The Consequences of President Carter

Summary

History As It Happens: The Consequences of President Carter

Host: Martin Di Caro
Release Date: January 3, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of History As It Happens, host Martin Di Caro delves into the presidency of James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, exploring the enduring consequences of his term as the 39th President of the United States. Carter's tenure, marked by significant domestic and international challenges, offers a rich landscape for historical analysis. Di Caro weaves insights from top historians with archival audio to present a comprehensive examination of Carter's legacy.

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Early Presidency and Election

Jimmy Carter's ascent to the presidency was unexpected. A relatively unknown peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, Carter entered the White House at a time when America was grappling with the aftermath of Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Historian Sean Wilentz notes, “Carter embodied the spirit of a new South, declaring that the time for racial discrimination was over” (03:43).

Notable Quote:

Jimmy Carter [00:07]: "I say to you, quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over."

Carter's populist approach and emphasis on integrity resonated with a public eager for change and honesty in government.

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Domestic Affairs and Energy Crisis

One of Carter's first actions as president was addressing the national energy crisis. In his first televised address, Carter emphasized the urgency of establishing a comprehensive energy policy.

Notable Quote:

Jimmy Carter [12:03]: "All of us must learn to waste less energy simply by keeping our thermostats lower in the winter and warmer in the summer."

Despite his efforts, the energy crisis persisted, exacerbated by inflation and rising interest rates. Historian Jeremy Surry criticizes Carter's inability to effectively collaborate with Congress, leading to a significant drop in his approval ratings from 70% to 28% within a year (12:44).

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The Malaise Speech

In July 1979, amid escalating economic woes, Carter delivered what became known as the "malaise speech." He identified a "crisis of confidence" affecting the nation’s spirit and cohesion.

Notable Quote:

Jimmy Carter [14:12]: "It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will."

While initially received positively for his candor, the speech ultimately backfired as it was perceived as a lack of concrete solutions, further diminishing his public support (15:55).

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Iran Hostage Crisis

The Iran Hostage Crisis became the defining foreign policy challenge of Carter's presidency. Following the Iranian Revolution and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini, Carter struggled to manage the deteriorating relationship with Iran. His failed rescue mission in April 1980, where two aircraft collided, resulted in the death of eight crew members and intensified the national crisis (30:29).

Notable Quote:

Jimmy Carter [19:33]: "For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years."

Historians Jeffrey Engel and Jeremy Surry highlight Carter's genuine efforts to negotiate the hostages' release and the complexities he faced in balancing morality with strategic interests.

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Foreign Policy Achievements

Despite the tumultuous nature of his presidency, Carter made significant strides in foreign policy, particularly in human rights advocacy and peace negotiations.

Notable Achievements:

• Human Rights Emphasis: Carter was the first president to prioritize human rights in U.S. foreign policy, influencing Soviet policies and supporting dissident movements in Eastern Europe. Historian Sean Wilentz praises Carter's role in laying the groundwork for the eventual dissolution of the Soviet empire (24:31).

  Jimmy Carter [24:31]: "The Universal Declaration and the human rights conventions that derive from it do not describe the world as it is. But these documents are very important nonetheless."

• Camp David Accords: In 1978, Carter brokered a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, a lasting achievement that still holds relevance today. However, as journalist Christopher Hedges critiques, the accords marginalized the Palestinian issue, leading to ongoing conflicts (35:58).

• Carter Doctrine: Announced in his 1980 State of the Union address, the Carter Doctrine declared the Persian Gulf a vital national security region, setting the stage for future U.S. military involvement in the Middle East (38:11).

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Legacy and Consequences

Carter's presidency is often viewed through a lens of mixed outcomes. While his domestic policies faced significant hurdles, his foreign policy initiatives had long-lasting impacts. Historian Jeffrey Engel lauds Carter's integrity and commitment to human rights, contrasting his leadership style with that of his successor, Ronald Reagan.

Notable Quote:

Historian Jeffrey Engel [23:05]: "Carter made the fundamental mistake, I think, in many ways, of trusting the American people with the entire truth... People want a leader who offers them a pathway."

Carter's post-presidency, however, has been celebrated as one of the most impactful, dedicating decades to humanitarian efforts, particularly in Africa, solidifying his legacy as a force for positive change.

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Conclusion

Jimmy Carter's presidency was a period of significant challenges and pivotal decisions that shaped both domestic and international landscapes. While his administration faced criticisms for economic struggles and the Iran Hostage Crisis, Carter's commitment to human rights and ethical governance left an indelible mark on history. Martin Di Caro effectively captures the complexities of Carter's legacy, inviting listeners to reflect on the true consequences of his leadership.

