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CNN Live Event/Special
Former President Jimmy Carter Dead At 100. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired December 29, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:00:38]
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST (voiceover): Jimmy Carter lived a longer life than any other American President, an incredible life. This is his story.
September 2019, Small Town Plains, Georgia celebrates the annual Peanut Festival and it's homegrown hero's 95th birthday.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First, let's give the biggest round of applause to President Carter, number 39 and Rosalynn.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): This is where Jimmy Carter spent more than 40 years after leaving the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: He started in Plains. Plains has been so important to him.
JASON CARTER, GRANDSON OF JIMMY CARTER: Plains, Georgia really defines who he is. Plains is a tiny town that got ingrained in him and my grandmother.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ms. Carter, how are you?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Grandmother Rosalynn, Jimmy Carter's wife.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER, 39TH UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: Our roots are deep in Plains and our heart is here and we love this town.
It's very hard to admit that you have sinned.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): On Sundays, he would teach and preach.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARTER: You are the performers and we have one audience member, and that's God.
BLITZER: How important is that for you?
JIMMY CARTER: It's one of the most important things, maybe the most important thing in my life, my Christian faith.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Former President Carter lived the small-town life, but he and Rosalynn had global ambitions, seeking to eradicate diseases, advocating for human rights, trying to peacefully resolve international conflicts.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: Thank you all.
JASON CARTER: One of the most remarkable things about their lives is that they started in this tiny town and then they've done this incredible amount of global work.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: That work and a Middle East peace agreement that Carter brokered while President were honored by the Nobel Committee. Who would have thought that a peanut farmer from a small, segregated southern town would become President of the United States, a Nobel Prize peacemaker, and a great humanitarian?
BLITZER (voiceover): James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1st, 1924.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: We didn't have electricity. We didn't have running water. It was during the Depression years.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): His father, James Earl Sr., a peanut farmer, personified the value of hard work to young Jimmy, who he nicknamed Hotshot.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: He called me hot when I was pleasing him. f he ever called me Jimmy, I knew that something was wrong between us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): At every turn, Jimmy wanted to please his father. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTR: Daddy was my absolute hero. At the same time, an extremely stern disciplinarian, you know. I never dared to violate my father's orders or even his request.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): That fear would keep little Jimmy on task, vigilant to do his part every single day starting at 4:00 a.m.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHIP CARTER, JIMMY CARTER'S SON: He and the people that worked on the farm would meet before dawn. He would pick cotton and work with them all day long.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): After a long day on the farm, then he would come home to family and fellowship.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Chip, this is the home where your dad grew up. Well, he grew up hearing a lot of stories about this place.
CHIP CARTER: I have done that.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): This place would nurture and shape a future President.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: So this dining room underscores the importance of family for President Carter.
CHIP CARTER: But at the same time, they were allowed to read at the table, so most of them read the whole meals.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): His parents instilled values that stayed with him throughout his life. Family, education, faith.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENT HISTORIAN: The Bible, Scripture was part of his daily childhood life. Every night at supper, they would not only say the Lord's Prayer, but would read the Gospel of Christ.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[22:05:10] BLITZER (voiceover): But this close-knit family didn't always agree on everything, especially when it came to Carter's parents and racial issues.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: Plains was largely an African American town and it was segregated.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Young Jimmy would witness his mother Lillian, openly break from the segregated customs of the South.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER BOURNE, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT CARTER: She had a reputation of being a bit of a maverick on race. It was traditional that blacks, when they went to a white home, would always go to the back door. And Ms. Lillian, his mother, would encourage them to come to the front door.
CHIP CARTER: She was a nurse and she would babysit and help African Americans just like she would anybody else.
JIMMY CARTER: I saw her reaching out to people who were destitute and who were in need, who were sick, and showed a great humanitarian commitment to them.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): But her husband held very different views on race.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: Jimmy Carter's own father was an arch segregationist. So it's an interesting childhood of a microcosm of a mother whose heroes, Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis the boxer. And a father who's an arch old style segregationist. Carter learned to speak both of those languages.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Yet as a child, race was never an issue for young Jimmy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHIP CARTER: He lived out in the country with very few white friends. All of his friends were African American.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Then he began to experience something altogether different and for him, troubling. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHIP CARTER: When he was 15, he realized that his African American friends were opening the gate for him and closing the gate and occasionally calling him mister. And I think that's when it kind of hit him. There was a difference that needed to be amended.
