All language subtitles for PBS.American.Experience.Jimmy.Carter.720p.HDTV.x264.AC3.MVGroup.org_track3_[eng]

I, Franklin Delano...

Harry S. Truman...

Lyndon Baines Johnson...

Richard Milhous Nixon....

do solemnly swear...

that I will faithfully
execute the office...

of president
of the United States.

American Experience presents

the definitive collection
of presidential biographies.

Tonight...

My name is Jimmy Carter and
I'm running for president.

He promised the country
new leadership...

MAN:
Jimmy Carter represented honesty and decency.

But his presidency would be
held hostage.

WOMAN:
It came to symbolize whether he was strong.

The definitive collection
of presidential biographies

continues with Jimmy Carter.

MAN:
His devotion to peace and human rights keep on resonating.

Tonight on American Experience.

Captioning sponsored
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NASA ANNOUNCER:
Lift-off, the clock is running.

PILOT:
They have mass casualties up here.

RINGSIDE ANNOUNCER:
Schmeling is down!

Exclus
JIMMY CARTER: I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you,

so I can't stand here tonight
and say it doesn't hurt.

About an hour ago, I called
Governor Reagan in California

and I congratulated him
for a fine victory.

I look forward to working
closely with him...

DAN CARTER:
All his life he believed that if you worked hard enough at it,

understood the issues,
mastered information,

then you would come out first.

I said to him,
"It must have been hard

to turn over the keys
to Ronald Reagan,"

and he said, "You don't know
how hard it was."

NARRATOR:
On January 20, 1981, after one of the most humiliating defeats

in American political history,

President Jimmy Carter returned
home to Plains, Georgia,

to what he called,
"An altogether new, unwanted

and potentially empty life."

ROSALYNN CARTER:
He really was better than I was when we came home

because, um,
I was so depressed about it

that he was always trying
to prop me up.

(crowd cheering, applauding)

NARRATOR:
Four years before, he had stunned the nation.

(cheering)

PATRICK CADDELL:
Going from total anonymity

to being president
of the United States

in less than 12 months

is unprecedented
in American history.

If it weren't for the country
looking for something in '76,

uh, Carter could never
have gotten elected.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY:
He offered a biography of what we wanted to hear--

a farmer,
Main Street values, Plains--

and he carried
that message through.

It was the right message
at the right time.

CARTER:
Our commitment to human rights.

NARRATOR:
He had promised a new beginning,

to heal the wounds
of Watergate and Vietnam--

a government as good
and decent and compassionate

as the American people.

(crowd chanting)

But events would overwhelm him--
an energy crisis, inflation,

an Islamic revolution, and 53
Americans held hostage 444 days.

Carter came to be regarded
as a good and decent man

who was in over his head.

ELIZABETH DREW:
He's a very, very smart man and very well-intentioned,

but feel... feel is very,
very important in politics,

especially in a president,

and Carter just didn't have
very much of it.

What he had was a moral ideology

and the issues
where he proved successful--

the Panama Canal treaties,
the human rights crusades,

peace in the Middle East--

those were issues where
his moral ideology guided him.

In a nation
that was proud of hard work...

NARRATOR:
"Carter was one of the more exasperating men ever

to claim the White House,"
one journalist said.

"His tenacity, so admirable,
could shift to stubbornness,

"his religious faith
to self-righteousness.

His brilliant mind could be
bound up by intricate details."

Many times the one argument

that I would find
would ruin a person's case

is when you'd say, "This
is good for you, politically."

He didn't want to hear that.

He didn't want to think that way

and he didn't want his staff
to think that way.

He wanted to know what's right.

BRINKLEY:
This is one

of the most highly ambitious
people you'll ever meet.

I mean, you don't make it
from Plains, Georgia,

to the White House
just on charm.

But what makes him complex

is he's got that kind
of hubris and arrogance

and also
this Christian humbleness

and that's the battle he's
constantly finding himself in.

NARRATOR:
"As a child, my greatest ambition

was to be valuable around the
farm and to please my father,"

Jimmy Carter wrote
of his boyhood in rural Georgia.

"He was the center of my life
and the focus of my admiration."

DAN CARTER:
I can't believe that Jimmy Carter ever felt lost,

in the sense that he didn't know

where his place was
in the world.

And a lot of that comes
from his father,

who not only was a
well-respected, powerful figure

in the community, but I think
had a real sense of who he was.

And that certitude
and self-confidence

was something that his son,
I think, absorbed unconsciously.

NARRATOR:
By the standards of southwest Georgia,

Earl Carter presided
over a small empire.

A staunch segregationist,
he owned some 350 acres of land

where he planted corn,
cotton and peanuts,

employing more than 200 workers
at harvest time.

Five sharecropper families,

who depended on him
for their survival,

lived year-round
at his farm in Archery.

Carter's mother, Lillian, was
an avid reader, loved traveling

and was known to enjoy
a sip of bourbon.

She put in long hours
as a nurse at a nearby hospital

and devoted much of her free
time to helping sick neighbors.

She got paid in chickens
and vegetables

and that kind of things
because she really helped

and felt called to help those
that had less than her,

and I think she instilled that
in all of her children.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
She was the only person in Plains

who would take up
for Abraham Lincoln

if he was ever brought up.

Today it's unbelievable
to think about that,

but back then it
was just a way of life,

and we never thought anything...

we never thought it
was really wrong.

NARRATOR:
Lillian set for Jimmy the example of service to others.

Earl put the steel
in his character.

BETTY GLAD:
He was very demanding.

He expected his children
to be the very best,

and, um, and in some ways they
all had that built into them.

NARRATOR:
"I never remember him saying 'good job'

when I did my best to fulfill
his orders," Jimmy later said.

"The punishments he administered
remain vivid in my memory."

A short distance
from the Carter farm

was Plains, Georgia--
population 600--

the only place for miles
to get a cup of coffee,

a haircut, buy or sell goods.

It is the place Jimmy Carter
always called home,

where as a child he went

to the all-white Baptist church
on Sundays

and where he attended
the all-white public school.

DAN CARTER:
Everybody knew that he was special.

He was somebody different,
smarter than,

worked harder than,
did more than,

ceaselessly working at improving
himself, even as a child.

NARRATOR:
Jimmy made all "A"s.

He played basketball and joined
the book lover's club,

read Shakespeare's King Lear,

Ben-Hur,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

He dreamed of joining the Navy.

His uncle Tom Gordy
had excited his imagination

with tales of adventures,

and postcards and gifts
from exotic, faraway places.

In June 1943, at age 18,
the farm boy from Plains

was admitted to the U.S.
Naval Academy at Annapolis--

the first Carter ever
to leave Georgia

to pursue a higher education.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
Jimmy's sister Ruth was my best friend

and she had a picture of him
on the wall in her bedroom.

I just thought he was

the most handsome young man
I had ever seen.

One day I confessed to her

that I wished she would let me
take that photograph home,

because I just thought
I had fallen in love

with Jimmy Carter.

NARRATOR:
Rosalynn Smith was shy, a dedicated student,

read the Bible daily
and went to church on Sundays.

Her mother once described her

as a girl who could wear
a white dress all day

and keep it clean.

E. STANLY GODBOLD:
She was very bright.

She was a reader.

She liked to look at maps.

She was always interested
in seeing the world

and, uh, she always wanted
to get away.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
I went to a meeting at the church

and I was standing outside

and Jimmy drove up with Ruth
and her boyfriend,

got out of the car and came up
and asked me to go to the movie.

He kissed me good-bye.

I was thrilled to death, and
then we started corresponding

and, uh, by the time Christmas
came, I was swept off my feet.

NARRATOR:
One month after his graduation from Annapolis,

Jimmy and Rosalynn were married.

She was 18, he was 21.

Two years after
joining the Navy,

Ensign Carter was accepted
into the submarine service.

It was a way to advance rapidly

in a highly competitive
environment.

BRINKLEY:
The military was everything for Jimmy Carter.

It's his training.

He's never a minute late
for anything.

Punctuality means everything.

His sense of order...

There's no sense of a mess
around Jimmy Carter.

It's a certain kind of person
that works in a submarine.

It takes a kind
of mental discipline.

NARRATOR:
After six years in the service,

Lieutenant Carter earned one
of the most coveted posts

in the Navy-- senior officer
of the USS Seawolf,

on the vanguard of America
nuclear defense program.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
He always had one of the best positions in the Navy,

and I think it gave him
a lot of confidence

that he could do
whatever he wanted to do.

NARRATOR:
In 1953, less than a year after he began duty on the Seawolf,

Carter received a message
from home.

His father had cancer and
was not expected to live long.

Ten years had passed
since Carter left Plains

for a career in the Navy.

Visits home had been rare.

Father and son
had grown distant.

As he sat by Earl's bedside,

Jimmy discovered a side of his
father he'd never seen before.

"Our long conversations
were interrupted

by a stream of visitors, black
and white," Carter later wrote.

"A surprising number wanted
to recount

"how my father's
personal influence

"and many secret acts
of generosity

had affected their lives."

GLAD:
He saw that he had really built a community around himself.

A lot of people liked him

and, uh, came to see him
when he was sick

and when he died,
came to his funeral.

And what Jimmy realized,

he didn't have a community
for himself.

He's actually said to me,
"You know," he said,

"I wondered at that time,
if I died,

"how many people would come
to my funeral

or how many people would care
if I died."

And I think it made him,

at a fairly fundamental level,
examine what life is all about.

BRINKLEY:
He was a shining star in the U.S. Navy

who could have gone
very, very far.

He dropped all that

to emulate his father, to take
over his father's business.

I don't think there's any
higher tribute a son could make

to his father than to say,
"Now that you're dead, Daddy,

I want to stand in your shoes."

