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(energetic music) President Jimmy Carter ran as a Washington outsider.

Once in the Oval Office, he faced the insiders he had run against, was celebrated for the Camp David Accords, and challenged by the Iran Hostage Crisis.

(energetic music continues) For over 220 years, this precious document, the United States Constitution, has been the compass for our democracy.

Now, see it from a new perspective, through the eyes of the former presidents who took the solemn oath to preserve, protect, and defend our constitution.

(energetic music continues) Now, from the National Constitution's Center on Philadelphia's historic Independence Mall, your host, Cokie Roberts.

(energetic music continues) - It was a very different country in 1787, the year the Constitution was signed.

13 states huddled along the Atlantic Sea Coast were home to 4 million people, most of them farmers.

Now, in 50 states, nearly 300 million Americans are engaged in work unimaginable to the men who met in Philadelphia.

While the framers here at Independence Hall could not anticipate everything about the world of modern presidents, Alexander Hamilton wrote at the time that "There ought to be a capacity to provide for future contingencies as they may happen..." The government's charter is deliberately open to interpretations, especially in turbulent times.

- Governor Carter, are you prepared to take the constitutional oath?

- I am.

- [Cokie] When Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter swore his allegiance to the Constitution in January, 1977, taking the same oath as every president since George Washington, it was a time of disillusionment with the government itself.

He was the 39th president of the United States and the third president in four years.

(audience applauding) - This inauguration ceremony marks a new beginning, a new dedication within our government, and a new spirit among us all.

(audience applauding and cheering) - We had had Watergate scandals where the President violated the Constitution and lied to the American people.

We'd had the Vietnam War where obviously President Johnson and others exaggerated our successes and didn't tell the people the truth.

We'd had the assassination of President Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

The CIA had been revealed by the Frank Church Committee to have committed atrocities in the name of our government, even plotting murders.

So there was a great sense then of distrust of the integrity of top government officials.

And I think this greatly weakened at least the executive branch of government in respect to the Congress.

So there's no doubt that when I came into office that people were looking for someone who would tell the truth, and I always did, by the way.

And also someone who had not been so deeply involved in the troubles and controversies in Washington.

- And one of your first acts, it was to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue- - Yes.

- From the Capitol to the White House.

Did that symbolize a new beginning in Washington?

- Fo me, it did.

This was a highly secret thing.

I had seen that not only was there a distrust of the government, but that there was kind of a fear in Washington, which, fear might not be quite accurate, maybe concern about the general public among Washington officials.

And I wanted to show, first of all, that I trusted the American people and that they respected me.

So Rosa and I and the Secret Service were the only ones that knew in advance that we would stop the limousine, get out and walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

But it was a symbolic expression of my trust in my own integrity and in my own safety on the one hand, and also a demonstration that there was no separation encapsulated in a big, black limousine between the incumbent president and the people of our country.

- You came in after President Ford had pardoned President Nixon.

Was that still hovering over the presidency?

- I think so.

I was fairly generous with pardons.

Some president since then have pardoned practically no one because of the controversies involved.

Others have abused the pardon right.

I think President Clinton is the most notable example during the last few hours he was in office.

But I think that pardon right is one that's very important for the president and a very good constitutional right.

- Why?

- Because there can be some gross injustices in the system of our courts in the United States.

There can be some people who've been confined for life, whose experiences in the prison have shown that they deserve a second chance and they can be useful citizens.

And I think that those are the main reasons that it's important to have the pardon right.

On the other hand, I think the pardon has sometimes been abused.

I won't go into any details, but since I left office, there have been people who were pardoned that I thought should have stayed in prison.

- Was pardoning President Nixon a good idea?

- I think so.

I noticed that on President Ford's 90th birthday he was asked that question, which was inevitable.

And he said, even in retrospect, he doesn't think that my victory over him was affected by his pardon, that he thought that during the '76 campaign, that if he had not pardoned Nixon, it would've been such a constant issue brought up by the news media and maybe by me that he was better off to get it out of the way, even though he was criticized in some ways.

I think he did the right thing to pardon Nixon, yes.

And because it resolved that issue once and for all.

And I think President Ford, who has become one of the greatest and closest personal friends I've ever had in my life, did the correct and courageous thing.

- Your first day of office, you pardoned Vietnam draft evaders.

- Yes, I did.

- Why did you do that?

- In a way, I thought bringing the constant and continuing altercation about the Vietnam War to a conclusion was important.

And although I served 11 years of my life in the military, my father was in the First World War.

My oldest son was in Vietnam.

I thought that that the best thing to do was to pardon them and get the Vietnam War behind us.

