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Former president explains how the next president can repair the United States' global reputation in 10 minutes. (1:25)
 

Former president shares his thoughts on the Democratic presidential race and recounts stories from his new book. Full interview. (24:20)
 

Tavis: I'm always honored and pleased to welcome former president Jimmy Carter to this program. The Nobel Peace Prize recipient and bestselling author is out with his latest book just in time for Mother's Day. It's called "A Remarkable Mother." The book is filled with wonderful stories and memories about his late mother, Ms. Lillian, set to debut at number seven on "The New York Times" bestseller list. So Mr. President, you have done it again.

President Jimmy Carter: All right, thanks, Tavis.

Tavis: How you been?

Carter: I've been great.

Tavis: It's good to see you again.

Carter: I enjoy being with you, always.

Tavis: I'm always glad to have you on the program.

Carter: All right.

Tavis: Let me start - there are so many funny stories in this book, and I want to cover some topical issues of the day in just a second. But let's start with the story you tell in the book of you going to your mother's house to tell her that you were going to run for president.

Carter: All right.

Tavis: So you walk in the house and you do what?

Carter: Well, I had been playing tennis. I walked in the house and unfortunately I put my feet up on the - up on the table there, and she said - I won't tell you exactly - actually, I'll tell you exactly what she said. "Get your damn feet off my table," is what she said. (Laughter)

And then she said, "What do you want?" And I said, "Well, I'm going to run for president." And she said, "President of what?" (Laughter) Well, that was the way we started. And then later she told a news reporter, she said, "I'm really glad Jimmy's running for president." He said, "Why, Ms. Lillian?" And she said, "Maybe now we'll get a good restaurant in Plains." (Laughter)

Tavis: There are some great stories in here about (laughter) your mother, and we'll get back to some of those stories in just a second. Let me switch gears somewhat dramatically.

Carter: All right.

Tavis: I just thought it was a funny story to introduce the president to our show tonight. The election last night. Hillary wins Indiana; Barack wins North Carolina; six more contests to go, not enough votes in these six contests for anybody to get to the magic number of 2,025.

Carter: That's right.

Tavis: The superdelegates, like Jimmy Carter, now kick in. What do you make of this situation?

Carter: Well, they initiated the superdelegates after my election in 1980, when Kennedy not only wouldn't support me - Ted Kennedy - but he wouldn't even shake my hand when I got that nomination. So that split the party down the middle, and so the superdelegates were designed to kind of pull the party back together if it did get separated during the primary season.

And I think it's separated much less deeply now than it was in 1980, so my prediction is that very shortly after the June 3rd last primary, the loser is going to endorse the winner, the loser's supporters are going to support the winner, with a few possible exceptions.

I think that if some of the newcomers to politics, for instance, the very young people, maybe the African Americans that never have been involved in politics and just really love Obama, if Hillary should get the nomination, some of them may not vote. But they're certainly not going to vote for John McCain, so I see a good prospect of victory in November.

Tavis: What do you make of the fact that for a race that has generated so much talk about diversity, about inclusion, about Black folk and about women, that these superdelegates, 63 percent of them are men, 43 percent of them are White men - at least 43 percent. What do you make of the fact that White men, after all this talk about diversity and inclusion, can make the difference here?

Carter: Well, I think if all of them were like me, it'd be very good. (Laughter) I know I can be unbiased, and my mama could have been unbiased. But she would be delighted to see the prospect of a Black man maybe becoming president of the United States, and she'd be glad to see a woman become president for the first time in history also.

She was a formidable political activist. She supported me, she campaigned five days a week for months for me, and that put me over the top. And then she did that when I ran for governor and also for president. And she supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964 in Sumter County, Georgia. She was probably, she and her family, including me, were the only White folks in the whole county that supported Johnson, because he was stigmatized because of his human rights acts, as you know - the legislation he passed.

He turned over Georgia and Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi to Barry Goldwater. He didn't even campaign in Georgia, but she campaigned for him. But I think she would be delighted to see this tough, knock-down, drag-out Democratic primary, and I think she would have confidence, as I do, that the party's going to come back together.