NARRATOR:
When Jimmy told Rosalynn, she was furious.

"She almost quit me,"
he later said.

CHIP CARTER:
Mom was kind of disappointed to be going back to Plains,

and she had worked a good bit
of her life to get out of there

and, uh, they were going back
to take over a... a business

that wasn't doing very well.

NARRATOR:
Carter applied all his energies to peanuts.

"He was always experimenting,"
Rosalynn later wrote.

"Trying new things, dreaming up
something else he wanted to do."

"I had to admit I was enjoying
life," Rosalynn later said.

The Carters went fishing,

played golf,
took frequent vacations.

(no audio)

Jimmy served on the Sumter
County Board of Education,

taught Sunday School
at the Plains Baptist Church,

was scoutmaster, vice president
of the Lions Club.

"But he had come to the point of
boredom," Rosalynn remembered.

"And one weekday morning
in 1962, he got up

and put on his Sunday pants."

ROSALYNN CARTER:
I was really shocked.

I had no idea he was thinking

about running
for the state senate.

NARRATOR:
The campaign that launched Jimmy Carter's political career

lasted all of 15 days.

There was no money
and no staff--

only family and friends
and his own determination.

Though he would always play
the reluctant politician,

even by his first campaign,

Carter was no stranger
to politics.

DAN CARTER:
Politics was something he lived and breathed

from the time he was a child--

a kind of weekly, daily,

even during election season
interaction, barbecues.

You gathered on the county
courthouse grounds for speeches.

He talks about going
to rallies with his father

and remembering them very well.

And I think he came
to see politics

as something not alien,

not something he had
to make a decision to do,

but was almost natural.

NARRATOR:
"I received a startling education," he said,

"One that set the tone
for my future career."

On January 14, 1963,

the morning after
the traditional whiskey

and barbecued wild hog dinner,

Jimmy Carter was sworn in as
a member of the Georgia Senate.

He was one of 89 new legislators
joining the Georgia Assembly,

many of them determined
to change the old ways

of Georgia politics.

LEROY JOHNSON:
I had the good fortune of being the first black to be elected

to the General Assembly
of Georgia in 100 years.

Carter was one of those persons

who came to the Senate
at that time,

and he was not
a leader of the Senate.

He was quiet.

He was effective.

He was deliberate...

and he made no waves.

NARRATOR:
In 1966, after two terms in the Georgia Senate,

Jimmy Carter jumped into the
race for governor of Georgia.

He ran well behind arch-
segregationist Lester Maddox,

famous for wielding an ax handle

to keep blacks away
from his chicken restaurant.

Carter promised better schools,
better hospitals, better roads,

and a more competent government.

"It is hard to hear

"Senator Carter talk
about state government

and not be impressed by his
integrity," one reporter wrote.

DAN CARTER:
You're not going to turn the applecart upside down,

but you're going
to bring changes,

you're going to bring
improvements in the South

and you're going to do it

by applying good, sound business
techniques to everything

from the way you run
your public institutions

to the way you run
your government.

NARRATOR:
Carter took his message to every corner of Georgia.

"We never stopped," Rosalynn
recalled, "no matter what."

By election day,
he was closing in on the lead.

CHIP CARTER:
We went to bed thinking we were going to win.

I'd gotten up and gone
to school the next day,

being congratulated about
my father winning the primary,

and then Billy came to the...
about 2:00 in the afternoon

and told us that
Lester Maddox had beat us

by less than a half
of a percentage point.

So, it was very disheartening.

NARRATOR:
"We all felt sick," Rosalynn recalled.

"We were $66,000 in debt,
and Jimmy had lost 22 pounds."

After all the miles traveled,
the handshakes, the long days,

Jimmy Carter was
right back where he started

when he first ran
for the Senate in 1962.

Weeks later, with the loss
still fresh in his mind,

Jimmy went for a walk
with his sister Ruth,

an evangelical Christian
and a spiritual healer.

All of his life he had been
a churchgoing Christian,

but now felt that his faith
had been superficial.

"We are both Baptists," he said,

"but what is it that you have
that I haven't got?"

"Total commitment," she replied.

"I belong to Jesus--
everything I am."

"Ruth," he answered,
"that's what I want."

BRINKLEY:
At that point he decided

that he'd always put
Christ in his life first

and politics second.

But that's been
a struggle for him,

because politics is the ego
and Christ is the humbleness.

NARRATOR:
The born-again Christian traveled north

to blighted neighborhoods

in Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts

as a "personal witness"
for Jesus Christ.

BRINKLEY:
He would go door to door,

getting people
to witness Christ,

take Jesus into their lives.

I mean, can you imagine?

Ten years later this man is
president of the United States,

and he's banging on doors,

asking people,
"Do you want a Bible?

Will you take God in your life?"

I'm Jimmy Carter,
I'm running for governor.

How are you?

NARRATOR:
In 1970, with renewed fervor,

Carter ran for governor
of Georgia a second time.

I have been campaigning

almost 18 hours a day
without stopping

for eight months.

I've seen almost every
factory shift in Georgia,

been in almost every store...

ROSALYNN CARTER:
It was just

kind of an obsession.

He had lost, so he had to win.

And we worked as hard
as we could.

Bye.

Hi, y'all.

NARRATOR:
It would not be the amateur run of 1966,

but a well-coordinated effort.

Carter brought in two
Southwest Georgia boys:

Jody Powell
as his personal assistant,

and Hamilton Jordan
to manage the campaign.

Advertising man Gerald Rafshoon
would handle the media.

Bert Lance,
a banker from Calhoun,

played the role of advisor.

LANCE:
...though it was a tough, tough campaign

and there were many

who thought that Carter
could not possibly win.

NARRATOR:
Carter's rival for the Democratic nomination--

Carl Sanders-- enjoyed
a commanding 20% lead.

He had the backing of the
Atlanta business establishment

and the support
of African Americans,

voting in greater numbers since
the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Carter went after Sanders
with a vengeance.

TV ANNOUNCER:
Some candidates in this governor's race have

large campaign contributions
behind them.

Big money asking big favors.

Jimmy Carter only has
the people of Georgia...

NARRATOR:
Carter portrayed Sanders

as a tool of the Atlanta
business establishment

and himself
as a hard-working Everyman.

ANNOUNCER:
No wonder Jimmy Carter has a special understanding

of the problems facing everyone
who works for a living.

Isn't it time
somebody spoke up for you?

GODBOLD:
He wanted to appeal to the large middle-class,

blue-collar type,
predominantly white,

and most of these people are
going to be segregationists.

GLAD:
He courted the racist vote.

There were some radio ads
that he ran in 1970.

He said that "Unlike Sanders,
I am not trying to get the..."

and he sort of slid over

whether it was "block"
or "black" vote.

But it sort of meant
the same thing.

GODBOLD:
Carter himself was not a segregationist in 1970.

But he did say things that the
segregationists wanted to hear.

He was opposed to busing.

He was in favor
of private schools.

He said that he would invite

segregationist
Governor George Wallace

to come to Georgia
to give a speech.

JOHNSON:
The only solace

that we got and received was the
fact that, in private meetings,

he convinced us that
if he was given an opportunity,

he would make things better.

He'd always come up
with this question of trust.

"Trust me.

I believe in doing
the right thing."

GLAD:
If you are really trying to accomplish good moral ends,

you may have to be a low-life
politician to get there.

And he didn't probably like
doing it that much,

but he was willing to do it.

(rifle fires, crowd applauds)

(rifle fires)

CARTER:
At the end of a long campaign, I believe I know our people...

NARRATOR:
On January 12, 1971,

Jimmy Carter, age 46, was
sworn in as Governor of Georgia.

North and South,
rural and urban...

NARRATOR:
In his inaugural address,

he revealed
his true feelings on race.

I say to you quite frankly,

that the time for racial
discrimination is over.

(light applause)

No poor, rural, weak or black
person should ever have to bear

the additional burden of being
deprived of the opportunity

of an education, a job
or simple justice.

(moderate applause;
light whistling)

JOHNSON:
We were extremely pleased.

Many of the white
segregationists were displeased.

And I'm convinced that those
people that supported him

would not have supported him

if they had thought that he
would have made that statement.

DAN CARTER:
I do remember reading his inaugural address

and thinking,
"This is wonderful."

You've got a governor
in a Deep South state

who is stating emphatically

not just that it's time
to accept change,

but that it's time
to really move far beyond that

and end all forms
of discrimination.

NARRATOR:
Carter appointed

an unprecedented number of women
and African Americans,

stimulated foreign investment,

reformed the state's
criminal justice

and mental health systems.

I see unfair taxes
and government waste

and I see runaway spending...

NARRATOR:
The centerpiece of his agenda was a radical plan

to streamline state government
with savings at every level.

LANCE:
Everybody had to pay for their own lunch.

You know, we had to put
two dollars into the kitty.

Mary Beasley, who was
his secretary at the time,

would ask you want you wanted,

so you felt honored to be able
to go ahead and spend money

for a dried-out sandwich.

NARRATOR:
The governor's proposal to slash

the number of government
agencies provoked outrage.

CART:
I welcome

the confrontation
with heads of departments.

You know, I'm willing
to fight with anybody

who opposes a recommendation
that would be helpful to...

JOHNSON:
I saw a completely different side of Carter.

In the Senate,
he was not assertive.

As governor, he was assertive.

He knew where he wanted to go,

and he knew the direction
he wanted to go in.

And he wanted
complete compliance.

NARRATOR:
By the time his reorganization bill reached the Senate floor,

Carter had alienated
most of the assembly.

But his bill squeaked through
by a handful of votes.

