawaii
and a third, Jeff, born
in New London, Connecticut.
With her husband away at sea,
Rosalynn found herself alone
and in charge of all the affairs
of the Carter household.
"I felt inadequate and
very lonely," she later said.
"Sometimes I cried,
though I didn't let Jimmy know.
"He has no patience with tears,
"thinking instead that one makes
the best of whatever situation,
and with a smile."
ROSALYNN CARTER:
I learned to be
very independent.
I could take care of myself and
the baby and and do things
that I never dreamed
I would be able to do alone.
NARRATOR:
Two years
after joining the navy,
Ensign Carter was accepted
into the submarine service.
It was a way to advance rapidly
in a highly competitive
environment.
MAN:
The military was everything
for Jimmy Carter.
It's his training.
He's never a minute late
for anything.
Punctuality means everything.
His sense of order
There's no sense of a mess
around Jimmy Carter.
It's a certain kind of person
that works in a submarine.
It takes a kind
of mental discipline.
NARRATOR:
While the rest of the officers
lingered after dinner
or settled in for a long game
of bridge or poker,
his shipmates remembered
Carter would read a book,
solve a sonar problem
Always something constructive.
"I mastered the assignments
that I had,"
Carter would say
of his naval career.
"Got the best fitness reports
and I never put in for anything
that I did not get."
ANNOUNCER ( on tape):
She's coming up out
of the deep the Seawolf.
NARRATOR:
After six years in the service,
Lieutenant Carter earned one
of the most coveted posts
in the navy senior officer
of the USS Seawolf,
on the vanguard of America's
nuclear defense program.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
He always had one of
the best positions in the navy,
and I think it gave him
a lot of confidence
that he could do
whatever he wanted to do.
NARRATOR:
In 1953, less than a year after
he began duty on the Seawolf,
Carter received a message
from home.
His father had cancer and
was not expected to live long.
Ten years had passed
since Carter left Plains
for a career in the navy.
Visits home had been rare.
Father and son
had grown distant.
As he sat by Earl's bedside,
Jimmy discovered a side of his
father he'd never seen before.
"Our long conversations
were interrupted
by a stream of visitors, black
and white," Carter later wrote.
"A surprising number wanted
to recount
"how my father's
personal influence
"and many secret acts
of generosity
had affected their lives."
GLAD:
He saw that he had really built
a community around himself.
A lot of people liked him
and, uh, came to see him
when he was sick
and when he died,
came to his funeral.
And what Jimmy realized,
he didn't have a community
for himself.
He's actually said to me,
"You know," he said,
"I wondered at that time,
if I died,
"how many people would come
to my funeral
or how many people would care
if I died."
And I think it made him,
at a fairly fundamental level,
examine what life is all about.
NARRATOR:
Duty also weighed on Carter.
Miss Lillian had no interest
in the business
and Ruth and Gloria had married.
His brother, Billy, just 16,
was mad as hell
when told his older brother
would be stepping in.
BRINKLEY:
He was a shining star
in the U.S. Navy
who could have gone
very, very far.
He dropped all that
to emulate his father, to take
over his father's business.
I don't think there's any
higher tribute a son could make
to his father than to say,
"Now that you're dead, Daddy,
I want to stand in your shoes."
NARRATOR:
When Jimmy told Rosalynn,
she was furious.
"She almost quit me,"
he later said.
CHIP CARTER:
Mom was kind of disappointed
to be going back to Plains,
and she had worked a good bit
of her life to get out of there
and, uh, they were going back
to take over a a business
that wasn't doing very well.
BRINKLEY:
Rosalynn had finally got out
of that flyspeck village,
and had gotten to see the
bright lights and big cities.
Imagine being based in Hawaii,
where you get a Pacific breeze
and palm trees
and the smell of the Orient
in the air,
and now you're back
in the suffocating,
mosquito-plagued humidity
of Plains, Georgia.
She pleaded with him not to go.
BOURNE:
She had seen
a very nice life ahead of them,
and then he wanted
to give that all up, and go back
and become a peanut farmer
and she was just really angry.
And she literally
did not talk to him
the whole way back to Plains.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
I pouted for about year.
Not really, but I was just
the total mother and wife.
It was tough for a while.
CHIP CARTER:
We loved it.
Plains is a place where at six
or seven, eight years old,
you can go off by yourself.
We spent every afternoon
after school in the woods
playing hide-and-seek
and building forts
and fishing and hiking
and that kind of thing.
It was just a great way
to grow up.
( crowd angrily yelling)
NARRATOR:
Only a year after their return
home, the Carters were thrust
into the turmoil sweeping
across the South.
In 1954,
the Supreme Court outlawed
segregation in public schools.
White Southerners, organized
into white citizens' councils,
vowed to resist.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
Jimmy was approached
by one of the prominent
businessmen asking him
to join
the White Citizens' Council
and he told him that it only
cost five dollars to join
and that he would be glad
to pay his dues.
I think Jimmy told him he could
flush his money down the john.
But anyway, Jimmy refused to do
that and we lost some customers.
DAN CARTER:
I won't say it was
a profile in full courage,
but it was not an act
of discretion.
You had to carefully think
about it
and it required,
at the very least,
a kind of independence
of thought
and in some respects
a kind of, uh, courage
to say "No. This I won't do."
NARRATOR:
Carter applied
all his energies to peanuts.
"He was always experimenting,"
Rosalynn later wrote.
"Trying new things, dreaming up
something else he wanted to do."
As the business expanded,
he turned to Rosalynn for help.
CHIP CARTER:
Mom is not really the type
to join the stitch-and-chat
and to sit around
and be content with that.
Part of their uniqueness
is that they're partners
in everything
and I think a lot of that
started back then,
to make her a part
of what was happening
so that she would really
have something to be proud of.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
He asked me to come
and keep the office.
And I had a friend who taught
an accounting course
in a vocational-technical
school,
and she gave me a set
of accounting books.
I began to study accounting.
I began to keep the books,
and it was not too long
before I knew
actually as much or more
about the the business, uh,
on paper, uh, than he did.
CHIP CARTER:
I started working there
when I was nine.
We worked in the warehouse
during peanut season.
Peanut season
was a very heavy time.
Sometimes we worked
50 hours straight.
I think that he worked hard.
Um, he tried to instill it
in his children.
