presidential library in austin, texas, to hear cnn chief washington correspondent jake tapper on his novel about capitol hill. also that evening we're in philadelphia at the free library where radio and tv host michael smear cornish shares his thoughts on political climate. we hear peter stark to detail the early military career of george washington. and saturday we're at the reagan library in california with former white house social secretaries jeremy bernard and lee burman, sharing thoughts on professional and public civility. that is look at some of the events booktv will cover this week. many of these events are open to the public. look for them to air in the near future on booktv on c-span2. . .

if some of you would like to move forward, that will make it easier for us to accommodate the crowd. i am jane harman, president and ceo and absolutely does i later entitled president carter white house years. i have been turning this around as a workout. once you've finished reading that you can cancel your gym membership and just what dean around -- walk around carrying it. measured against other biographies, stu eizenstat wins

on size alone. this isn't justil about party. this is a deep dive into a presidency means, written by someone who was there to see at all. certainly i was there too, mr. remembers a t far more detal than i ever could, which is why was so excited to get the book and to have this discussion and we are talking about a discussion in depth today. every time i saw the new in the white house over 40 years ago, he was carrying a yellow pad. everyone will remember this all the time, 5000 pages worth of notes on a yellow pad. i doubt that any presidential biography was never prepared by someone the well-prepared. but i am not surprised. i missed you in the summer of 1964 when we sat next to each other at the young democrats of america here in washington. i won't reveal our ages, then or

now, but i will tell you he's older. we overlap at law school, had sons named brian who our friends in that worked across the hall from each other in the carter white house on the second lord of the west wing. most of our panelists were also there, so this is aer lovely reunion and a number of others from the carter administration are in the audience, so i thought i'd ask all of our friends to stand up for a moment. look at this. pretty impressive. stu eisenstadt is heading the firm international practice and focuses on resolving international trade problems and businesses is that the u.s. and foreign governments. he is a lot of work to do at the u.s. these days. he was chief white house domestic policy advisor to jimmy

carter, to the e.u. and deputy secretary of the treasury during the carter administration. the most important was your time as a scholar at the wilson center in 2001 when he researched and wrote what later became a vote called and perfect justice, slave labor in the unfinished business of world war ii, a blockbuster and we thank you for coming here to write it. seriously on a very important topic. joining stu on the panel are david aaron, deputy national security adviser and former u.s. ambassador to the oecd, former deputy assistant forde domestic affairs and former vice president for government affairs at turner and i guess you're still affiliated with bob hunter, member of the nsc staffer president carter who worked on west european and

middle eastern affairs as you ambassadorn to nato and foreign policy adviser to senator ted kennedy. doug bersharov on child abuse and neglect. so, in reading blurbs from a broad spectrum of commentators about this book, i was met by several and i just want to note them before we get along. alan greenspan said, quote, president carter anticipated many of the programs that his successor,ea ronald reagan, embrace pretty fostered major -- a fostered major deregulation of transportation, communication and banking and most importantly appointed paul volcker one of the most committed anti-inflation fighters to chairmanshipg of the federal reserve. stu eisenstadt succeeds in offering a balanced view of the carter presidency. splendid read. david h ignatius said this and said this and i know this will

come out. called carter a smart come indecent but unlucky man in the white house. i was deputy secretary of the cabinet and i had a second row seat the first half of the carter presidency appeared at the white house bid of 1978 but stayed in touch. my late husband, sidney and i met in the roosevelt room and president carter present so with over 30 years of marriage. sidney served for a time on the carter center which has played a big role in the carter post president he and i will just note the post-presidency is not covered in the book but it's lasted for decades and so when you read the book about the post-presidency comments got to to be minimum 8000 pages. this morning, stu will get 15 minutes of opening comments followed by her panel, which iod will moderate and then we'll go to your questions. our goal is to tease out the successes and disappointments of

an extraordinarily hard-working and principled president and i want to echo by saying what madeleine albright says in the prologue to this book. she also was a colleague from those days and she says she hopes this book will help reframe the carter presidency. so do i. please welcome wilson center scholar trained to. [applause] >> thank you, jane for a long friendship and for hosting us and for all of you for coming. jimmy carter's political idol was harry truman and he placed truman's famous slogan on his oval office desk. both presidents left highly unpopular. not truman is remembered much more for his achievements and for his fault and i hope my book will be too a similar reassessment of jimmy carter as