And I think that's the main thing that President Ford thought to get the Nixon issue behind him.

And so that's why I did it.

- Now, you did come as an outsider, and your critics would say that you never really got inside enough to work with the Congress.

This constitution does create these difficult checks and balances.

Was that an issue?

- Well, the checks and balances and the separation of powers have been issues ever since the first president took office.

And I think it's a very wise decision that our founding fathers made to have those separations.

The Congress had decided after Watergate that they would monitor very closely the activities of the executive branch of government in executing laws that they had passed.

- [Cokie] Even though Democrats dominated the Congress, the President often found himself at odds with his own party.

On one controversial issue after another Carter fought with Congress.

- One was with the Panama Canal treaties, which was by far the most difficult political issue I have ever faced.

This agreement has been negotiated over a period of 14 years under four presidents of the United States.

- I respond to that by saying that we bought the canal, we've paid for it, we have sovereignty of it, and we have to the exclusion of Panama, and we have it in perpetuity.

- [Jimmy] It was more difficult than getting elected president to get two thirds of the senators to vote for this unpopular decision that I had made.

- And there are senators who I think are knowingly ahead of their people.

They're a little concerned about the reaction of the people.

If they support the treaty, they feel that it's in the best interest of the country to do so, they're waiting to see which way the wind blows in some cases.

- And the other one was the normalization of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China.

I'm gratified that after too many years of estrangement that our two countries have now grasped the opportunity to reestablish these vital formal links that exist between us.

As you'll remember, President Nixon went over in 1972 for a historic visit and declared that there was only one China, but he refused to say which China.

And then when President Ford was in office, that issue still existed.

The China with which we had diplomatic relations was still Taiwan.

And I decided to normalize relations with the People's the Republic of China.

And the President has the constitutional right to conclude treaties, but, this is a mistake the founding fathers made, with a two thirds vote required in the Senate.

I would like to see at least just a majority vote.

That's one change I would make.

But this actually went to the Supreme Court because Senator Goldwater, whom I greatly admired, and he was a friend of mine, concluded that I had no right as president to conclude the existing defense treaty with Taiwan, unless two thirds of his senators approved the dissolution of that treaty.

- So what you're saying is getting rid of the treaty, what you were essentially doing was ending the Taiwan Defense Treaty.

- Yes.

Yeah, which had in it a provision that after a one-year notice, either side could terminate the treaty.

And I used that existing provision in the treaty to terminate it after a full one-year notice.

Goldwater took the position, with 24 other senators I remember, that the president could not end a treaty unless two thirds of the senators approved.

And the Supreme Court ultimately had to make the ruling because district courts ruled with Goldwater.

And the Supreme Court upheld my position.

- I remember the Panama Canal treaties debate very well.

- So do I.

- I'm sure you do.

- I still have scars.

(both laughing) - And it was a very tough debate and very hard getting those two thirds.

It's your view that is a mistake?

- Yes, I think that the presumption should be that the President is speaking for the country in concluding a treaty.

But I would certainly approve the requirement that a majority of the Senate, a 51% vote, would be adequate to approve a treaty.

But this way one third of the members of the Senate can block permanently any treaty that the President has concluded.

I think that's a mistake.

- I do remember at the time thinking that were it the House that they would not have ratified the treaty because of the next election coming up.

- That's true.

- That this was a constitutional result of the six-year term and the Senate being more removed.

- I have said many times that's the most courageous vote that the Congress has ever cast in the history of our country.

Because although it was right, and two thirds of the senators eventually agreed it was corrected to vote for it, there were 20 senators who voted for that treaty in 1978 who were up for reelection.

Of the 20, only seven came back the next year.

And the attrition rate was almost as great among incumbent senators in 1980, two years later.

And it hurt me a great deal, obviously, in the reelection campaign because the overwhelming sentiment among highly motivated voters was that this was a giveaway program and that we should not have given away our canal.

- But you had the support, as you said.

It was much more bipartisan in Congress.

Senator Baker was the minority leader, and he was very much on your side.

- He was, almost habitually.

In fact, I think the records would probably show that Senator Baker approved my positions on controversial issues, maybe more than the majority leader who was Senator Byrd.

The different difficulty that came after the treaty was approved was getting the House to pass legislation that would change our relationship with Taiwan, because that involved trade, and commerce, and financial interrelationships, and so forth, which were under the purview of the House and the Senate.

But the fact is, eventually the House members realized that if they didn't approve the legislation, then our relationship with Taiwan would be severely damaged rather than continued, not with full diplomatic relations, but with the Commerce Clause completely implemented.