BLITZER: And that had a powerful impact on him.
CHIP CARTER: Powerful impact.
BLITZER: Throughout his whole life.
CHIP CARTER: Powerful impact.
BLITZER: Who do you think had the greatest impact in shaping his life?
CHIP CARTER: Probably my grandmother but he also had a teacher named Ms. Julia Coleman. And Ms. Coleman was wonderful. She's the one that gave him the list of books to read. I think it was 50 books during the summer, which included War and Peace.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): But the biggest inspiration for his future career came from a family member serving in the military.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: And as a young boy, Carter's determined to get into the U.S. Naval Academy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Coming up, Carter's duty that derailed his dream.
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[22:11:08]
BLITZER (voiceover): In Georgia, a recent Plains high school graduate, 16-year-old Jimmy Carter, dreams of traveling the world and serving his country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STUART EIZENSTAT, FORMER CHIEF WHITEHOUSE DOMESTIC POLICY ADVISER: He had a deep sense of public service and it had been his dream since he was 6 or 7 years old to go into the Navy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: For Carter, joining the Navy means adventure. An adventure he has been reading and hearing about since he was a child.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHIP CARTER: The boat here, My Uncle Tom was in the Navy and traveled
around the world and he would write dad every month a letter from wherever he was.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Even with excellent high school grades, there is no guarantee Carter will make the cut.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHIP CARTER: He was afraid that he was too thin, so he stuffed himself with bananas to get over the weight.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He went to Georgia Southwestern here for a year and then went to Georgia Tech for a year before he finally got appointed to the Naval Academy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): In July 1943, Carter enters the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. But back home in Plains, someone special would capture his heart.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: Rosalynn Smith is the love of Jimmy Carter's life. It's a great romantic story, I think in the end more powerful than Ronnie and Nancy Reagan. She was friends with Ruth as his sister, and when he was at the Naval Academy he proposed to her.
JIMMY CARTER: It was during Washington's birthday in 1946, and I asked Rosalynn if she would marry me and she said no. So from then until I graduated from Annapolis, I begged her to change her mind and she finally did, thank goodness.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): On July 7, 1946, weeks after graduating from the Naval Academy, James Earl Carter Jr. weds the equally ambitious Eleanor Rosalynn Smith.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROSALYNN CARTER, WIFE OF JIMMY CARTER: Jimmy always expected me to be able to do anything. I used to think that he ought to worry about me in the Navy when were first married, and he was gone from Monday till Thursday at sea every week and I had to take care of everything. And I was a new bride right out of rural South Georgia. But he never did. He never sympathized with me about it. He just assumed that I could do. And -- and being young and just married, I was going to show him.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): A new wife, a new career, Jimmy Carter is living his lifelong dream. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: He spent the late 1940s and early 1950s just traveling the world and liked it. Whether it was Schenectady, New York, or Hawaii, the Carters were happy. Rosalynn Carter basically said, I am not going back to Plains.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): They start a family. Jimmy Carter rises to the coveted position of lieutenant in the nuclear submarine service, and he loves it. Life is sublime until Carter gets the devastating news that his father is dying.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: When his father got cancer, Carter had a conundrum. If I don't go there and save the longtime family peanut business, it's going to collapse.
JIMMY CARTER: Rosalynn nor I ever dreamed that I would leave the Navy until I'd served 30 years in surface ships and in submarines. But in 1953, when my father died, I decided, to my own amazement, that I would resign from the Navy. When I told Rosalynn, she was absolutely shocked and furious. In fact, when we finally got out of the Navy in October of 1953 and drove from Schenectady to New York, all the way to Plains, she didn't say two words to me on the whole trip. She was furious.
CHIP CARTER: When he got here for the funeral, the people that came up to him, both White and actually African Americans that came up and hugged him and told him how much his father had done for them, how he had lent them money or given them credit or done whatever, just everybody that kept coming up and doing it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[22:15:13]
BLITZER (voiceover): Carter sees his father in a whole new light and commits to following in his footsteps. He takes over the family business and it becomes a success. But that success doesn't satisfy a relentless call to public service.