president, not simply as a widely admired former president. my thesis is he was one of the most successful one term presidents in american history and indeed accomplished more than many into terms. to object their surveys indicate more than almost 70% of all of his legislative proposals were passed by congress just under the percentage of the legendary lyndon johnson. vice presidentup walter mondale summed up his presidency by saying we told the truth, we obey the law and we kept the peace. the rap on the carter presidency is summed up by several eyes. inflation, iran, and

inexperience by the georgia mafia and interparty warfare with the kennedy wing of the democratic party. i do not gloss over in my book any of these problems. i address them directly. but with no eyewitnesses likely to be around in the next 20 years and with the danger that there will be an indelible image of hismi administration as a failure, i wanted to write a book that demonstrated that this problem should not obscure the very major successes that he achieved. ones that are long-lasting and have made the country and the world a better place. the authenticity of the book as jane indicates, is based on the fact that i wrote over 5000

pages of contemporaneous notes which are housed in the library of congress of every meeting, every phone call amplified by 350 interviews, five within and i was not select this. i interviewed people who were favorable and unfavorable, republicans and democrats to give a complete picture. because of the contemporaneous nature of my notes, it provides a unique view of this president and i believe of any president he and the atmosphere of working in the white house. so let me briefly share some of the accomplishment, just a few stories of how they occurred. on the domestic side, and he laid the foundation through three major energy bills in four years of the energy security wet enjoy today commit the regulating the price of natural gas and crude oil to permit maximum production, putting

conservation nominations agenda for the first time and cleanrating the era of energy with solar and wind power. the final compromise is more appropriately hammered out with two conservative republican senators and two liberal democratic house members in the map room of thee white house wee fdr followed the course of world war ii. he was a great consumer champion esof consumer advocates to overe industry, not as today as they try to oversee their industries and he charged them with a very clear charge knocked out by hard-earned legislation, namely to transform our overregulated transportation to them. he deregulated trucking,

railroads and airlines and in the airline industry, he permitted cheaper prices, more competition. he brought air travel to the middle class and democratized day.y. i daresay we would not have the jetblue's and southwest is that not for ellen deregulation and he did not stop there. he became the deregulation of telecommunications, whichho oped up the whole cable industry as we know it today. he regulated bank deposits so people could pay full interest rates and importantly repealed the prohibition era of limitations in the industry whichch prevented afloat the lol craft beers which now proliferate so w widely. he was theta greatest environmental president since theodore roosevelt, doubling the size of the whole national park

system created by the alaska landfill and doing so over the fierce opposition of the alaska delegation who did not want to prevent any interim being developed for oil and gas. he made the last compromise in a carter -esque way. he made a giant map of alaska on the oval office rug with senator stephen, a veteran of 25 years and pointed out every river in every mountain ridge in a protected area. amazing sender seasons that they knew more about my state than i did. we won the election in large part because of watergate and he put in place a whole series of post-watergate reforms and good

government. for example, the 1978 ethics act regulated than a nondisclosurein for all public officials of assets coming in, limiting when in office and restrict teen their lobbying revolving door when they left. he created inspectors general printers on the week that goes by that there's not an article about reports to root out fraud, waste and abuse in agencies. he created the office of special counsel to investigate wrongdoing. some topical? in addition, he signed into law the foreign corrupt practices act, which art american companies from driving foreign officials and made the most thoroughgoing reform of the civil service system since its creation. i was caught up in seville in one of these reforms when a

magazine with a great love of tootsie rolls, one fantasy roles then i got a giant sized lifetime supply of a tootsie rolls from tootsie roll company. when we determined that we probably might have exceeded the $25 gift rule, we returned it, wrote a nice letter explaining why and the every chairman later said he tried to have it both ways. i'm still trying a to find a secret service. including this wonderful lady to have public office minorities to judgeships in senior positions than all 38 presidents put together before him.