FORTSON:
As I told the committee up there,

he reminds me
of a South Georgia turtle

who's been blocked by a log.

And he just keeps pushing,
pushing, pushing straight ahead.

He doesn't go around here

until he finally gets
a soft spot in the log,

and right on through he goes.

He is a man of great
determination and steel.

NARRATOR:
Election season 1972, Jimmy Carter extended his hospitality

to Democratic hopefuls.

Barely two years
in the governor's mansion,

he already had his eye
on the White House.

CHIP CARTER:
Every Democrat running for office came to Georgia.

And every single one of them,
Dad would ask to come

and stay with him
at the governor's mansion,

and realized that they were
just people like him.

NARRATOR:
That July, Carter led the Georgia delegation

to the Democratic
National Convention,

hoping for the second spot
on the ticket.

I'm over here in the box

and I really can't tell
what's going on so much.

But Jimmy comes over
from the floor

and briefs me
every once in a while.

As you said, it's the first time
I've ever been to a convention

and I'm just so excited
about it.

GERALD RAFSHOON:
I remember at the end of the McGovern speech

at 3:00 in the morning,

Hamilton Jordan and I
were walking away

from the convention hall.

I said, "You know...

"if Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey,
Terry Sanford,

"Scoop Jackson, George Wallace,

"Ted Kennedy can run
for president,

Jimmy could run for president."

And then of course we said,

"If these guys who are running
these campaigns"--

like we met the people
in the McGovern campaign--

"can run a campaign
for president,

hell, we could do that."

I called Ruth.

I said, "Jimmy's going
to run for p-p-..."

I couldn't even say the word,
it was so... unreal to me.

NARRATOR:
Carter officially announced his candidacy in December 1974.

The one-term Southern governor
was a long shot.

Nobody knew him.

It was like picking a name
out of the phone book.

I mean, it takes a bit of hubris
to think you're the best person

to be the president of the
United States because you were

a one-term governor of Georgia.

MAN:
♪ Once and for all, why not the best? ♪

BRINKLEY:
It's a kind of arrogance run amok.

MAN:
♪ You see his name was Jimmy Carter... ♪

CARTER:
I want to see us once again have a nation

that's as good and honest
and decent and truthful

and competent
and compassionate...

and as filled with love
as are the American people.

JOHN FARRELL:
At that time,

character was
a monumental issue.

The country had been
through a horrible time

and Jimmy Carter represented
honesty and decency.

CARTER:
I'll never tell a lie.

I'll never make
a misleading statement.

I'll never betray the confidence
that any of you has in me.

BRINKLEY:
Lyndon Johnson lied to us about Vietnam.

Richard Nixon lied to us
about Watergate.

He's saying, you know,
I'm not one of those turkeys

who's messing things up
up there.

(Allman Brothers'
"Ramblin' Man" playing)

♪ Lord, I was born
a ramblin' man... ♪

NARRATOR:
Carter's campaign strategy was simple:

run early and run hard.

Before any other candidates
even announced,

Carter had traveled
more than 50,000 miles,

visited 37 states and delivered
more than 200 speeches.

BOURNE:
He was a wonderful speaker before small groups.

He would get up
and talk, without notes,

with extraordinary passion.

Almost like a preacher, really
having the spirit with him.

NARRATOR:
It was a grassroots effort financed on a shoestring.

CHIP CARTER:
We had all these stepping stones we had to do.

We had to qualify
for federal matching funds

by a certain point.

And we accomplished
every one of them.

Every time you accomplished one,

it gave you more and more
confidence.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
We had our boys out,

we had Aunt Sissy out,
we had his mother--

all going
in different directions.

CHIP CARTER:
At one point in the presidential campaign

we had 11 family members
in 11 different states

at the same time.

We were out every day,
knocking on doors.

We knocked on 60,000 doors
in New Hampshire.

That was probably almost
every Democratic household

that we could identify
in the whole state.

WALTER CRONKITE:
Jimmy Carter took a long lead tonight

in the race for the Democratic
presidential nomination.

He won the New Hampshire
primary handily.

(applause)

I remember when we couldn't
find a microphone.

(crowd laughs and cheers)

NARRATOR:
Carter's stamina seemed superhuman.

"Behind that Huckleberry Finn
grin," one reporter observed,

"there is a perfectionist
campaign machine

that shuts down
only six hours out of 24."

State by state,
the delegates kept adding up.

By the time the Democrats
convened in New York,

in July 1976, Carter had
a lock on the nomination.

(band plays
"We Shall Overcome")

MONDALE:
The fact that Carter could unite the nation, North and South,

and give us a clean shot
for the presidency--

this was the culmination
of my dreams.

My name is Jimmy Carter

and I'm running for president.

(applause and cheering)

And now I've come here
to accept your nomination.

(thunderous applause)

GLAD:
He'd pulled off a miracle.

In the fall of 1975, he was
barely visible as a candidate,

below five percent
in all the polls.

And suddenly, six months later,

he has the Democratic
presidential nomination,

and he is running 70%
in the public opinion polls.

That is a miracle.

Now, the problem was
that he had his vulnerabilities,

and they showed in the fall.

(train whistle blowing)

CARTER:
This election means a lot to our country.

NARRATOR:
Carter began the fall campaign

against incumbent
President Gerald Ford

with a 15-point lead.

CARTER:
We've been disappointed,

disillusioned.

We've been kept
out of government.

We've been embarrassed.

Sometimes we've been ashamed...

NARRATOR:
He returned to the themes of honesty and trust

that had defined
his primary campaign.

Jimmy Carter will say
anything, anywhere,

to be president
of the United States.

NARRATOR:
But as election day approached,

he was pressured
to take a stand on the issues.

He wanders,
he wavers,

he waffles
and he wiggles.

He isn't the man...

LANCE:
He was a moderate to the moderates.

He was a conservative
to the conservatives.

He was a liberal
to the liberals.

And in fact he was
all of those things.

We're going to have
a fair government once again.

We're going to have a government

that's open and not secret,
once again.

JOSHUA MURAVCHIK:
His standard line when asked about his foreign policy

was that he wanted
to provide a foreign policy

as good as the American people.

Well, gee, that's great

but what in the world
does it mean?

You can depend on it.

You help me, I'll help you.

Thank you very much.

GLAD:
The gist of what he presented was

that he would be
a centrist Democrat

who had liberal values
in his heart,

as well as the desire
for frugality and thrift

and efficiency in government.

And so he could appeal to people

from all parts
of the Democratic Party.

But as Julian Bond said
at one point,

"The problem with this is

that his support was
an inch deep and a mile wide."

NARRATOR:
Alarmed that support among liberal Democrats was eroding,

Carter's young staff made
a bold move.

CADDELL:
We did the Playboy interview

to show that being
a born-again Christian

was not a threat to more secular
Democrats and young people.

NARRATOR:
For five hours, Carter tried to explain his views

on culture, politics and faith.

Toward the end of the interview,

exasperated
at not being understood,

he said, "I've looked
on a lot of women with lust.

I've committed adultery
in my heart many times."

CADDELL:
If you read the interview,

the "lust in your heart" line

was to try to explain

that he, too, was a sinner,
that...

But the language was--

and I would see this
all the time--

Carter used language that was
germane to his world, to his...

like we all do--
to our own cultural context.

Here's a guy who is so moral,

but on the one hand
he talks about

he's lusted after women
in his heart,

and he talks about shacking up

and he uses language
that's going to really enrage

and turn off a lot of people.

BRINKLEY:
Do not underestimate

what a crisis that interview
and the "lust in my heart"

caused Carter.

It almost derailed
the entire Carter campaign.

They were in havoc over it.

CADDELL:
In retrospect, it was kind of amusing.

It wasn't very funny
at the time,

trying to explain to people

that Jimmy Carter was not
some child molester,

you know, I mean, or pervert.

The Playboy thing has been
of very great concern to me.

I don't know how
to deal with it exactly.

NARRATOR:
By the time Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford met

in the first of two
presidential debates,

Carter's lead had evaporated.

The momentum belonged to Ford.

Two weeks later, he blundered.

FORD:
There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe

and there never will be
under a Ford administration.

Uh, I'm sorry,
could I just follow...

Did I understand
you to say, sir,

that the Russians are
not using Eastern Europe

as their own sphere
of influence...

MONDALE:
We knew that this was going to hurt,

that a lot of people
couldn't see

how a president would say that.

It gave us about a week, as I
recall, to pound away on this.

And you could just feel people
moving on that question.

So what it did, I think,

was rather than electing us,
it stopped our slide.

(applause and cheering)

NARRATOR:
By election day, the polls showed a dead heat.

It was not until 3:00 a.m.

that the networks announced
the winner--

by one of the closest margins
in American history.

(cheering)

CADDELL:
I look back now, and I just... I'm amazed.

Going from total anonymity

to being president of the United
States in less than 12 months

is unprecedented
in American history.

If it weren't for the country
looking for something in '76,

Carter could never
have gotten elected.

He'd never have been allowed
out of the box.

BRINKLEY:
He offered a biography of what we wanted to hear:

farmer, Main Street values,
Plains.

It was the right message
at the right time

and it didn't happen
by accident.

Carter created that message,

knowing that
that's what would win the day.

I came all the way through.

Took 22 months,

and I didn't get...
choked up until I...

(crowd chuckles)

(crowd applauds)

(crowd cheers and whistles)

CRONKITE:
This was not planned, it was not scheduled

and whether this is Carter's
surprise for his inaugural,

by golly, Bob, how about that?

NARRATOR:
The morning of January 20, 1977,

Jimmy Carter surprised
the nation.

CHIP CARTER:
I remember I was out there walking

and you could hear Walter
Cronkite over the loudspeaker

saying, "The president
is walking down the street!"