In 1962, Jimmy Carter decides to run for a seat in the Georgia State Senate. And when the Democratic primary votes are counted, Carter is declared the loser. But --
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOURNE: I challenged the results. It was Quitman County and some of his friends in that county called him and said, the ballot box has been stuffed and they have destroyed ballots that were for you. And they're only counting the ballots of your opponent and then there was a very important journalist from the Atlanta Journal, John Pennington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Pennington's reporting reveals that Carter's opponent received lots of fraudulent votes, including some from dead people. Carter takes action.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: He knew it. Challenged it in the courts and won.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): With no Republican opponent, the primary win puts Carter in the State Senate.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: But had I been defeated for that office, I never would have ran for office again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): And so Carter's roller-coaster career continues. Just four years later, another race, a higher job.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: And then in 1966, he ran for Governor.
BOURNE: Yes.
BLITZER: It didn't work out that well.
PETER BOURNE: Well, interestingly, he was not that eager to run. But he felt that the other -- the people who might win were really bad people who were not progressive so he ran. It was a very tough race but he lost. And the winner was Lester Maddox, the very racist restaurateur from Atlanta.
BRINKLEY: He thinks his political career is over.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Coming up, devastation, salvation, and redemption.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:21:04]
BLITZER (voiceover): It's 1966, and Jimmy Carter is reeling after losing the Democratic primary for governor of Georgia. He questions his future in politics, even his purpose in life. He turns to his sister for guidance.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ruth was a faith healer and a born-again Christian.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Her words to Carter, forget himself and focus on God. That advice inspires him to share his faith with others.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: Carter goes up to Pennsylvania, goes door to door, asking people to take Christ in their -- in their heart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): After he returns to Georgia, it's back to politics as Carter decides to run for governor again, but differently.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: From 66 to 70. Carter recognizes that he's got to win over segregationists.
BLITZER: And he was willing to talk about racial issues, too, in a different way than the traditional Southerner.
JUDY WOODRUFF, FORMER NBC REPORTER: He played it very carefully, though. He would go before African American audiences and be empathetic, talk to them about their issues. Then he would go into deep South Georgia and be empathetic with that group as well.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): When civil rights leader Andrew Young first meets Jimmy Carter, he's skeptical until he meets Carter's mother.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDREW YOUNG, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: When I realized that Mrs. Carter had been the county nurse that had delivered all of the babies, Black and White, and that she considered them all her children. It reminded me of a quotation that Martin Luther King used to use. You've got to have a tough mind and a tender heart. And that's what I saw in Jimmy Carter.
WOODRUFF: He was very good with people. He would immediately connect with them, look them in the eye, reach out, shake their hand, give them that big Jimmy Carter smile. And this was not a race he was supposed to win.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): But he does win. On January 12, 1971, Jimmy Carter is inaugurated as Georgia's 76th governor, bringing a changing tide to the South.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JIMMY CARTER: I say to you, quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over.
BRINKLEY: And then he hangs a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the Georgia State House, and he becomes the cover of Time Magazine, Carter, as Dixie whistles a new tune, a new progressive governor from Georgia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): As Carter is changing Georgia, his aspirations change as well. He begins eyeing the national stage.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: And to meet the great challenge. In 1972, I went to the Democratic National Convention in Miami when George McGovern was nominated and a lot of people had run for President that year. And I realized that I knew just as much about this country and just as much about laws than some of these famous people who might be President.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): So Carter decides he wants to be president, and with his team, secretly plots it out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WOODRUFF: They had the country mapped out. He and Hamilton Jordan, who had drawn up basically a manifesto of how they were going to take over the country.
BOURNE: I wrote a 10-page memo to Carter saying, I think, you know, if you ran the kind of populist campaign in places like New Hampshire that you did in Georgia, you could win.
JIMMY CARTER: A nice President.
YOUNG: : It was a shock. None of us could conceive of a southern governor being president of the United States.
LILIAN CARTER, MOTHER OF JIMMY CARTER: He said, I'm going to run for president. I said, president of what? And he said, President of the United States. And I laughed.
JIMMY CARTER: I was subjected to a lot of ridicule. And I remember the headline in the Atlanta Constitution, Jimmy Carter is running for what?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): But the criticism only fuels his fire. So Carter hits the campaign trail, and his true believers, the peanut brigade, follow him.