ruth bader ginsburg was asked, how did you become a judge? she said it was because of jimmy carter. he also supported affirmative action in certain bankruptcy and credit the modern vice president be with walter mondale, took what had been an office of total disrepute and made it the opposite is today, a full partner with the president after the election mondale submitted a request, access to secret documents, all meeting, one-on-one lunches. carterar added one other. he moved the vice president now permanent into the west wing and as we know politics is in real estate, everything is location, location and location. just yards fromm the oval office and made them a full partner. you must overstep because he had

one with the original architectural plans of the west wing and found that his new office actually had originally had a private bathroom which he very much w wanted. and he found the later in a remodeling of the west wing that bathroom had been moved to the security office. they do just fine without it. but more seriously, you'll read in some detail that this fully engaged vice president came within an eyelash, the first time it's reported and confirmed of resigning more about the society not to be on the reelection ticket because of this concern with the so-called malaise speech on the cabinet resignations. that is one of the biggest surprises. inflation was an enormous problem. we inherited w it.

carter tried multiple plans to do with it. nothing worked. so he decided to take tough medicine in the election year and over the opposition of many of us in the white house he appointed paul volcker to head to the fed, knowing because local or told them he was going to choke the economy come as grade inflation or raise interest rates and lead to higher unemployment, but eventually lower inflation. the meeting that they had in the oval office is really a classic. volcker is a foot taller than carter. and carter describes vividly in the book how he was slouching over a couch in the oval office andr l carter said it felt like was interviewing me for a job, not the other way around. but heo did appoint him and let him do his job and has supported the tough monetary policy without any complaint even during an election year.

he was not the ultimate beneficiary because the tough medicine only work during the reagan administration and for the nation thereafter. this is emblematic of so much of what carterou did. tough decisions which had payouts only later. his foreign policy achievements only morefi significant. camp david will stand as a landmark of personal diplomacy. he pored over intelligence reports to understand and to tend to thele gettysburg battlefield to demonstrate the continued war. he barred the press so there would be no leaks during the negotiations. and after 13 agonizing days and nights, over 20 drafts which he wrote and negotiated separately because they were like two scorpions. they hardly matter atn all. we came close to an agreement on the 13th day but didn't reach

it. it wasn't a bluff, had his bags packed, a car to take him back to washington to five at two israel. carter came up with a personal touch that changed history. he had learned he had eight grandchildren and great love for them, got each of their names, wrote personal inscriptions to each of them of pictures of themselves at camp david and personally walked him over to his cabin and as he began to look through them, carter saw as he describedca to me his lips quiver, his eyes teared and he said mr. president, i'm putting my bags down. i'm going to give it one last try in that is a treaty that has lasted now for almost 40 years. no violations come essential to security and our national

interests. he was the first president to put human rights at the center of foreign policy. he applied it to the right wing tater of latin america reaching out to dissidenthe democratic movement, cutting off their arms and tied back to the panama canal treaty to show that there was going to be a new era in u.s. blood relations. the hardest fight we had in congress with the panama canal treaty. it was bloody. one cost revote it turned out in a critical one was republican senator hayakawa who is dead set against. we learned through mondaleou and told carter he would consider switching his vote if carter would see him every two weeks to get his foreign-policy advice. carter said senator, i wouldn't want to limit you to just two weeks am flattered you vote for the treaty, carter never saw him. he also on the left embraced the

soviet dissident movement in the soviet jewry movement. sakharov, the leader, sharansky the soviet jewish movement and saved his life by his own admission by saying during his trial that you are not a u.s. spy. they say that the soft underbelly of theie soviet unio, but was joined with hard power as well. it was carter, not reagan, who began to build up after vietnam could certainly reagan built on it, but he built on carter's foundation and together with two nuclear arms treaties and with a the remarkably tough response to thee afghan invasion, the carter doctrine so forth that even conservatives applaud. carter played a significant role for the unraveling of the soviet union.