He obeyed his father,
jumped when he spoke.
We did the same thing.
( motor whirring)
NARRATOR:
"I had to admit I was enjoying
life," Rosalynn later said.
The Carters went fishing,
played golf,
took frequent vacations.
( no audio)
Jimmy served on the Sumter
County Board of Education,
taught Sunday School
at the Plains Baptist Church,
was scoutmaster, vice president
of the Lions Club.
"But he had come to the point of
boredom," Rosalynn remembered.
"And one weekday morning
in 1962, he got up
and put on his Sunday pants."
ROSALYNN CARTER:
I was really shocked.
I had no idea he was thinking
about running
for the state senate.
NARRATOR:
The campaign that launched
Jimmy Carter's political career
lasted all of 15 days.
There was no money
and no staff
Only family and friends
and his own determination.
Though he would always play
the reluctant politician,
even by his first campaign,
Carter was no stranger
to politics.
DAN CARTER:
Politics was something
he lived and breathed
from the time he was a child
A kind of weekly, daily,
even during election season
interaction, barbecues.
You gathered on the county
courthouse grounds for speeches.
He talks about going
to rallies with his father
and remembering them very well.
And I think he came
to see politics
as something not alien,
not something he had
to make a decision to do,
but was almost natural.
NARRATOR:
"I received
a startling education," he said,
"One that set the tone
for my future career."
Quitman County, historically,
had been run
by a man named Joe Hurst
and Joe was not atypical
for many, many small counties in
the state the poorer counties.
You had one person
who was a political power,
who just in effect
kind of ran the county.
NARRATOR:
Hurst was used
to getting what he wanted,
and in 1962, he wanted
another democrat,
Homer Moore,
to be elected senator.
FORTSON:
The ballot box was a liquor box,
that had been taken
and, uh, a hole cut
in the top of it
so that you put your ballot
over in there after you,
and was set up on the counter,
and you had to come up
and and mark your ballot
right next to it
with Joe and a bunch
of his crowd watching, you know,
while you're doing it.
NARRATOR:
Fraud was rampant.
Voters were threatened,
ballots destroyed.
Joe Hurst even stuffed ballots
of dead voters
into the Old Crow box.
That evening when the votes were
counted, Jimmy Carter had lost.
He decided
to contest the election.
DAN CARTER:
By all accounts, even allowing
for a certain hyperbole
in the memory of Mr. Carter,
this required an extraordinary
kind of doggedness
in just keeping at it and
keeping at it and not giving up.
NARRATOR:
Carter appealed to newspapers,
filed for injunctions,
took affidavits from voters.
Miss Lillian kept saying, "Jimmy
is so naive so naive."
There were threats
against the Carters.
Jimmy was followed.
A stranger came by the Carter
warehouse and warned Rosalynn
that the last time anyone
had crossed Joe Hurst,
their business had burned down.
"I was constantly scared,"
she later said.
"Jimmy was frightened, too."
Two weeks later, a local judge
agreed to hear Carter's case.
FORTSON:
When it came time
to open that box and recount it,
right there, rolled up into
a ball, were all these ballots,
and Judge Crow
was a a funny fellow.
He chewed tobacco,
and he had just cut off
a little piece of tobacco
and put it in his mouth, and he
was kind of putting it around,
and I was I saw that
and I saw him cut his eyes,
stop chewing,
and then go back to chewing
and sit back,
and right then is when I knew
we had that thing won.
NARRATOR:
On January 14, 1963,
the morning after
the traditional whiskey
and barbecued wild hog dinner,
Jimmy Carter was sworn in as
a member of the Georgia Senate.
He was one of 89 new legislators
joining the Georgia Assembly,
many of them determined
to change the old ways
of Georgia politics.
MAN:
I had the good fortune of being
the first black to be elected
to the General Assembly
of Georgia in 100 years.
Carter was one of those persons
who came to the Senate
at that time,
and he was not
a leader of the Senate.
He was quiet.
He was effective.
He was deliberate
and he made no waves.
NARRATOR:
Carter opposed special interests
and sweetheart deals.
He worked hard
and read every bill,
staying away from
drinking sprees and poker games.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
In the last session of the state
senate in his last year there,
I was standing in the back
of the senate chamber with him
and the lieutenant governor
was going on and on and on,
and it was bedlam,
like the last day.
And Jimmy said, "If I were
lieutenant governor,
this wouldn't be happening."
And I thought, "Uh-oh,
he's really enjoying this."
NARRATOR:
In 1966, after two terms
in the Georgia Senate,
Jimmy Carter jumped into the
race for governor of Georgia.
He ran well behind arch-
segregationist Lester Maddox,
famous for wielding an ax handle
to keep blacks away
from his chicken restaurant.
Carter left
his younger brother, Billy,
in charge of the business,
while the rest of the family
went on the road.
CHIP CARTER:
I think I had $25 a week
for expenses to eat on,
and I had a gas credit card.
And we came
in every Saturday night
and told what we'd been doing.
It was a real education
for all of us
and we were doing it
as a family.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
I would come home
and ask him questions
that people asked me
while I was campaigning
and that I didn't know
the answers to.
And he would give me the answers
so I could go back out
and talk about issues.
He had confidence in me to do
the things that I needed to do.
NARRATOR:
Carter promised better schools,
better hospitals, better roads,
and a more competent government.
"It is hard to hear
"Senator Carter talk
about state government
and not be impressed by his
integrity," one reporter wrote.
DAN CARTER:
You're not going to turn
the applecart upside down,
but you're going
to bring changes,
you're going to bring
improvements in the South
and you're going to do it
by applying good, sound business
techniques to everything
From the way you run
your public institutions
to the way you run
your government.
NARRATOR:
Carter took his message
to every corner of Georgia.
"We never stopped," Rosalynn
recalled, "no matter what."
By election day,
he was closing in on the lead.
CHIP CARTER:
We went to bed thinking
we were going to win.
I'd gotten up and gone
to school the next day,
being congratulated about
my father winning the primary,
and then Billy came to the
about 2:00 in the afternoon
and told us that
Lester Maddox had beat us
by less than a half
of a percentage point.
So, it was very disheartening.
NARRATOR:
"We all felt sick,"
Rosalynn recalled.
"We were $66,000 in debt,
and Jimmy had lost 22 pounds."