[22:25:02] (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SAM NUNN, FMR. U.S. SENATOR: When you have hundreds of people from your home state that are out there breaking their neck every day in Iowa and New Hampshire and all over the place, it tells you something. Not just about them, but about the candidate.
BLITZER: So, Chip, let's talk about this place, lots of history here.
CHIP CARTER: Yeah. This is the depot in Plains, Georgia, the very center of town and we took it over as a campaign headquarters and people flocked through all the time. So we had nine different family members on the campaign trail in different areas.
JIMMY CARTER: We never campaigned together. And by the time people woke up, were so far ahead they couldn't catch us. And from then on, it was just, everybody wanted to stop me, but they couldn't do it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): The unstoppable peanut farmer is flying high. Meanwhile, the country is at an all time low.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD NIXON, 37TH UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
BRINKLEY: And his biggest thing going for him was, I have nothing to do with Washington, D.C. I am a true outsider and people were sick of all of the palace intrigue and grotesqueness of the Watergate tapes and the like that Carter seemed like a cool summer breeze entering American political life.
JIMMY CARTER: I would not tell a lie. I would not mislead the American people.
And people believed me finally and I think that after the lies that came out of Vietnam and Watergate and after the assassination of John and Robert Kennedy, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. There was a resonance there to somebody in whom the people could have confidence.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): But to become president, he needs a running mate who can balance the ticket. Seasoned Senator Walter Mondale fits the bill.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER MONDALE, FORMER UNITED STATES VICE PRESIDENT: Carter had no experience in office, in elective office, in -- you know, in the north, at all. So he needed help on that and he knew it. I'd had a lot of experience and we made a pretty good team, I'd say. JIMMY CARTER: And now I've come here after seeing our great country to
accept your nomination.
BRINKLEY: Carter, Mondale and as we headed into the election in the fall, it was pretty much neck to neck with Gerald Ford and Bob Dole.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Until the Playboy problem.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: Carter did have a group of Georgia advisors and they looked at polls and saw that Carter has one big problem, and that is that white men don't like him, that they think his born-again Christianity is weird.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): To change that image, Carter does an interview with the popular men's magazine Playboy and says, I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do and God forgives me for it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: I remember getting a call from the Atlanta Constitution on a Sunday when this broke, and I said, oh, my God, this is going to be deadly.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): This strategy backfires. Carter plummets in the polls. Then weeks later, in a critical foreign policy debate, Ford makes his own snafu.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GERARD FORD, 38TH UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford Administration.
EIZENSTAT: That took away much of the power of incumbency and the supposed advantage that President Ford would have on foreign policy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): It's down to the wire. With weeks to go until the election, Governor Carter and President Ford are neck and neck. It's anyone's race.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:32:26]
BLITZER (voiceover): November 2, 1976 Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter are in a dead heat on election morning.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: And it looked like this was going to be and was a real nail-biter
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Then at about 3:30 a.m.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And that does it. ABC now projects Carter is the winner with 272 electoral votes --
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): In one of the closest races in American history, Jimmy Carter is elected President of the United States.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: It's a long way from plains to Washington D.C. But we've made a great deal of progress lately.
WOODRUFF: It was really kind of an extraordinary thing to think that six years after this man had been elected governor, he was elected President of the United States from Georgia, of all places, as a Democrat. It was a remarkable period in American politics.
HAMILTON JORDAN, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF: In everything he's done in his life, he brings into focus kind of all of his resources, all of his energy, and then he just tenaciously pursues his -- his goals. I mean, that was how he won the presidency.
JIMMY CARTER: and will, to the best of my ability --
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): With his hand on the Family Bible. On January 20th, 1977, Jimmy Carter is sworn in as the 39th President of the United States.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WARREN BURGER, CHIEF JUSTICE: So help me God.
JIMMY CARTER: So help me God.
WARREN BURGER: Congratulations.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): From the beginning, he is a different kind of President.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: Terribly cold winter, he got out of his limousine on Pennsylvania Avenue and he and Rosalynn, and the family walked the whole way to show that he was running against the imperial presidency. He was going to be a person of the people.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): For the people and against the Washington establishment, Carter brings in his own team, nicknamed the Georgia Mafia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: With LBJ, it was the Texas Mafia. With Jack Kennedy, it was the Massachusetts Mafia. But the difference is that they had Washington experience.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): To get things done his way, President Carter makes significant changes. He agrees to increase the influence and duties of the Vice President.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: You spelled out how you saw the Vice President role in a memorandum you wrote to President Carter.