It was a major moment of the
Carter presidency symbolically.

It was great theater.

DAN CARTER:
Here was this tremendous breath of fresh air.

He was going to bring
something new to Washington,

bring new people and new ideas.

CARTER:
Our commitment to human rights must be absolute,

our laws fair...

It was so different
from what had come before.

People were looking
for something that was simple,

something that was pure,

and it just struck a chord
in the American people.

CARTER:
More is not necessarily better.

HERTZBERG:
Jimmy Carter was exactly

what the American people
always say they want:

above politics,
determined to do the right thing

regardless of political
consequences,

a simple person who doesn't lie,

a dest man, not somebody with
a lot of imperial pretenses.

That's what people say
they want

and that's what they got
with Jimmy Carter.

NARRATOR:
The Carter team arrived in Washington full of confidence,

ready to take on the Washington
insiders they had run against.

CADDELL:
I felt like the advance wave of the German army

arriving in Paris in 1940.

I mean, this is
a Democratic city,

and they were terrified--
I mean, terrified.

You could feel it in the air.

They did not have
a lot in common

with the national
political party.

They did not have a lot
in common with the Congress.

They were a very close-knit
band of brothers

and they were intensely loyal
to Jimmy Carter.

And they were
pretty cocky guys as well.

JODY POWELL:
There was clearly some degree of suspicion

and maybe even a little bit
of resentment that...

"Here come these folks
riding in here

"that didn't really pay
their dues.

"They're not us.

"They're not our kind of folks

and all of a sudden
they're in the White House,"

and "We'll show them

that this town is tougher
than they think."

WOMAN:
His top people had no experience in Washington.

And they were sort of
contemptuous of Washington.

Well, it's one thing to sort
of run against Washington,

but you have to live there
and you have to govern there

and you have to work
with the people who are there,

and it really doesn't
get you anywhere

to have this attitude if you
want to get anything done.

You get things done by power.

You get power
from having public support.

My argument was that
in order to maintain power

we would have
to reinforce constantly

the message
of what we were doing.

Good evening.

Tomorrow will be two weeks
since I became president...

NARRATOR:
On February 2,

Carter addressed the nation
in a fireside chat on energy.

The country had been
through an oil scare in 1973.

To head off a new crisis, Carter
appealed directly to Americans

to rally around a new program.

All of us must learn
to waste less energy.

Simply by keeping
our thermostats, for instance,

at 65 degrees in the daytime
and 55 degrees at night,

we can save half the current
shortage of natural gas.

If we learn to live thriftily

and remember the importance
of helping our neighbors,

then we can find ways to adjust.

NARRATOR:
Carter led by example.

He curtailed
the use of limousines,

canceled magazine subscriptions,
unplugged television sets,

and put the presidential yacht,
Sequoia, on the auction block.

He turned off
the air conditioners

and it was so hot
in the White House,

people would come in there...

(laughs)

It was unbelievable.

It would be a hundred above
in there.

NARRATOR:
To save on staff overtime,

all White House functions
would end at midnight.

No hard liquor would be served.

HERTZBERG:
Jimmy Carter is a Low Church Protestant,

where it's a sin

not to have a hard wooden bench
to sit on in church.

And he brought that simplicity
to the White House.

DAN ROSTENKOWSKI:
We were all invited down to the White House every other Tuesday.

We walked into
the private dining room

on the first floor
off the East Room.

We looked at the table

and there were these
little fingertip cookies,

and... Tip O'Neill looked at me
and he said, "What's this?"

I said, "I guess
that's breakfast."

So the president walked in,

you know, walked around the room
and shook hands with everybody.

And O'Neill looked
at the president, and he says,

"Mr. President, you know,
we won the election."

CARTER:
That's the last time you were here?

That's the last time
I was in the Oval Office.

NARRATOR:
Carter presented his agenda

to the speaker of the house,
Tip O'Neill.

Energy was Carter's
number-one priority,

but it was competing with his
long list of other legislation--

bills on hospital cost
containment, urban policy,

ethics in government.

You brought enough
for four years' work.

I understand that.

NARRATOR:
There was nothing in the package

to grease
the wheels of government.

Some are of more
priority than others.

NARRATOR:
When Carter struck from his budget

19 multimillion-dollar
water projects

that had been approved
by President Ford,

congressmen were furious.

DREW:
He was absolutely right to take it on--

these sort of boondoggles

and unnecessary, really,
pork-barrel things--

but he didn't know
how to take it on.

You have to build
political capital,

you have to build alliances,
you have to make deals.

LANCE:
The quid pro quo was not in him.

If you came to him and said,

"Look, we can get so-and-so
to vote for us,"

he would turn a deaf ear.

NARRATOR:
"He never understood how the system worked,"

Tip O'Neill
would later complain.

"And although this was out
of character for Jimmy Carter,

he didn't want
to learn about it either."

DAN CARTER:
If your job is to find

the public good, to arrive
at what the public good is

and then to articulate it,

and then you become
the voice of the people.

And when you do that, it becomes
very difficult to compromise.

ROSTENKOWSKI:
On one occasion when I was talking to President Carter

I said, "Mr. President,

"you know, I've had
three presidents before you

"and I'll have several
after you.

"I'm telling you,
from the vantage point

"of what I see
in the legislative process,

"you will be able to do and what
you won't be able to do.

Now, you can accept that
or not accept it."

But Carter's attitude

was members of the House
and Senate are bad guys.

FARRELL:
Carter put O'Neill and the others like him

in the same category with the
corrupt Georgia courthouse pols

that he had been fighting
for much of his life.

The same kind
of back-scratching,

featherbedding pol, worrying
about the next election,

worrying about
their public opinion polls,

coming in and not doing
what was right.

BRINKLEY:
Often, he wouldn't

return phone calls
of leading senators.

There was a kind of an abrasive
attitude he had towards them.

He never showed them
the respect.

So they all eventually
got bitter and turned on him.

DAN CARTER:
Even if he had had a personality transplant

and he had spent
three hours a night

playing poker with Tip O'Neill,

I don't think that would
have madthe difference.

I mean, he was...
he was faced with

an extraordinarily difficult
set of circumstances,

which in part sprang not only
from the political situation,

but from his... the...
the lack of a connection

between his own views
and those of his party.

NARRATOR:
"There will be no new programs implemented

"unless they are compatible

"with my goal
of having a balanced budget

by the end of my first term,"
he pledged.

But liberal Democrats, eager
to resume the social agenda

of Lyndon Johnson's
Great Society,

would not back away.

STUART EIZENSTAT: There hadn
an eight-year period

when there had been
no Democratic president.

The were a lot of pent-up
and legitimate desires

by constituency groups

for more investment
in a whole range of programs.

Although he sympathized
with much of it,

all of his instincts
were to cut budgets,

reduce the deficit dramatically.

But he was always under pressure
from the Left

to have more spending.

NARRATOR:
At a breakfast meeting,

Carter berated the congressional
Democratic leadership

for adding $61 billion
in new programs to his budget.

"The Democratic Party
needs to remove the stigma

of unjustified spending,"
he said.

"Mr. President,"
Tip O'Neill reminded Carter,

"the Democrats are the champions
of the poor and the indigent."

BOURNE:
Carter thought that big social programs

and large amounts
of federal spending

would bankrupt the country.

He could see,
I think, very clearly,

the way the world was going,

and he knew that old era
had to be phased out.

Carter, looking back,

was being very long-sighted
in saying, you know,

"We just don't have
an open-ended,

"never-ending
amount of money to spend.

We have to get things
in balance."

NARRATOR:
Carter's commitment to fiscal restraint

appealed to
a growing number of Americans.

"He brings to the office

a refreshing habit of plain
words and simple manners,"

wrote Newsweek.

"A mind and discipline
of tempered steel

and an insatiable appetite
for work."

Jimmy Carter
had entered the presidency

with only 51% of the vote.

By June, he enjoyed
an approval rating of over 70%.

Then came an event

that rocked the foundation
of the Carter presidency.

It was called the Lance Affair.

In July 1977,

Carter's budget director,
Bert Lance,

was accused
of financial improprieties

at his bank in Calhoun, Georgia.

A federal investigation cleared
Lance of all illegal activity,

but concluded
that he had engaged

in "unsafe and unsound
banking practices."

CARTER:
Bert Lance is a man of competence

and a man of integrity,
and that his services...

NARRATOR:
Believing the affair was behind him, Carter stood by his friend.

Bert Lance enjoys my
complete confidence

and support.

I'm proud
to have him

as part of my
administration.

NARRATOR:
Carter had miscalculated.

To the press, the issue
was ethics, not the law.

Sensing a scandal,
they went on the attack.

POWELL:
There were a lot of journalists who very much wanted to prove

that they could be as tough
on a Democratic president

as they had been on...
on a Richard Nixon.

There was a... a real desire
to make sure that it was clear

that they were going to pursue
this every bit as aggressively.

One of the things people like to
go after more than anything else

is what they perceive
as hypocrisy.

So that you're judged
by the standards

that you set for yourself.

And certainly,

Carter's talking about,
"I'll never tell you a lie"

and emphasizing honesty
provided an easy opportunity.

NARRATOR:
Carter's inner circle urged him to get rid of Lance.

But he was torn

between loyalty to his friend
and his own reputation.

For weeks, he allowed
the Lance Affair to fester.

REPORTER:
Do you feel you were drummed out?

LANCE:
My statement speaks for itself.

I have no comment
about being drummed out.

I said in my statement

that I had to analyze
and question what...

LANCE:
The day that I resigned, I came home, and I was spent.

I lay down on the bed
crying about the situation,

just from the standpoint

of just having run out
of any adrenaline

or emotion or anything else,

and so we had all that horde
of media out on the front yard

that had been there constantly.