After all the miles traveled,
the handshakes, the long days,
Jimmy Carter was
right back where he started
when he first ran
for the Senate in 1962.
Weeks later, with the loss
still fresh in his mind,
Jimmy went for a walk
with his sister Ruth,
an evangelical Christian
and a spiritual healer.
All of his life he had been
a churchgoing Christian,
but now felt that his faith
had been superficial.
"We are both Baptists," he said,
"but what is it that you have
that I haven't got?"
"Total commitment," she replied.
"I belong to Jesus
Everything I am."
"Ruth," he answered,
"that's what I want."
BRINKLEY:
At that point he decided
that he'd always put
Christ in his life first
and politics second.
But that's been
a struggle for him,
because politics is the ego,
and Christ is the humbleness.
NARRATOR:
The born-again Christian
traveled north
to blighted neighborhoods
in Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts
as a "personal witness"
for Jesus Christ.
BRINKLEY:
He would go door to door,
getting people
to witness Christ,
take Jesus into their lives.
I mean, can you imagine?
Ten years later this man is
president of the United States,
and he's banging on doors,
asking people,
"Do you want a bible?
Will you take God in your life?"
He wanted to understand theology
and so he began reading
a lot of theologians
and began to craft for himself
a political theology
that was compatible
with his own personality.
NARRATOR:
Carter found guidance
in the writings of theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr.
GODBOLD:
Niebuhr said,
"The sad duty of politics
is to bring justice
to a sinful world."
A Christian has to get
involved in politics.
He has to soil his hands
as a politician
or in an immoral society,
in order to improve it.
BRINKLEY:
Niebuhr taught him that there is
good and evil in the world,
and that politics is corrupt,
but it's honorable,
as long as you kept
your heart pure
and your sense of morality pure.
NARRATOR:
"I believe God wants me to be
the best politician I can be,"
he said.
I'm Jimmy Carter,
I'm running for governor.
How are you?
NARRATOR:
In 1970, with renewed fervor,
Carter ran for governor
of Georgia a second time.
I have been campaigning
almost 18 hours a day
without stopping
for eight months.
I've seen almost every
factory shift in Georgia,
been in almost every store
ROSALYNN CARTER:
It was just
kind of an obsession.
He had lost, so he had to win.
And we worked as hard
as we could.
Bye.
Hi, y'all.
NARRATOR:
It would not be
the amateur run of 1966,
but a well-coordinated effort.
Carter brought in two
Southwest Georgia boys:
Jody Powell
as his personal assistant,
and Hamilton Jordan
to manage the campaign.
Advertising man Gerald Rafshoon
would handle the media.
Bert Lance,
a banker from Calhoun,
played the role of advisor.
MAN:
though it was
a tough, tough campaign
and there were many
who thought that Carter
could not possibly win.
NARRATOR:
Carter's rival
for the Democratic nomination
Carl Sanders enjoyed
a commanding 20% lead.
He had the backing of the
Atlanta business establishment,
and the support
of African Americans,
voting in greater numbers since
the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Carter went after Sanders
with a vengeance.
TELEVISION ANNOUNCER:
Some candidates in this
governor's race have
large campaign contributions
behind them.
Big money asking big favors.
Jimmy Carter only has
the people of Georgia
NARRATOR:
Carter portrayed Sanders
as a tool of the Atlanta
business establishment
and himself
as a hard-working Everyman.
ANNOUNCER:
No wonder Jimmy Carter has
a special understanding
of the problems facing everyone
who works for a living.
Isn't it time
somebody spoke up for you?
GODBOLD:
He wanted to appeal
to the large middle-class,
blue-collar type,
predominantly white,
and most of these people are
going to be segregationists.
GLAD:
He courted the racist vote.
There were some radio ads
that he ran in 1970.
He said that "Unlike Sanders,
I am not trying to get the"
and he sort of slid over
whether it was "block"
or "black" vote.
But it sort of meant
the same thing.
GODBOLD:
Carter himself was not
a segregationist in 1970.
But he did say things that the
segregationists wanted to hear.
He was opposed to busing.
He was in favor
of private schools.
He said that he would invite
segregationist
Governor George Wallace
to come to Georgia
to give a speech.
JOHNSON:
The only solace
that we got and received was the
fact that, in private meetings,
he convinced us that
if he was given an opportunity,
he would make things better.
He'd always come up
with this question of trust.
"Trust me.
I believe in doing
the right thing."
GLAD:
If you are really trying
to accomplish good moral ends,
you may have to be a low-life
politician to get there.
And he didn't probably like
doing it that much,
but he was willing to do it.
( rifle fires, crowd applauds)
( rifle fires)
CARTER:
At the end of a long campaign,
I believe I know our people
NARRATOR:
On January 12, 1971,
Jimmy Carter, age 46, was
sworn in as Governor of Georgia.
North and South,
rural and urban
NARRATOR:
In his inaugural address,
he revealed
his true feelings on race.
I say to you quite frankly,
that the time for racial
discrimination is over.
( light applause)
No poor, rural, weak or black
person should ever have to bear
the additional burden of being
deprived of the opportunity
of an education, a job
or simple justice.
( moderate applause;
light whistling)
JOHNSON:
We were extremely pleased.
Many of the white
segregationists were displeased.
And I'm convinced that those
people that supported him
would not have supported him
if they had thought that he
would have made that statement.
DAN CARTER:
I do remember reading
his inaugural address
and thinking,
"This is wonderful."
We've got a governor
in a Deep South state
who is stating emphatically
not just that it's time
to accept change,
but that it's time
to really move far beyond that
and end all forms
of discrimination.
I suddenly saw him
as part of this new generation
of Southern politicians
who were moving beyond
the divisions of racial politics
in the 1950s and 1960s.
NARRATOR:
The Carters moved into the
brand-new governor's mansion,
on 18 acres
in Atlanta's poshest district.
CARTER:
This is the first time our
family has really been together
for the last four years.
Our oldest boy has just gotten
back from the Navy
and I've been campaigning
for four years,
so we're looking forward
to living as a family again.
MAN:
Mrs. Carter,
have you had any
special problems?
No, not really.
We packed the clothes
in the car last night.
And really, the only furniture
we had to bring was one sofa,
which is just a favorite, old
sofa that my children love.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
Going from Plains, Georgia,
to the governor's mansion
was much harder for me
than going from the governor's
mansion to the White House.
