Peter Baker
speaker
291 appearances
9 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 9 Jan
Peter Baker’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 — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
He quotes some of the people who come through Camp David, telling him how he's getting it wrong, how he's not doing it right. You don't see the people enough anymore.
And it's this remarkable self-critique that I think in some ways really actually resonates at first with the audience, that they've never heard a president open up like this and admit that he isn't leading to his own satisfaction, that he's willing to accept that his presidency is not going the way he wants it to be.
Imagine a modern president doing that today.
It is exactly right. He is the truth teller in this instance. In his view, he is being very honest with the American public about how he sees the problems of the country. And it goes over well at first because it is so unusual, because it is so refreshing in its own way. It was sort of celebrated for its candor.
And at first people think he has actually broken through, but then he does something to undermine the whole purpose of it. Which is what? He fires his whole cabinet. He fires his whole cabinet? Yeah. He asks for all of the resignations, all of them. He ends up keeping most of them, but he ends up using it as a way of cleaning out a few of them.
And it sends a statement that he may not have intended to the country. It may have been meant as a cleansing idea, a fresh start, but it actually caused a lot of Americans to doubt his judgment. They don't think he knows what he's doing and
Even his own vice president, Walter Mondale, was so upset about this that he started contemplating whether he was going to stay on the ticket or maybe even resign as vice president. He thought this was such a hand-handed, badly handled move. It was amateurish in his mind.
Yes. And after all that drama, that self-critical speech that he delivered that so many people originally connected with suddenly looked different through a different lens. People started to see the speech as a sign of weakness. And it becomes known as the malaise speech, even though he never even uses the word malaise in it. But it's a marker at this point for his presidency.
For years to come, people would remember that speech as an example of somebody who couldn't lead.
Right. He had alienated his own party. And when it came to the domestic side of his presidency, he was being seen as a disappointment. But what was making him unsuccessful at home, his outsider-ness, his stubbornness, his image of himself as this unvarnished truth-teller, all of that helps him make him a success in one particularly intractable problem overseas. We'll be right back.
So amid all these troubles at home, Carter decides he's going to try to do something that no president had ever done before, which is to resolve one of the biggest conflicts in the Middle East at that time between these two longtime enemies, Israel and Egypt. I mean, people may not remember this now, but Egypt was one of the strongest Arab nations at the time.
And like the rest of the region, hadn't even accepted Israel's right to exist since it had been established in 1948. And so they basically been at war for 30 years at this point off and on. And it was the core instability of the region. So he wants to dive on and he believes through this same stubbornness that he is uniquely qualified to bring them together.
So he invites Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, and Anwar al-Sadat, the president of Egypt, to Camp David in September 1978.
For what would become 13 days of pretty remarkable negotiations. It's an insanely complex negotiation over land and politics and religion and history. And throughout these 13 days, it's Carter singularly holding the whole thing together, this crazy enterprise that seems like it's going to break down at any moment.
I mean, he's almost literally physically throwing himself in the door to prevent this side or that side from throwing up their hands and leaving. At one point, you know, the Egyptians packed their bags and saying, well, they were done with these talks and it's Kara who has to talk them out of leaving.
At another point, he brings photographs of himself to sign for each of Begin's eight grandchildren. which reminds the two of them at that moment what they're doing this for, for the next generation. Carter, he's appealing to anything he can think of to get these two enemies to come together and make peace.
And later it's immortalized in this photo. It's one of the most famous photos of his presidency, probably, of him standing. between these two leaders, Begin and Sadat, at a ceremony on the lawn of the White House. And the three of them are holding hands together, and they have these big grins on their faces, and it feels like such an invigorating, inspiring moment.
And everybody agrees that had it not been for him, it never would have happened. And here we see Carter's stubbornness paying off. He was single-minded in his pursuit. He was the only one there at Camp David who thought he could pull it off. President Carter. For long days and nights, you devoted your time and energy to the pursuit of peace.
Sadat later called him the unknown soldier of the peacemaking effort. And Begin agreed, he says, that Carter would be, quote, remembered and recorded by generations to come.
And it is, in fact, this singular accomplishment that is probably the one most lasting, enduring, and triumphal moment of the Carter presidency.
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