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Transcript Reference: The timestamps in the quotes correspond to the transcript provided for accurate attribution and context.

Transcript

[Martin DeCaro]

History as it happens. January 3, 2025. The consequences of President Carter.

[Jimmy Carter]

I say to you, quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over.

Something has propelled Jimmy Carter out of the overcrowded pack.

[Historian]

They argue he's taking a new approach to politics that goes beyond specific issues. They call it a thematic campaign.

[Jimmy Carter]

Let our recent mistakes bring a resurgent commitment to the BAS principles of our nation.

[Martin DeCaro]

People who want to work but can't.

[Historian]

Find jobs are part of today's other bad economic news.

[Jimmy Carter]

The unemployment, a more serious domestic problem. That problem is inflation.

[Historian]

Gas lines at many stations were a lot longer than normal.

[Jimmy Carter]

Why doesn't anybody contact the President? Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.

[Ayatollah Khomeini]

Ayatollah Khomeini returns to a country teetering on the brink of civil war.

[Historian]

In Iran, there have been new threats against the hostages, threats inspired by the new United States. That does not any longer rule out.

[Jimmy Carter]

The use of force, but to my deep regret, eight of the crewmen of the two aircraft which collided were killed.

[Historian]

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

[Martin DeCaro]

James Earl Carter was an unlikely president. He entered the White House with the dark clouds of Vietnam and Watergate hanging over the nation. He exited four years later amid myriad troubles, foreign and domestic. His job approval rating in the mid-30s. Was he a failure? Where did he succeed? Maybe the better question what of the Carter presidency endures to this day? Was he consequential? That's next, as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Historian]

Jimmy Carter is the president who first reacts very strongly to Soviet aggression and the placement of Soviet missiles, intermediate range missiles in Europe. And much of what we associate with Reagan's hard line comes from Jimmy Carter. He is also the first president to make human rights a central issue. One of his most enduring speeches is the speech he gives, the commencement address at Notre Dame University, where he makes the case that human rights must be at the center of our foreign policy.

[Jimmy Carter]

It is a crisis of confidence.

[Historian]

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

[Jimmy Carter]

I am.

[Historian]

Would you place your left hand on the Bible and raise your right?

[Martin DeCaro]

January 20, 1977. Inauguration Day.

[Historian]

Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear.

[Jimmy Carter]

I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear.

[Historian]

That I will faithfully execute.

[Jimmy Carter]

That I will faithfully execute.

[Historian]

The Office of President of the United States.

[Jimmy Carter]

The office of President of the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

In the Age of Reagan. Historian Sean Wallentz writes, Jimmy Carter's best day as president may have been his first. After his swearing in, he left his armored limousine and walked hatless down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House with his wife and family, a populist touch that recalled the inaugurations of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Like Jefferson and Jackson, the new president, Jimmy, not James, would renounce pomp and circumstance and return the nation's government to the people. A vigorous 52 year old with a beaming smile, Carter conveyed all American virtues. Having risen out of the small town of Plains, Georgia, he left a promising career in the navy to take over the family's peanut business when his father fell ill. Only later did he return to politics, eventually winning the governorship on his second try in 1970, succeeding the notorious segregationist Lester Maddox. As governor, Carter seemed to embody the spirit of a new south, where he declared at his inaugural in Atlanta, the time for racial discrimination is over.

[Jimmy Carter]

At the end of a long campaign, I believe I know our people of this state as well as anyone could. Based on this knowledge of Georgians, north and south, rural and urban, liberal and conservative, I say to you, quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over. Our people have already made this major and difficult decision, but we cannot underestimate the challenge of hundreds of minor decisions yet to be made. Our inherent human charity and our religious beliefs will be taxed to the limit. No poor, rural, weak or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job for simple justice.

[Martin DeCaro]

Now, as president, writes Wilentz, he would bring his spirit of decency to a national government that still seemed adrift, with the support he expected of a Congress firmly controlled by his own party. The throngs along Pennsylvania Avenue roared with.

[Historian]

Approval and is walking down the avenue at Pennsylvania now. Whether this is an intention to walk the mile and a half, we have no idea.

[Martin DeCaro]

No less than Gerald Ford, though, Carter faced large problems that defied conventional wisdom. And he had even worse luck than his predecessor.

[Historian]

All these people who are straining for a glimpse of the man who's been president for an hour and a half now are getting their wish.

