President Carter

by Stuart E. Eizenstat

  The job of a president is not to try to understand each argument that comes before him in great detail, but to think strategically and talk freely with all the key actors inside the government and out, whose support will shape his fate. But that was not Carter’s way. He explained it to me: “I wanted to make a judgment based on what I knew, and much of what I knew was what I was told by you and by Harold Brown and others. Even in Austria [where the final SALT II agreement was negotiated and signed], I didn’t have to turn around at the negotiating table and say, ‘Harold, explain to me what is characteristic of this or that missile.’ I knew the missile. And the same way with the negotiations at Camp David.” He felt the same way about handling domestic issues. In all, he said he was “intrigued” by issues and had to understand them “when I was the one who had to make the ultimate judgment.”32

  Leadership is an essential element of the presidency. Symbolism matters: The night before his inauguration, the incoming president took his family, his senior aides, and our families to the Lincoln Memorial—the country’s first chief executive from the Deep South since Reconstruction paying this special tribute to the Great Emancipator in modern times. Carter likewise exercised leadership by combining a vision of where the country should go on the issues he had chosen as critical, while insisting that we on the White House staff present him with all the options and backup material for his review. At the other end of the spectrum, Ronald Reagan is considered a better leader because he believed in and articulated a few basic principles—smaller government, lower taxes, stronger defense, and literally read from three-by-five-inch cards when he held meetings on specific issues. (And more recently, a president who does not even seem to use these.) Which is the preferred model for presidential leaders? Each president brings a unique style of leadership to the Oval Office.

  Yet with all the turbulence of the transition, there was an exhilarating message about American democracy that a man from Plains could be elected to the highest office in the land, as he took the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol, opening with a verse from the prophet Micah, “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8). His short inaugural address was vintage Jimmy Carter: a tone poem, but with a downbeat note. Rather than a call for the American people to reach for the stars, or a promise to expand the New Frontier, New Deal, and Great Society, for which his party’s liberal base was hoping, he urged what he knew was politically unpopular: limits and sacrifice. The country could not afford everything its people wanted, and thinking of the looming energy shortages, he asked for “individual sacrifice for the common good.” He emphasized human rights, which “must be absolute,” and nuclear arms control, which would frame his key foreign-policy goals. He insisted, over internal disagreement, as he had with his announcement speech more than two years before, on calling for the “ultimate goal” of the “elimination of all nuclear weapons from this earth.” Instead of a call to combat Soviet expansionism, the wars he wanted to fight were against poverty, ignorance, and injustice.

  He followed his speech with a dramatic break from tradition, which shocked and thrilled the onlookers and the nation watching on television: getting out of his limousine and walking about a mile hand in hand with Rosalynn down Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea originated with Wisconsin senator William Proxmire as a way to emphasize physical fitness and was initially discarded until Carter thought it would send a broader message of openness and closeness to the people after Watergate.33

  In his first official act on his first full day in the White House, he began a pattern that would be emblematic of his presidency: taking politically unpopular steps he felt were the “right thing to do.” Following his campaign promise, his first executive order granted pardons to those who refused to serve in Vietnam. While it helped heal an open wound from the divisive war,34 it was out of step from the start with his Southern conservative base. Carter was never forgiven by some veterans’ groups and many of his fellow Southerners for his pardon. But he championed and signed into law the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bill in 1980, authorizing the creation of the Vietnam Memorial, and movingly described the “simple and austere grandeur” of its design. He acknowledged its long path to properly honor our Vietnam Veterans, led by Jan Scruggs and supported by the Vietnam Memorial Fund, on which Rosalynn Carter served. It is now one of the most visited and, indeed, treasured sites on Washington’s National Mall.35

  3

  THE MAKING OF THE MODERN VICE PRESIDENT

  Jimmy Carter and Fritz Mondale created the modern vice presidency, moving a constitutional anomaly out of the shadows of power to a trusted partner of the president and not an object of ridicule. The office of vice president was an afterthought at the Constitutional Convention, which did not foresee the rise of political parties. In a compromise the Founders agreed that the candidate winning a majority of Electoral College votes would become president and the second highest—usually his principal rival—vice president. This arrangement quickly proved untenable, and after the Constitution was amended, electors in 1804 voted on one ballot for president and on the second for vice president, which meant that the vice president had not been a candidate for the highest office and could only aspire to it if the president died in office. It is not hard to imagine the discomfort felt by presidents in seeing their own mortal shadow in the flesh, or to understand why many kept their potential successor at arm’s length. His political role was to balance the ticket by region or ideology, and his only formal duties were presiding over the Senate and casting tie-breaking votes.

