How Carter’s life of public service and humanitarianism will be recognized

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• Geoff Bennett:

  And for more now in the life and legacy of President Carter, we're joined by our own Judy Woodruff, who has covered Jimmy Carter since before he was elected president.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Also presidential historian Barbara Perry from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And Stuart Eizenstat, who was domestic policy adviser to President Carter and, as you heard, spoke at the funeral today.

  With a welcome to all of you, I want to start there, Stuart Eizenstat, with you.

  Your remarks at the funeral service today, you said you sought to redeem the Carter presidency and reframe the public understanding of it, that, in your view, his accomplishments were more enduring than most modern presidents. What inspired you to have that as your message today?

• Stuart Eizenstat:

  Because it's always rankled me that people say he's the best ex-president we have had. And that's probably true. But that is an implicit way of saying, but he wasn't a successful president.

  And I meant by redeeming that it's now time, after the election loss we suffered, for sure, and after over 40 years, 10 times more time than he spent in the White House, to take a real look at what he did. And what he did was extraordinary.

  We got 70 percent of our legislation through. We made the country go from energy dependence to energy security. He was a great environmental president, a great civil rights president, appointing more Blacks and women to senior positions than all 38 presidents before him.

  In foreign policy, his combination of human rights and hard power, building up our military, really helped end the Cold War. Camp David is, to my mind, the greatest single presidential act of diplomacy in American history, without — that's all forgotten.

  So it's now time to go back and take a look. I tried to do that in my book" President Carter: The White House Years," but this gave me a unique opportunity to talk to a nationwide and worldwide audience.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Judy, as Geoff mentioned, you covered Mr. Carter before he was president.

• Judy Woodruff:

  I did.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You covered him as president in the White House. You have interviewed Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. You were at the cathedral today as well.

  What was it like to cover him, not just those years in the White House, but the many years of service after?

• Judy Woodruff:

  It was exhausting.

  (Laughter)

• Judy Woodruff:

  Because this was a man — and you have got a sense of that from listening to Stu just now — who wanted to do everything, tried to do so many things during his time as governor, during his time as president, and certainly during his time post-presidency.

  He had many things on his agenda, from reorganizing government in Georgia and then in Washington, energy policy, certainly the international policy. He wanted government to work more efficiently. He wanted the budget to be in better shape. He was working — he worked on diversity.

  He was — it was as if — what is the saying in the Bible, idle hands are a devil's workshop. His hands were never idle. There was always something. And I know once-, I will just tell you, Amna, I interviewed him about a decade ago. It was at his office at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

  And I asked him, I said, well, how are you spending your spare time? And he proceeded to list 10 or 12 things. He was involved in teaching Sunday school, building homes for Habitat for Humanity, bird watching, peacemaking, and on and on and on. That was who Jimmy Carter was.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Barbara Perry, we heard President Biden eulogize his longtime friend today. And he talked about what he saw as his basic — his enduring attribute, which was character, that he refused to let his power, his ambition erode his inherent goodness.

  How did that strike you?

  Barbara Perry, Director, University of Virginia Miller Center: Well, what struck me was that the current president, soon-to-be outgoing president, used the term character, and he said it three times.

  And we know from Joe Biden's ways of speechmaking that, when he says a word three times, he really means it. And I think we know what he means by the contrast. And I also noted that Andrew Young, in giving his homily for his dear friend Jimmy Carter, said that Martin Luther King had commented that character was when you can bring together antitheses and that, for Jimmy Carter, as it was for Dr. King, it was a strong mind, but a soft heart, and that that was part of his character.

  And that's what we see both, I think, in foreign policy, as well as in domestic policy.

• Stuart Eizenstat:

  May I mention one thing on character?

  You can judge a character of people when you suffer loss. How do you handle loss? We suffered a devastating loss in 1980. And he told us the very day after we lost, the next morning: "Get your chins off the ground. We're going to have the best transition out ever."