[Martin DeCaro]

James Earl Carter died on December 29, 2024. He lived a century of those 100 years. This podcast episode's gonna focus mostly on the fourth he spent in the White House as the 39th president of the United States. With these questions, in what endures, was Carter consequential? It's not the same as asking was he a good or bad president? Nothing wrong with that question. It's just that the answer might depend on your politics or your sense of morality. Good versus bad, great versus evil. These are moral judgments. So I prefer to understand whether a leader was consequential, as the historian Ian Kershaw writes in Personality and Power, his recent book about European leaders. But this would apply to leaders of any country. Kershaw writes, it is, to my mind, best to leave behind the search for greatness in political leaders. The issue, he says, is not whether or not, by some nebulous definition, a leader was great. The focus instead should be squarely on that leader's historical impact and legacy. Moral judgment, whether a great leader has to be a force for good or whether negative greatness is possible, then falls away. Although the historian's use of language itself inevitably has moral overtones, this still, of course, leaves open the question of the role of the individual in history.

[Jimmy Carter]

We reject the prospect of failure or mediocrity or an inferior quality of life for any person. Our government must at the same time be both competent and compassionate. We have already found a high degree of personal liberty, and we are now struggling to enhance equality of opportunity, our commitment to human rights.

[Martin DeCaro]

As Jimmy Carter addressed the nation for the first time as its chief executive, he knew he had a difficult job ahead of him. It had already been a tough decade, but he probably did not anticipate just how extremely difficult it would be. But he had the public on his side at first, as an outsider seeking to restore public faith in government. Here is historian Jeremy Surry.

[Historian]

Carter ran as the honest man anti Watergate. He was the opposite of what we had with Nixon and Agnew. He ran as the pious figure who would not get involved in wars like Vietnam. He would not get us in that corrupt, lying kind of of war where the government was lying to the public, as we learned in the Pentagon Papers and things of that sort. And he promised to be a president who would work with, including Middle Eastern leaders to help bring peace to the world that would benefit us. He later becomes known as a cold warrior because of his response to Soviet aggression. But he actually ran promising more detent, promising more peace in the world and a focus on the needs of Americans at home.

[Martin DeCaro]

And here is historian Jeffrey Engel.

[Historian]

The fact that a politician would say, I will never lie to you, and have that be an incredibly important voting desire from the American people, tells us just how wounded the American people were from Watergate and from Vietnam. That, you know, a man who came in whose basic pledge was, I will tell the truth, seemed like a breath of fresh air. And the fact that he had the pious background, the fact that he was an Annapolis grad, frankly, the fact that he was also A technocrat. Those are things, I think, that were really very appealing. If we had discussion earlier about who the worst president of the 20th century was, worst democratic president of the 20th century, if we were to ask a different question, who was the smartest president who had the highest IQ of any president, I'm willing to put my money on Jimmy Carter. Now, what that tells us, of course, is that there's more to success than intelligence, than IQ points. And Carter had other personality flaws, of course, that preclude his success. But you know, as a man who came into office appearing to be prepared to do well, he has a lot going for him.

[Martin DeCaro]

And then reality imposed itself. Returning to Sean Wilent's the Age of Reagan, a new energy crisis, compounded once again by treacherous turns in foreign affairs, brought stagflation back with a vengeance. Carter's lack of experience in Washington, his faith in technical expertise, and his disdain for the capital's ordinary politics, all assets in winning the presidency, writes Wilentz, would be routinely cited as the main sources of his enormous difficulties after he entered the Oval Office. Many of Carter's most severe political wounds certainly were self inflicted. But the challenges and misfortunes of the late 1970s also left a president of Carter's centrist political sensibilities with little room to maneuver. And while the Carter administration floundered, the resurgent Reagan Republicans enlarged their operations and honed their message, determined to win their revolution at last. So let's begin with domestic affairs as we weigh Jimmy Carter's legacy. He made it a priority to establish a national energy policy because of an Arab oil embargo. Earlier in the 1970s, he submitted a plan to Congress with more than 100 proposals aimed at reducing oil consumption, converting from oil and natural gas to coal as an energy source, and increasing domestic supplies of energy. His first televised address as president, dressed in a sweater, sitting in an armchair next to a fireplace, was about energy.

[Jimmy Carter]

As I pointed out during the campaign, the United States is the only major industrial country without a comprehensive long range energy policy. The extremely cold weather this winter has dangerously depleted our supplies of natural gas and fuel oil and forced hundreds of thousands of workers off the job. I congratulate the Congress for its quick action on the Emergency Natural Gas act, which was passed today and signed just a few minutes ago. But the real problem? Our failure to plan for the future or to take energy conservation seriously.