- You've written that under the Constitution the President has much more authority in foreign affairs, and, therefore, decisions can be made more quickly and usually have with more immediate results.

- That's certainly true.

- Camp David- - Yes.

- Was, of course, the great triumph of foreign policy in your administration.

Was that an example of what you're talking about where the president could pretty much act unilaterally?

- There was not any great dissension or opposition inherent within the Congress concerning what we did at Camp David.

The big opposition, obviously, it was normalizing relations with China, which I did unilaterally, which was my constitutional privilege, and the Panama Canal treaties.

But there's no doubt that I negotiated at Camp David with Begin and Sadat very well aware that anything I said at Camp David as a contribution of the United States of America would basically be upheld by the Congress and that the President did have that authority to negotiate.

So yes, the president's right to conduct foreign affairs, to recognize any government in the world that he chooses, and to appoint diplomats, and to withdraw them from the office on the spur of the moment.

Those kind of things are extremely important to the ability of a president to negotiate a peace agreement.

- When you were negotiating that agreement at Camp David, it was a very difficult time.

Were you even worrying about what was happening locally, the American people's response, or was it completely dedicated to trying to find peace in the region?

- Well, both because my role as president, really, for the first time was to take a balanced position between Israel's government on the one hand and the rights of the Palestinians on the other, and to deal equitably with the Egyptians.

And so this was a highly controversial thing for me to do.

In fact, I had only been in office for two months when I publicly called for a Palestinian homeland, which was revolutionary proposition in those days.

So it was highly unpopular.

But while I was immersed in Camp David negotiations, which was a full-time commitment, for 13 days, I was really much more concerned with the reaction of Begin and Sadat, one representing Israel, other representing the country that was the most serious challenger to Israel and representing the Arab world, than I was about domestic consequences on what I decided at Camp David.

The framework document proposes a five-year transitional period in the West Bank and Gaza, during which the Israeli military government will be withdrawn and a self-governing authority will be elected with full autonomy.

It also provides for Israeli forces to remain in specified locations during this period to protect Israel security.

The Palestinians will have the right to participate in the determination of their own future in negotiations which will resolve the final status of the West Bank and Gaza, and then to produce an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

- What's your reaction now to what's happening in terms of the Middle East?

- Despair and disappointment.

Disillusionment.

I think the opportunities that we had at the end of the Camp David Accords in 1978 and '79, the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which has stood intact, not a word here, but treaty has been violated now in 24 years.

So proud of both of you.

God bless you both.

And the subsequent agreement that was worked out by the Norwegians at Oslo, all those spelled out the premises on which a fair and just solution to the Mideast embargo could be predicated or built, which would protect the security of Israel, have normal relations between Israel and all her neighbors, and give justice to the Palestinians.

All those dreams of those days have gone down the drain now.

And my hope is, and my prayer is that the roadmap to peace, so-called, will be successful.

- And do you see a role for the American president in this?

- Yeah, I think there's no way that the two sides will ever come together in a spirit of equity or security without the United States and its president personally being deeply involved.

I think that's crucial.

(crowd screaming) - [Reporter] Early on the morning of November 4th, 1979, hundreds of Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran.

Mossad... - [Cokie] If Camp David was the great triumph, the Iranian Hostage Crisis was the great tragedy.

Immediately after the hostages were taken, though, you were able to put a few things in place in terms of freezing assets, all of that.

Again, did you feel that there was a constitutional question there?

- The American people in this...

Within a few weeks, two weeks I think, of the taking of the hostages I sent the Ayatollah Khomeini a message from me that if you injure a hostage, we will terminate Iran's trade entirely with the outside world.

And if you kill a hostage, we will take military action against your country.

And I sent this message to Khomeini, I believe, through seven different channels, primarily the German government, and the Swiss government, and others to make sure he got the message.

He never injured a hostage and he never threatened to kill a hostage as a response to that.

In fact, one hostage, I think from Maine developed a numb arm, and Khomeini immediately released him so there would not be an allegation that the Iranians, so I had no doubt that my constitutional right as a president would've resulted in complete carrying out of that threat to terminate all trade between Iran and the outside world, and I could launch a military attack instantly if I chose, in which I could have destroyed Iran's oil wells and their military forces.

In the process, I would have undoubtedly resulted in the death of all the American hostages.

So I was reluctant to do it, but I had no doubt, constitutionally, that I had the right and the obligation, and the authority to carry out my threat.

- And you would've had the support of the Congress on that.

- Absolutely, there's no doubt about that.

- But then you finally did decide to rescue them.

- Yes.

- It was Operation Eagle Claw.

