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Amanpour
Interview with Former Chief Speechwriter for Jimmy Carter James Fallows; Interview with Stanford University Director of Iranian Studies and "The Shah" Author Abbas Milani; Interview with "The Outlier" Author Kai Bird. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired January 09, 2025 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up. Unimaginable destruction as
fires burn across Los Angeles County. One of them is now the most destructive L.A. has ever seen and will have the latest.
Then, Jimmy Carter is laid to rest in a state funeral honoring the 39th and the longest living president. Carter's former chief speechwriter, James
Fallows, joins us.
And I'll unpack the legacy of Carter's Middle East policy in the Iran hostage crisis with Professor Abbas Milani, who was a political prisoner in
Iran himself.
Also on the show --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAI BIRD, AUTHOR, "THE OUTLIER": We ought to value a president who works hard and is decent and never lies to us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- Walter Isaacson speaks to biographer Kai Bird about Carter's commitment to do what he believed was right even when it was politically
risky.
Welcome to the program everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Apocalyptic scenes in Los Angeles as wildfires continue raging out of
control. Tens of thousands of residents have been forced to flee in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. The blaze is now the most destructive in
L.A. County history. And from the air it looks like a war zone.
Here's California Governor Gavin Newsom.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): I really am long-term optimistic, but the devastation, to hear people wailing and crying, concern about their pet,
their family, they're just bewildered about what statistics -- what they're experiencing. And again, not just experience. I was not talking past tense.
This is happening in real-time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: President Biden has cancelled his final overseas trip to Italy to meet with the pope in order to deal with this fire emergency. In
Altadena, California, the Eaton Fire has destroyed more than a thousand structures and forced most of the town to evacuate. And correspondent Kyung
Lah is joining me now from there.
Kyung Lah, welcome to the program. I can't imagine what it must be to try to cover this. Are you noticing anything different from day to day, like
right now, compared to earlier?
KYUNG LAH,L CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: It's been dramatically different, and it's very surreal for me because I live right down about
five minutes from here. So, what's happening here in Altadena, and this is a middle class community of single family homes, at least in this section.
The struggle today is, even though fire has gone through this area, what firefighters are now having to fight -- you can see over here, Leonel, if
you can take a look. This is a house. This is a new fire.
Somehow, embers -- at this point, they can't do the diagnostics, but there are new fires that are continuing to pop up. A home that thought they made
it through the fire, the first wave, this is now something new that's happening. And firefighters -- you see the number of firefighters who are
out here. These are firefighters who've been working, in many cases, more than 24 hours straight trying to battle a very dangerous fire.
So, this home over here, this is a home that was already flattened. And if you can see further down, this is a larger road here in Altadena, all of
those homes are gone. There are entire sections of this community that -- and this is a foothill community, so it's not a mountain community. This is
a foothill community that had been completely destroyed.
People in this community are -- I interviewed a VA nurse who has lived here for 25 years, she has no idea at this stage what she's going to do. So, a
fire of 10 -- more than 10,000 acres still burning dangerously in those hills behind us, and five people have died from this fire so far.
[13:05:00]
AMANPOUR: And, Kyung, you know, you said you live just down the road. You've shown us other resident's houses ablaze right there. The emergency
workers seem to say that in some areas the winds are shifting somewhat. They're not as high and hurricane-like as they were yesterday, and that
might help them. Can you confirm that in where you are?
LAH: Night and day. And I can tell you this because I've been here since the beginning. More than 24 hours ago, me, my kids, my husband, we slept
well last night in a place that we evacuated to. The windows were not shaking. The night before, I thought every single window in the home was
going to explode because of hurricane force winds. It was unbelievable.
Today, you can still see there's just a little bit of some of the embers coming through. It is a completely different story. What firefighters can
now do today is begin to draw containment lines. Even though I can tell you that right now, the two big fires, the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire,
are zero percent contained, they are beginning to at least make some headway. The big problem, though, is that there's so many homes lost, and
this is going to now be a financial disaster for entire communities.
AMANPOUR: And you mentioned Palisades, obviously, it's been called the worst ever fire in L.A. history. And we have -- you know, heard from lots
of people, seen lots of the terrible damage, and whole communities have been destroyed up there. I mean, we showed the drone pictures of what looks
like a war zone.
Can you tell us anymore about what's happening there? You say it's zero control -- zero contained right now.
LAH: Zero containment on both of these fires. And yesterday it was extraordinary, Christiane, because yes, we knew about the Palisades Fire
that had broken out for a little less than 48 hours ago, and that was a huge problem.