[Martin DeCaro]

Carter wanted Americans in their homes and businesses to pitch in by conserving by keeping their thermostats lower in the winter and warmer in the summer.

[Jimmy Carter]

All of us must learn to waste less energy simply by keeping our thermostats. For instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night, we could save half the current shortage of natural gas. If we learn to live thriftily and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust.

[Martin DeCaro]

The energy crisis was not solved and the honeymoon ended quickly. Inflation roared back, interest rates soared and Carter's relationship with both parties in Congress sour. His approval rating sank from 70% to 28% just a year later. Again, here is historian Jeremy Surrey.

[Historian]

Carter had a Democratic Congress, but because he was an outsider distrusted by his own party leadership, he had a very difficult time working with members of Congress. And he was perceived as ineffective in part because he couldn't get his own ducks in a row. And the relationship with Tip O'Neill, then Speaker of the House, ironically turns out to be a better relationship for Reagan than it does for Carter. I always use this when I talk about domestic policy with students to make the point of how important it is to build effective working relationships with counterpart institutions. Carter didn't understand that, didn't invest in that. He thought he was going to tell Congress what to do. And any president who thinks they're going to tell Congress what to do is setting himself up for failure later, in.

[Martin DeCaro]

1979, Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve. And Volcker's policies eventually tamed inflation, but not before triggering a recession that hurt the President's re election chances in 1980. Jimmy Carter did not cause the stagflation that awaited him when he took office. He was not responsible for the oil embargo. But presidents still must demonstrate to the American people they have a handle on such problems, that they have a plan to solve them. But as Americans waited on gas lines, Carter took to the airwaves in mid July 1979 to air what he thought was the fundamental problem underlying the nation's ills. And these words would overshadow his new proposals on the energy crisis and everything else in the so called malaise speech.

[Jimmy Carter]

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. Our progress has been part of a living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom. And that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past. In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.

[Historian]

The initial reviews of the speech are quite positive. Think back to everything we've been discussing already. If this is a period where Americans believe that they have had a series over many years of defeat and decline, the President here is saying, I've analyzed and identified the problem. Now it turns out the solution is no fun because nobody wants to go on a diet, nobody wants to do sit ups, nobody wants to eat kale. Carter, I think, and this is key, it was bad politics. But I'm hard pressed to say he was wrong. If his major point was that we have an excess of materialism and that we are less concerned with the community and with our fellow man and woman and citizen than we should be because we're more concerned with our material gain, I'm hard pressed to say that's wrong.

I think, although analytically Carter was largely correct, I think he didn't understand the role of a presidential leader. FDR could speak very honestly about the problems and he would offer pathways forward where people could do things that offered some positive hope, something that would come of this. And it wasn't just about doubling down on sacrifice. Sacrifice was involved, but you would also get something in return for it. And he would do something, something the banking crisis. We are sending people to provide good money to your banks. Please put your money back in the banks. Take it out of your mattresses. And Carter was instead putting it all on the American people and saying, you have to do this, you have to conserve. And he thought he was connecting by showing that he was doing that too. People want a leader who offers them a pathway, not to instant success, not silver bullet solutions, but something we can do that will make it better and make it better soon. And he wasn't offering that.

There's many ways to solve a problem and there's many paths to leadership. Think back on the two presidents that are widely considered to be among the most influential of the 20th century. The one we've already been talking about, Reagan, and the one we just mentioned, fdr. What do they share in common? Tremendous optimism, tremendous belief. Even when the darkest days Are there? And there doesn't seem to be much evidence we're going to win. Why? Because we're American. That's not really a great argument when you stop and think about it, especially for a man like Carter, who, let's remember Carter was a nuclear engineer. He was one of the people who worked on the first nuclear submarines and by all accounts would have been very happy staying in the Navy working on submarines, save for the fact that his father died. He needed to come back because he had integrity, come back and take care of his family. So when you say to a person like Ronald Reagan or fdr, what do we need? And the answer is a sunny smile on our face. A person who's an engineer like Carter says that's not actually a solution.