I had never, ever been
in the governor's mansion.
Um, when Jimmy was
in the state senate,
I didn't come to Atlanta,
because I was working at home.
I was not part of the Atlanta
political community.
It was a really difficult
experience.
CHIP CARTER:
She had to learn her own voice,
how to project, how to make a
speech, how to win people over,
how to deal with legislators
on her issues.
She had to learn
how to do all that.
NARRATOR:
The people of Georgia came
to meet the new first family,
and fell in love with Amy,
the Carters'
three-year-old daughter.
GODBOLD:
The public identifies
with a small child,
and Carter understood that, and
they kept Amy in the limelight.
It made him human.
He could be
a successful politician,
a successful governor
and a successful father
all at the same time.
NARRATOR:
Carter appointed
an unprecedented number of women
and African Americans,
stimulated foreign investment,
reformed the state's
criminal justice
and mental health systems.
I see unfair taxes
and government waste
and I see runaway spending
NARRATOR:
The centerpiece of his agenda
was a radical plan
to streamline state government
with savings at every level.
LANCE:
Everybody had to pay
for their own lunch.
You know, we had to put
two dollars into the kitty.
Mary Beasley, who was
his secretary at the time,
would ask you want you wanted,
so you felt honored to be able
to go ahead and spend money
for a dried-out sandwich.
NARRATOR:
The governor's proposal
to slash
the number of government
agencies provoked outrage.
CARTER:
I welcome
the confrontation
with heads of departments.
You know, I'm willing
to fight with anybody
who opposes a recommendation
that would be helpful to
JOHNSON:
I saw a completely
different side of Carter.
In the Senate,
he was not assertive.
As governor, he was assertive.
He knew where he wanted to go,
and he knew the direction
he wanted to go in.
And he wanted
complete compliance.
He's fighting
for total submission
and total control
of the legislators,
and he's willing to use
100 million or 200 million
or whatever it is
FORTSON:
Jimmy's character is such
that he wants
to get things done.
He wants them done.
And he has a tendency, I think,
to run roughshod over anything
that stands in his way.
We need to remember who pays the
taxes and who pays our salaries.
DAN CARTER:
He had a tendency to take
his case to the people
and then try to force
the legislature to follow him.
CARTER:
Or the welfare recipient
DAN CARTER:
He never, as governor, broke
what I think was
an unfortunate habit
of seeing personal politics,
as a kind of
That is,
with other politicians
As a kind of nuisance,
something that had to be done
because you had to talk
to these people.
He never developed
the interest in
Or really particularly
good skills
At working with individuals
who may have disagreed with him.
CARTER:
where you pay more
than $312.50 a month.
NARRATOR:
By the time his reorganization
bill reached the Senate floor,
Carter had alienated
most of the assembly.
But his bill squeaked through
by a handful of votes.
FORTSON:
As I told the committee
up there,
he reminds me
of a South Georgia turtle
who's been blocked by a log.
And he just keeps pushing,
pushing, pushing straight ahead.
He doesn't go around here
until he finally gets
a soft spot in the log,
and right on through he goes.
He is a man of great
determination and steel.
NARRATOR:
Election season 1972, Jimmy
Carter extended his hospitality
to Democratic hopefuls.
Barely two years
in the governor's mansion,
he already had his eye
on the White House.
CHIP CARTER:
Every Democrat running
for office came to Georgia.
And every single one of them,
Dad would ask to come
and stay with him
at the governor's mansion,
and realize that they were
just people like him.
NARRATOR:
That July, Carter led
the Georgia delegation
to the Democratic
National Convention,
hoping for the second spot
on the ticket.
I'm over here in the box
and I really can't tell
what's going on so much.
But Jimmy comes over
from the floor
and briefs me
every once in a while.
As you said, it's the first time
I've ever been to a convention
and I'm just so excited
about it.
MAN:
I remember at the end
of the McGovern speech,
at 3:00 in the morning,
Hamilton Jordan and I
were walking away
from the convention hall.
I said, "You know
"if Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey,
Terry Sanford,
"Scoop Jackson, George Wallace,
"Ted Kennedy can run
for president,
Jimmy could run for president."
And then of course we said,
"If these guys who are running
these campaigns"
Like we met the people
in the McGovern campaign
"can run a campaign
for president,
hell, we could do that."
I called Ruth.
I said, "Jimmy's going
to run for p-p-"
I couldn't even say the word,
it was so unreal to me.
I'm one of about 15 or 20 people
in the country who
active in the Democratic party
who have been mentioned for
a place on the ticket next year.
NARRATOR:
Carter's timing was perfect.
For the next two years,
Americans would be gripped
by the Watergate scandal.
Disillusioned with politics,
they were ready for a change.
Until after
the November election.
RAFSHOON:
It was 1970
early '74.
I went over to see him
one night.
Rosalynn was out of town.
I went over to the governor's
mansion and I said,
Let's just talk about
what the themes would be.
And he took a yellow pad
and he wrote:
fairness, not from Washington,
not a lawyer,
Southerner, religious.
These things
that were coming from Carter
were the themes of the campaign.
Jimmy who?
Jimmy Carter?
I don't know who he is.
Carter is a basketball player,
isn't he?
( campaign music playing)
NARRATOR:
Carter officially announced
his candidacy in December 1974.
The one-term southern governor,
was a long shot.
Nobody knew him.
It was like picking a name
out of the phone book.
I mean, it takes a bit of hubris
to think you're the best person
to be the president of the
United States because you were
a one-term governor of Georgia.
MAN:
Once and for all,
why not the best? ♪
BRINKLEY:
It's a kind of arrogance
run amuck.
MAN:
You see his name was
Jimmy Carter ♪
CARTER:
I want to see us
once again have a nation
that's as good and honest
and decent and truthful
and competent
and compassionate
and as filled with love
as are the American people.
MAN:
At that time
character was
a monumental issue.
The country had been
through a horrible time
and Jimmy Carter represented
honesty and decency.
CARTER:
I'll never tell a lie.
I'll never make
a misleading statement.
I'll never betray the confidence
that any of you has in me.
BRINKLEY:
Lyndon Johnson lied to us
about Vietnam.
Richard Nixon lied to us
about Watergate.