But then it became whack a mole, the Eaton Fire, another fire, the Hearst Fire. There's -- and then firefighters are being stretched all over the
place. There simply aren't enough people on the ground to try to deal with these extraordinary conditions. The amount of water that we got here in
California a couple of seasons ago, that led to extraordinary growth. Just wonderful trees. My garden was doing great. But then, this year, I do not
remember the last time it rained. So, it's extraordinarily dry.
Even as I pick this up here, you can see all of this. This is all just -- it's all dead and dried out. And this is somebody who has sprinklers. So,
our gardens right now are nothing but tinder, and that's across this entire area. Mixed that with the winds, those hurricane force winds I was telling
you about, you have a recipe for disaster in areas like this where, you know, 25 years ago, when these residents moved in, they never thought that
there was going to be fire here. That was unthinkable. But when you have hurricane force winds pushing it all through, you can't stop it.
AMANPOUR: Yes. You know, we've heard and seen pictures of schools and school districts and, you know, shops and hospitals, and I mean, just so
much, not just homes. Can I ask you, when you interview people, do they -- I mean, I realize they're dealing with an emergency right now, but does the
concept of extreme weather, the sort of security challenge of climate and all of that, does it ever come up?
LAH: It does, but let's put this into real terms, into real working class terms. I'm staying in a home that's further south of here, away from the
fire with another family who lives here in Altadena. I live in a community right next to Altadena. And what she was wondering, and this is the mother
of two kids, where do you go if you're already financially baked into a community, even though climate disaster and wildfire is a part of our daily
life now, especially in California, where do you go? Where do you go that you can afford, that is safe, where you have a job?
It is not as simple as, you know, just move somewhere else. That's far too luxurious to think about. Not when you have kids, not when you have
property, and -- but then you have to then realize this is what our climate emergency is leading to.
AMANPOUR: Kyung Lah, it's really dramatic and you've described it very vividly. Good luck to you and everybody there who are trying to survive
this and battle it. Thank you so much.
Now, one of the first U.S. presidents to recognize the importance of addressing environmental challenges was Jimmy Carter. He emphasized
conserving energy and advocated for renewable energy that laid the groundwork for later climate action.
Today, America, and the world watched as well, paused to say goodbye to the former president and humanitarian.
[13:10:00]
The funeral was attended by all five living presidents. President Biden delivered the eulogy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Today, many think he was from a bygone era, but in reality, he saw well into the future. A white Southern Baptist who led
on civil rights, a decorated Navy veteran who brokered peace, a brilliant nuclear engineer who led on nuclear nonproliferation, a hardworking farmer
who championed conservation and clean energy, and a president who redefined the relationship with the vice president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: A hugely full life. And James Fallows was by Carter's side through much of his presidency. He served as his chief speechwriter, and
afterwards, Fallows became a prominent journalist, and he's joining me now from Washington, D.C.
Welcome to the program, James Fallows. I know you were watching this funeral, as so many people were. Just -- what were you thinking as all
those tributes flowed today?
JAMES FALLOWS, FORMER CHIEF SPEECHWRITER FOR JIMMY CARTER: So, there were three of the tributes that struck me especially today. One was by Steven
Ford, the son of Gerald Ford, whom, of course, Carter had defeated in 1976. And he talked about -- he said that Carter and Ford became close friends
after a very close and surprisingly bitter race, and that each of them agreed to give the eulogy at the other's funeral. So, the question was
which one would be there in real-time, which one virtually.
And so, Steven Ford read the eulogy that his -- that Gerald Ford would have given for Jimmy Carter, which was full of tributes to his character, to his
belief in American values, to his expansive view. That was very impressive.
There was Jason Carter, who was a grandson of Jimmy Carter, who gave a very humorous description of his grandfather. He was saying, you know, a nuclear
engineer, but one time he made -- he accidentally called his grandson and he thought he was taking a photo on a cell phone, it was -- it got a laugh
from the audience.
And then, of course, there was Joe Biden, who is giving what was an extremely hard-edged eulogy, in my view. He talked about all the things
that Jimmy Carter accomplished, including in human rights and the environmental visionary emphasis that he had and his work for racial
reconciliation. But then, at least a dozen times, Biden very strongly emphasized the importance of character and kindness and honesty and
principle and avoiding hatred and being true to American institutions.
Many of those times he looked directly at the most recent of the president sitting there, Donald Trump, who was sitting uncomfortably next to Barack
Obama, uncomfortably for Obama, I believe. So, Biden gave what was for him quite a hard-edged speech, I thought and -- but it was a quite appropriate
end to these tributes for Carter, I believe.
AMANPOUR: How interestingly observed. I just want to ask you, because, you know, you mentioned Ford and Carter and agreeing to give the eulogies at
each other's, when you see the five sitting there, and actually Obama was smiling and chatting with Trump for a while, I don't know what was being
said, but it was evident that he was -- there was a lot of bonhomie going on anyway, for the world. Can you imagine any of those presidents doing
that for each other?