[Martin DeCaro]

That was Jeffrey Engel and Jeremy Suri. And returning to Sean Wilentz's the Age of Reagan, he writes, the early response to Carter's speech actually was favorable, as commentators expressed a slightly astonished admiration for his candor as well as his eloquence. Anything in the short run was better than nothing, and Carter's ratings in the polls immediately rose. But once the full purport of Carter's sermons sank in, it boomeranged on the White House. Editorialists and pundits began claiming there was nothing wrong with a country that knew responsible leadership couldn't fix. Whatever political goodwill Carter gained disappeared completely when, two days after his speech, he announced that he had asked all his Cabinet secretaries for letters of resignation and that he'd accepted five of them. The President had not lost his mind, writes Wilentz, but he looked panicked. In the summer of 1979, the administration seemed to have finally crashed and burned.

[Jimmy Carter]

For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.

[Martin DeCaro]

So was Jimmy Carter's domestic agenda a total failure? Definitely not, says his biographer, Kai Bird, writing in the New York Times. Byrd says he deregulated the airline industry, paving the way for middle class Americans to fly for the first time in large numbers. And he deregulated natural gas, laying the groundwork for our current energy independence. He worked to require seat belts or airbags, which would go on to save 9,000American lives each year. He inaugurated the nation's investment in research on solar energy and was one of the first presidents to warn us about the dangers of climate change. Carter ran through the Alaska Land act, tripling the size of the nation's protected wilderness areas. And he appointed more African Americans, Hispanics and women to the federal bench, substantially increasing their numbers. Again, Kai Bird in the New York Times. You know, Carter never used the term malaise in that televised address in July 1979, but that is how many Americans may have remembered the 1970s. Again, here is historian Jeremy Surrey.

[Historian]

So the United states in the 1970s, particularly the second half of the 1970s, was in a real low point in terms of morale, in terms of self confidence. It was not necessarily as partisan as it is today, but it was a darker moment. I think in many, many respects, much of that had to do with the legacy of Vietnam. 1975 is the fall of Saigon. Also Watergate.

I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

We also had the Vice President resign in scandal. Probably more significant than both of those two things, we have recurring oil crises. The United states in the 1970s for the first time became dependent upon oil from the Middle East. Until the late 1960s, we were actually a relatively independent producer of oil for our own needs, at least by the early 1970s. And then by the mid-1970s, certainly we were dependent upon oil from the Middle East. This is the height of Middle east leverage over the United States. And it is following in particular the 1973 war that the OPEC states, led by Saudi Arabia, raise oil prices and restrict and embargo oil to the United States. So it's hard for my students to imagine, but in that era, one had to ration gasoline. There were gasoline lines and you had to actually, in these large gas guzzling cars that got like six miles to the gallon, you couldn't go very far. No road trips at spring because you couldn't get gasoline. And so the country felt like it was in a period of decline. I don't think we feel like we're in decline today. We feel like we're coming apart. But that's different. This was a time when people felt the country was in decline. There was a sense that the world was moving against us. And one of the leaders of Soviet intelligence, Mitrokin, actually was writing about this on the Soviet side, that the world was going the Soviet direction, not our direction. And that's what a lot of people thought in the second half of the 1970s. That's the context for Jimmy Carter's really surprising run for the presidency. No one guessed in 1975 that this little known peanut farmer governor from Georgia would one day be President of the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

After Carter lost touch, Ronald Reagan connected, even if his plans didn't offer a way out of the domestic morass either. Here's historian Jeffrey Engel, Reagan offered optimism.

[Historian]

I think sometimes of Reagan as a golden retriever, you know, that he would show up and he'd be happy, and he'd be happy to see you, and he'd be willing to tell you how the world is a good place and gonna get better, and we're just gonna all succeed. And we've learned now from history that the American people like that. And I think Carter, we should remember because he was so full of integrity and determined to preside with integrity. He made the fundamental mistake, I think, in many ways, of trusting the American people with the entire truth. You know, he told them, turn down your thermostats, which is good economic policy and good environmental policy, and nobody wants to do it. And Ronald Reagan said, they tell us.

We must learn to live with less and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been.

Live your lives to the fullest because you're Americans and you deserve that. And that may not be a great economic policy, that may not be a great moral policy, but man, does it make you popular.

[Martin DeCaro]

Jimmy Carter may have left his most lasting mark in the realm of foreign policy. He elevated the defense of human rights after investigative journalists and congressional hearings for years shone a light on egregious abuses by the U.S. national Security State. Here is Carter in a speech in 1978.

[Jimmy Carter]

This week we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We rededicate ourselves, in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, who is a chairperson of the Human Rights Commission, to the Universal Declaration as, and I quote from her, a common standard of achievement for all peoples of all nations. The Universal Declaration and the human rights conventions that derive from it do not describe the world as it is. But these documents are very important nonetheless. They are a beacon, a guide to a future of personal security, political freedom and social justice.