Tavis: What's your relation - since you raised it, what's your relationship with Ted Kennedy been like since 1980?

Carter: Much better, because he has been trying to help my wife with mental health work. His son has been much more helpful, but both the Kennedys have been in the forefront, Ted Kennedy in the Senate and his son in the House of Representatives. And they're now sculpting, between the House and Senate, a bill on parity for mentally ill people. So my relationship with him has been quite polite and friendly.

Tavis: I know you've said this many other times, but for those who've not heard you say it as yet, you will make your announcement as a superdelegate about who you're going to support when?

Carter: After the primary season is over. My wife and I decided when I left the White House rather than me getting involved between Democrats or among Democrats, just to wait till the process is over before we make an announcement or endorsement.

Tavis: Let me switch gears now. We're spending so much time talking about the presidential race, and indeed we should, as Americans, but it's hard to not have your heart just burdened by this situation in Myanmar. What is America's - what's our moral obligation, our moral duty at this time?

Carter: I think that President Bush is doing all he can right now, and that's to offer American humanitarian assistance. If and when the military junta will permit Americans to come into the country, we don't have any relationship with the leaders there, and they are horrible oppressors, and have been for many years now - almost 20 years.

But I think it's always better, even when you dislike somebody, to have communication with them so you can try to influence them to change their ways. But to isolate them and stigmatize them drives a deep wedge between us, and I hope that we'll see an alleviation of that suffering.

Tavis: Your mother - in the book, it's very clear that she was so open, so honest, so caring about all people - real humanity here.

Carter: Yeah, but particularly the poorest and the most isolated, the most suffering people.

Tavis: And African Americans.

Carter: And dark skin, yeah, yeah.

Tavis: Exactly. How did that develop for her? I'm raising this because now with this Black guy running for president named Barack Obama, everybody's - not everybody, but a lot of people now want to be politically correct, a lot of folk are supporting him from all kinds, but your mother was this way when it was very unpopular.

Carter: Well, this was, you have to remember, back in the 1930s.

Tavis: Exactly.

Carter: It was 25 years before Rosa Parks sat in the front of a bus and before Martin Luther King, Jr. became famous. But she felt that racial discrimination or persecution was wrong, even though the Supreme Court said separate but equal was permissible, and all the churches did and all the schools did and all the politicians did.

My mama thought it was wrong, and she just violently opposed it. And she always treated Black and White people the same. I lived in a little community. We didn't have any White neighbors. All of our neighbors were Black. Mother was a registered nurse, that's why she came over to where my daddy lived and that's why they got married, thank goodness, and I was born.

But at first she was in charge of the operating room, and then later she began to nurse in the hospital itself, because we needed the money. And she got $4 a day for 12 hours' duty in a hospital room, and the hospital her and the patients paid the hospital. But she had a guaranteed $4 a day.

Later, she saw that the people that lived around Archery, Georgia, where I lived, didn't have nearly enough money to go to the hospital, so she began to nurse inside people's homes. In those days, a nurse went into a private duty home for 20 hours a day for $6. She never got paid because there wasn't much money, but they were -

Tavis: Twenty hours a day?

Carter: Twenty hours a day, yeah. So all the time I was in my late grammar school and high school years, my mother was nursing 20 hours a day. And she would come home at 10:00 at night and wash out her nurse's uniform and take a shower bath and write some notes, put it on her desk for me and my sister to do our chores next day.

Then she'd go back to work at 2:00 in the morning, so we very seldom saw mama. But she felt that she was the only medical doctor, in effect, that these people would ever know. And they would pay her whenever they could, with a bushel of corn or with a pig or with some chickens or eggs or black-eyed peas during the season, things like that.

They tried to pay my mama, but she knew she wouldn't get the money. But that was her life, and then when she was 68 years old, she joined the Peace Corps, and the only thing she asked for was I want to go where it's warm, I want to go where the people are poor and suffering, and I want to go where they're dark-skinned.

So they sent her to South India down there, what was then Bombay, which is now Mumbai, and that's where she was when she was 70 years old.

Tavis: There's a great story that you tell about how you had a chance to go to India.