I guess it was a suicide watch.

REPORTER:
Any comment at all?

DREW:
Looking back, it wasn't that big a deal.

But what it did do
at the time...

was give the first blow

to the image that Carter
was trying to project

that his was a squeaky-clean
administration.

Whether my own credibility
has been damaged, I can't say.

I would guess to some degree.

An unpleasant
situation like this...

NARRATOR:
Carter's approval rating plunged 25 points.

POWELL:
It would have been better for the president

if we had brought that
to an end sooner.

It threw us off our stride.

It made it harder for us
to talk about other things

and sort of played
into questions

about whether we could lead
and run the country.

CADDELL:
Until that moment, we had been driving the agenda.

Everyone danced to our tune.

After that, we danced
to everybody else's tune.

And that hurt us
with the public,

because now Jimmy Carter
is not in charge.

(cheering and applause)

NARRAT::
On May 22, 1977, before the graduating class

at the University of Notre Dame,

President Jimmy Carter
unveiled a new foreign policy

for the United States.

Being confident
of our own future,

we are now free of that
inordinate fear of communism.

NARRATOR:
Carter had come to office

with no experience
in foreign affairs,

but determined to make his mark.

In his first year alone, he met
more than 40 heads of state,

resumed talks on diplomatic
relations with China

and with the Soviet Union
on arms control.

He launched a new peace process
in the Middle East

and signed a new Canal Treaty
with Panama,

transferring,
after 75 years,

ownership of the canal
to the Panamanians.

But it was a principle
straight from his heart

that would redefine America's
role in the world.

We have reaffirmed America's
commitment to human rights

as a fundamental tenet
of our foreign policy.

GADDIS SMITH:
That was his greatest speech, standing up for our own values,

and expecting then that
the world would appreciate that,

and that we would be--
he didn't use this phrase,

but it's an old phrase
in American history--

like the beacon on the hill,

the beacon of freedom
and liberty and democracy.

GLAD:
He will be remembered for putting on the agenda hereafter

the whole issue of human rights.

We now assume that the goal
of a state

is not only to protect its
national security interes.

It has an obligation to try
to deal with human suffering

where it has
the ability to do that.

I feel very deeply

that when people are put
in prison without trials

and tortured and deprived
of basic human rights

that the president of the United
States ought to have a right

to express displeasure
and to do something about it.

MONDALE:
His idea is

that every child
is a child of God

and, based on his faith,

entitled to the stature
and respect and the rights

of what that means.

NARRATOR:
But the biggest challenge to Carter's human rights policy

would come in the Middle East.

Iran, because of
the great leadership of the Shah,

is an island of stability

in one of the more troubled
areas in the world.

NARRATOR:
Carter was aware

of the brutality
of Iran's secret police

and of 2,500 political prisoners
held in Iran's jails.

But the Shah,
installed to the throne

in a U.S.-backed coup in 1953,
had long been a trusted ally.

New Year's Eve, 1977, in Tehran,

Carter reaffirmed
America's support.

One week after Carter's visit,

anti-Shah demonstrations
broke out.

When Iranian secret police
fired on the demonstrators

and killed several students,

religious leaders called the
Shah's government anti-Islamic.

DREW:
Iran was a very complicated situation.

And the Shah
was very useful to us.

At the same time,
something else was going on,

something very powerful
was going on in Iran.

And as I recall,
we kind of missed it.

We knew there was
some resentment

and we knew somewhat
of the history of the country,

but we were not conscious,

nor were we informed, of
the intensity of the feelings.

NARRATOR:
Since the days of Plains and peanuts,

the marriage of Rosalynn
and Jimmy Carter had blossomed

into a full partnership.

Sometime before Carter
became president

he realized what a valuable
adviser to him Rosalynn was.

She was a major player
in the campaigns

and she did have good rapport
with the people.

She, of course, was ambitious
in her own right.

She wanted to be more
than a fashion plate

and somebody whoave teas.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
The first year Jimmy was in office, I became so frustrated.

Every night, Jimmy would get off
the elevator at the White House

and I would say,
"Why did you do this?"

or "Why did you do..."
something.

And one day, he finally said,

"Why don't you come
to cabinet meetings?

And then you'll know
why we do these things."

So I started going--
it was always on my calendar--

and I'd just listen.

I didn't participate,
but I listened.

And then I knew why
the decisions were made.

NARRATOR:
The first child to live in the White House

since the Kennedy years,

nine-year-old Amy
had the run of the place.

She roller-skated
down the marble hallways,

played in a tree house
her father built for her,

and even got a new dog,
named Grits.

BRINKLEY:
She was the apple of her father's eye.

President Carter hadn't spent a
lot of time with his three sons

when they were growing up,

so he tried to put a lot of
attention and energy into Amy.

NARRATOR:
In keeping with Carter's populist image,

Amy was sent to public school.

The media made much of the fact
that her best friend

was the daughter of the cook
at the Chilean embassy.

She was such a shy,
intelligent girl,

it was very hard
always having that media glare.

And I think
after the White House

she's tried her best
to stay out of the limelight.

NARRATOR:
In 1978, the first signs of a gathering economic storm

were becoming visible.

The stock market was at
its lowest point in three years,

the trade deficit growing,
unemployment on the rise.

The most serious problem that
our nation has is inflation,

and it's getting worse.

It's absolutely imperative that
Americans commit themselves--

all of us--
to a common sacrifice

to control this rapid
increase in prices.

Carter inherited
a no-win economic situation.

I see him as
the last presidential victim

of the war in Vietnam.

Every war this country has
fought, once it is over,

the economy has to readjust
to a peacetime economy.

I call on the private sector...

GODBOLD:
And what always happens is runaway inflation.

NARRATOR:
Carter implored labor and business leaders

to keep wages and prices down,

and pressured Congress
to cut back spending.

CARTER:
I believe the American people will understand...

NARRATOR:
But inflation kept rising, his words falling on deaf ears.

JAMES LANEY:
He has this enormous determination

to go after and do

what he thinks
ought to be done.

The capacity to explain,

persuade, inspire, mobilize,
energize the whole country...

I do not have all the answers--
nobody does.

LANEY:
That was far more tenuous and uncertain.

CARTER:
But I want to let you know

that fighting inflation
will be a central...

LANEY:
He thought people would just follow, but that didn't happen.

CARTER:
And I want to arouse our nation to join me in this effort.

NARRATOR:
There were growing doubts about Carter's leadership.

The president,
most Americans believed,

was too mired in details,
was ineffective with Congress,

had attempted too much
and delivered too little.

EIZENSTAT:
This is a classic case

where first impressions
often sets in with people

and the first impressions
of that first year were:

too many things,
lack of priorities,

a lack of accomplishment.

The fact is, we actually had
a good legislative record,

but we had thrown so much up
that, in comparison to that,

it... the accomplishments
seemed to pale.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
I would sometimes say,

"Why don't we do this
in your second term?"

and he would say, "What if I
don't have a second term?"

And I think he felt
that way the whole time--

that if something needed to be
done, it needed to be done.

NARRATOR:
With an approval rating of only 33%,

Time magazine concluded,

"He has the potential
for growing in the office,

but he does not have
a great deal of time left."

NARRATOR:
Nestled in the mountains of Maryland,

Camp David was
Jimmy Carter's refuge.

It was the place he and Rosalynn
repaired to on weekends

to get away from
the pressures of Washington.

In September 1978,

Jimmy Carter would enshrine
Camp David,

and himself, in history.

MONDALE:
He had spent a lot of time studying the Middle East.

He felt very deeply
that we should try

to find peace over there,

and boy, he really bet
his presidency on that.

GLAD:
He was already very low in the polls--

he had practically
nowhere to go but up--

but he still could
possibly win a second term,

and if he failed, that would...

that would certainly
write him off.

NARRATOR:
Since the creation of the state of Israel,

every attempt to bring peace
to the Middle East had failed.

Refugees, land disputes,
terrorism plagued the region.

Four wars, the last in 1973,
had left a bitter legacy

of hate and mistrust.

NARRATOR:
Everyone urged Carter

to stay away from what seemed
an intractable situation,

but he would not be deterred.

"I slowly became hardened,
and as stubborn

as at any other time
I can remember," he wrote.

The Middle East, for years
had been, and was then,

the place where you thought,

"If we're going to end up
blowing up the world,

"that's where it will start.

"If there's going to be
a nuclear confrontation

"between the superpowers,

it's going to come
out of the Middle East,"

so finding... you know,
finding a way to tamp that down

was, to him,
extremely important.

NARRATOR:
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat

took the first step toward peace
in November 1977,

when he became
the first Arab leader

to set foot on Israeli soil.

Carter seized the opportunity.

The following September,
he welcomed President Sadat

and Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin to Camp David

to negotiate a treaty
that would lay the foundations

for peace in the Middle East.

GLAD:
He brought all of his skills

and all the best sides of
himself to the whole operation,

and all of the potential
in Jimmy Carter

was out there at Camp David.

It was a... really,
an extraordina time.

SMITH:
He had studied things so carefully.

He knew the population

of every village
in the West Bank and Israel.

It's hard to think
of a president in our history

who had that much capacity
to absorb and retain detail.

GLAD:
He made a mistake at the very beginning.

He thought, and told his aides,

"You know, we're just going to
bring together Begin and Sadat,

"and they'll talk and
they'll get to know each other

and they'll understand
each other."

Well, he got them there,
and it turned out,

after the first three meetings,

they were practically
never talking to each other

and things were going
downhill very fast.

NARRATOR:
"It was mean," Carter later recalled.

"They were brutal
with each other.

Face-to-face discussions
became an impossibility."