And that was a disaster.

- Well, yeah, it was a very great disappointment to me.

I think the operation was beautifully planned.

The fallacy in it was that we had eight helicopters.

Six were necessary to extract all the hostages.

We thought we might lose two of them.

One turned back unexplainably to the aircraft carrier.

We lost two more, which meant that we couldn't extract all the hostages.

We would have had to leave some of them behind, which would've resulted in that death.

So we terminated the expedition, which was a great tragedy for me.

And the process, of course, the hostages stayed until a number of months later.

- Right, until Ronald Reagan took the oath of office.

- I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear.

- [Jimmy] Five minutes after he took office, the hostages were free.

The morning of the inauguration at 10 o'clock in the morning before the 12 o'clock deadline, all the hostages were in an airplane at the end of the runway in Tehran ready to take off, but Ayatollah Khomeini had sworn that they would not be released until after I was no longer president.

- I remember that day so well.

I remember being at the Capitol for the inauguration and hearing in my headset, the hostages have just been released.

- I was too.

Well, I had people ready to come and tell me when did the plane take off?

And I think five minutes after 12:00, the plane took off and all the hostages were free.

One of the happiest moments of my life.

Just a few moments ago on Air Force One, before we land at Warner Robins, I had received word, officially, for the first time that the aircraft carrying the 52 American hostages had cleared Iranian airspace on the first leg of the journey home.

(audience applauding) And that every one of the 52 hostages was alive, was well, and free.

(audience cheering and applauding) - [Cokie] That was after Jimmy Carter's presidency had ended.

At the beginning, the governor of Georgia had arrived with a new idea: let the president's cabinet play a major role in governing the country.

Though the Constitution says nothing about a cabinet, every president since George Washington has appointed executive department heads.

Carter wanted to increase their power.

- I made the ultimate decisions, but I met regularly with my cabinet.

And as you know, I had presidential press conferences regularly as well, more than any other president has ever done, as far as frequency was concerned.

The way I ran the foreign and defense policies of our country was every Friday morning, I had a full hour and a half session with me, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President, and the Director of the National Security Council, and CIA director, and Jody Powell, the Press Secretary every Friday morning.

And we spent a full hour and a half discussing any matter that involved defense, or security, or foreign affairs, and they would present their ideas and their proposals.

I would make the final decisions.

Dr. Brzezinski would keep notes.

And that would be the end of it until the following Friday.

And then on Wednesday, the National Security Advisor and the Secretaries of State and Defense would meet to see if and how my directives had been carried out, and to make sure that they were cooperating with each other.

And then they would prepare the agenda for the following Friday.

This was done every week.

And so there was a very intimate relationship between me and the members of the National Security Council on a continual and sustained basis.

And there was never any disagreement or misunderstanding between state and defense and a national security advisor on what our policy was concerning even trenchant questions that came up concerning defense of foreign affairs.

- Unlike today.

- Unlike today, yeah, that's true.

Even when President Clinton was in office, I urged him to do the same thing, but he never did so far as I know.

And so I don't think there's any doubt that Cy Vance, when he was Secretary of State and Dr. Brzezinski, and Harold Brown, the three top leaders, they were like a three-person team.

Sometimes they didn't agree with each other, and they would bring their differences to me on Friday morning.

I made the final decision.

- You did have a moment when you basically fired a lot of the cabinet.

I remember that day well, too.

I was on Capitol Hill, and it was like a little brush fire going through the House of Representatives.

"Did you what happened?"

"Did you what happened?"

- Yeah, I remember.

- Why did you do that?

- I think in retrospect, that was a mistake on my part.

We had reached a crisis in the country, primarily because of the energy issue.

I had labored over that on a domestic basis to the exclusion of a lot of other important issues.

And we had a deadlock on energy policy.

Ultimately, I think we got almost everything I wanted, but at that time, I felt that we needed to have a renovation of the basic government itself.

So I was very eager to, and did keep almost all of the cabinet officers, but a few did decide to resign.

I gave them an opportunity to resign, and then I asked a number of 'em to stay on, a few I didn't ask to stay on, and they did step down.

I think in retrospect, it should have been done, instead of a cabinet in its totality, at one time I should have handled the individual cabinet officers on a private and individual basis.

- And over a period of time?

- I think so.

- Because it was too dramatic?

- It was too dramatic.

- You talk about your press conferences, and, of course, the Constitution does provide for a free press.

In the terms of the hostage crisis, do you think the press went overboard?

- The press went overboard, but I have to say that the general public did too.

You know, there were yellow ribbons everywhere in the nation, and I was obsessed with the hostage crisis as well, so I can't blame anyone else.