Carter: Yeah, I did.

Tavis: Back to the same village. I'll let you tell the story, yeah.

Carter: All right. Two years ago, my wife and I went to India to build Habitat houses. We do that every year now for 25 years. And I chose a place near the little village where my mother was in the Peace Corps. So when she was there, she wasn't anything. In fact, she was an Untouchable, because she had to handle bodily fluids and things like that that made people Untouchables.

But now that I was president, had been president, I was welcomed in the village and it was a big deal when I went back there and so forth. But they brought in people that knew my mama when she was in the Peace Corps, and one of the - her favorite people in that little village, called Vickhroli, was a gardener. He worked for - the whole village was owned by one rich family called Godrej.

But he would sneak vegetables out and give them to my mother to eat, and she cooked her own meals in those days in the Peace Corps, and she didn't have any way to pay him back because she didn't have any money. So she decided that she would teach his little 6-year-old daughter how to read and write. So they took a picture of them sitting on a rock in my mother's - it's in the book - my mother's teaching a little girl.

So I wanted to meet the gardener. Unfortunately, he had passed away. But the people that owned the farm said, "I want you to meet his daughter." And I said, "Great." And I met her. She had got a Ph.D. and she was president of a university nearby.

Tavis: That's a great story.

Carter: And I just thought that was the impact my mother had on people's lives. She changed a life.

Tavis: When you tell the story of your mother being 70, basically, and going to India to join the Peace Corps, as I was reading the book I was thinking that you are like your mother in so many ways, but in the sense that as she got older, she got bolder. (Laughter) That's my new line for Mr. President. As he gets older, he gets bolder.

You seem, out of love and service to people, truly to not care what they think about what you do, what you have to say. This Hamas - I know you've been asked about it a thousand times, I don't care about asking you about it, but am I right about this? As you get older, you get bolder?

Carter: I guess so. I've got Secret Service protection the rest of my life, and I'm not running for anything. (Laughter)

Tavis: That helps, huh?

Carter: So I can basically do what I want to. (Laughter) But my mother did the same thing, as a matter of fact, when I was president. She helped put me in the White House, and when I was president I would try to have a press conference. I want to talk about the Soviet nuclear threat, I want to talk about peace in the Middle East, I want to talk about global environment. And the first question I would get was, "Mr. President, how do you react to what your mama said on the 'Johnny Carson Show' last night?" Or the "Merv Griffin Show," or even Walter Cronkite.

She would just take over the show, and after five minutes you would think that they were her guests on her show. But anyway, I would say, "Look, I'm not responsible for what my mother said last night. She has her own life to live; I've got to be president of the United States."

Tavis: On a serious note, though, how do you navigate being president with a mother who is that outspoken while you're occupying the Oval Office?

Carter: Well, we just had to separate ourselves. (Laughter) As a matter of fact, I sympathized last week with Obama, who was kind of afflicted with what his pastor said. And Rose said, "Jimmy, that reminds me of Mama when you were president." (Laughter) But she didn't - well, she had a lot of effect on me, and obviously I loved my mama.

She was a dynamo. She tried to say strange things. As a matter of fact, the first year I was in the White House, they came out with this game called Trivial Pursuit. And you couldn't hardly get a copy of it. I finally got one copy for my children, because I was the president. But -

Tavis: There's a little-known presidential fact right there. Jimmy Carter used his (laughs) -

Carter: That's true.

Tavis: - used his power to get a copy of Trivial Pursuit.

Carter: That's true, I did. My staff contacted the manufacturers. They sent me one copy for Christmas, I appreciated it.

Tavis: Wow. One copy.

Carter: Yeah, 1977. And when I opened it up, one of the questions was "Who said, 'When I look at my children, I wish I had remained a virgin?'" It was Lillian Carter was that answer. (Laughter) She was something. But she was a great person and she was an inspiration, because she always did what she thought was right.

And when she was 70 years old, I put it in the book, she kept a diary. And she said, I hope for my children, in effect, that they'll always do what they think is right, and what they think is exciting and adventurous and unpredictable and gratifying, and not give a damn what anybody says about them." So in a way, Mama's wish has come true (unintelligible).