On day three-- the expected
deadline for an agreement--

Carter had accomplished nothing.

"There must be a way," he kept
saying, "there must be a way."

That night at dinner,
alone with Rosalynn,

he arrived at a solution.

If the two men could
not talk to one another,

they would have to talk
through him.

He decided that essentially

the Americans would draft
the proposal

and put the proposal
on the table.

You wouldn't have an Egyptian
and an Israeli proposal.

You would have
an American proposal.

NARRATOR:
"I must admit that I capitalized on the situation,"

Carter later wrote.

"It greatly magnified
my own influence."

Carter devoted himself
to drafting an agreement.

With more than 50 issues
to be resolved,

the work was painstaking.

He was remarkably tenacious,

persistent, persuasive,
tough-minded,

tough both with Sadat
on some occasions

and with Begin
on other occasions.

BRINKLEY:
That people trusted him as an honest broker

came to play in a very magical
and important way.

He is seen as somebody
who is not a cheat or a liar.

He is somebody who puts
his money where his mouth is.

NARRATOR:
"My world became the negotiating rooms,

"the study where I pored
over my notes

and maps of the Middle East,"
he recalled.

"Between sessions,
I craved intense exercise

and lonely places where I could
think and sometimes pray."

ROSALYNN CARTER:
He had things scheduled after the first week,

and I was going into Washington

to do some of the things
he was supposed to do.

And when I would leave to go in,
they would say,

"Don't smile, because everybody
will think they'll be all right.

Don't look grim, because
they'll think it's failing."

That was hard.

It was from the depths
to the heights

all the time at Camp David.

One minute you would think
it was going to pass

and everything was so exciting,
and then...

and another... another time,
it would be just hopeless.

POWELL:
It always seemed to me that the odds were against success;

it always seemed like
a long shot, and so I was...

I spent a good bit
of my time thinking about,

"How are we going to deal with
this thing if it collapses?"

NARRATOR:
Shuttling back and forth between Sadat and Begin,

Carter began to put together
an agreement...

a framework for negotiations
in the Middle East

which would address the fate
of the Palestinians

and the future of Gaza
and the West Bank...

and a separate peace treaty
between Egypt and Israel.

Israel would return
the Sinai territories

occupied since the 1967 war.

Egypt would recognize the right
of Israel to live in peace.

On September 14, day ten,
Carter turned to the issue

he knew could derail
any progress made so far--

the dismantling of Israeli
settlements in the Sinai.

BOURNE:
Carter was unable to get Begin to make any concessions

that would really have locked up
an agreement,

to the point where Sadat
just got fed up

and said, "Well,
I'm going home," you know.

"I'm just not going to wait
any... be here any longer,"

and... and literally
sort of had his coat on

and was out the door.

NARRATOR:
Carter begged Sadat to stay,

appealing to their friendship
and mutual trust,

and reminding him
of Egypt's good relations

with the United States.

Sadat decided to remain
at Camp David.

Saturday, September 16,
Brzezinski wrote in his diary:

"The President is driving
himself mercilessly.

"He has single-handedly
written the proposed document

for the settlements
on the Sinai."

Carter presented
the formula to Begin.

At first he called
the demands on Israel

"excessive,"
"political suicide."

But in the end he relented,
agreeing to submit

the question
of the Jewish settlements

to the Israeli parliament.

Jimmy Carter saw a picture

of the three major
participants on his desk,

and he told his secretary

to find out the names
of Begin's grandchildren

and so then
he wrote little notes,

putting in the names
of all the grandchildren.

He went over to Begin and said,

"You know, this is not
just for us.

This is for our grandchildren,
and let me give this to you."

And Begin was
profoundly moved by this.

NARRATOR:
The Camp David Accords were hailed

as a monumental triumph
of diplomacy.

(applause)

NARRATOR:
"With his brilliant success and inspired leadership,

"Carter has taken
a first big step

toward realizing the promise
of his presidency,"

was the verdict of the press.

These negotiations provide
that Israel may live in peace

within secure
and recognized borders,

and this great aspiration
of Israel has been certified,

without constraint, with the
greatest degree of enthusiasm,

by President Sadat, the leader

of one of the greatest
nations on earth.

(applause)

BRINKLEY:
There will never be a history of the Middle East written

without Jimmy Carter's name
in the index.

A hundred years from now,
200 years from now,

people will be talking
about the Camp David process

that began
in those Maryland mountains.

BOURNE:
Camp David was the plum of his administration.

This was the crowning glory,
and it enshrined him in history.

To these two friends of mine,
the words of Jesus:

"Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they shall be
the children of God."

(sustained applause)

NARRATOR:
Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Prize

for their contribution to peace.

Camp David became the touchstone

for all future negotiations
on the Middle East.

Yet Carter's great success

did nothing
to improve his standing

with the American people.

MONDALE:
There was something about how we had slipped

in the eyes
of the American people

that prevented us from getting

what should have been
an enormous lift

out of this incredible
diplomatic feat.

We thought, "Boy, this shows
we can get things done.

It does bring peace
in a crucial area."

And there was
no movement at all.

It was very dispiriting.

WOMAN:
♪ Say it's only a paper moon... ♪

NARRATOR:
At home, President Carter's leadership was in question.

On the world stage, he kept
piling up accomplishments.

In January 1979,

he received Chinese Vice-Premier
Deng Xiaoping in Washington

to celebrate the establishment
of formal relations

between the United States
and China.

WOMAN:
♪ If you believe in me... ♪

NARRATOR:
In June, he met Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev in Vienna,

to sign the SALT II
arms control agreement.

From there, it was on to Tokyo
for a major economic summit.

CADDELL:
The country is having this terrible domestic problem

and the president is somewhere

out on the other side
of the world,

and not for a couple of days--
for weeks.

And I remember
getting on the phone and saying,

"You people
got to come home now."

NARRATOR:
In one year, the American economy had spun out of control.

Gasoline prices
had more than doubled,

mortgage rates pushed 20%.

Unemployment kept on rising.

LANCE:
There were just so many forces at work.

When inflation becomes rampant,

interest rates are high

and the business cycle
is turning against you,

it becomes almost impossible.

NARRATOR:
Of all the problems facing the nation,

most Americans now agreed
inflation was the most urgent.

In the summer of '79,
fueled by rising oil prices,

it surged to 14%.

ROGER WILKINS:
Inflation makes you doubt the future.

When you have inflation,

you don't see
as much building going on,

you don't see
as much investment going on,

you don't see
as much hiring going on.

People weren't seeing
their savings growing,

and as a matter of fact,
people were terrified

that inflation would impoverish
them in their old age.

NARRATOR:
Carter acted decisively.

To reduce the budget deficit and
bring inflation under control,

he cut into social programs.

"New realities,"
explained the White House,

"must temper our nation's
commitment to the poor."

BOURNE:
It stirred up a hornet's nest of opposition

from the Ted Kennedy people,

from the traditional
F.D.R. coalition.

They were very, very angry.

NARRATOR:
African-American leaders felt betrayed

and vowed to wage an all-out
fight on what they called

Carter's "immoral, unjust
and inequitable budget cuts."

WILKINS:
The leader who most encapsulated the goals that I wanted

was Martin King, at the end of
his life, saying to the country,

"We have to do something
about poor Americans.

"We're the richest country
on the face of the earth,

and we've got to do something."

Every time I vote for
a Democrat, I want that Democrat

to have Martin's spirit
about poverty in his soul.

Jimmy Carter ran away from that.

(warning siren wails)

NARRATOR:
Across America, frustration was reaching a breaking point.

In Levittown, Pennsylvania,

truckers barricaded expressways
to protest high fuel prices,

setting off riots,
which left 100 injured

and led to more
than 170 arrests.

CADDELL:
I thought in '79, we were really headed down the tubes.

I now thought we were
in deep, deep trouble,

and I thought the president
was becoming irrelevant.

NARRATOR:
Polls showed Carter falling behind Ted Kennedy

as the preferred candidate
among Democratic voters,

and even losing trial heats

to the likely Republican
nominee, Ronald Reagan.

WOMAN:
I don't think he has control of the situation;

I think he's a very religious
man, a very nice man,

but I just don't think
he's capable of the job.

A lot of people think
he's shaky, you know,

and I'm one of them.

I think he's kind of shaky.

I think that he's
a really floundering leader.

I don't see him as a leader,

and I don't look to him
for leadership.

NARRATOR:
President Carter's approval rating was 25%--

lower than President
Richard Nixon's

at the time of Watergate.

"It all seems to be falling down
around me in the White House,"

he told a friend.

"I don't know what to do."

MONDALE:
I think he was losing some of that essential nerve

that he has in such abundance,

but just for a brief
moment there.

It was really, uh...

I was heartsick,
and I felt so sorry for him.

NARRATOR:
Carter groped for a way to reassert his leadership.

One adviser suggested that he
give a major speech on energy

and put the full blame
of the economic crisis

on the high price
of Middle East oil.

EIZENSTAT:
When we drew the outlines up, he was really quite disgusted.

This is just more of the same.

It doesn't address
the basic problems.

People will see this as pablum.

We need something more.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
Jimmy had made several speeches on energy.

He was trying to impress
upon people

the fact that they
needed to conserve

and it just seemed to be going
nowhere with the public.

And so he just said, "I'm not
going to make the speech."

So he got on a conference call
with his senior staff,

and the way he put it,
very pungently, was,

"I just don't want to bullshit
the American people."

NARRATOR:
Carter retreated to Camp David.

For the next ten days,
businessmen, labor leaders,

governors, pop psychologists
and clergy

were called to the mountaintop

to participate in one of
the most extraordinary episodes

of presidential soul searching
in American history.