But you know, every night, Walter Cronkite would say- - Right.

- 113 days of the hostages being held, and "Nightline" was founded.

- Right.

- As a permanent program because of a hostage crisis.

The country was obsessed with the 52 hostages who remained, and so was I.

And I would meet regularly with all the family members of the hostages.

We would pay their way to come to Washington so they could give them an up-to-date report, sometimes concerning secret or top secret matters, at least confidential matters, that related to the hostage crisis and what I was trying to do.

So I think the whole country was obsessed with it.

And I can't blame the press for being extraordinarily obsessed because the general public, the international community, and the White House were all deeply involved in getting those hostages, everyone, home safe and free.

And they all came home safe and free.

- Right.

Was it a failure of intelligence in Iran?

- I think the whole world was surprised when the Shah was overthrown.

Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.

And I never had any preview of his actual ejection from Iran itself and his deposition in favor of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Earlier though, and even in late in the last week, in 1977, my first year in office, I talked to the Shah and told him that I was deeply concerned about his abuse through his secret service, SAVAK, of civilians who were demonstrating against his regime.

They had fired into a crowd and killed about 250 people.

And I told 'em he was making a serious mistake in not having the people's positions expressed.

He said, I was naive about it, that I was exaggerating.

This was only a tiny 1% who were communists who was trying to overthrow his government, and they had no justification.

So I had a personal encounter with the Shah about what he was doing, but I was amazed when he was actually overthrown.

And I don't think that's any intelligence agency in the world had any premonition that that would happen.

- The whole question of intelligence and secrecy in an open society is one that is always problematic.

You mentioned at the beginning that the CIA, the Church Committee had had hearings and revealed terrible abuses by the CIA.

Do you think that's a fair assessment?

- When I became president, I brought in a classmate of mine, Stansfield Turner, a classmate at the Naval Academy who was a Rhode scholar and a distinguished admiral who did a superb job, by the way.

And I think that substantial reforms were made under Stansfield Turner because the CIA had been involved previously in illicit, illegal, and very embarrassing activities.

President Ford mandated, through an executive order, that the CIA could no longer assassinate any other leader.

All this had been done, even as far back as Eisenhower.

And so I left that order intact.

So I think that the intelligence agencies were brought under control, and they retained their complete independence and gave me unbiased assessments of what was going on.

And we never intruded into their ability to collect intelligence, and to collate it, and to analyze it and give me unvarnished analyses without any sort of imposition or political considerations on them about what they would report.

- Although in terms of energy, there was a charge made that the intelligence was cooked to support your energy policy.

Does that just happen in every administration?

- Yeah, I don't recall that, but I can't deny that there were allegations made about almost everything concerning energy.

Energy was a hard fought battle where we eventually, I think, prevailed in almost every case.

We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent.

There is no way we can solve it quickly.

It was charged with horrendous political connotations.

And I don't have any doubt that people may have alleged it, but there was never any distortions made so far as I know, concerning energy or any other issue.

And so far as I know, all the reports we made to the public were truthful.

- Did your view of covert activities and secrecy change in the course of the presidency once you were inside and looking at what was going on?

- I tried to mandate then, and since I left the White House, a maximum openness in reports and to declassify as much information as was possible.

And I have been certainly aware of the fact that since I left office, there has been a reimposition of a great deal of secrecy of material that should be made public.

But I tried to have as much openness as possible.

I would like to declassify all my records from the White House.

But as you probably know, there has been a directive from the White House since then that a lot of the records, even left over earlier than me or earlier than President Reagan, should be kept secret for some reason.

So I'm in favor of openness.

- Why do you think they are doing that?

- I can't say with complete objectivity.

I think there's some decisions that have been made recently that the White House doesn't want to be made public.

I would rather see the whole thing be revealed.

And I think the evidence in the case of Watergate, which brought Nixon down, was not what was actually done, but the effort to conceal it.

And I think that what President Clinton did, he didn't ultimately suffer the consequences of what he did, but the fact that he lied about what had been done or misled the public about what had been done.

So I think the evidence that we had, and I think in the Iran Contra consequences of President Reagan, it was not what he was actually doing, but the fact that he tried to conceal it, and a number of people were sent to prison because of that.

So I think the concealment of facts is almost invariably a mistake in the long run and sometimes has immediate consequences adversely to those who conceal the facts.

- We've talked around the energy crisis, but of course it was such a huge issue.

- [Jimmy] It was.

- And I wonder how you deal with something like that when it's such a global issue.

You're president of the United States, but these oil prices are driving inflation up ruining the economy, but they you have no control over them.