FALLOWS: So, interesting. I can imagine -- so, Al Gore, who lost in the very contested Bush v. Gore race in -- you know, in 2000 was sitting
directly behind George W. Bush. I think you can see him in that shot immediately behind him. I think the two of them have become civil.
I think that, essentially, for all of the presidents, probably with the exception of Trump, there is a sense they're a part of a fraternity,
literally a fraternity, as opposed to a sorority, a fraternity of people who have understood uniquely the pressures that come with that office.
Jimmy Carter seemed for a while an outsider in that group because of his very independent, do it my own way spirit. I think even he, as shown by his
friendship with Gerald Ford, recognized they had something in common.
One of the main things I learned when I worked in the White House for Jimmy Carter is that the only decisions a president gets to make are the
impossible ones, because any decision where it's even 51-49, somebody else makes. You only get the decisions to make where it's lose, lose, lose, null
side. So, I think most of them you can imagine them sharing a bond of having been in that unique hot seat. And then, they have this other outlier
who is on the far end of the pew or end of the pew.
[13:15:00]
AMANPOUR: James Fallows, another very profound speech was without notes by the 92-year-old Andrew Young Carter's U.N. ambassador and a civil rights
leader in his own -- you know, in his own term. And he spoke about how Carter was a minority. Whites were a minority in Plains and in the area
where Carter grew up. And that sense of being a minority propelled him to his fight and his struggle for equal rights, for civil rights, human
rights.
And he also said, I don't know how it's going to go down here, but I never could imagine to this day, I can't understand how a boy from Plains or a
man from Plains became president of the United States. So, you were there when it happened. How did he make it?
FALLOWS: So, he made it -- and it's still the case that this is the most rapid ascent in U.S. presidential history. One year before he was sworn in
1977, Jimmy Carter's name -- U.S. was one percent. Everybody else who has taken this office has been famous in one way or the other, you know, from
George Washington -- Donald Trump as a TV star, even Barack Obama had become a known figure in the previous four years.
So, he won through a strategy of -- through a combination of bad luck for the country, good luck for him and careful strategy. The bad luck for the
country is that the many terrible time, the fall of Saigon was just months in the past. The Watergate wounds and the resignation of Richard Nixon were
still raw and open. Stagflation was the beginning. The oil shocks were starting. It was a really, really bad time. There was a sense, a profound
sense of wanting something new. That was the bad luck for the country.
The good luck for Jimmy Carter was that he came on to the national notice in a number of ways. Hunter S. Thompson then, you know, fear of loathing on
the campaign trail wrote a very -- article in Rolling Stone based on a speech that Carter had given at the Law Day ceremony in Georgia saying,
this was somebody who understands the need for real American justice.
As Andrew Young having come from a white minority in a fairly racist part of Georgia, when he was governor he said, the time for racial
discrimination is over. He famously put Martin Luther King's portrait in the Georgia State capitol. He managed to bridge black versus white, old
versus young -- Vietnam War -- pro-veteran. He was a naval academy graduate versus antiwar people. Environmentalist. He became a bridging figure who
had a kind of magic that made people think this guy could be the answer.
Then there was this strategy. He was the person who invented the Iowa caucuses. That he -- Hamilton Jordan, Jody Powell, his comrades thought
Iowa could make him president, and they pioneered that way of doing things.
AMANPOUR: That's really interesting. Look, I want to ask you because, you know, you said a couple of things afterwards, you know, you said it was
easier to admire him than to work for him. In The Atlantic in 1979, after you left you wrote, Carter's willful ignorance, his blissful tabula rasa
could, to me, be explained only by a combination of arrogance, complacency, and dread, thought, insecurity at the core of his mind, and soul.
I mean, he was your boss, your mentor, your friend. Why -- what caused you to write that?
FALLOWS: So, I think 45 years ago, that assessment held up for the realities of 45 years ago. And I think the widespread sense among many
people who had supported Carter, who respected him, was that the promise he brought into office, again, when he was the most popular president, first
term president ever, with ratings higher than Reagan's or Obama's or anybody else's, was being squandered in ways that were correctable. And it
was a sense of not knowing things he didn't know.
I think it is to Carter's credit that he was the same person in every decade of his life, every chapter of his life, in his 44 years as former
president, that was all to his strength of being able to invent all the causes he had around the world, to kill off practically the guinea worm, to
monitor elections, to work on Habitat for Humanity, to write 32 books.
When he was in office, these were both a plus and a minus, and it seemed a correctable minus. That was the effort that many people, including me, were
saying, this can be turned around if we change course. And I think the analysis stands up for 45 years ago. I'm glad he had the 44 years as ex-
president to show the things he could do.