MONDALE: Yes, yeah, to executiveize the Vice President, to bring him in the action of the White House, and trying to get things done.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): And Carter appoints a cabinet that is a bit different.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: He did create a groundbreaking cabinet.
BRINKLEY: He did and he put a lot of historic first of African Americans and women.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[22:35:03]
BLITZER (voiceover): Another historic first, Carter appoints Andrew Young as the First African American U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
YOUNG: : And he said, if we are going to be taken seriously about civil rights and about human rights, I need you. DAN RATHER, BROADCASTER: Here now is the President.
JIMMY CARTER: Good evening.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): A few weeks into his presidency --
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: All of us must learn to waste less energy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): In a televised fireside chat, Carter urges everyone to do their part during an energy crisis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night, we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.
MONDALE: Well, he had this idea that the American people had to get used to being frugal and it started during chilly weather. So he wore a sweater and turned thermostats down so were all freezing, except in my office, where I turned it up a little bit.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Later that year, Carter establishes the Department of Energy and decides to pursue a controversial item on his agenda, giving up control of an engineering marvel built by the United States, the Panama Canal.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: 80 percent of the public when we started opposed returning, "our canal" to the Panamanians.
JIMMY CARTER: It was more difficult to get two thirds of a senate to vote in favor of the Panama Canal Treaty than it was to get elected President to start with.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): But Carter gets the votes he needs and joins the Panamanian President to sign the treaty.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: Carter was thinking that this would create a new era of goodwill.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): And to extend that goodwill, Carter takes an unprecedented step to bring peace to the Middle East.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOURNE: Because of his intimate reading of the Bible and other religious documents, he felt that this is something that he was destined to do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): In September 1978, he welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Camp David.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: We tried to put Begin and Sadat together the first night, and it was like putting two scorpions in a bottle.
YOUNG: They were in separate cabins, and President Carter ran back and forth between the two of them.
JIMMY CARTER: We stayed there 13 days. Well, I would meet with Begin or Sadat, make notes about what Begin said, and then what I thought Sadat might accept and not accept.
YOUNG They finally decided, this isn't working, and so they packed up to go home.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): It's the last day of negotiations at Camp David and there is still no resolution. Carter makes a heartfelt gesture that changes the course of history.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: He has eight copies made of the photograph taken of the three of them, gets the names of each of Begin grandchildren who he knew he loved dearly, autographs it to each with best wishes for peace, Jimmy Carter, hands it to him. And sees Begin who, his eyes starting to tear as puts his bags down and said, Mr. President, I'll make one last try.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): On March 26, 1979, Egypt and Israel formally signed the peace treaty ending 31 years of conflict between the two countries, a monumental accomplishment for President Carter then, in the summer of 1979, an oil crisis. As a result of the Iranian revolution, oil output to the U.S. has severely declined, leading to gas shortages all across the country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: Jimmy Carter comes home in July of 1979 from the Tokyo summit with his polls plunging because there were gasoline lines and rising inflation. His young pollster had convinced he and Rosalynn that the reason why his polls were low was not because of inflation and long lines. It was because there was a malaise in the public.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): And President Carter confronts it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. It is a crisis of confidence.
BRINKLEY: Carter starts saying, and the problem isn't me, it's you, the American voters. You're not doing enough. You're gluttons for gasoline. You're spoiled. People didn't take it well.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): The problems for Carter would escalate. Coming up, the worst year of Carter's life.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:43:42]
BLITZER (voiceover): November 4th, 1979, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking dozens of hostages, including 66 Americans, and demanding the U.S. extradite deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi back to Iran.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Americans inside have been taken prisoners.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The American hostages were blindfolded, handcuffed and marched out on the US Embassy's front steps by the revolutionary students.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): It is the beginning of a siege that will last more than 400 days, through the 1980 presidential election, through the rest of Carter's presidency.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: He decides to hold himself up in the White House. He cancels his foreign trips but that made him a hostage in the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Carter may be silent but the media coverage is intense.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The special report that we planned to bring you
tonight was about domestic politics. We think the crisis in Iran is more urgent right now than the campaign here at home.
WOODRUFF: It was drummed into the American consciousness that this was happening and it was happening on Jimmy Carter's watch.