- That's true.

- How do you deal with that?

- Well, that was a very difficult thing.

The disruption of the oil supplies from Iran and Iraq after the Iraqi war began, caused a dramatic reduction in the total supply of oil on a global basis.

And that's why the price of oil more than doubled in less than 12 months.

And so that was something over which, you know, no leader in the world could have had control.

- And do you think it distorted our foreign policy to be worried about oil prices?

- No, I don't think so.

I think it was unavoidable that we should be worried about oil prices, and as I just mentioned, we did everything we could.

The only thing that we couldn't do was to end the war on Iran.

I deeply resented Iraq's invasion of Iran.

They did it because Iran was weakened because of our partial embargo concerning the hostages.

And Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, which I condemned publicly and still resent.

After I left office, by the way, President Reagan quickly normalized diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein and gave him some support, the Iraqis, in that war against Iran.

But at that time, the termination of oil supplies from those two countries was the disturbing factor on the overall global oil supply market and prices, which was uncontrollable unless we could end that war.

- And then on the home front, in trying to deal with energy conservation... - Yes.

- Trying to raise prices off gasoline or taxing gasoline you ran up against the special interest.

- Utility companies must promote conservation and not consumption.

All the natural gas companies must be honest with all of us about their reserves and profits.

We will find out the difference between real shortages and artificial ones.

We'll ask private companies to sacrifice just as private citizens must do.

All of us must learn to waste less energy.

- Is what you've seen with political money and political committees, and all of that, is that something that is outside of the Constitution or is it implied by The First Amendment, the right to petition Congress?

- One basic issue that was constitutional in nature, but was never was highly contentious when I was president, was does the federal government have the authority to mandate a nationwide policy on deregulating the price of oil or controlling the price of natural gas?

Or should this be a state issue?

And I decided that it was a federal responsibility and obligation, and we passed laws accordingly.

Before I went out of office, some of 'em were passed after I was defeated, but before I left office, we had a pretty good overall success.

But that issue about federal authority to mandate matters over which the states had previously had control were constitutional in nature and the Supreme Court and others have upheld the right of the federal government to have uniformity of oil and natural gas policy.

- As a former governor, when you were there, how did you see federalism?

Did your views of federalism change?

- A great deal.

One of the reasons that I ran for president back in 1973, was the oil crisis in 1973, was when they had their boycott by OPEC against countries trading with Israel.

And I saw the Congress passing laws that I thought many of which were ill-advised.

And as a governor I had to implement those ill-advised laws and I thought I understood 'em as well as even the prominently mentioned candidates for President: Ed Muskie, and Ted Kennedy, and Scoop Jackson, and others.

I need not name 'em all.

And I thought I was as highly qualified concerning domestic affairs as were they.

And that's one reason that in inclined me to run for president.

But I did see a great need for the federal government to participate in aiding the states to do extraordinary things, like to deal with poverty-stricken families, and to deal with the uniform energy policy, and to deal with the Alaska Lands issue, which had been festering for 20 years, and to deal with strip mining laws, and environmental issues.

I saw those things as a very important obligation of the federal government, even though it did encroach on what had previously been considered to be state's rights.

- So you see it differently depending on where you stand?

Depends on where you sit?

- Exactly, I think that's true.

(Cokie laughing) - Let me ask you about a couple of sort of extra-constitutional things.

One, the role of the First Lady.

- Yes.

- That is something that is certainly not in the constitution, but Mrs. Carter played a very important role in your administration.

- Yes, she did.

- Tell me why that meant so much to you.

- One of the things I learned as governor was that a person in extreme authority, a president or a governor, can become isolated, and arrogant, and impervious to criticisms, or dissension, or disagreements, even among one's own tiny and highly trusted group.

And Rose and a friend named Charles Kobo had unimpeded access to me and no restraint about- - What they might say?

- Personally confronting me.

So when I did make a decision that was controversial, people who disagreed with me strongly, that didn't want to come directly and confront me, as the exalted President of the United States would go through Rosalynn or Kobo, and they would present their dissenting views.

So Rosalynn became deeply knowledgeable about the issues that came up during my presidency.

She had campaigned full time and independently of me when I was elected president.

So Rosalynn was highly educated and knowledgeable about almost all the issues that I faced, except some that were highly secret and couldn't be revealed to her.

And so that was one reason that she became so interested.

Since Rosalynn permeated me with, bombarded me with questions almost every evening at suppertime about what's happening now, what is your cabinet member members think?

I told her, Rosalynn, why don't you sit in on the cabinet meetings in the background and you can hear what the debates are and then you'll be briefed.