HERTZBERG:
Basically this was

a kind of self-psychoanalysis

by Carter
and the administration.

He sat up there and listened

to the most scalding critiques
of his presidency.

NARRATOR:
"They told me that I seemed bogged down in details,"

Carter wrote.

"That the public acknowledged
my intelligence and integrity,

"but doubted my capacity
to follow through

with a strong enough thrust
to succeed."

Within Carter's own staff

a fierce debate raged
over what had gone wrong

and what President Carter should
say to the American people.

Carter's pollster argued
the president should address

a subject deeper
than energy or the economy;

that there was a crisis
of the American spirit.

CADDELL:
For the first time, we actually got numbers

where people no longer believed
that the future of America

was going to be
as good as it was now.

Never in the history of American
polling had that ever existed--

that Americans ever,
even if they believed it,

ever evidenced, would say,

"Oh, my children
will have it worse than I am.

"The country's
going to get worse.

We've already had our heyday."

And that really shook me,

because it was so anti...
so anti-American.

I made the point,
and Mondale made the point,

that if there was a problem
with the American spirit,

it was because
of the underlying problems

of inflation and energy,

not because there was something
wrong with the American people.

I argued that there were
real problems in America

that were not mysterious,
that were not rooted

in some kind of national
psychosis or breakdown;

that there were real gas lines,
there was real inflation,

that people were worried
in their real lives

about keeping their jobs.

CADDELL:
The vice president of the United States was looking at me

and basically accusing me
of being insane.

You had this real division

and then Jimmy Carter ended it
by saying--

and this moment,
I'll never forget it--

he ends the thing, saying,

"I just wanted to hear
what you all said.

"I've decided; I'm going to do
everything that Pat said."

Good evening.

This is a special night for me.

NARRATOR:
On July 15, after a ten-day retreat,

Jimmy Carter descended
from the mountains of Maryland

to deliver the most
controversial speech

of his administration.

I want to speak to you
first tonight about a subject

even more serious
than energy or inflation.

I want to talk to you right now

about a fundamental threat
to American democracy.

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.

HERTZBERG:
The speech was more like a sermon than a political speech,

and it had the themes

of confession, redemption
and sacrifice.

And he was bringing
the American people

into this spiritual process
that he had been through

and presenting them with
an opportunity for redemption

as well as redeeming himself.

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.

FARRELL:
The speech unfairly was labeled the "malaise speech,"

because it talked about the fact

that the country was
in a difficult situation,

which it was.

But Americans don't always want

their public leaders
to come to them and say,

"Hey, we're in
a bunch of trouble."

When your leadership is

demonstrably weaker
than it should be,

you don't then point
at the people and say,

"It's your problem."

If you want the people to move,

you move them the way
Roosevelt moved them,

or you exhort them

the way Kennedy
or Johnson exhorted them.

You don't say,
"It's your fault."

BRINKLEY:
The op-ed pieces started spinning out

saying there's nothing wrong
with the American people.

We're a great people.

Maybe the problem's
in the White House.

Maybe we need new leadership
to guide us.

It boomeranged on him.

POWELL:
If you make a bold stroke like that,

you do have to think about
how do you follow it up.

What does day three and day four
and day five look like?

How do you translate that
into additional steps?

And we botched that.

NARRATOR:
To give the impression of a fresh start,

Carter asked his entire cabinet
to submit their resignations.

Five were accepted.

FARRELL:
By firing the cabinet the way he did,

Carter just telegraphed
to the country

that he wasn't up for the job.

It was a sign of panic.

It looked like
this was a president

who was thrashing about, looking
for other people to blame.

NARRATOR:
Carter's approval rating dropped even lower.

"After all the Camp David
meetings,

"the dramatic speech
on July 15

"and the cabinet firings,

he is back where he began,"
one analyst wrote,

"a chief executive rejected
by his ultimate constituency--

the American people."

That fall, the liberal wing
of the Democratic Party

finally broke
with the president,

throwing its support
behind Ted Kennedy.

The senator from Massachusetts
would wage a brutal campaign

for the Democratic nomination.

For Jimmy Carter, nothing
seemed to be going right.

He collapsed while running
a ten-kilometer race.

It was taken
as a sign of weakness.

He became the butt of jokes
when a story broke

that he'd been attacked
by a giant rabbit

while fishing in Georgia.

Even the Carter family,
once thought fun and colorful,

was becoming a liability.

Billy was investigated

for accepting a bribe
from the Libyan government.

Furious, Carter distanced
himself from Billy.

"I have no control
over my brother

and he has no control
over me," he said.

On November 4, 1979,
it would all seem trivial.

A few days earlier, 3,500
Iranian students had marched

toward the American embassy
in Tehran,

threatening to overtake it.

(demonstrators chanting)

NARRATOR:
The anti-Shah movement, which had begun in early 1978,

had grown into a full-fledged
Islamic revolution.

The shah was driven into exile

and the Ayatollah Khomeini
became the leader

of a new and mysterious
Islamic republic.

BRZEZINSKI:
I never had any illusions about Khomeini.

I didn't have much familiarity

with fundamentalist Islam,
but I knew he would be a menace.

SMITH:
If Carter had been more critical of the Shah,

conceivably it would have been
a little more difficult

for the Ayatollah Khomeini

to identify the United States
as the great Satan

and to say everything
that is wrong in Iran

is basically the fault
of the United States.

Maybe the fact that
the United States

had been a significant player
in Iran since 1945

was such that it was too late
for Carter or anybody

to change
the deeply hostile nature

of the Iranian revolution,

but it might have made
a difference.

NARRATOR:
In the first few months of the revolution,

Carter had worked
to build a relationship

with the Khomeini regime.

But the history
of U.S.-Iranian relations

would soon catch up with him.

For months,
the deposed Shah of Iran

had wandered the Middle East,
then Latin America.

Ill with cancer,
he asked permission

to come to the United States
for medical treatment.

MONDALE:
There were several of us sitting around the table

talking about whether
the president should permit

the reentry of the Shah.

We had people tell us
that if we let the Shah in,

there could be a real negative
repercussion in Iran.

But the Shah was sort
of pathetically flying

around the world, and here's
this great country saying,

"Well, we won't even let you
come to one of our hospitals."

He went around the room,

and a lot of the people said,
"Let him in."

BRZEZINSKI:
I argued that he should be allowed in,

because we treated him
as an ally in good times,

and I felt
it was our responsibility

to treat him as a former ally,
but a friend, in bad times.

I felt American credibility
was at stake.

MONDALE:
And he said, "And if, then, this revolution moves in a way

"to take our employees
in our embassy hostage,

then what will be your advice?"

And the room just fell dead.

(men shouting in Farsi)

NARRATOR:
The Shah arrived in the United States on October 22.

Two weeks later,

Iranian students
seized the American embassy.

53 Americans
were to be held hostage

until the United States
returned the Shah to Iran.

Everyone awaited word
from Khomeini.

Seeing an opportunity
to consolidate his revolution,

the Ayatollah gave his blessing,

calling the U.S. embassy
"a den of spies."

CARTER:
The United States of America will not yield

to international terrorism
or to blackmail.

CADDELL:
It was a defining event.

This is the entire United States
government captured

and held illegally
under international law

and being taunted every day.

WILKINS:
The whole world saw these images

of these people
burning American flags,

stomping on images of Carter

and the most rancid sort
of disrespect and hatred

of the United States,

on television,
around the world, all the time.

NARRATOR:
"I would lie awake at night,

"trying to think of steps
I could take

"to gain the hostages' freedom,

without sacrificing the honor
and security of our nation,"

the president wrote.

Carter rejected all military
options as too risky.

"The problem," he said,

"is that we could feel good
for a few hours,

until we found that
they had killed our people."

BRINKLEY:
He was determined to bring every one of those men back alive.

You see the moralism of Carter,

the Christianity affecting
his foreign policy making,

his belief in each human life
having a great sanctity to it,

his not wanting
to have blood on his hands.

The successful statesmen
have to balance risks,

and sometimes...
sometimes a risk

to a relatively limited
number of lives

down the road saves
many, many more lives.

POWELL:
To react in a way that was strong and powerful

would have set us off
down a road

that no man could say
where it might lead.

(TV news theme playing)

WALTER CRONKITE:
Good evening.

The 100th day of captivity
for 50 Americans in Tehran...

DAN RATHER:
The 100th flag for 100 days of captivity.

NARRATOR:
As spring 1980 approached,

the hostages had grown
into a national obsession,

their memory kept alive by
millions of yellow ribbons.

RATHER:
...and the nation shares their ordeal.

NARRATOR:
No stone was left unturned trying to bring them home.

While Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance

dealt with Iranian
government officials,

Hamilton Jordan met secretly
with anyone who held out hope.

(voices murmuring)

I think I have an infection
in this eye.

NARRATOR:
"Our lives became a seesaw of emotions

as scheme after scheme fell
apart," Rosalynn later recalled.

"Every time we saw the hostages
on television, I counted them."

ROSALYNN CARTER:
No one can know how much pressure there was on Jimmy

to do something about that.

And I would go, like,

"Why don't you do something?"

He said,
"What would you want me to do?"

I said, "Mine the harbors."

He said, "Okay, suppose
I mine the harbors,

"and they decide to take
one hostage out every day

and kill him,
what am I going to do then?"

(voices murmuring)

DREW:
Fairly or not, it came to symbolize

the question
of whether Carter was a leader,

whether he was competent,
whether he was strong.

(clock ticking)

NARRATOR:
By April, pressure was growing intense,

and the situation
increasingly hopeless.

"We could no longer afford
to depend on diplomacy,"

Carter was forced to conclude.

"I knew from
an intelligence report

"that there was little prospect
of the hostages' release

"for the next five
or six months.