BRINKLEY: And it started making Carter look small and ineffective.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Carter chooses to use economic warfare to force the release of the hostages, ending the U.S. purchase of Iranian oil and then freezing billions in Iranian assets. In his diary, he writes, depriving them of about $12 billion in ready assets was a good way to get their attention and it works a little. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders 13 Americans free. Still, 53 remain captives. Finally, more than three weeks into the crisis, the President breaks his silence.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: We will not rest nor deviate from our efforts until all have been freed from their imprisonment and their abuse.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): With the crisis hanging over him, he announces his re-election bid. And then the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan to support its failing communist government. Perhaps one of Carter's more controversial responses, a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games being held in Moscow.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: And one of the toughest meetings and most emotional meetings that I think we had in the White House was when Jimmy Carter invited all the Olympians into the White House. These young kids had trained for four years to go to Moscow for their respective sport. And we had to tell them financial security reasons we couldn't do it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Above all, Carter's top priority is freeing the hostages. And after months of planning, he orders a secret rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: Well, the mission actually took place in April of 1980. It's extremely complex. We had to send a large expeditionary force from a long distance away.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): The rescue operation faces obstacle after obstacle, from sandstorms to a devastating accident.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: And when the rotor blade of one helicopter struck, the C130 cargo plane filled with fuel to refuel the aircraft to go into Tehran, it burst into flames and killed eight servicemen. Imagine how Carter felt 7,000 miles away monitoring this.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): On day 174 of the hostage crisis, Carter delivers the terrible news.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: And as President, I also know that the nation shares not only my disappointment but also my determination to persevere and to bring all of our hostages home to freedom.
EIZENSTAT: And in many ways, those flames that engulf those servicemen engulfed our presidency as well.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): As the political season picks up, the Republican Party nominates former California Governor Ronald Reagan. The Democrats once again pick Jimmy Carter as their candidate. He agrees to debate Reagan, and they face off just before Election Day.
JIMMY CARTER: Governor Reagan, again, typically, is against such a proposal.
RONALD REAGAN, 40TH UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: Governor, there you go again.
HAMILTON JORDAN: Well, the dam kind of opened, and a lot of undecided voters went to -- went to Governor Reagan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): One week later, Ronald Reagan defeats Jimmy Carter.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the vote continues to come in at this hour as we said. And it continues to add to the stunning totals won in this 1980 presidential election by Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: The people of the United States have made their choice, and of course, I accept that decision.
The last year that I was in office was the worst year of my life. Not only because I was defeated in November, but because the Iranian terrorists were holding hostages and we didn't know if they would come back alive and safe or not. And that was a commitment of mine. It was so deep and personal that it was just -- it just tore our lives apart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): But then, in the last moments of his presidency, a ray of hope.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: We have now reached an agreement with Iran which will result, I believe, in the freedom of our American hostages.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): As Reagan gives his inaugural address.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RONALD REAGAN, 40TH U.S. PRESIDENT: Government is not the solution to our problem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): It happens.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: 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 a journey home, and that every one of the 52 hostages was alive, was well, and free.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): His defeat is hard, but tempered by these final moments in office.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: And all the way out to get on Air Force One to come back to Plains after I was no longer president, we had nothing but celebrations. And we were so happy that the hostages were finally free.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): He's back in Plains for less than a day when President Reagan extends him a courtesy, meet the hostages in Germany on their way home.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: I had a lot of trepidation. It was just one of the, you know, most -- the greatest reliefs and I guess one of the happiest moments, not only for me, but for all the United States. (END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Coming up, fnding his purpose after the fall.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:54:03]
BLITZER (voiceover): In 1981, having failed to win a second term, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter return home.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: After four years living in the White House, he and Rosalynn head back to Plains, Georgia. What was that like?
BRINKLEY: Bittersweet. Plains was always in his bloodstream but they were sad and they were lonely and they missed the trappings of power. A depression of sorts kicked in.
CHIP CARTER: I think it was more for our family, like a death in the family more than anything else.
JIMMY CARTER: I had not planned to go -- Plains, 600 people, no prospect for a job.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): And he discovers the family business is in trouble.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JORDAN: His farm, which had been in a blind trust, was in disrepair, almost bankrupt.