- And then we can talk sports at dinner?

- Then we could even watch a movie after dinner.

So Rosa began to do that.

And then later when I couldn't go to as many countries as I wanted to, we had a very interesting, very necessary altercation in Latin America, a number of 'em with military dictatorships, and with a potential nuclearization of the military in Argentina and Brazil.

I needed to go and I couldn't.

And we had a very serious problem with one of the top cabinet officers in Columbia being deeply involved in the drug trade.

I sent Rosalynn down there to represent me, and she visited hospitals and talked about, you know, elderly, and children, and so forth, but she also dealt with those issues.

So Rosalynn became very knowledgeable and very influential in that.

And when we had the problem of refugees coming out of the aftermath of the Vietnam War, I couldn't go to to visit the refugee camps.

I sent my wife to represent the United States of America.

She never had any authority, but she was very helpful to me and I think played a role of activity that certainly, at that time, was unprecedented.

And I'm grateful for the fact that she did it.

- Ever since Abigail Adams, however, there have been certain complaints about First Ladies.

- Yes.

- That nobody elected them and nobody can fire them.

- [Jimmy] That's true.

(both laughing) - Do you think that's fair?

- Well, I think it's fair, and the president is always accountable for what the First Lady does and what authority or responsibility she is given, just as he is about his own activities.

And so I think if the First Lady was ever called upon to do anything that was improper or illegal, the public condemnation would be an adequate restraining force.

- The vice president, the Constitution says the vice president presides over the Senate, and breaks a tie, and waits for the President to die.

- Yes.

- But you decided to use the Vice President in more roles than that?

Yes.

- There had never been a vice president who was given the authority or responsibility that I gave Fritz Mondale.

When I asked Fritz Mondale to be vice president, after I considered a group of other very wonderful people, I told him to set down in writing what he would like to do as vice president.

And he visited Nelson Rockefeller, and he visited Hubert Humphrey, and he talked to a lot of other people, and he finally gave me a book of things that he thought he might like to do, or things about which he wanted to be informed.

And I eventually adopted all of them.

I was shocked to find out that no other vice president had ever been briefed on the use of nuclear weaponry that would have to be used within 26 minutes if the United States was attacked.

He was not even in the lineup.

And no previous vice president had ever been included in the lineup.

It went from the President to the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State.

So anyway, that was just one of the most horrendous indications that the vice president had been backpedaled, put in the back of responsibilities.

So I involved Fritz Mondale in everything, and I never had a meeting in the Oval Office in which Fritz Mondale was excluded unless a foreign vista said, Mr. President, I would just like to have a direct talk with you and you alone.

The rest of the time Fritz Mondale had access to everything that I did so that if something should have happened to me, he would've been thoroughly familiar with the issue and prepared to take whatever action was then required.

- And you had the benefit of then also of his advice and counsel?

- Yes, and Fritz had been involved in the Senate and the Congress.

As, you know, before I got there, he was familiar with the ways \of Washington, which I wasn't.

So he was my avenue of communication and advice concerning dealing with the Congress.

That was very helpful.

- You say you didn't have any conflicts with the judiciary when you were in office, but there was one important case where, at least what I've read said, there was a little conflict inside the administration, which was over the Bakke case.

- Yes.

- And what kind of brief to file.

This was an affirmative action case involving the University of California at Davis, where a White student sued, saying that he had been passed over for a minority student.

We are still seeing that today with the University of Michigan cases.

What is your take on where the Constitution stands on these questions?

- I think the Constitution is basically mute on the specific issue, but it does imply that American citizens should be treated fairly and equitably.

And I agreed with the Bakke case, and I also agreed with a recent decision of the Supreme Court that said that affirmative action in generalities could be pursued, but you couldn't have a rigid quota.

So I don't think there's any doubt that the era up till 1865 of slavery and at least a hundred years more of official racial discrimination under the separate but equal ruling of the US Supreme Court has had a devastating impact on the quality of education, and the economic standards, and the social standing of minorities in this country, particularly the African Americans.

And I think they deserve some opportunity to come out of a household that is still poverty-stricken and has no books in it, and to compete, and to have an opportunity in good colleges to go to law school or to get advanced degrees.

So I think that affirmative action in some form, without rigid quarters, is still badly needed in this country, and I hope it will continue, at least for the next decade or more.

- When you're talking about poverty-stricken households, obviously, you've spent a lot of your time worrying about that.

- Yes.

- And your commitment to human rights has been such a fundamental part of your being.

Is that out of your faith or is that some combination of your faith and these American institutions in which you've served?