AMANPOUR: I mean, he created the post-presidency, didn't he? I mean, he's the most successful post-president in American history. I want to also, you
know, lay out some of the stuff he said in his speech at Notre Dame, and it was about recognizing and putting human rights at the center of American
policy, and most notably overseas, but I guess at home as well. Here's what he said.
[13:20:00]
And we have some pictures also of the gun salute at Carter's, you know, coffin arriving at Joint Base Andrews. So, I just want to play this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY CARTER, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: We've reaffirmed America's commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy. I understand
fully the limits of moral suasion. We have no illusion that changes will come easily or soon, but I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue
the power of words and of the ideas that words embody.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: I mean, all these decades later, he is still remembered for putting human rights at the center, but he seemed to be clear eyed about
the limits of that.
FALLOWS: Yes, as you play that passage, it brings it all back, that -- actually, that was a speech I was closely involved in with -- of course,
many countless other people in the White House. And I think it's a speech that stands up very well.
And the passage, just following what you read, he talks about, you know, we have examples in our own history from Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King of
the power that words can have. And so, I think that the complexity of his policy, as he announced it then, is that obviously no powerful nation can
have a foreign policy based purely on civil rights, because any nation has realpolitik interest around the world, but it matters to say what you stand
for, to say where you are heading, to say where you believe the arc of history should lead.
And that commencement address at Notre Dame in 1977, I think stands as one of Carter's foreign policy legacies, along with the Camp David Agreements
and the Panama Canal Treaty, and also as something that presidents since him have often have aspired to, and future presidents should.
AMANPOUR: James Fallows, I want to ask you about a speech that you didn't write, but practically, the whole world knows it, and they call it the
Malaise speech, even though that word was nowhere near that speech, and actually, it was much more positive and constructive than people give him
credit for. I'm going to play a little snap of it, and then we'll talk.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARTER: The threat is nearly invisible. In ordinary ways, it is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and
spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose
for our nation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Take us back and tell us what he was trying to say in that whole speech.
FALLOWS: So, that was in the summer of 1979 and starting probably at -- that was in the second half of his presidency and things were just falling
apart, basically, on every front for Jimmy Carter and his administration then. The inflation rate was beginning to soar. His popularity ratings from
a very high level were beginning to plummet. There was turmoil around the world in the Soviet Union -- then-Soviet Union in Iran, in the Americas,
and it was anything that you could say about discontent in the United States for the past four or five years was quadrupled back then.
So, Jimmy Carter went up to Camp David. He had a number of advisers, historians, philosophers, religious leaders come and talk with him. And he
gave this speech, and something that is -- many people know that the Malaise speech, even though he never used that word, what few people
remember is that in the week or so after he gave it, the speech was enormously popular. Jimmy Carter's approval rating went up by at least 10
points, maybe 12 points in the wake of it, which is a huge -- which is a landslide, an earthquake in opinion ratings. People felt as if he had again
connected with some nerve in the American psyche.
Then after that, he asked for all members of his cabinet to submit their resignations, which was seen as a step towards disorder. It sort of stepped
on all the news about the speech. But I think that Carter's speech, if read now or listened to, stands up as a president trying to address what we now
think of as very contemporary concerns about what is the purpose of the country, what's the soul of the country, what's the balance between the
public good and the individual short-term good. And so, it was -- and it was very popular for a while.
AMANPOUR: And, James Fallows, we're going to discuss more in detail foreign policy with my next guest. But you were there when Jimmy Carter was
essentially crippled politically by the Iran hostage crisis. And you say that, you know, he was obsessed by it. He said he was obsessed by the
hostages. Of course, they were not released until literally minutes after Reagan's inauguration. Just tell me how that affected him.
[13:25:00]
FALLOWS: So, I think that to his strength and also sometimes to his detriment, Jimmy Carter was a master of detail. The Camp David Accords
would never have happened without Jimmy Carter's personal tireless engagement with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. And a number of other
things, defense spending. He looked at, you know, the charts for individual weapons and so on.
So, when it came to the Iranian hostages, this became a political millstone around his neck, because I believe the anniversary of their being seized in
Tehran was Election Day, or right around Election Day a year later.
And so, Carter, with his trademark intensity, was trying to see what could be done. What did the Iranians want? Is there any way to deal with them?
There's a whole separate literature that you are well aware of about the ways in which the Reagan operation campaign appeared to be dealing with the
Iranian hostage holders to make sure the hostages were not released on Jimmy Carter's watch, but it became part of his -- something he felt he
could solve as he solved other problems.
And then, of course, six months before the election or so, there was the disastrous Desert One rescue mission, where helicopters crashed, and I
think that may have been the time, if there were a turning point in the campaign, it may have been that.