He's saying, you know,
I'm not one of those turkeys
who's messing things up
up there.
( Allman Brothers'
"Ramblin' Man" playing)
Lord, I was born
a ramblin' man ♪
NARRATOR:
Carter's campaign strategy
was simple:
run early and run hard.
Before any other candidates
even announced,
Carter had traveled
more than 50,000 miles,
visited 37 states and delivered
more than 200 speeches.
BOURNE:
He was a wonderful speaker
before small groups.
He would get up
and talk, without notes,
with extraordinary passion.
Almost like a preacher, really
having the spirit with him.
NARRATOR:
It was a grassroots effort
financed on a shoestring.
CHIP CARTER:
We had all these stepping stones
we had to do.
We had to qualify
for federal matching funds
by a certain point.
And we accomplished
every one of them.
Every time you accomplished one,
it gave you more and more
confidence.
ROSALYNN CARTER:
We had our boys out,
we had Aunt Sissy out,
we had his mother
All going
in different directions.
CHIP CARTER:
At one point
in the presidential campaign
we had 11 family members
in 11 different states
at the same time.
( "Ramblin' Man" continues)
NARRATOR:
The first test came
in January 1976.
With no delegates at stake,
other candidates wrote off
the Iowa caucuses,
but Carter saw them
as a way to surface early
and gain the attention
of the press.
Iowa put Carter
on the political map,
and gave him momentum
heading into a field
of better-known Democrats
ALLMAN BROTHERS:
On my way to New Orleans
this mornin' ♪
NARRATOR:
Mo Udall, Birch Bayh,
Sargent Shriver
In the all-important
New Hampshire primary.
MAN:
We had almost a month
between the Iowa caucuses
and the New Hampshire primary,
which gave us time
to build on the win,
both in terms of recognition
and coverage
and in terms of raising
just enough money
to make it through New Hampshire
and have a bit left over.
NARRATOR:
Campaign volunteers from
Georgia the "Peanut Brigade"
Descended on the Granite State.
CHIP CARTER:
We were out every day,
knocking on doors.
We knocked on 60,000 doors
in New Hampshire.
That was probably almost
every Democratic household
that we could identify
in the whole state.
Hello. Are you
Mrs. Cobb?
Yes, yes.
I'm Dot Padgett
WOMAN:
You'd say, "Mrs. Smith?
My name is Betty Pope,
and I'm from Americus, Georgia.
And if Mrs. Smith was there
with her dog,
I would remember
that this beautiful lab
came to the door with her.
So I'd make a note and I'd talk
to her a little bit about Jimmy,
and often it was,
"Have you ever met him?"
And of course,
that's why we were there.
So we did get our name out.
And I think that we surprised
America when he won.
WALTER CRONKITE:
Jimmy Carter took
a long lead tonight
in the race for the Democratic
presidential nomination.
He won the New Hampshire
primary handily.
( applause)
I remember when we couldn't
find a microphone.
( crowd laughs and cheers)
NARRATOR:
The next crucial contest
was Florida.
The leading contender,
George Wallace,
the former governor of Alabama,
was an outspoken segregationist
who had become a liability
to the Democratic Party.
MAN:
We'd run a Northerner
that was right on civil rights,
and George Wallace would steal
a third of our vote
and we couldn't get elected.
Here came along a man
from the South,
with very good
civil rights credentials,
who just might be able
to handle George Wallace.
NARRATOR:
As a native son, Carter
could appeal to white voters.
He also had the support
of African-American leaders.
CHIP CARTER:
Martin Luther King, Sr.,
had endorsed us.
Andy Young was on our team.
Great civil rights leaders here
in Atlanta were behind us,
others that got to know us.
It was a real asset to us.
YOUNG:
All of the liberals
that I had worked with
got nervous in a room
full of black people.
And Jimmy Carter didn't.
He was very comfortable,
very relaxed.
When I talked with him
I realized that he read more,
he was more disciplined,
more organized,
his personal life was
more meaningful,
his religion was really way down
deep in the marrow of his bones.
And and I said, you know,
"That's the kind of guy
that ought to be running
this country."
NARRATOR:
Most candidates stayed away
from Florida confident
the little-known Georgian
could be dealt with later.
DAN CARTER:
There really was
an underestimation of Carter
from the beginning
in that '76 campaign.
And he took advantage
of that repeatedly.
Carter in no way played
the Southern rube,
but there was a little bit of
this sneaking up on everybody.
By decisively defeating George
Wallace, he not only succeeded
in doing what the liberals
wanted him to do,
but transforming himself
into a really powerful,
major candidate.
GLAD:
What the liberals
had not realized
is that by the time of Florida,
Jimmy Carter
would have won Iowa,
would have won New Hampshire,
and would have this huge retinue
of press following him around
and he was the man to beat.
NARRATOR:
Carter's stamina
seemed superhuman.
"Behind that Huckleberry Finn
grin," one reporter observed,
"there is a perfectionist
campaign machine
that shuts down
only six hours out of 24."
State by state,
the delegates kept adding up.
By the time the Democrats
convened in New York,
in July 1976, Carter had
a lock on the nomination.
( band plays
"We Shall Overcome")
MONDALE:
The fact that Carter could unite
the nation, North and South,
and give us a clean shot
for the presidency
This was the culmination
of my dreams.
My name is Jimmy Carter
and I'm running for president.
( applause and cheering)
And now I've come here
to accept your nomination.
( thunderous applause)
GLAD:
He'd pulled off a miracle.
In the fall of 1975, he was
barely visible as a candidate,
below five percent
in all the polls.
And suddenly, six months later,
he has the Democratic
presidential nomination,
and he is running 70%
in the public opinion polls.
That is a miracle.
Now, the problem was
that he had his vulnerabilities,
and they showed in the fall.
Okay, gang, let's go around.
NARRATOR:
In the summer of 1976,
with a huge lead in the polls,
the Democratic candidate
could relax.
( people cheer)
The press descended on Plains,
eager to learn
about the peanut farmer
who might become president,
and the remote Southern town
he called home.
GLAD:
It was thought out
and carefully planned
by the campaign committee.
As Jody Powell said,
our campaign was not
really about issues.
It was about blue skies,
where everybody knew each other,
and no pollution.
That was it all the way.