china. everybody thinks chinese normalization, kissinger and nixon and they deserve all the credit forh our preaching, but they would not take, taiwan lobby. they did a not or malaise relations. carter did. he took the lobby on anyone is another very tough fight. deng xiaoping, all four-foot 11 comes into the white house, cabinet room and what he wants now being thankful for democratic -- diplomatic relations. he was the lowest possible tariffs on chinese goods that we offer two or most solute trading partners, but he knew there was a lawth precluding not. he said to the president, we don't admit immigration and he pushed a white house notepad and pencil to the president m and said, you put on this by the number of chinese you'd like us. a million, 10 million. and the president with a twinkle

inhah his eye said i'll tell you what, i'll take 10 million if you take 10,000 american journalists in response. the coup de grace to the carter presidency was administered by arends krol radical ayatollah khomeini, whose top aide i interviewed. he held americans hostage for 444 days in violation of every international norm will carter support dissipated. i am very frank in this chapter. we made a lot of mistakes in the most significant were intelligence failures. the cia had put the shah back on the phone in 1953. six presidents have lavished tens of billions of dollars of the most sophisticated military equipment and did not realize that domestic support was

resting on quicksand. they did not know that for five years he had been getting cancer treatment. he didn'tt know that it was sending provocative cassettes back to tehran against the shah. the most difficult decision was what to do when the h hostages were taken and he made a decision telling the families and that is the number one priority. frankly i disagreed with that. blockade the harbors to prevent them from exporting oil. but he was afraid i would risk havingnd hostages come back wita tough choice. i don't agree with it. nevertheless, we negotiated for 440 days unsuccessfully and another decision made, which again was a retrospect was

holding himself up in the white house, cronkite ended and saying 150, 250. it was a disaster. and they were opposed the carter presidency and that is the aborted rescue effort in iran. it was highly complex. there was a lot of bad luck involved, but the destruction of those in loss of life of eight american became really a signature of what happened. and it have been largely because there were not enough helicopters. it happened because we have not

had entered military service cooperation at that point. it was only later we created that fromne which took osama bin laden and others. if there's one positive thing to come out of iran other than hostages come in safely, it is that remains that i described we got 50,000 iranian jewish out of iran and kept those in the united states studying from being exiled through very clever reinterpretation. that is for dhaka and for dreamers. to conclude in this way, we lost overwhelmingly i in 1980 and yet carter did not burden from the very first day after the election, he said let's make this the most successful outgoing transition ever and it was. he negotiated the super chemical

cleanup and in one last gesture of reconciliation with ted kennedy who had no reason to reconcile, kennedy wanted steve buyer to help us on airlinenend deregulation appointed to a vacancy in the first circuit. i went in to see carter knowing he would do it and he said no. it willa be attributed to the judiciary and that is what got them on the first circuit and ultimately the supreme court. by book is not just about policy. it's about people. very interesting profile to mention only two in the interest of time. ms. polian is a registered nurse with black and white patients in the rural south when it was highly unpopular into the peace corps 68. a new york reporter in on the

central thesis of the campaign i'll never lie to you. though certainly you know that your son must have lied. this certainly was. yes, you're right. he told white lies all the time. i said to the reporter, and two midway lie. remember when i said how wonderful it was to have you here. that was a white lie. [laughter] i saw them going from being a shy campaigner to an accomplished first lady. one last story that is russell long, powerful chairman of the senate finance committee, son of the famous king fish, governor of louisiana and later chief of staff recounted the story as follows. although the parish leaders then

just before a tough reelection and said boys come you got to get the vote out for me and they promised lavishly buildings and bridges the new road. and when he won, they all came lining up, waiting to be paid in russell new there wasn't enough money in the treasury to begin to pay. so he said uncle earl, what must i tell these parish leaders? russell cummings and tell them your uncle earl lied. russell is a transformational figure, but he was a transactional one who would trade his mother for a vote and couldn't understand why the southerner and president would do thetr same. jimmy carter of course is the principal player and i described him in great detail coming from a gnat infested 500 person hamlet to the oval office. by understanding the mood of the times, warning after watergate, being a new face a smile as

bright as the mississippi river he was all things to all people and put together an improbable and ultimately unstable coalition of conservative southern white anxious to have one of their round in the white house. african-americans , labor working class people. it was inherently unstable on the successful coalition. fiscally conservative, which we have more today, socially liberal on policy on race issues. real internationalists of mild populace. he was criticized looking out the note from the cabinet. he was criticized for over attention to detail. reading too many appendices. but over the years have begun to wonder if it's a worse way to govern.