I decided to act."

It was called "Desert I."

It required six
C-130 transport planes,

a 90-man rescue team,

two C-141 Starlifters,

eight helicopters

and nearly impossible logistics.

GLAD:
It was a highly risky operation.

The CIA even talked
about the number of people--

including the hostages--

who might be killed;
but it was doing something.

NARRATOR:
South of Tehran, in the Iranian desert,

the rescue mission
turned into a disaster.

Two helicopters failed,

another crashed into a C-130
in a sandstorm.

Eight men died in Desert 1.

Three more were severely burned.

CARTER:
It was my decision to attempt the rescue operation.

It was my decision to cancel it
when problems developed.

The responsibility
is fully my own.

POWELL:
I sort of thought at the time,

"Well, people will give the
president credit for trying."

But I also realized

that now the chances of being
able to get those people out

anytime in the near future
was very, very slim,

and that... from
a political standpoint,

that was going to be
a heavy burden to bear.

NARRATOR:
In August 1980, President Carter survived

the challenge
from Senator Edward Kennedy

for the Democratic nomination.

The campaign had been
bitter and divisive,

but in the end, Kennedy
had seemed too liberal

and too tainted by scandal.

(cheering)

EIZENSTAT:
The attack from the left was extremely debilitating,

and the fact that we had
a divided party

going into the general election
in 1980 against Ronald Reagan

was an additional albatross

beyond the hostage crisis
and beyond inflation.

REAGAN:
Jimmy Carter's administration tells us

that the descendants of those
who sacrificed to start again

in this land of freedom
may have to abandon the dream

that drew their ancestors
to a new life in a new land.

NARRATOR:
Republican candidate Ronald Reagan launched his campaign

on Labor Day
with a broadside attack

delivered before an audience
of working-class Americans.

...record is
a litany of despair,

of broken promises, of sacred
trusts abandoned and forgotten.

WILKINS:
Reagan was a very formidable fellow.

The combination of his beliefs--

which were not numerous,
but they were clear--

um, and his acting skills

really made people
sit up and say,

"This is... this guy means
and believes what he's saying."

NARRATOR:
Carter trailed Reagan by more than 20 points.

With the Soviets in Afghanistan,
the hostages in Iran

and the economy in shambles,
he was vulnerable.

LANCE:
We were still going through tough economic circumstances.

People were hurting.

Interest rates were higher,

unemployment was higher,
inflation was greater.

ANNOUNCER:
When you come right down to it,

what kind of a person should
occupy the Oval Office?

NARRATOR:
Unable to run on his record, Carter went on the attack,

portraying Reagan
as trigger-happy cowboy

with his finger
on the nuclear button.

ANNOUNCER:
...and a destroyer to Ecuador to deal with a fishing controversy?

CADDELL:
We didn't have any cards to play

because there wasn't
any cards to play.

We were now trapped by events,

trapped by a government that
couldn't come up with any ideas,

and basically,
we were frustrating the hell

out of people.

But they still trusted Jimmy
Carter not to blow the world up,

and that was our only hope.

NARRATOR:
On October 28, 100 million viewers, the largest audience

ever to watch a presidential
debate, tuned in.

The candidates
were running neck and neck.

...then the insurance
would help pay for it.

These are the kind of elements
of a national health insurance

important
to the American people.

Governor Reagan, again,

typically, is against
such a proposal.

MODERATOR:
Governor?

There you go again.

When I opposed Medicare...

CADDELL:
He had won it in the first half-hour by not being crazy.

What had happened
was you could see the shift

in the beginning of the debate,

over 90 minutes was
a sense of "he's not dangerous."

And that's all he had to do.

DAN RATHER:
Today, the vigil of the hostages lengthens to one whole year.

NARRATOR:
The Monday before Election Day

played like a nightmare
for Jimmy Carter.

ANNOUNCER:
Today, the Majlis spelled out conditions

for release
of the American hostages

now ending their first year
in captivity,

and the four conditions are
the same as those set down...

POWELL:
A good portion of that weekend leading up to it

and all day Monday,

Americans were literally
having their nose

rubbed in this embarrassing,
irritating,

humiliating situation.

NARRATOR:
Carter campaigned all day and into the night

in Mississippi,
Oregon, Washington.

He arrived in Seattle
at 3:00 a.m.--

the last rally,
the last speech.

POWELL:
I had stayed on the plane to finish up something.

Before I could get off,
the phone rang.

And it was Hamilton Jordan and
Pat Caddell back in Washington.

They had seen the tracking polls
from that day,

and they said,
"It's basically over."

Tomorrow, vote for yourselves.

Vote Democratic, help us.

God be with you.

POWELL:
I went in to hear his speech,

thinking that I was
the only person there

who knew that, basically,
the election was over

and that we had,
that we had lost.

NARRATOR:
It was a landslide.

Carter won only six states.

For the first time in 28 years,

the Democratic Party
lost control of the Senate.

On the last day
of his presidency,

Jimmy Carter stayed up
through the night.

A deal with Iran
had been reached.

The release of the hostages
was imminent.

A crew from ABC News stood by
to record the historic moment.

You're not sending that
film anywhere, are you?

MONDALE:
He wanted to get these hostages home on his watch.

And this was not about
getting reelected anymore.

This was about
getting this done,

because he felt so deeply
about it.

We were in the Oval Office

around, maybe,
2:00 in the morning.

And nothing happening.

Dead silence.

But we got to the time

where it was 9:00
in the morning.

We had to be at the inaugural.

The new president
was coming in at 11:00.

And finally,
we all started running off.

And we still had one officer
back there with a phone,

the hot line,
in case there was any news.

REPORTER:
Here they are now.

WOMAN:
Is there any word about the hostages?

Have they taken off?

MONDALE:
And he was in contact with Carter

all the way up the inaugural
route and on the platform.

So if there were anything
that was positive or negative,

he'd hear about it.

MAN:
♪ And the home of the... ♪

MONDALE:
And of course, the story was that Khomeini released them

the minute after Reagan
was president.

(man finishes anthem)

NARRATOR:
at the old train depot in Plains

to welcome the Carters home.

POPE:
There was a sea of umbrellas out there in the public,

standing in the cold
and the rain, waiting for him.

And it was a bittersweet day.

CHIP CARTER:
I think they reacted just like anybody else would

that had just been rejected
by 200 million people.

It was one of the toughest times

they've ever been through,
I think.

ROSALYNN CARTER:
He really was better than I was when we came home,

because I was so depressed
about it

that he was always trying
to prop me up.

NARRATOR:
The Carters settled in to write their memoirs

and to make plans to build
a presidential library.

But Carter had little enthusiasm

for building what he called
"a monument to myself."

ROSALYNN CARTER:
One night, I woke up

and Jimmy was sitting
straight up in the bed.

This is after we'd been home
about a year.

And I said, "What's the matter?"

I thought he was sick, because
he always sleeps all night,

even in the White House.

He can turn things off
and go to sleep.

And he said, "I know
what we can do at the library.

We can have a place
to resolve conflicts."

And so that was the germ
of the idea

for what became
The Carter Center.

NARRATOR:
Inspired by his success in the Camp David Accords,

Carter envisioned a place where
he could host world leaders

and mediate civil wars
and political disputes.

At a cost of $28 million,

The Carter Center
would span 35 acres,

include an arboretum, a lake,

and room enough for a staff
of more than 100.

we dedicate an institution
this cthat testifies,ident,

as does your life itself,

to the goodness of God
and to the blessings He bestows

upon those who do their best
to walk with Him.

NARRATOR:
In 1986, at the inauguration of The Carter Center,

President Reagan expressed
the growing respect

many now felt for the man
they had once rejected.

(applause)

NARRATOR:
Through The Carter Center,

Jimmy Carter would launch
his new career

as an elder statesman.

In his travels
throughout the world,

Carter has championed the cause

of the poor
and the disenfranchised.

HERTZBERG:
Being a good post-president

doesn't retrospectively make you
a better president.

What a post-presidency can do,
though, is to illuminate

which aspects of a president's
character were real

and which were phony.

All of his strengths--

perseverance and dedication,
integrity,

those have all turned out
to be very, very real.

LANCE:
He never lied to the American people,

he kept the peace,

he brought the hostages home
without loss of life--

all the things that he said
that he was going to do.

It was a time when we needed
that sort of person as president

that people could put
some faith and trust in.

BRINKLEY:
What was Carter?

He never had
a kind of nutshell program.

He had no interest

in either the New Deal tradition
of Franklin Roosevelt

or the New Frontier tradition
of John Kennedy

or the Great Society
of Lyndon Johnson.

He never crystallized a great
agenda of what he wanted to do.

He simply tackled issues
as they confronted him,

one by one by one.

HERTZBERG:
I think history is going to look at him in a kindlier light

than his contemporaries did.

His values, his devotion
to peace and human rights,

keep on resonating

in a way that his failures
and weaknesses don't.

What's the next big thing?.

Will our cars be so smart
they drive themselves?

MAN:
I just press this button and it will come and pick me up.

Can we power our cars
with fuel grown in a field?

MAN:
Advanced biofuels.

This is the future of energy
for the U.S.

And will intelligent machines
take over the world?

Don't worry, I'll keep you warm
and safe in my people zoo.

Watch NOVA scienceNOW.

Wednesday at 8:00, 7:00 Central
on most PBS stations.

Next time
on American Experience...

MAN:
There's no government intervention.

There's no labor legislation.

A horrific tragedy that changed
the American workplace forever.

WOMAN:
The last thing I remember seeing was my sister Marie

enveloped in flames.

"Triangle Fire," next time
on American Experience.

Captioned by
Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org

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at American Experience online.

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