And so going into Plains
you see blue skies,
you see everybody in town
seemed to love Jimmy.
Everybody was enthusiastic
about him.
So it was perfect.
POWELL:
This was who he was.
This is where he came from.
The people in that town
clearly saw him as one of them.
That was a tremendous asset.
POPE:
When you're campaigning,
every little picture
in the paper,
every little something,
is free publicity.
So we were trying
to impress the people
and trying to let them know
what the real Plains was like.
We went and took this empty
depot and steam-cleaned it
and we brought furniture
from our homes
and pictures off the walls.
Everybody just cooperated
and wanted to help.
NARRATOR:
Back home, surrounded
by family and friends,
Carter would display
his best qualities.
GLAD:
You would go to the church on
Sunday, and there would be Jimmy
and he'd have the lesson
for the day
and he'd outline something.
One time, he came out
and he had underlined
"The Baptists believe in the
separation of church and state."
So he was safe on church issues.
You might go out
to the pond house
and hear Jimmy Carter come out
and say what he just heard
from a group of experts,
and like an "A" student
in a seminar,
tell you what everybody said
with great clarity.
REPORTER:
Following that up,
are you saying that
GLAD:
And if you asked him
a tough question,
he got those cold blue eyes,
and reporters would just
shudder with delight:
that look!
And so you
what you could see,
he'd be a tough son of a bitch.
So not only was he moral,
and did he have all these people
love him, but he would be tough.
NARRATOR:
Carter's eccentric family
provided color.
Sister Gloria rode
a Harley Davidson
and was a born-again Christian.
Sister Ruth was
a Charismatic Christian
and popular faith healer.
And holding forth at his filling
station across from the depot
was Billy,
Carter's hard-drinking brother.
BILLY CARTER:
My big advantage?
Sam Donaldson was against me.
POPE:
Brother Billy he was a sport.
He was a very good businessman,
and he was extremely colorful.
And he was much brighter,
much more learned and well read
than most people think.
He read a book every day
and had over 20,000
in his library
stashed up in his attic
when he died.
WOMAN:
Smile, Billy.
CHIP CARTER:
Billy ended up with a reputation
and then he tried
to live up to it.
MAN:
All right.
( camera clicks and whirrs)
NARRATOR:
Of all the Carters, it was
the irrepressible Miss Lillian
who best reflected on Jimmy.
Since her husband's death,
she had lived life
on her own terms.
Always committed
to helping the poor,
she had joined the Peace Corps
and spent two years in India.
BRINKLEY:
There's that wonderful story
of Miss Lillian
when one reporter woman from
New York came down to Plains
and Miss Lillian greeted her
and said, you know,
"Welcome to Plains."
You know,
"It's so nice to see you.
"Would you like some lemonade?
"How was your journey?
Your dress is beautiful."
You know, pouring
on the Southern hospitality.
And the reporter jumped right
in on Miss Lillian and said,
"Now, Miss Lillian, your son
is running for president
"saying he'll never tell a lie.
As a mother, are you telling me
he's never told a lie?"
She goes, "Oh, well, Jimmy tells
white lies all the time."
And the reporter said, "Well,
tell me, what do you mean?
What is a white lie?"
And Miss Lillian said,
"Remember when I said,
"'Welcome to Plains, ' and
'How good it is to see you'?
That's a white lie."
Well, now, it's sometimes said
that parents are
never really satisfied
with what their
children accomplish
I won't be satisfied until
he gets in the White House.
You think he will?
I know he will.
And then what are
you going to do?
I'm going to stay
at the pond house and fish.
( train whistle blowing)
CARTER:
This election means
a lot to our country.
NARRATOR:
Carter began the fall campaign
against incumbent
President Gerald Ford
with a 15-point lead.
CARTER:
We've been disappointed,
disillusioned.
We've been kept
out of government.
We've been embarrassed.
Sometimes we've been ashamed
NARRATOR:
He returned to the themes
of honesty and trust
that had defined
his primary campaign.
Jimmy Carter will say
anything, anywhere,
to be president
of the United States.
NARRATOR:
But as election day approached,
he was pressured
to take a stand on the issues.
He wanders, he wavers,
he waffles and he wiggles.
He isn't the man
LANCE:
He was a moderate
to the moderates.
He was a conservative
to the conservatives.
He was a liberal
to the liberals.
And in fact he was
all of those things.
We're going to have
a fair government once again.
We're going a government that's
open and not secret, once again.
MAN:
His standard line when asked
about his foreign policy
was that he wanted
to provide a foreign policy
as good as the American people.
Well, gee, that's great
but what in the world
does it mean?
You can depend on it.
You help me, I'll help you.
Thank you very much.
GLAD:
The gist of what
he presented was
that he would be
a centrist Democrat
who had liberal values
in his heart,
as well as the desire
for frugality and thrift
and efficiency in government.
And so he could appeal to people
from all parts
of the Democratic party.
But as Julian Bond said
at one point,
"The problem with this is
that his support was
an inch deep and a mile wide."
NARRATOR:
Alarmed that support among
liberal Democrats was eroding,
Carter's young staff made
a bold move.
MAN:
We did the Playboy interview
to show that being
a born-again Christian
was not a threat to more secular
Democrats and young people.
NARRATOR:
For five hours, Carter
tried to explain his views
on culture, politics and faith.
Toward the end of the interview,
exasperated
at not being understood,
he said, "I've looked
on a lot of women with lust.
I've committed adultery
in my heart many times."
MAN ( continues):
If you read the interview,
the "lust in your heart" line
was to try to explain
that he, too, was a sinner,
that
But the language was
And I would see this
all the time
Carter used language that was
germane to his world, to his
like we all do
To our own cultural context.
Here's a guy who is so moral,
but on the one hand
he talks about
he's lusted after women
in his heart,
and he talks about shacking up
and he uses language
that's going to really enrage
and turn off a lot of people.
BRINKLEY:
Do not underestimate
what a crisis that interview
and the "lust in my heart"
caused Carter.
It almost derailed
the entire Carter campaign.
They were in havoc over it.
CADDELL:
In retrospect,
it was kind of amusing.
It wasn't very funny
at the time,
trying to explain to people
that Jimmy Carter was not
some child molester,
you know, I mean, or pervert.
The Playboy thing has been
of very great concern to me.
I don't know how
to deal with it exactly.