AMANPOUR: Yes. And he said, I think, if only I'd had another helicopter and being able to execute that mission. James Fallows, thank you so much
for your memories, your perspective, and all this wisdom about Jimmy Carter. Thank you very much indeed.
So, as we said, much of his legacy is defined by this country, Iran. Carter was consumed by the hostage crisis when young Iranian revolutionaries
stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 53 Americans against their will for 444 days. Carter ordered a rescue mission, but that failed tragically
when two of the helicopters collided.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARTER: There was no fighting. There was no combat. But to my deep regret, eight of the crewmen of the two aircraft which collided were killed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Now, that crisis played a large role in Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election. To unpack Carter's Middle East legacy some
more, I'm joined by historian Abbas Milani, author of "The Shah," who's with me now from Stanford University in California. Welcome back to our
program.
ABBAS MILANI, DIRECTOR OF IRANIAN STUDIES, STANFORD UNIVERSITY AND AUTHOR, "THE SHAH": Thank you for having me.
AMANPOUR: Can I ask you something, Professor? You know, many Iranians, certainly those who supported the Shah, believe that Carter, quote/unquote,
"lost Iran," this U.S. friendly, western friendly nation, and enabled, you know, the fundamentalist Ayatollahs to come in.
At the funeral, Stuart Eizenstat, who was a member of Carter's, you know, advisers and cabinet, said, Carter didn't lose Iran, the Shah lost Iran.
What was going through your mind, as an Iranian, when -- you know, when you think about Carter now?
MILANI: Well, I think they exaggerate the role he had in losing Iran, but I think he did help Iran get lost to the clergy because there was an
inconsistency in his policy. He began early on with advocating human rights that changed the landscape in Iran. When he realized that that change
policy is beginning to seriously weaken the Shah, he was occupied by Camp David. He wasn't paying attention to Iran.
By the time he decided to pay attention to Iran, he was getting three different advices. He was getting one advice from Sullivan, who was his
ambassador in Iran. It was an arrogant man whose arrogance only matched his ignorance of politics in Iran. He was getting one other advice from Vance,
who was the secretary of state, who kept advocating for continuous human rights pressure. And he was getting, I think, the wisest advice from
Brzezinski, who realized that the human rights policies are going to get the Shah essentially thrown out of the country. And Carter couldn't make up
his mind. And by the time he made up his mind, I think it was too late.
There is a misconception, something the Royalists have, that he, Carter, conspired to overthrow the Shah. I think that is against every evidence I
have seen in the archives. Until October '78, Carter went out of his way to try to keep the Shah in power. But by the time he was making that effort, I
think it was already too late.
AMANPOUR: And then, of course, he was denied asylum by Carter and the Shah, you know, wandered around the world until he died in Egypt. But of
course, that -- when he did come in for treatment, that prompted the hostage crisis.
[13:30:00]
In your mind, having studied and written and taught about this, do you think there was any way the United States could have had a different
relationship with the Ayatollahs, you know, before the hostage crisis or even could that have been done in any different way? Was the United States
always destined to have this enmity with the Islamic Republic of Iran? Did you hear me? Abbas Milani, can you hear me?
Yes, I think the line may have dropped. We're going to come back to you, but hold on a second. We're going to go to another segment for the moment.
With some more on the life, legacy, and presidency of Jimmy Carter, with Pulitzer Prize winning author Kai Bird. You'll remember him from his
Oppenheimer biography that was turned into a multi-Oscar winning film. But his book about Carter is called "The Outlier," and follows his upbringing
in the post-Civil War South, and how that shaped his views on race and politics. Bird discusses this with Walter Isaacson, and they talk about how
Carter's post-presidency legacy soared.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Kai Bird, welcome to the show.
KAI BIRD, AUTHOR, "THE OUTLIER": Thank you, Walter, for having me.
ISAACSON: You know, President Jimmy Carter was born just two generations after the Civil War. And in his memoir, you know, he has this wonderful
line. He says, I grew up in one of those families whose people could not forget that we had been conquered. In other words, the south had been
conquered by the north. While most of our neighbors were black people whose grandparents had been liberated in that same conflict. How did that affect
him?
BIRD: Oh, Walter, that's a great question. And I know that comes right out of his childhood memoir. And it -- that captures his whole life story in a
sense, and that he really grew up in this southern culture that was drenched in the knowledge that his people had been defeated. They had known
defeat and occupation.
And so, he -- as an adult southern white man, he was aware of America's limits. He was aware that there could be defeat. And it made him very
pragmatic and down to Earth. And, of course, you know, he grew up in archery, this little hamlet two miles down the road from Plains.
And, indeed, he was virtually the only little white boy there, and all his playmates were African Americans. And that, too, gave him a different
sensibility as an American. It made him a southern white liberal instinctively, and extremely comfortable in his own skin, around African
Americans and in blacks, Southern Baptist churches. And so, that's Jimmy Carter.