- I think it's certainly compatible with my Christian beliefs on compassion, on love, on forgiveness, on justice, peace.

There's no doubt about that.

But I think my own obsession with human rights on a global basis and civil rights at home has come from my childhood when I grew up in a community as a lonely White child with only Black playmates.

And my mother was a registered nurse, almost equivalent to a doctor.

And I was immersed in the Black culture of life until I went off to be in the Navy.

And I saw the devastating effect on their lives of official racial discrimination when they could not vote, they couldn't serve on a jury, they couldn't go to a decent school.

They didn't have school buses.

The White kids did.

The Black kids, got the cast off books that the White kids had already used beyond repair.

I saw that, and that was part of my early life.

And so when I did achieve a position of prominence and influence, I think it permitted my consciousness.

When I made my very brief eight-minute inaugural address as governor, I announced that the time for racial discrimination is over, which now sounds mundane, but at that time was revolutionary.

It was in 1971, and in two weeks I was on the cover of Time Magazine because I made that simple statement.

So I think that my background and my knowledge of the intimate relationships with Black families in whose homes I spent many, many nights, and ate with them, and slept with them, and so forth, was a foundation of my later commitment to human rights.

- You've written that your most vivid impression of the presidency remains the loneliness.

Why is it so lonely?

- Well, you have to remember that no matter who the president might be, the issues that come to the Oval Office on the president's desk that have to be decided one way or the other, those are the kinds of issues that cannot be resolved by a mayor, or a county commissioner, or a governor, or a state legislator.

They have to be decided ultimately by the President, and if they were easy to resolve, they would've been resolved at a lower level of government so they get to be very important, and controversial, and difficult.

And the President is the only one that can make the decision.

I kept my desk, "The buck stops here," that I inherited from Harry Truman.

And that's one of the reasons that I use the word loneliness.

I spent more time in prayer when I was president I would just be wise enough to make the right decisions than I ever did in any other four years of my life.

And I tried to avoid isolation.

That wasn't the point.

I wasn't isolated because I was surrounded by friends, and supporters, and staff members in whom I had complete confidence and, you know, a very supportive family.

But the ultimate decision... Should I go to Camp David?

Should I launch a military attack against Iran?

Should I normalize diplomatic relations with China?

Should I permit the Panama Canal to be given to the Panamanians to operate?

Those decisions can only be made by one person.

And so there is a loneliness there.

- Despite all the checks and balances?

- Despite all the checks and balances.

And the checks and balances are reassuring because you have an innate feeling that if I do make the wrong decision here, the two other branches of government, ultimately, can correct a serious mistake that might be detrimental to the integrity of our own country.

- The ultimate force for correction in politics is the electorate, as President Carter learned the hard way in 1980 when Ronald Reagan, the outsider from California, defeated him, just as he, the outsider from Georgia, had beaten President Ford.

You know, you talk about President Ford becoming a good friend.

And one of the things that has struck me in the course of these interviews is that each of you has, in some way, defeated another.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you defeated President Ford.

President Reagan and Bush defeated you.

- Yeah.

- President Clinton defeated President Bush, and then President Bush defeated Clinton, Gore.

So it's remarkable this system that here are people who have waged incredibly intense battles against each other, and yet the civility still prevails.

- It is, and I think the US Constitution and its relatively unchanging nature for more than 200 years has been the foundation on which we can survive a very unpleasant election on occasion, and a deeply grieved loss, and an exhilarating victory., and we all feel that we are still part of a team and that the principles of the United States of America, despite the exigencies of the moment and the political encounters that cause dissension and sometimes animosity for a brief period of time, overcome because of America and what it is.

And the Constitution of the United States is a basis for that stability, and for that integrity, for that ongoing commitment to the same wonderful principles.

- Have you been able to be more effective since you left office?

And if so, what does that say about the system?

- I've learned a lot since I left the White House.

I'm now in the lead of the Carter Center, and we have programs in 65 nations in the world, the poorest, most destitute countries, and among the most forgotten and needy people on earth, and so I've learned so much, since I was president, about the needs of those people and what the United States could do.

So it gives me a wonderful opportunity to use the Office of the President 20 years afterward in a constructive and gratifying way.

This last 20 years or so have been the best years of my life.

(audience applauding and cheering) Our dominant international challenge is to restore the greatness of America... (audience applauding and cheering) Based on telling the truth, a commitment to peace, and respect for civil liberties at home and basic human rights around the world.

(audience applauding and cheering) - President Carter's departure from Washington did not end his public service.

His work to end conflict and support human dignity around the world earned him the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Thank you for being with us.

I'm Cokie Roberts.

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