NARRATOR:
By the time Jimmy Carter
and Gerald Ford met
in the first of two
presidential debates,
Carter's lead had evaporated.
The momentum belonged to Ford.
Two weeks later, he blundered.
FORD:
There is no Soviet domination
of Eastern Europe
and there never will be
under a Ford administration.
Uh, I'm sorry,
could I just follow
Did I understand
you to say, sir,
that the Russians are
not using Eastern Europe
as their own sphere
of influence
MONDALE:
We knew that this
was going to hurt,
that a lot of people
couldn't see
how a president would say that.
It gave us about a week, as I
recall, to pound away on this.
And you could just feel people
moving on that question.
So what it did, I think,
was rather than electing us,
it stopped our slide.
( applause and cheering)
NARRATOR:
By election day,
the polls showed a dead heat.
It was not until 3:00 a.m.
that the networks announced
the winner
By one of the closest margins
in American history.
( cheering)
CADDELL:
I look back now,
and I just I'm amazed.
Going from total anonymity
to being president of the United
States, in less than 12 months,
is unprecedented
in American history.
If it weren't for the country
looking for something in '76,
Carter could never
have gotten elected.
He'd never have been allowed
out of the box.
He offered a biography
of what we wanted to hear:
farmer, Main Street values,
Plains.
It was the right message
at the right time
and it didn't happen
by accident.
Carter created that message,
knowing that
that's what would win the day.
I came all the way through.
Took 22 months,
and I didn't get
choked up until I
( crowd chuckles)
( crowd applauds)
( crowd cheers and whistles)
CRONKITE:
This was not planned,
it was not scheduled
and whether this is Carter's
surprise for his inaugural,
by golly, Bob, how about that?
NARRATOR:
The morning of January 20, 1977,
Jimmy Carter surprised
the nation.
CHIP CARTER:
I remember I was
out there walking
and you could hear Walter
Cronkite over the loudspeaker
saying, "The president
is walking down the street!"
It was a major moment of the
Carter presidency symbolically.
It was great theater.
DAN CARTER:
Here was this tremendous breath
of fresh air.
He was going to bring
something new to Washington,
bring new people and new ideas.
CARTER:
Our commitment to human rights
must be absolute,
our laws fair
It was so different
from what had come before.
People were looking
for something that was simple,
something that was pure,
and it just struck a chord
in the American people.
CARTER:
More is not necessarily better.
MAN:
Jimmy Carter was exactly
what the American people
always say they want:
above politics,
determined to do the right thing
regardless of political
consequences,
a simple person who doesn't lie,
a modest man, not somebody with
a lot of imperial pretenses.
That's what people say they want
and that's what they got
with Jimmy Carter.
NARRATOR:
The Carter team arrived in
Washington full of confidence,
ready to take on the Washington
insiders they had run against.
CADDELL:
I felt like the advance wave
of the German army
arriving in Paris in 1940.
I mean, this is
a democratic city,
and they were terrified
I mean, terrified.
You could feel it in the air.
They did not have
a lot in common
with the national
political party.
They did not have a lot
in common with the Congress.
They were a very close-knit
band of brothers
and they were intensely loyal
to Jimmy Carter.
And they were
pretty cocky guys as well.
There was clearly
some degree of suspicion
and maybe even a little bit
of resentment that
"Here come these folks
riding in here
"that didn't really pay
their dues.
"They're not us.
"They're not our kind of folks
and all of a sudden
they're in the White House,"
and "We'll show them
that this town is tougher
than they think."
WOMAN:
His top people had
no experience in Washington.
And they were sort of
contemptuous of Washington.
Well, it's one thing to sort
of run against Washington,
but you have to live there
and you have to govern there
and you have to work
with the people who are there,
and it really doesn't
get you anywhere
to have this attitude if you
want to get anything done.
You get things done by power.
You get power
from having public support.
My argument was that
in order to maintain power
we would have
to reinforce constantly
the message
of what we were doing.
Good evening.
Tomorrow will be two weeks
since I became president
NARRATOR:
On February 2,
Carter addressed the nation
in a fireside chat on energy.
The country had been
through an oil scare in 1973.
To head off a new crisis, Carter
appealed directly to Americans
to rally around a new program.
All of us must learn
to waste less energy.
Simply by keeping
our thermostats, for instance,
at 65 degrees in the daytime
and 55 degrees at night,
we can save half the current
shortage of natural gas.
If we learn to live thriftily
and remember the importance
of helping our neighbors,
then we can find ways to adjust.
NARRATOR:
Carter led by example.
He curtailed
the use of limousines,
canceled magazine subscriptions,
unplugged television sets,
and put the presidential yacht,
Sequoia, on the auction block.
He turned off
the air conditioners
and it was so hot
in the White House,
people would come in there
( laughs)
It was unbelievable.
It would be a hundred above
in there.
NARRATOR:
To save on staff overtime,
all White House functions
would end at midnight.
No hard liquor would be served.
HERTZBERG:
Jimmy Carter is
a Low Church Protestant,
where it's a sin
not to have a hard wooden bench
to sit on in church.
And he brought that simplicity
to the White House.
MAN:
We were all invited down to the
White House every other Tuesday.
We walked into
the private dining room
on the first floor
off the East Room.
We looked at the table
and there were these
little fingertip cookies,
and Tip O'Neill looked at me
and he said, "What's this?"
I said, "I guess
that's breakfast."
So the president walked in,
you know, walked around the room
and shook hands with everybody.
And O'Neill looked
at the president, and he says,
"Mr. President, you know,
we won the election."
CARTER:
That's the last time
you were here?
That's the last time
I was in the Oval Office.
NARRATOR:
Carter presented his agenda
to the speaker of the house,
Tip O'Neill.
Energy was Carter's
number-one priority,
but it was competing with his
long list of other legislation
Bills on hospital cost
containment, urban policy,
ethics in government.
You brought enough
for four years' work.
I understand that.
NARRATOR:
There was nothing in the package
to grease
the wheels of government.
Some are of more
priority than others.
NARRATOR:
When Carter struck
from his budget
19 multimillion-dollar
water projects
that had been approved
by President Ford,
congressmen were furious.
DREW:
He was absolutely right
to take it on
These sort of boondoggles
and unnecessary, really,
pork-barrel things
But he didn't know
how to take it on.