ISAACSON: And you look at his father had lots of land, had sharecroppers, black sharecroppers, but he was quite the white supremacist. How come that
didn't -- how come Jimmy Carter didn't end up that way?
BIRD: Ms. Lillian, his mother was the counterbalance to his very racist father, who is a very conventional white southern man in South Georgia. But
Ms. Lillian just was a different sensibility. She was her own independent spirit. She became a nurse. Jimmy was born in a hospital in Plains, the
first American president to be born in the hospital. And she was just the opposite of her husband.
She was -- she encouraged her son to play with African Americans. She allowed them in the house. She made house visits to African Americans. She
was a Democrat. And later in life, you know, she went around planes shocking her neighbors by saying good things about Abraham Lincoln, just to
be provocative.
So, Jimmy grew up, you know, with this contrarian mother and it gave him a streak of independence.
ISAACSON: If he was so much of a liberal and progressive, especially on issues of race coming from his mother, how come he wasn't involved in the
civil rights movement of the '60s?
BIRD: He was extremely clever and pragmatic, and he just -- in those early years, he kept his head down. He didn't -- he could have had a chance to,
for instance, meet Martin Luther King Jr., but he never did.
[13:35:00]
He quietly went about his own business. And then, in 1962, decided suddenly, on the spur of the moment, to run for a state senator seat, won.
He kept his head down even then.
ISAACSON: Why did he run for State Senate?
BIRD: I think he was bored with his business. He had turned the family peanut farm and warehouse, which was really sort of a small agrobusiness
company, selling fertilizer and peanut seeds. And he turned it into quite a success, and he was bored.
He -- you know, Jimmy Carter was certainly one of the most intelligent and obviously one of the most decent men to occupy the White House. But he was
very intelligent, well read. And I think --
ISAACSON: But wasn't he both ambitious and had a driving religious faith? I mean, didn't that help him get into public life?
BIRD: And that, too, is a contradiction. Because he was extremely ambitious. In 1966, you know, he ran for governor and lost to a
segregationist, an ardent segregationist named Lester Maddox. And he was humiliated by that experience, and it led to sort of a crisis of faith. And
it led to what he later described his born-again experience. But there was a contradiction there between his ambition and his faith.
You know, as a Southern Baptist, you're taught that the -- really, the greatest sin is that of pride. And, well, Jimmy Carter had a lot of pride.
He always knew he was the smartest boy in his class, smartest guy in the room, and he knew that that was a sin. He reconciled it by making the
argument from Reinhold Niebuhr, borrowing from the -- from a liberal northern Theologian, the notion that, you know, the world is full of sin
and needs to be reformed and politics is necessary.
And so, he told himself, you know, I will do whatever is necessary to get elected and then I will use that power to do the right thing.
ISAACSON: But you say he would do whatever he could to get elected. You know, I remember growing up in the south, and you talk about Jimmy Carter
being humiliated by a loss for governor -- to Lester Maddox, the segregationist. And when that happened in the south, people went one of two
ways. George Wallace, that happened to him, and he said, I'll never be -- and then he used some slurs, and he decided to go -- to be very
segregationist.
Jimmy Carter goes the other way, so do a few other people. What causes that fork in the road?
BIRD: Well, he was desperate to get elected, to be able to have access to power. And so, when he next ran for governor in 1970, he really did engage
in some dog whistles. He would go and campaign in black churches, but he also went to small town small towns in Northern Georgia and defended the
right of people to send their kids to private white academies. That was a dog whistle.
And he won the election. And then turned around, having one power on his very first day in -- when he was inaugurated, he turns around and he
proclaims that the time for racial discrimination in the south is over. And people were shocked on the platform. There were -- you know, they felt
betrayed, some of his constituency.
But he went on to do the same thing, I would argue, when he won the White House. His whole approach to politics inside the Oval Office was to figure
out what the right thing to do, to educate himself as intelligently as he could.
So, look at what he did with the Middle East. I think this is a really important point that is not often made. That, you know, Camp David was the
scene of his greatest triumph. His personal diplomacy brought Egypt and Israel together. And yet, Carter also believed he'd gotten a wider peace
settlement, an agreement from Israel's Menachem Begin to go on and commit to a five-year freeze on the settlements, the Jewish settlements in the
West Bank. And then, Begin turned around and reneged, within days, according to Carter. Carter always believed he'd had a larger agreement.
[13:40:00]
And this is why for decades afterwards, during his presidency and afterwards, he very controversially did what he thought was the right thing
to do and spoke out against the settlements, pointing out that they are going to be an obstacle to a two-state solution.
