Jimmy Carter
speaker
288 appearances
16 recordings
12 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard 1 May
Jimmy Carter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
They may not be willing to sit down in the same room or to acknowledge one another through a direct negotiation. But as you may know, I'm sure you do, the science of politics is self-delusion.
Everyone who is running for office, for mayor or for president, whatever, believes that if the election is honest and if the people know me and know all these other jokers running against me, surely I will win.
So if we can convince both sides or let them convince themselves that they can win if the election is honest and that I can help guarantee that the election will be honest, they see a way to become president of that nation without continuing the war on the battlefield. So that is the kind of thing that I see very clearly now, which I did not understand at all, even when I was president.
Well, I don't remember any low points. The high point obviously was was assuming the role of president of the greatest nation on earth and trying to keep a secret. We had planned a few days ahead of time to get out of the limousine for the first time in history and walk down Pennsylvania Avenue as just one of a people.
And that secret was kept, one of the few secrets, by the way, that we kept while I was president. And it was a glorious reception. The weather was cold. I remember... that my mother, who always knew how to take the starch out of people's sails and bring people back down to earth, I was very full of myself.
And when we left the reviewing stand and started to walk to the White House for the first time, really, the news media gathered around us. And my press secretary, Judy Powell, said, don't anybody talk to the news media. Everybody wants to have an interview. And I complied with Jody's request, but typically my mother said, Jody, you can go to hell, I'll talk to whom I choose.
And the TV folks and everybody got around, and they said, Miss Lillian, aren't you proud of your son? And I waited with great pleasure to hear my mother's response, and Mama said, which one? So she took the wind out of my sails. That's one of the things I remember about Inauguration Day.
The aura of the White House and the humility that you feel occupying the same quarters as those great men was overwhelming. Also, what do you do the next day? I had pretty well gotten my cabinet firmed up quite early after the election, and what do you do the next day to deal with a multitude of issues? I had a very fine agenda. I couldn't get much support.
originally from the Congress, although finally my batting average was about the same as Lyndon Johnson's or John Kennedy. I have to say, though, as a bottom line, that I was quite confident of myself. I wasn't plagued with trepidation that I was inadequate for the job. That may be presumptuous, but anybody who decides, I want to be president of this great country has to be somewhat presumptuous.
So I wasn't plagued with an inferiority complex. I felt that no matter what came up, or that I could handle it as well as anyone.
Well, you know, about 2 o'clock in the morning in April when we tried the rescue operation and we couldn't succeed, that was perhaps the high point of despair in my presidency. And I knew that I had to get up early the next morning, about 6 o'clock, and prepare to go on all the morning talk shows and explain to the American people that the rescue operation had failed. That was a very dismal point.
Also, we knew... that an accident had occurred and that one of the helicopters had flown into an airplane and that eight people had died. And I had to notify those families during the night that their loved ones had perished in a secret operation. There's no way that anything else that happened during the four years could equal that as a time of discouragement and despair.
Well, I didn't realize that. I had not been to bed for three days and had negotiated in the most meticulous detail the release of the hostages. Everything was all agreed, and the hostages were in the airplane ready to take off.
at ten o'clock that morning Washington time so we were just waiting to get word that they had cleared Iranian airspace and when I went to the reviewing stand when I relinquished the presidency to Reagan and he made his inaugural speech before I left the reviewing stand I was informed that the plane had indeed taken off and the hostages were all safe and free
I have to say that I didn't even think about the fact that it happened a few minutes after midnight, I mean after noontime. I just knew that they were free, and that was one of the most glorious moments. and happy moments of my entire life.
Well, to me, I didn't even think about it, but obviously that became the major story among the news media, that it happened about 20 minutes after I was no longer president. To me, that was insignificant, but it has still prevailed. Even your question indicates that it was a historically important
fact that it happened a few minutes after I left the White House as a president rather than while I was still in office. I didn't even consider that as a major factor then. It was the news media, I think, that made that a major factor.
Well, I'm cordial and open. The only thing I have to offer is my own integrity and an element of objectivity. I don't have any ax to grind. My ax to grind is to try to bring peace and an end to human rights abuses. But it doesn't mean that I go in ignorant of past crimes. And I have to just realize that these people have committed crimes.
And in most cases, crimes have been committed on both sides. They may be much more onerous on one side than the other. But quite often it's the scorned person or the despised person or the unsavory people in international judgment that will need someone to listen to their position, as was the case with Kim Il-sung and with the provisional government in Haiti and as with the Bosnian Serbs.
No, I tried. Through every possible means, official and unofficial means, I tried to negotiate with or to communicate with Ayatollah Khomeini. But he issued orders in his autocratic way that no Iranian was authorized to speak to anyone who represented the U.S. government in the hostage thing. So we tried to get all kinds of people to open up some sort of discussion with...
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