  And what did we do? We got Stephen Breyer confirmed by the Senate, on his way to the Supreme Court. We got the Superfund bill for chemical waste passed. We got the Alaska lands bill, which doubled the entire national park system, and we got the hostages released, all as a lame-duck president.

  So, rather than sulk and feel depressed, he said, we're going to make this the best two-and-a-half months anybody's ever had after they voted out.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Stu, can I ask, though? You mentioned the sort of duration of the accomplishments.

  In this particular moment, we saw how he led with decency, reached across the aisle, had friendships with political rivals, waged peace in the Middle East and normalizing relations with China.

  We're at a hyperpartisan moment in America right now and a hot war in the Middle East and rising tensions with China. Is there a sense some of those accomplishments are being undone?

• Stuart Eizenstat:

  Well, there's always that potential.

  Things, however, that won't be undone, we still have normalized relations with China, as tense as they are. We have a Middle East that is on fire, but a Middle East on which people built on his Camp David and each — of Israel's history with the Abraham Accords.

  And I would predict here, sitting here, that within, I would think, a year or two, the Saudis will also normalize. So I think that many of the things he's done are really lasting. And let me give you two that would be unexpected.

  One is, he created the whole Office of Inspector Generals to root out fraud, waste and abuse. Just this last week, Michael Horowitz, the inspector general for Justice, issued a very important report about what was happening in the Trump administration.

  And the other is the special counsel legislation. That has endured. It's — the form of it somewhat changed, but the notion of having an independent counsel to look at wrongdoing.

  So all the ethics laws that we have, every single one, lobbying restrictions, gift restrictions, disclosure of assets, all of those things, civil service, they're all enduring. They're still here.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, on that point, I mean, what aspects of the Carter presidency or post-presidency can leaders look to and learn lessons from? And, of course, we should mention that his partnership with Rosalynn Carter was most impactful.

• Barbara Perry:

  Well, certainly.

  And, as I pointed out, that the Ford eulogy by Steven Ford from his dad was that both of those men, Jerry and Jimmy, married up. So that's my first piece of advice to any people who would want to be president at some point. If you are going to marry, man or woman, or et cetera, make sure you marry up. That's always a great partnership.

  I think the other thing I'd like to point to would be not only in the post-presidency, this model of the modern post-presidency of making your life — giving your life to the world, giving your life to helping the world and the country to be better.

  And then I'd also say diversity. I know that D has gotten — that D words, gotten a bad connotation of late. But I think it's important, as the ambassador said, to look back at Jimmy Carter and think about what he did for the federal judiciary,more women, more minorities.

  He actually had an affirmative action program for the lower federal bench. And it's unfortunate that he didn't get to put a person on the Supreme Court, but he did put Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer on the lower federal courts. And that was their entree to the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Judy, where, to you, does Jimmy Carter sit in the context of modern presidents?

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, he sits apart in many ways, because he was a peanut farmer from rural Georgia who rose, I think, as Andy Young said today, Ambassador Andy Young said, how unlikely it is that someone would come from a place of population 200-and-something to the presidency of the United States, so, unlikely, but remarkable in many ways, because of everything we have been discussing here, all the things he tried to do.

  And I would say the force of his moral character, who he was, that morality, his faith, his deep faith, his belief that he wanted — something drove him every day to want to make life better for the American people, for every — and after he was president, for everybody on Earth. That is an incredible ambition for someone to have. And that's what drove him for a century.

• Barbara Perry:

  A life well-lived.

• Stuart Eizenstat:

  You know, another thing that he changed was, the first lady, she…

• Amna Nawaz:

  Stu, we may have to leave it there. I'm so sorry. We're out of time.

  (Crosstalk)

• Amna Nawaz:

  I know we could speak for many more minutes.

  But, Stu Eizenstat, Judy Woodruff and Barbara Perry, we thank you so much for being here today.

• Stuart Eizenstat:

  Thanks for having us.