And then, he went a step further when no one was listening to him, and he wrote a book in 2006 called "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Now, by using
that word, apartheid, he knew he was being provocative, and he got a lot of criticism. People resigned from the Carter Center. It was, you know, very
controversial. It took a lot of courage to do that.
But I would argue, looking back, you know, all these many years later, look at what's happened in the Middle East. Look at what's happened to Israel.
Carter is looking very prescient. Israel has gone down a path that is leading towards annexation and essentially an apartheid-like state. And
Jimmy Carter, you know, predicted this. That's a very tough thing to -- for him to have done.
And I think you can see him doing similar -- taking similar stands on all sorts of issues, from race, to climate change, to the very difficult
decision he made to appoint Paul Volcker to the Fed at a time when inflation was raging. And he knew that Paul Volcker was going to jack up
interest rates and constrict the money supply and make it very difficult for his re-election campaign in 1980, but Carter did it.
So, he's an extraordinary politician. He's really not a politician. He's sort of, you know, a spiritual leader who came to apply his politics to the
Oval Office. A very unusual presidency.
ISAACSON: You talk about that spiritual quality of him. Explain to him what we sometimes call the Malaise speech, even though I don't think that
word was used in it. It reads more like a sermon than it does a speech. Was he thinking he was in the pulpit?
BIRD: Absolutely. That's what he was thinking. You know, it's an extraordinary speech. I urge people to go and look it up. It's very
unusual. It's very prescient to read it today. It's talking about a crisis in America, in a spiritual sense. He was railing against what he called the
culture of narcissism. He was railing against the notion that Americans too often thought that they could find happiness and wellbeing in self-
indulgence and consumption.
This is, you know, not the usual kind of thing that an American president will talk about. But what he's really trying to get at in that speech is
there's a contradiction, you know, a conflict between the two essential principles in American life, our commitment to the freedom of the
individual, which is very powerful in America historically. But also, our commitment to community.
And Carter always believed in a very religious sense that, you know, you cannot have personal freedom without community. And he, I think, got this
in part from his childhood growing up in archery in Plains, a small-town sensibility. And he thought that America in the '70s was drifting away from
its commitment to community.
And that speech is really tough and I would argue is prophetic. He was often sort of a prophet in the wilderness. Again, not much of a politician.
He ignored the politics. This was not a popular thing to say, although he got a nice bump in the polls for about 10 days.
But, you know, read today, it's actually quite astonishing to -- particularly since we have Donald Trump who sort of embodies the notion of
narcissism. Donald Trump is about to walk back into the Oval Office. And so, it's an irony that narcissism has triumph. And Jimmy Carter would argue
that this is something to regret.
ISAACSON: you say he was the most decent man to be in the Oval Office and there was both a decency and a sense of character, in some ways, the
character sense was almost holier than now. I mean, but he was so dedicated to the idea that character counts, that you don't lie.
[13:45:00]
Could somebody like that be elected now, or is he -- is that seen as such a weakness these days?
BIRD: We're about to find out with the next four years with Donald Trump. But, you know, history works with a pendulum and maybe the pendulum will
swing back after having a narcissist who really doesn't care about the facts very often.
Jimmy Carter, you know, campaigned in 1976 famously saying, I will never lie to you. And you know, skeptics were a little cynical about that. His
own personal lawyer, Charlie Kerbo, turned to an aide when he heard that Carter had made this as part of his stump speech, I will never lie to you.
Kerbo turned and said, well, there goes the liar vote.
But Carter, you know, was a very decent man. He tried not to lie. He tried to do the right thing regardless of the political consequences. He had no
sex scandals in his life. And certainly, not during the presidency. There was no financial corruption. It -- and you know, he kept the peace. He
didn't send American troops into war. It's an extraordinary record and a personal one, and his personal commitment to trying to do the right thing
and to being decent I think is something that, you know, people will gravitate toward in the future.
His reputation historically, I think, is going to rise. And you know, Americans are may someday realize that they would actually like to have in
the Oval Office someone who rises at 5:30 in the morning, gets into the Oval Office by 6:30 and spends 12 hours working very hard trying to read
300 pages of memos every day to -- and pay attention to the deals. We ought to have -- we ought to value a president who works hard and is decent and
never lies to us.
ISAACSON: Kai Bird, thank you so much for joining us.
BIRD: Thank you, Walter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Let's bring back in historian Abbas Milani now for more on the foreign policy legacy. Sorry, we lost you due to a technical snafu. But I
want to ask you this, because you had started by saying Carter's focus on human rights is part of what lost the Shah his throne, which is kind of,
you know, a lot of people will be surprised by, to hear you say that.
But you were a political prisoner under the Shah, correct? What did you think? You were in jail when Carter came into office.
MILANI: Well, when I was a political prisoner and Carter came to office, overnight, our lives changed and life became much better. Torture virtually
stopped overnight in Iran. Political prisoners used to call it democracy. So, for us individually, life changed very profoundly. For Iran, life
changed for the better.