he had an odd view of politics and then departed politics. if you want to take one of your recommendations. that was the strength h of weak ties that allowed him to attack, but also was forgetting the president is not only the commander-in-chief but has to be the politician in chief. two liberal, too conservative for liberals. last point. the book will take you deeper into the white house than any other presidential history. you'll understand the pressures that conflict and demands to make decisions for which they are often no good options. mount rushmore in this book. but i am suggesting he belongs

in the foothills of mount rushmore with president who has done great things for their country and for the world and that is the principal argument of mygs book. thank you. [applause] >> well done, my friend. by the way, the reference to correcting typos was two minutes that i took of the cabinet meeting with one of my jobs as deputy cabinet secretary to two years i spent in the white house. carter would read them and correct my spelling is takes. and in addition to that committee read at least 300 pages a day, which is just an astounding amount of work when you think about it given the other pressures. so i want to ask everyone else on the panel.

and tooo help people who didn't know him or didn't understand him think about the successes that he had. how do you go about doing that? putting information out won't necessarily make you feel especially in written form. i just want to ask, going down the line based and ending with her historian, based on the extent that each of our panelists had in the white house working on issues you mentioned, what suggestions you have for how looking back on their time they would help you and madeleine albright and the rest of us achieve this goal of reframing the presidency. let's start with david and lester with foreign policy on the nsc who continued active as we all know until six months ago

and was a fascinating choice foe carter is national security advisor. just taken a couple of the w had issues. pick the ones you want to pick. looking back, how do you think they can be explained in the context of then and now that carter did the right thing and was a very good president. >> well, i would like to focus on the iranian hostage rescue. and it's not really understood whyy it failed. a big study by the pentagon. but i would like to take you back to the last meeting we had. it was actually the second to last. we had ake meeting with secretay of defense, chairman of the joint chiefs.

and they said, what i want you to do is ask questions. that seemed to be my principal qualificationai. so i'm in the process and asking questions and i get a note handed to me by a guy named willie smith a cheap bath. 113 t. and we've taken care -- >> defense secretary at the time it turns out the problem with this. and as a result the indian

ocean. unfortunately, we didn't have any attack helicopters, so they've decided to use anti-submarine warfare that would go around and had tremendous range. but the problem was the pilots of theseil helicopters were lifers. they 5 were 40, 50 years old and they hadn't signed up for an assault and apparently they were drinking, smoking dope, having realnd morale problems. but we brought in marine helicopter pilot and they'll be great. the problem was as a result,

turned around and went out. another problem was in the sandstorm. a third through his black jock on top of the air conditioner for the engine and burned it out. finally in a very sad case when they decided to abort the mission flew into one of the c-130s that was full of ammunition andnd fuel and a lotf people lost their lives. the reason i mentioned this is twofold. on one hand, this was a doomed operation because the navy refused to put their aircraft carriers in the gulf. and he would say they view as burton. it could've been dangerous. of course, absolutely. except one thing. when the first gulf war to place in the airld force started flyig

under the amaranth in iraq and kuwait, they drilled those aircraft carriers fighting to the polls and they weren't going to get beaten by the air force. and that is important for one very overriding reason, which had not been asked were very much. but the navy was and is deathly afraid of having an aircraft carrier, particularly by a cheap torpedo or a missile of some kind because they are extremely vulnerable and they know iff tht ever happens, we won't build another $5 billion aircraft carrier. >> thank you. fascinating. domestic policy. i was thinking as do so, that

woodrow wilson was president when hundred years ago had a really good first-term based on his success on domestic policy. wasn't as long as jimmy carter was, but the federal reserve, income tax, federal trade commission and so forth i'll pass on wilson's watch. very few people remember any of that. they do remember what many think is a very idealistic and unfocused international policy. some of us think it was successful, but many don't. they also remember at the end of this president become a wilson was totally incapacitated and had a terrible record on race and wasn't much good on women either. the memory of those ind his next and i love it that we celebrate his mashing of scholarship and policy here. looking at domestic policy

achievements and stews sketched many of them, what insights do you have? and david, that was fascinating. some of that wasn't carter at all, but in the circumstances. how would you frame his domestic record in a way that people will notice? >> i'm not sure that can c realy be done. american politics is almost completely tied up with winning andt losing. the short-term view, said jerry ford lost even though there was a lot to be said for the ford presidency i think. h.w. bush lost, we lost in someday in the future as we seen just recently been reinterpreted here come the people in your business will return to this and this will be an enormous

