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
Right. He's facing a challenge in the primaries from Ted Kennedy. He beats him back, but then he has to face this charismatic former actor and governor of California, Ronald Reagan. And Reagan is attacking him for failing to end this crisis, basically saying he will be the one to end it himself. if he is elected president. And it just puts Carter on the defensive.
He has a hard time arguing the case of his presidency when he feels so much under siege by the day-to-day diplomacy and this failed military operation. So he runs what is called a Rose Garden campaign, which is to say that he doesn't leave the White House that much.
to do the traditional stump speeches and, you know, rallies and so forth, because he feels that would be inappropriate with these American diplomats facing life and death in Tehran. And he ends up losing by a wide margin. Reagan ends up winning a pretty substantial landslide and... then, of course, is going to take office in January of 1981.
And I'll never forget that day because on that day, the inauguration, Carter is trying up until the last minute to get these hostages out. And he thinks he finally has a deal. Around 6.30 in the morning, they tell him, yes, we've got a deal. The hostages are going to be released before noon, before you leave office. And he's excited. He calls Reagan to tell him.
But Reagan is asleep and the aides won't wake up the president-elect to tell him. So he's frustrated by that. And he goes with Reagan later in the morning to the Capitol. And even then, the postures are still on the plane, but the plane hasn't been released yet. It hasn't been allowed to take off. He's watching his watch. He's waiting for the word. Nothing happens.
And there is Reagan taking the oath of office and ending the Carter presidency.
And
...did the Iranians finally let the plane take off. One last cruel indignity meant to torture Jimmy Carter that he could not release them on his watch. They were released in the first minutes of the Reagan presidency. The last indignity for a humbled president.
Well, it definitely felt that way at the time. And Carter certainly felt that way, you know, that they were tormenting him in effect, that they were adding insult to injury. Look, it's important to remember there were other factors going on in that election as well. And it's possible Carter would have lost anyway. I mean, there was kind of an exhaustion with him at this point.
And Americans were struggling with inflation and unemployment and economic troubles. Reagan famously said in one of the debates, you know, are you better off than you were four years ago? And a lot of Americans thought the answer was no. And Reagan was this more optimistic figure at a time when the country was looking for it. He was the anti-Malays candidate in a way, right?
He talked about America as a shining city on a hill. He didn't appear in a cardigan. He believed in the grandeur of the office. And so where Carter wanted to make the presidency smaller, more accessible, more approachable, less pomp and circumstance, Reagan was this Hollywood actor who,
turned governor, who wanted to bring back kind of black tie swagger to Washington and convince America that it was this exceptional place in the world, which is what a lot of Americans wanted to hear then.
Yeah, I mean, I think these are attributes that really worked for him in 1976 when there was this Watergate hangover, this Vietnam hangover. They just didn't work for him in 1980 when there was kind of a Carter malaise, if you will, right?
That they didn't serve him as effectively while he was president and running for reelection as they did the first time he asked voters to put him in office in the first place. And he didn't adjust. He didn't adapt. But when he leaves office, it turns out that it wasn't an act. This was who he was.
Well, what distinguishes it is its utter modesty, right? Most presidents, after leaving office, become rich. They sign multimillion-dollar book deals or, like with President Obama, podcasts and TV deals. They give paid speeches, and they live a life that resembles the splendor of the office that they had held. But Carter didn't do that.
He first literally goes back to Plains, Georgia to the same house, this little ranch house that he and Rosalynn had lived in since 1961. Modest, very unassuming. At one point, the house, in fact, is worth less than the large Secret Service vehicles that are parked outside of it. And the first thing he does is start teaching Sunday school. Wow.
And when he does finally reappear in the public arena, it's when he opens the Carter Center in 1982, just two years after his defeat in the election. And it's through this nonprofit group that we witness a post-presidency of service and civic-mindedness that's really unlike anything we've seen in the modern political era.
He travels the world promoting human rights and monitoring elections in emerging democracies, countries like Panama and Nicaragua and Venezuela.
He physically shows up during these elections. He stands at the polls and watches people vote, election after election, to assure that the process is free and fair. The worm comes out of a joint, say, in your knee. It swells up and destroys the tissue.
He starts a program to eradicate guinea worm, the very painful and debilitating disease in the developing world that in the 1980s affected millions of people. And of course these kids can't go to school. The pain is too great and they need medical care. And he persuades volunteers in tens of thousands of villages to treat the water where the worms grow.
Showing 261–280 of 291 · page 14 of 15
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