[Martin DeCaro]

In an obituary published in Rolling Stone a couple of days ago, the aforementioned Sean Wilentz wrote of Carter's enduring influence in the arena of human rights. Wilentz wrote, more than anyone could have realized at the time. Carter's emphasis on human rights had momentous positive results, especially vis a vis the Soviet Union. Carter's predecessor, President Gerald Ford, had begun the shift by signing the famous Helsinki Accords in 1975, which, while recognizing Eastern bloc borders, also included assurances of civil and human rights. The Helsinki human rights provisions led in turn to the formation of independent organizations, beginning with the Moscow Helsinki Group, to monitor abuses behind the Iron Curtain. Wilensk goes on to say that with the Helsinki agreement in force, Carter made his breakthrough, altering the central axioms of American foreign policy. By elevating human rights, he placed pressure on the Soviets at their most vulnerable point. Beyond engaging the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, Carter directly encouraged dissident political currents in Central and Eastern Europe, most notably the Charter 77 group in Czechoslovakia, and raised powerful objections when they were repressed. Under Carter's banner of human rights, these movements would thrive in the 1980s and eventually lead to the toppling of the Soviet empire. President Reagan, writes Wilentz, remembered correctly in many ways as Carter's political polar opposite, receives credit for ending the Cold War, at least for helping to end it in tandem with Mikhail Gorbachev. But it was Jimmy Carter who prepared the way, with his insistent emphasis on abiding respect for individual human rights.

[Jimmy Carter]

As long as I am president, the government of the United States will continue throughout the world to enhance human rights.

[Martin DeCaro]

As Sean Wilentz mentions in his piece, there was a big exception to this emphasis.

[Jimmy Carter]

Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, your Majesty, and to your leadership, and to the respect and the admiration and love which your people give to you.

[Martin DeCaro]

New Year's Eve, 1977, in Tehran. President Carter toasting the brutal Shah. As historian John Ghazvinian writes in his remarkable book, America and Iran, exactly one week later, the revolution began. Within hours of Carter's toast, Khomeini and other oppositionists blasted the United States, claiming the President was interested in human rights only in countries where the United States did not have military or strategic interests. Much of the Iranian street, shocked and disgusted by Carter's effusive praise for the Shah, agreed wholeheartedly. Kazvinian goes on to say, history has recorded this moment, early 1978, as the uprisings began, as the one when the Shah began to lose his grip. Incredibly, the growing disturbances, says Ghazvinian, went unnoticed by Washington. Not one official at the US Embassy in Tehran considered it worthy of a dispatch or telegram to the State Department. Not one urgent phone call was made. The United States, he says, continue to treat the unrest as a minor domestic matter.

[Historian]

Carter inherits a really difficult situation, and it's worth underlining that his Republican predecessors are criticizing him for not doing enough to support the Shah. And it is Henry Kissinger, in fact, who pressures, through his public statements, pressures Carter to offer sanctuary for the Shah, to allow the Shah to come into the United States. To get medical treatment, which is actually what sparks the rampage of the US Embassy hostage taking. Right, so the hostages are taken because Carter actually listens to the Republicans. And initially, after telling the Shah he couldn't come into the US that it wasn't prudent, that now he's going to allow our old friend to come and get medical treatment here rather than having to go back to Iran and stand trial. And as a consequence, the students take our embassy officials hostage. So. So Carter's in a very tough place. If he had abandoned the Shah earlier, that would not have led to a more orderly transition, I don't think. And he would have been criticized on the right. And if he had tried to do more to support the Shah in the midst of the revolution, I don't think that would have worked either. I think what Carter can be legitimately criticized for is how he reacts after the revolution.

[Martin DeCaro]

There was a window there where there was a moderate opposition before the Ayatollahs come to power.

[Historian]

Maybe. Maybe. It's hard to know. One could argue he could have tried more there. I don't know. I'm skeptical it would have succeeded. The. Even the moderate revolutionaries saw the United States quite legitimately as their enemy. And so it's hard to imagine that this would have worked. I think the failed rescue effort, an undertaking that never should have gone forward. To this day, having read about this multiple times in multiple contexts, I still don't understand how this rescue effort was ever going to work, even if the helicopters had not gone down in the desert.

[Jimmy Carter]

But to my deep reg, eight of the crewmen of the two aircraft which collided were killed.