JIMMY CARTER: And to my amazement that I was a million dollars in debt so the first thing I did, I had to reconstitute my finances. And I sold every bit of my business and just barely paid off my debts.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): After salvaging his finances, Carter turns his attention to his future. In order to move forward, Carter decides he must look back.
[22:55:10]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: I began to read my diary notes of all the time I was in the White House. When something happened that were not in the official record. I dictated what happened. I had 6,000 pages of detailed diary notes. And out of that, I wrote a book called Keeping Faith, Memoirs of a President. And so that pretty well kept me occupied, I think favorably that first year. JORDAN: He was still a young and vigorous man. He had his -- half of his life still in front of him and he didn't know what to do with himself. And over a period of time, he realized that he didn't want to make a lot of money. He didn't want to serve on corporate boards. He didn't want to play golf. He wanted to go off and use his talents to -- to help other people.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Carter and his wife start working with Habitat for Humanity, building affordable housing for people in need.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: We're now in 13 foreign countries. We're building about one home per day. And I think it's kind of like planting yeast in a loaf of dough. Its just habitat makes things grow all around us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): He's inspired to continue his fight for human rights and soon settles on his next chapter.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: One night, I kind of sat up in bed. I generally sleep very soundly, and I said, I know what we'll do, we'll create in Atlanta, adjacent to the Presidential Library, a place like Camp David, and I'll negotiate peace. That was the original concept of the Carter Center.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): On his 62nd birthday, he celebrates the dedication of the Carter Center's new home.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: We're indeed lucky to have a state capitol like this, a place to locate this presidential center and 30 acres of beautiful land.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): When the Carter Center opens, leaders of countries facing impending conflicts make him their go to peacemaker, including his own country. In 1994, President Bill Clinton authorizes a team led by Jimmy Carter to Haiti. Their mission, restore democracy through peaceful negotiation before multinational troops remove the ruling military regime by force.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NUNN: The paratroopers were on their way and Carter was still negotiating when President Clinton said to him and to us, get the hell out of there. (END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Senator Sam Nunn, Carter, and General Colin Powell succeed. The invasion is averted.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL CLINTON, 42ND UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: The peaceful solution they helped to work out is another major contribution in all their careers.
JASON CARTER: So my grandfather has always believed, I think, in a timeless way, that the United States should be a superpower for peace, a superpower for human rights.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): And a superpower for spreading and strengthening democracy with the former president monitoring elections in Panama, Nepal, Lebanon, and elsewhere.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARTER: And right now the Carter Center has programs in 60 or more countries and many of them are in Africa and we operate among the poorest people in the world.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): And Jimmy Carter's greatest post presidency achievement.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: If the worm comes out of the joints --
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Practically eradicating an insidious disease.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: I'm really at my happiest when I'm in, for instance, an African village that a year ago had devastating affliction of guinea worm. And now, because of our program, there is no guinea worm.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Humanitarian, peacemaker, and finally Nobel laureate.
JASON CARTER: I get this call at 5:00 in the morning and I answer the phone, it's my grandmother. And I think, oh my gosh, something's happened. And she said, Jason, have you heard the news? And I said, I mean, obviously not. It's 5:00 in the morning. No, what happened? She said, pawpaw won the Nobel Peace Prize.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Carter is often lauded for all he accomplished after leaving the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRINKLEY: Carter is the great ex President in American history.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): A post-presidency that can sometimes overshadow the impact of his presidency.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
EIZENSTAT: He was a president who left a legacy at home and abroad that makes this a better country and ethics, peace in the Middle East, and normalizing relations with China.
SARAH WEDDINGTON, FORMER. ASSISTANT TO JIMMY CARTER: He was determined to increase the number of women in top judicial positions.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Before 1977, only 10 women had been appointed Federal judges.
WEDDINGTON: When Carter left the Oval Office, there were more than 40.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): Including Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WEDDINGTON: And then that put her in position to be appointed by Bill Clinton to the U.S. Supreme Court.
MONDALE: I think Jimmy Carter's legacy will be of an honest, faith driven public servant.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER (voiceover): A man of faith who continued to preach and to serve long after he first returned to Plains, Georgia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIMMY CARTER: Whenever there's a choice to be made between peace and war, choose peace. Whenever there's a choice to be made between basic human rights and the violation of people's rights and the equality of people, choose the human rights. So if we would just do this, the world would be a better place.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