  But otherwise, in the often-bowdlerized words of Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice president, the Texas populist John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, the office was “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” The greatest secret of World War II was concealed from FDR’s vice president Harry S Truman, upon whom fell the responsibility of whether to use the atom bomb against the Japanese within a couple of months after taking office. Dwight Eisenhower was asked what major tasks his vice president, Richard Nixon, had performed in office and replied dismissively that he would need a week to think about it. The deliberate and painful marginalization of Lyndon Johnson as vice president by John F. Kennedy and his circle became something of a scandal that Johnson never forgot and—like a father reliving an abusive childhood—inflicted on his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey, the liberal Minnesota senator. Johnson denied Humphrey his own plane; he often found himself bumped by mere staff members; and, his staff told me when I was still working in the Johnson White House, that the vice president was left stewing outside the offices of senior staff, like Joe Califano, waiting to meet them.1 Richard Nixon’s first vice president, Spiro Agnew, became his hatchet man until forced to resign over a scandal dating from his term as governor of Maryland.

  When Carter ran for president, his campaign’s principal theme of restoring trust in government extended to raising respect for the office of vice president. This began in his process of selecting a prospective running mate. Determined to avoid a last-minute choice under pressure at the convention, Carter turned his attention to finding a running mate a month before the Democrats convened.

  Working with Ham, Rosalynn, and Kirbo, he compiled a list of about twenty people. Ham developed an elaborate formula with factors including the traditional ones of adding electoral clout and actually being capable of serving as president. As a Washington outsider, Carter also sought an experienced congressional hand.2 Some names were put on the list as a signal to voting blocs that one of their own was worthy of consideration but that was mainly for show, for example Representative Peter Rodino, a respected Italian American from New Jersey, who publicly declined because of age but made the speech formally nominating Carter at the convention.

  Kirbo was entrusted with the job of meeting with the most serious candidates, all senators. He interviewed them mainly by asking few questions, letting them talk, and making notes afterward. He did not advocate one over another,
but he did confide, “There were a lot of them I didn’t want to have as vice president.” He made numerous treks from Atlanta to Washington, because whenever he felt he had completed the roster, “Jimmy said he had one or two more, so I would see them.”3

  As important as Kirbo was in winnowing the field, the decisive interviews were those Carter held in Plains. Until the very end Frank Church of Idaho, an early critic of the Vietnam War and the CIA, was high on Carter’s and Rosalynn’s list (but no one else’s). Then he blew it by bragging that he was distantly related to William Tecumseh Sherman—definitely the wrong Union general; during the Civil War he cut the South in half, his reviled troops singing their anthem, “Marching Through Georgia,” and torched Atlanta. Another candidate declared his love for “blue-eyed peas”—oops, the favorite Southern peas have black eyes.4 The choice finally narrowed down to Edmund Muskie of Maine, a high-maintenance but brilliant senator known for his titanic ego, and Mondale, a mild-mannered and studious Midwesterner weaned on Minnesota’s liberal politics, which he tenaciously promoted in the Senate.5 When Mondale was considering a run for president in 1976, the delivery of his message on a political trip to Atlanta at Andy Young’s home was as impressive as he was. After we drove him back to his hotel, Fran said, “Jimmy Carter may be your candidate, but Fritz Mondale is mine!”

  Ironically, Mondale came close to taking himself out of the running for simple and compelling reasons. He loved the Senate, and his trial run for the presidency ended with him pulling out with a parting joke that he was fed up with staying in Holiday Inns. When Humphrey backed away from one last try at the presidency, that freed Mondale—but did he really want the job? Richard Moe, Mondale’s closest aide, persuaded him to talk to his political mentor. They met over coffee in the Senate dining room, and Mondale was surprised by Humphrey’s reply: “I learned more in the vice presidency than I’ve learned in a lifetime [in the Senate]. I’ve had more opportunity to affect public policy down there in one day than I have up here in a decade. Everybody thinks the vice presidency was bad; it changed my life. I stretched my mind, my understanding, my experience. I’m a different and a far better person. You don’t realize what a president must do until you have been there.”6

  Mondale then set out to prepare himself at a level that would outshine his Senate rivals. He believed that the selection process would take a “typical Carter approach—methodical and disciplined,” so he was the only prospective candidate to read Carter’s campaign book, his speeches as governor and presidential candidate, and to research articles about Carter. He prepared for the interviews by learning about the vice presidency from scholars and Humphrey’s aides. Mondale also discovered that although he and Carter occupied opposing—although not extreme—ends of their party’s political spectrum, they shared a small-town upbringing and religious backgrounds: Carter a Baptist, Mondale the son of a Methodist minister. Both had also served in the military, Mondale in the army during the Korean War. Because Carter had stumbled badly in the late primaries against liberal Democrats, Mondale felt he was “looking for somebody who could do serious business [for him] in northern states … was influential on the Hill, and respected by his colleagues”—and that he met all those qualifications.7

  Mondale successfully ran the gauntlet of interviews with Kirbo and Carter’s son Chip—they lasted two hours, longer than expected. But these were essentially auditions. After Kirbo, the Southern conservative, interviewed the liberal Mondale, he told Carter: “Governor, I thought I could get rid of that fellah, but I didn’t, and I don’t think I will.” But he went beyond that to tell him that as impressive as Mondale was and as important as he might be in helping get Carter elected, his conservative base was “going to give him hell” once they were in office.8

  But Carter formed a personal bond with Mondale in their first interview. Armed with his knowledge of Carter, Mondale emphasized their common values and impressed Carter as the only candidate who had read his book. They talked about a wide range of issues, but Mondale felt that one really connected them—civil rights. “That commitment made it possible for a Northern liberal and Southern conservative to join hands and cross the bridge,” Mondale said.