Tavis: To your point now, Mr. President, I was in a conversation the other day about you, and I heard something the other day that I've actually heard a million times, I think. And you might have heard this, and I'm curious if you've heard this before. But I've heard it many times, people who love and respect you and revere you will say about you that Jimmy Carter was just too honest to be president. He was just too honest to be - have you heard that before?

Carter: I've heard that.

Tavis: And if you have heard that - you have heard that.

Carter: Yeah.

Tavis: What's your assessment of that statement.

Carter: I don't think a president can be too honest. I think there's one - my favorite president in my lifetime was Harry Truman, and I really believe that Harry Truman never told a lie as president. I think if he - I don't think he would have stolen a three-cent postage stamp. I think he was absolutely honest.

And when I ran for president, my main effective campaign promise was I will never tell a lie. And I used to tell my supporters. At first I'd only have five or 10 of them, but I'd say, "If I ever make a misleading statement, don't support me, because I'm not going to go in -" because I went into office after tragedies in our country, after Vietnam and after Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were assassinated and after there was a lot of lies told about what we were doing in Vietnam.

So the people were waiting for somebody just to tell the truth, and I did. But I don't think that I was too honest. One of the things that I have been criticized for by my wife and others was that I didn't postpone controversial decisions until after my first term. Well, that may have been true, but still, it wasn't my nature to postpone it.

Tavis: But doesn't the very nature, since we're in this campaign season now, doesn't the very nature of running for president mean that you are going to - every candidate is going to find himself or herself in a battle of truth versus power, and so often, as you know, having been there, power wins out over truth, so how can you be president and be that honest?

Carter: I don't know. So far as I know, neither I nor anyone representing me ever told the American people a misleading statement - a lie about it. We told the truth even when it hurt. But politics were different then. I didn't have any money. We honestly never had enough money to pay for a hotel room, so when we were in a village off somewhere, we had to find a family to let us come in and spend the night in their house.

And as a matter of fact, when I got to be president, we had a reception the first week for everybody who had let me or my family spend the night in their house. Seven-hundred-and-sixty people came. And we gave them all a little plaque that said, "A member of Jimmy Carter's family slept here." So we didn't have any money, and at that time, it wasn't acceptable to make a derogatory statement about your opponent.

There was no negative advertising. I never referred to Gerald Ford as anything except "my distinguished opponent," and he treated me the same way, and the same when I ran later against Ronald Reagan. We always said, "My distinguished opponent." That was it. And if I had run a negative television spot that attacked Gerald Ford's character, it would have been suicidal for me. But now with massive floods of money, a lot of that money is spent on television spots that are designed to tear down the character of your opponent. And unfortunately, it works.

Tavis: How does Jimmy Carter, President Jimmy Carter square in his own mind, in his own head, in his own heart, your juxtaposition against Ronald Reagan in history? What I mean by that is Reagan has gone on, as you know, to be regarded now in death as this icon -

Carter: Yeah, by the Republicans.

Tavis: By the Republicans, exactly. How do you juxtapose your position in history against him?

Carter: I don't really worry about it, because I think that ultimately, what I did as president, what I did since I left the White House, will be how I'm judged. And I feel at ease with that, and we - as I said earlier, we told the truth, we kept our nation at peace, we kept other people at peace, and we promoted human rights and we alleviated suffering, and I think we took care of our nation's security.

So I think that in many ways, I don't have any apology to make about what I did or what I failed to do. That's a highly subjective and biased response to you, but it's not any different from what my wife would tell you.

Tavis: (Laughs) And you're entitled to that. Do you think that these eight years of the Bush administration where our reputation around the globe is concerned, do you think the damage is irreparable?

Carter: No, it's not irreparable, but it's serious. The damage has been horrible. But the next president can change that in 10 minutes.

Tavis: Ten minutes?

Carter: Yeah, 10 minutes.

Tavis: That quick?

Carter: Absolutely.

Tavis: What's the solution?