[Historian]

What appeared to be an uncertain flailing and then totally ineffective effort to deal with the crisis. I think that made things far, far worse for Carter. He could have managed the crisis. I don't think avoided it, but he could have managed it better.

This was a crisis that Carter allowed to consume his presidency. And every virtue has a negative spin to it. So Carter, if his flaw was that he cared a lot, his positive function was that he also care, wanted the hostages out. He worked, we now know, literally until the moment that he got in the limousine to ride with Ronald Reagan to Ronald Reagan's inauguration. He was personally working the phones and the diplomacy to try to get the hostages out. Now, the Iranians decided they wanted one last snub against Carter and didn't release them, of course, until Reagan was actually inaugurated. But go back a few steps to what Jeremy was saying about the failed military attempt to rescue the hostages. Think about What Carter's options really are at this point. You know, what is your goal here? Your goal is to try to save as many American lives as possible. Anything you do militarily is going to put them in danger. Any pressure that you put against the Iranians, for example, one thing which I think could have been explored further was setting up a blockade or mining Iranian shipping lanes. You know, that's only going to hurt the Iranian people, which he didn't think was a moral thing to do. So it's very difficult to imagine what Jimmy Carter should have done.

[Martin DeCaro]

That was again, Jeremy Surrey and Jeffrey Engel. So let's return to the situation on the ground in Iran because the Carter administration wasn't getting great information about what was happening in the country even after a horrible massacre by the Shah's security forces in September of 1978. Again, John Gazvinian in America and Iran, his remarkable book. On September 8, the unthinkable happened in Tehran's Jala Square. Security forces opened fire on a large crowd of peaceful demonstrators while in the southern slums helicopter gunships shot volleys down into the labyrinthine alleys. By day's end, several hundred people had been gunned down, one of the bloodiest incidents of regime violence in Iranian history.

[Ayatollah Khomeini]

For the last seven days, Tehran and other cities have seen violent clashes between troops and demonstrators demanding Khomeini's return.

[Martin DeCaro]

Recognizing his friend's predicament, President Carter tried to help, but succeeded only in making matters worse. Immediately following the massacre, Carter took time out from high level Arab Israeli peace talks he was hosting at Camp David, made a telephone call to the Shah assuring him he had the full support of the United States. The White House then issued a press release letting the world know about the phone call and reaffirmed the close and friendly relationship between Iran and the US. It was a disastrous miscalculation. Well, on November 2, 1978, the US ambassador, William Sullivan, who had spent much of the past year, writes John Ghazvinian, reassuring his bosses that the Shah was invincible, had a sudden change of heart. In an urgent telegram to the Secretary of State, he reported that Iran was in the midst of a full blown crisis and that the Shah was struggling with the choice between abdicating or introducing military rule. It was the first time Washington had heard anything like this from its man in Tehran. A week later, Sullivan sent another, much lengthier cable arguing that the Shah support among the public had sunk to an all time low and that the United States should begin making plans for the possibility that his regime might not survive so, says Ghazvinian. In November 1978, the US government, like almost every other government in the world, was caught off guard by the depth of hostility that Iranians were demonstrating toward their shah. For years, American officials in Iran had cultivated only limited contacts outside elite circles. As recently as the spring of 78, most had never heard the name Khomeini.

[Ayatollah Khomeini]

Ayatollah Khomeini returns to a country teetering on the brink of civil war.

[Martin DeCaro]

Khomeini was being helped down the steps.

[Jimmy Carter]

Of his chartered Air France jet to set foot on Iranian ground for the.

[Martin DeCaro]

First time in 15 years.

[Historian]

Some 60Americans are now beginning their sixth day of captivity. Inside the U.S. embassy in Tehran, every.

[Jimmy Carter]

Available channel to protect the safety of the hostages and to secure their release.

[Historian]

After 30 days of unsuccessfully trying to get the American hostages out of Tehran, the government of the United States is now trying to get the deposed Shah of Iran out of this country.

[Jimmy Carter]

The government of Iran must recognize the gravity of of the situation which it has itself created.

[Historian]

222Nd day of captivity the 285th day.

[Jimmy Carter]

Of captivity President Carter worked in the Oval Office throughout the night and before dawn this morning signed the executive orders that triggered the hostage's release.

[Martin DeCaro]

The 444 day long Iran Hostage crisis dominates public memory of the Carter years. But another piece of his foreign policy record is receiving renewed attention now, given the horrors unfolding in the Middle East. The Camp David Accords of 1978. Peace at last between Egypt under Anwar Sadat and Israel under Menachem Begin.