  After their morning meeting they joined Joan Mondale and Rosalynn for lunch. The two wives had walked around Plains and also hit it off. After lunch they met for another hour and a half, a session that laid the groundwork for a profound and positive change in the American vice presidency. Before his interview Moe had discussed with Mondale the idea that a vice president could be used more effectively as “an arm of the presidency in terms of policy advice, but also in terms of implementing policy, and as a presidential emissary.”9 Mondale transmitted these general ideas to Carter at the risk of turning him off. He told him that “I was not interested in a ceremonial position. I only wanted to come on board if I could help on substance.” Carter immediately replied, “That’s the only way we are going to do it.”

  This initial conversation about his role well before his selection was probably unique in American history. Moreover, Carter did not shy away from the unmentionable. He told Mondale that “a lot of presidents were intimidated by the reminder of life’s fragility when their vice president showed up. That doesn’t bother me at all; if I can’t be here, I want to be sure that my Vice President can take over right then, that the government will work, and that we understand the policies. The more we can cooperate, not just in the election, but in the government, the more you could be with me looking at all the confidential and secret information we need to see; attending every meeting with the president that you wish to attend; having full access to key members of the executive branch; and creating the principle that when the vice president talked to somebody in the administration, it was the president talking.” He said he wanted his vice president to be his adviser, a “source of independent information, his personal representative on the Hill and around the country.”10 Far from putting him off, Mondale’s active stance thoroughly intrigued Carter with the possibility of making the vice presidency a full-time and productive job.11

  Carter then took Mondale for a long walk around Plains. They visited Miss Lillian’s house; they talked about hunting and about small towns; and like two boys they looked for bottles in the woods near his farm. Then they inspected the Carter peanut factory.

  With great self-awareness Carter later explained to me why he picked Mondale to help offset his own political weaknesses: “Fritz had two or three advantages: one was that he was familiar with Washington; secondly, he had an intimate relationship with the activities in the trade union movement, in the Jewish community, the environmental community, the women’s movement, that I didn’t have. He knew who in Washington you could trust and who you didn’t trust; I didn’t have that. Fritz was also much more sensitive to the political consequences of a controversy than I was. I would go ahead with something even though it might be politically charged with potential unpopularity. I knew the black community better than Fritz; I knew farming better than Fritz: I knew state government better than Fritz. But among other things, he said he “knew best that Fritz was at the forefront of the expressions of concern to me about the United Nations resolutions against Israel.”12

  Ham meanwhile made a political calculation about Mondale’s weight as a “a class act, which he was.”13 The Carter camp had the liberals with them when they went after George Wallace in Florida, they had the UAW with them in Iowa because Carter had successfully wooed the local union leadership. But Ham knew that organized labor was cool to Carter and that the Democrats’ liberal wing was never with him. But Mondale had deep roots in the liberal, Jewish, and union communities, and Carter needed them to secure the base of the party in the general election.14

  * * *

  Then began an extraordinary integration during the campaign that laid the foundation for their close cooperation in office. Mondale’s staff moved to Atlanta so we could work together seamlessly and Mondale and his people could learn about Southern cu
stoms. Mondale made his first campaign stop in Beaufort, South Carolina, with Senator Ernest Hollings, who shared the nickname “Fritz” with Mondale but not his liberal attitude. Tall, silver-haired, handsome, and charming, with a deep-baritone Southern accent, he could have come straight out of central casting. At an outdoor event they both were eating bowls of shrimp when Hollings started to laugh out loud. Mondale was biting into the hot shrimp, shell and all, like the Yankee he was. Hollings never let him forget it.15

  Shortly after Carter’s razor-thin victory, Mondale asked Moe to put flesh on the bones of his general points on making the vice presidency a meaningful office, and not just standby equipment to be trundled out for funerals of world leaders. Early in December, Carter and Mondale met at Blair House, across from the White House, and talked in more detail after Mondale had sought advice from Humphrey and from Ford’s vice president, Nelson Rockefeller. Mondale told Carter he wanted to be “an across-the-board adviser” without specific responsibilities, lest they interfere with cabinet members’, and to “float” wherever the president needed him, which would entail complete access to Carter and to the White House information flow, all of which would be unprecedented.16 As the meeting ended, Mondale made a personal request. He wanted his wife, Joan, to have a role in promoting the arts, to which Carter readily agreed. In her four years she totally transformed public art in America, bringing it to official and private buildings as never before. (On February 4, 2014, Carter delivered a moving eulogy to Joan, calling her as “fervent and effective [a] champion of the arts as anyone I have ever known,” joking that he spent more time listening to her plea for more support for the arts than he did on Middle East peace.)