Carter: In the next president's inauguration on the 20th of January, he can get up and say, or she can get up and say, "While I'm president of the United States of America, we will never torture another prisoner. While I'm president of the United States, we will never again invade another country or attack another country unless our own security is directly threatened. While I'm president, we will raise high the banner of human rights. We will promote peace around the world, and not instigate warfare. When I'm president, we will have justice in this world, and people who are the poorest and most destitute folks in our nation will get the proper treatment from our government, and the tax breaks won't all go to the richest people on Earth."

And so this is the kind of thing that I believe will appeal directly to people instantly, and they'll say, "A new day has come to the United States of America."

Tavis: How long should I hold my breath that that's going to happen? Even for the person that you may ultimately end up endorsing?

Carter: I hope they'll be willing to say it, even though the incumbent president who just left office will still be on the stage. And they can word it a little bit more elaborate than what I just said, because I'm trying to save time on your television program, but they can take 15 minutes to say that. But I think let the world know that we will be champions of human rights, we won't torture anybody else, we won't go to war unnecessarily, and things of that kind.

Tavis: This book is out just in time, of course, for Mother's Day. I bet you planned it that way, didn't you?

Carter: That was not an accident.

Tavis: Not an accident.

Carter: Still telling the truth.

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughter) I like that. Still telling the truth.

Carter: All right, all right.

Tavis: We got this out in time for Mother's Day. On a serious note, though, there are so many people, I suspect, watching right now who will buy this book, who have bought this book since it's on the bestseller list already, whose mother is now deceased. How did you, how do you, for a woman who you loved so much, navigate every day without her being around?

Carter: I navigate with her memory, because I still live in Plains, Georgia. We haven't moved anywhere. We haven't gotten anywhere in life, we're still right there where (laughter) I was born, where my wife was born.

Tavis: The man from Plains, still in Plains.

Carter: Absolutely. I'm still working the same land that's been in our family since 1833. I'm still growing peanuts and cotton and corn. I was on my farm yesterday morning.

Tavis: Still teaching Sunday school.

Carter: Still teaching Sunday school every Sunday. Our whole life is concentrated on that same little community, and so that makes it easy for me to remember my mother, because all of her friends who are still living, and the ones that remember her, my age and younger, keep her alive in my memory. So Mother is still an inspiration to me, and I just really believe that she exemplified what a human being ought to be.

Because she put into practice in the most enjoyable way and in the most humorous way, quite often, her religious faith, because she worshipped the Prince of Peace, not preemptive war. She worshipped a leader who was filled with justice for the poor.

So I think that in many ways, my mother was not only a great American citizen, but she was a great follower of the faith that shaped her life.

Tavis: Let me close, then, on this note. What is the abiding lesson from Ms. Lillian to you that you can now share with us about how we do that? That is to say, to take what we read, take the word, and to put it into deed?

Carter: Well, I think what she wished for on her 70th birthday is good. I think that she wanted all of her children - maybe everybody listening to my voice - do what you think is right and fair, and be inquisitive in your mind to identify things that are wrong, but which society accepts. Like racial segregation, for 100 years everybody said it's fine, it's okay, and they even used bible verses to support it.

She thought that was wrong, and she tried to change it as an unknown nurse in a tiny little town in south Georgia, and she maintained that commitment of bringing justice to the world all her life. And eventually, she became the First Mother of America, and became famous, and she could shape peoples' lives on television programs as important as this one.

And so I think that that's the lesson that I would tell everybody: Don't underestimate your own capability to do right, if you're courageous enough to face the facts and withstand criticism.

Tavis: Perfect note on which to end this conversation. I confess, I never get tired of talking to President Carter. He - what you doing tomorrow, man?

Carter: I'm going home. (Laughter) We're having a global health program at the Carter Center tomorrow, and I'll be working side-by-side with the secretary general of the United Nations tomorrow.

Tavis: Always, always working. Whenever he goes, which I pray is no time soon, Jimmy Carter is going to go with his boots on. He's going to go working. His new book, "A Remarkable Mother," about his mother Ms. Lillian, just in time for Mother's Day. A great gift. Mr. President, always an honor to have you here.

Carter: Thanks very much, Tavis.

Tavis: Good to see you.