[Jimmy Carter]

The questions that have brought warfare and bitterness to the Middle east for the last 30 years will not be settled overnight. But we should all recognize the substantial achievements that have been made. One of the agreements that President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin are signing tonight is entitled A Framework for Peace in the Middle East.

[Martin DeCaro]

The peace treaty signed the following year endures to this day. But as the journalist Christopher Hedges writes, it sold out the Palestinians. Hedges writes, the agreement excluded the Palestine Liberation Organization from the talks. Israel never, as promised to Carter, attempted to resolve the Palestine question with Jordan and Egypt's involvement. It never permitted Palestinian self government in the west bank and Gaza. Within five years, it did not end Israeli settlements, a refusal that led Carter to later claim Begin had lied to him. But since there was no mechanism in the agreement for enforcement rights, Hedges and since Carter was unwilling to defy the Israel lobby to impose sanctions on Israel, the Palestinians found themselves once again powerless and abandoned.

[Jimmy Carter]

It deals specifically with the future of the west bank. In Gaza and the need to resolve the Palestinian problem in all its aspects. 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.

[Martin DeCaro]

Carter's foreign policy record also includes the SALT II arms control agreement establishing formal US China ties. That process was started under Nixon. Early support for the Afghan mujahideen, increased defense spending and the Panama Canal Treaty. And something he may not be aware of. The Carter Doctrine, announced in his 1980 State of the Union address, let our.

[Jimmy Carter]

Position be absolutely clear. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interest of the United States of America. And such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

[Martin DeCaro]

In the words of historian Andrew Bacevich at the time, President Carter declared the Persian Gulf a vital national security interest. That was the literal meaning of the Carter Doctrine. He did not intend to embark upon a war, nor did he anticipate what course that war was going to follow, its duration, costs and consequences. Like the European statesman who a hundred years ago touched off the cataclysm we know today as World War I, Carter merely lit a fuse without knowing where it led.

[Jimmy Carter]

The region, which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan, is of great strategic importance. It contains more than two thirds of the world's exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow.

[Martin DeCaro]

And in the view of Andrew Bacevich, it has led to decades of US Military involvement in the greater Middle East. It started under Jimmy Carter, and the reason was oil energy.

[Historian]

Would you place your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand and repeat after me? I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear.

[Jimmy Carter]

I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear that.

[Martin DeCaro]

I will faithfully execute James Earl Carter, 39th President of the United States, his one term in office among the most eventful and difficult in our nation's existence. If timing is everything in politics, Carter picked a bad time to be president.

[Historian]

Jimmy Carter's election to the presidency proves you don't have to give up your integrity to succeed in politics. He made it to the highest office in the world. He was elected governor of Georgia before that. And he did this as a man who was, as Jeffrey said, a thoughtful nuclear engineer, someone who cared about progressive racial politics, someone who believed he had to act honestly in all circumstances and believed in public service. He did not enrich himself when he was president or after he left the presidency. And I think it's important for us to remember this. You don't have to be a lying scumbag to get ahead. Second thing about Carter that I think is is very important for us today is that there is a skill called politics which involves not simply being right and being smart. We want our undergraduates and our fellow citizens to be right and to be smart. That's why we write books to help make them smart, we hope. But there's also a skill of working with politics people. Sometimes we call it compromise, sometimes we call it manipulation. I like to call it cooperation. That involves give and take. It involves understanding people's personalities, and it involves getting things done by doing the work. That is more an art than a science, which is persuading and bringing people together. And Carter was not strong on that. He could have been better on that if he valued it more. I think his biggest failing was for all his skills, he thought his intelligence was enough to carry him through through. But you need more than intelligence, you need the ability to work with people. And I hope we're making that point in our society today.

And I think Jeremy's point about politicking is really spot on. Carter in some ways didn't have what I like to refer to or others do, but I like this phrase as the emotional intelligence to cooperate, to manipulate, to get people to do things that they didn't want to do. And also make your own compromise and make your own sacrifice. But last thing I think we need to say about Carter before we go is of course to talk about his post presidency, even if only briefly. Obviously the longest post presidency in American history. The best line I've ever heard about Carter in this regard is to say he used the presidency as a launching pad to bigger things. He really focused on trying to become force change agent throughout the world. He took personally. The attack favorite is the attack against parasites in Africa that he wanted to eliminate. And more importantly, he said he wanted to eliminate it before he died. And he did. And that's just remarkable.

[Martin DeCaro]

On the next episode of History as It Happens, the Arms control extinction. Remember new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign up at History as it Happens dot com.