But very soon, it became clear that the continuation of that policy, coinciding with an economic downturn, coinciding what Carter didn't know,
but Shah's illness is making a perfect storm, and it will bring the Shah down.
At that time, he couldn't make up his mind. He vacillated between these three different advices that he was getting, and that caused the problem.
AMANPOUR: Yes, that caused -- so, are you telling me though that perhaps the Americans and maybe the British at that time, thought that the
Ayatollahs would bring more democracy and human rights than the Shah did?
MILANI: Absolutely. That's the big lie that I think Khomeini sold to the Carter administration. He clearly lied in his negotiations with them. He
wrote a letter to Jimmy Carter in January 1979 saying that we will keep Iran together. We will sell oil. We will keep the Soviets out of Iran. Just
help us get to power.
And there is no, I think, doubt that the evidence shows that Carter and his administration -- not I think Brzezinski but the dominant part of the
administration bought that story that Khomeini is going to deliver some form of sort of Islamic democracy. And the first prime minister he
appointed was very much along that promise.
[13:50:00]
Khomeini reneged on his promise to the Iranian people, and I think he clearly reneged on his agreements with the U.S.
AMANPOUR: Interesting. Yes, yes, yes.
MILANI: Yes. Go ahead.
AMANPOUR: And you referred to Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was Carter's national security adviser. Perhaps more hardline and clear eyed about what
was going on. I want to just quickly ask you about Carter's, you mentioned that he was so involved with the Camp David Accords in '79 that he kind of
took his eye off Iran.
But of course, they do stand as a unique and revolutionary peace deal for that region, and nothing has matched it since. And Carter himself has
become increasingly identified with trying to stand up for Palestinian rights, trying to call out Israel when he thought that they were breaking,
you know, America's policy of no settlements and this and that.
This is what Carter said about his complicated relationship with Israel when I asked him back in 2007.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARTER: Israel will never have peace, as long as they are confiscating and colonizing Palestinian land.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): I spoke with Former President Jimmy Carter, who has written a controversial book that's critical of Israel and its settlement
policy.
AMANPOUR: You have said that settlements are a real obstacle to peace.
CARTER: There's no doubt in any rational analyst's mind that the settlements are the major obstacle to peace.
AMANPOUR: But on the other hand, many people say actually it's Palestinian suicide bombers that are the major obstacle to peace.
CARTER: Well, there's no doubt that any sort of attack by Palestinians or others is horrible and must be condemned. But the basic problem is the
settlements and the lack of an accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel's withdrawn from Palestinian land.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): For decades, the U.S. has said Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are an obstacle to peace. So, why not withhold
America's abundant foreign aid to pressure Israel? I asked Former President Jimmy Carter.
AMANPOUR: America gives Israel $3 billion a year, no questions asked, just about. Why doesn't it say, OK, no more $3 billion?
CARTER: There's no way that a member of Congress would ever vote for that and hope to be re-elected.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, you know, what do you make of Carter's position all these years later, and particularly now in the horrendous aftermath of October
7th?
MILANI: I think his judgment was right, without a Palestinian State that has understandable limits and accepts the existence of Israel, there cannot
be peace in the Middle East. And I think in that sense, it is one of his most important contributions. But it's very ironic that his mistakes and
policies in Iran help bring to power the Iranian regime that has been for 44 years, the most systematic enemy after the right-wing in Israel of the
two states and the left-wing of the Palestinians who have both rejected the right of Palestinians to stay.
The Iranian regime has been the motor behind this argument. So, Carter created the possibility for peace, but also helped bring the force to the
region that has been undermining it along with the other actors that Carter was referring to.
AMANPOUR: And a very, very quick answer to the question I was trying to ask you. Before the hostage crisis in '79, was there any way that America
could have had some kind of continued political relationship with Iran under the Ayatollahs?
MILANI: Carter administration tried its best, Carter administration tried to normalize relations with the Mullahs, tried -- the Carter administration
gave Iran intelligence about the impending attack by Iraq, but Khomeini and the ruling elite were keen on turning against the U.S., and Carter could, I
think, do nothing about that turn that was profoundly ideological.
AMANPOUR: Professor Abbas Milani, thank you for your reflections and history on this subject.
And finally, tonight, a quick look ahead to tomorrow's program where I'll be speaking with one of the world's greatest living filmmakers. He's the
Spanish visionary Pedro Almodovar. We discuss his first ever film now in English called "The Room Next Door." And it stars two powerhouse actresses,
Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.
[13:55:00]
How he approached the difficult subject of death and assisted dying with his signature vibrant style. That is on tomorrow's program.
And that is it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. Remember, you can always
catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media.
Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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END