You have to build
political capital,
you have to build alliances,
you have to make deals.
LANCE:
The quid pro quo was not in him.
If you came to him and said,
"Look, we can get so-and-so
to vote for us,"
he would turn a deaf ear.
NARRATOR:
"He never understood
how the system worked,"
Tip O'Neill
would later complain.
"And although this was out
of character for Jimmy Carter,
he didn't want
to learn about it either."
DAN CARTER:
If your job is to find
the public good, to arrive
at what the public good is
and then to articulate it,
and then you become
the voice of the people.
And when you do that, it becomes
very difficult to compromise.
ROSTENKOWSKI:
On one occasion when I was
talking to President Carter
I said, "Mr. President,
"you know, I've had
three presidents before you
"and I'll have several
after you.
"I'm telling you,
from the vantage point
"of what I see
in the legislative process,
"you will be able to do and what
you won't be able to do.
Now, you can accept that
or not accept it."
But Carter's attitude
was members of the House
and Senate are bad guys.
FARRELL:
Carter put O'Neill
and the others like him
in the same category with the
corrupt Georgia courthouse pols
that he had been fighting
for much of his life.
The same kind
of back-scratching,
featherbedding pol, worrying
about the next election,
worrying about
their public opinion polls,
coming in and not doing
what was right.
BRINKLEY:
Often, he wouldn't
return phone calls
of leading senators.
There was a kind of an abrasive
attitude he had towards them.
He never showed them
the respect.
So they all eventually
got bitter and turned on him.
DAN CARTER:
Even if he had had
a personality transplant
and he had spent
three hours a night
playing poker with Tip O'Neill,
I don't think that would
have made the difference.
I mean, he was
he was faced with
an extraordinarily difficult
set of circumstances,
which in part sprang not only
from the political situation,
but from his the
the lack of a connection
between his own views
and those of his party.
NARRATOR:
"There will be
no new programs implemented
"unless they are compatible
"with my goal
of having a balanced budget
by the end of my first term,"
he pledged.
But liberal Democrats, eager
to resume the social agenda
of Lyndon Johnson's
Great Society,
would not back away.
MAN:
There had been
an eight-year period
when there had been
no Democratic president.
There were a lot of pent-up
and legitimate desires
by constituency groups
for more investment
in a whole range of programs.
Although he sympathized
with much of it,
all of his instincts
were to cut budgets,
reduce the deficit dramatically.
But he was always under pressure
from the Left
to have more spending.
NARRATOR:
At a breakfast meeting,
Carter berated the congressional
Democratic leadership
for adding $61 billion
in new programs to his budget.
"The Democratic Party
needs to remove the stigma
of unjustified spending,"
he said.
"Mr. President,"
Tip O'Neill reminded Carter,
"the Democrats are the champions
of the poor and the indigent."
BOURNE:
Carter thought
that big social programs
and large amounts
of federal spending
would bankrupt the country.
He could see,
I think, very clearly,
the way the world was going,
and he knew that old era
had to be phased out.
Carter, looking back,
was being very long-sighted
in saying, you know,
"We just don't have
an open-ended,
"never-ending
amount of money to spend.
We have to get things
in balance."
NARRATOR:
Carter's commitment
to fiscal restraint
appealed to
a growing number of Americans.
"He brings to the office
a refreshing habit of plain
words and simple manners,"
wrote Newsweek.
"A mind and discipline
of tempered steel
and an insatiable appetite
for work."
Jimmy Carter
had entered the presidency
with only 51% of the vote.
By June, he enjoyed
an approval rating of over 70%.
Then came an event
that rocked the foundation
of the Carter presidency.
It was called the Lance Affair.
In July 1977,
Carter's budget director,
Bert Lance,
was accused
of financial improprieties
at his bank in Calhoun, Georgia.
A federal investigation cleared
Lance of all illegal activity,
but concluded
that he had engaged
in "unsafe and unsound
banking practices."
CARTER:
Bert Lance
is a man of competence
and a man of integrity,
and that his services
NARRATOR:
Believing the affair was behind
him, Carter stood by his friend.
Bert Lance enjoys my
complete confidence
and support.
I'm proud to have him
as part of my administration.
NARRATOR:
Carter had miscalculated.
To the press, the issue
was ethics, not the law.
Sensing a scandal,
they went on the attack.
POWELL:
There were a lot of journalists
who very much wanted to prove
that they could be as tough
on a Democratic president
as they had been on
on a Richard Nixon.
There was a a real desire
to make sure that it was clear
that they were going to pursue
this every bit as aggressively.
One of the things people like to
go after more than anything else
is what they perceive
as hypocrisy.
So that you're judged
by the standards
that you set for yourself.
And certainly,
Carter's talking about,
"I'll never tell you a lie,"
and emphasizing honesty,
provides an easy opportunity.
NARRATOR:
Carter's inner circle
urged him to get rid of Lance.
But he was torn
between loyalty to his friend
and his own reputation.
For weeks, he allowed
the Lance Affair to fester.
REPORTER:
Do you feel
you were drummed out?
LANCE:
My statement speaks for itself.
I have no comment
about being drummed out.
I said in my statement
that I had to analyze
and question what
LANCE:
The day that I resigned,
I came home, and I was spent.
I lay down on the bed
crying about the situation,
just from the standpoint
of just having run out
of any adrenaline
or emotion or anything else,
and so we had all that horde
of media out on the front yard
that had been there constantly.
I guess it was a suicide watch.
REPORTER:
Any comment at all?
DREW:
Looking back,
it wasn't that big a deal.
But what it did do
at the time
was give the first blow
to the image that Carter
was trying to project
that his was a squeaky-clean
administration.
Whether my own credibility
has been damaged, I can't say.
I would guess to some degree.
An unpleasant
situation like this
NARRATOR:
Carter's approval rating
plunged 25 points.
POWELL:
It would have been better
for the president
if we had brought that
to an end sooner.
It threw us off our stride.
It made it harder for us
to talk about other things
and sort of played
into questions
about whether we could lead
and run the country.
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.
NARRATOR:
Only nine months in office,
Jimmy Carter was
a wounded leader
struggling
to regain the confidence
of the American people.
He would succeed
where others had failed
and face challenges
no one could have imagined.
( crowd angrily shouting chant)
Captioned by
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