contribution. one of the contributions the carter administration made, people ask me what happened in terms of our domestic program and they always say jim freeze here, they are smarter about this than i am. i would say it might've been a failure readership on our part, but it was a scholarship on the part of our comrade in the house andll senate who thought presidt carter was too conservative of the country was getting ready to collect a break-in. carter wasn't wrong. they were. i worked for 10 years in the senate and i can tell you the united states senators did not believe that their political portion were tied in any way to what happened to the presidents of either political party. in their experience it's not happening.

well, where the bloodbath in the senate in 1980. we lost items in the senate and frank church and jazz a ton of people. none of them until right at the last minute even thought they were in any particular degree of travel. we did every succeeding president the biggest favor that could be done because they all believe that their political fortunes are closely tied to it happens to their president. ronald reagan had a degree of followership that jimmy carter could only have dreamed that he would have. that's been true of every succeeding president. maybe students of congress will come to appreciate that contribution. >> thank you. bob, let me mention a little because he mentioned carter's human rights record. he was the first president to put human rights on the map as a tentative foreign policy and

sending everybody in this room cares about. could you make comments about that and think about ways in which people have forgotten his role there or maybe that is a bright spot in the carter presidency for four decades. >> first, let i me say to your original question what is going to help reframe the carter v. single word, time. time plus memoirs like this is an important critical building block. historians are going to be important. you just touched on some team in human rights, which is people looking back and looking at today in understanding a couple of things would go forward about presidents and the president need. number one is scared her.

jimmy carter was a person of genuine carrot to her. it is impossible to look at what is happening today if anyone is going to have any historical perspectivek without seeing thet great globe that comes from jimmy carter and you cannot separate the post-presidency from the presidency because this was a man of integrity who lived his life as president. human rights. carter racing got a bum rap on not right from the beginning. the irony is that henry kissinger at the time of the final i for being willing for not taking human rights seriously enough. how come you're worrying about this.

carter comes in from of the the europeans who had been pitching the previous administration didn't care about human rights but all the president does care is humanre rights. and america's role in the world, there are two overwhelming properties. one, what is the interest of the united states and what is the character in the united states and the world. today, in particular the post-cold war era, then united states stayed involved in the world not so much because we had things immediately to fear, but because we had things we believed in. if we had a president in modern times, it was jimmy carter who said these things we stand for. interestingly, when you saw the unraveling of the soviet union, a lot of that happened because carter was working on human rights country by country.

they separated your comments in italy to return to the hungarians and said okay, let's return. let's do the thingsur we can for solidarity. and then, in the middle east as well and we are still fighting with this, his great strategic achievement, think how much worse it would be today if it were not part of the egypt israel peace treaty, which took egypt out of the military balance against israel and ended the risk of a u.s. soviet confrontation. think how much worse it wouldf e today but for that. and then, for carter to say part of human rights and part of peace for israel has to be a resolution of the palestinian issue.

didn't happen in this t preside. still hasn't happened. working on security in the middle east began seriously under president carter and for that he's going to be e remembed after the fluff in the nonsense confined to the rubbish of history. >> on that happy note, doug, something bob just said on sunday to ask the questions to our historian this way. bob just mentioned the robust presidency of carter, 10 times longer than his president be. when we look at carter's record, can we isolate the white house, learn about the white house in 800 pages, but does that all mesh together and when people look back on him, he's still alive and kicking. when people consider him, is the post-presidency helping him?

how do you put all this together? [inaudible] >> i think so. >> i think your question raises an important point that stew made at the end. he is in trying to persuade us that he was a good man, trying to persuade us that he was a pretty good president. i think the way we want to address carter's successors to mike of successes on his president be. and i think to answer your other question about what is going and make this book be noticed, the next month or very important. steve said that carter was too liberal for the conservatives in too conservative for the liberals. i want to make a friendly

amendment to that. stu is talking about congress. it's not as if he was too liberal for conservatives in the country and not as if he was too conservative for liberals. it's that he had this congress he had to deal with. i'm one of the people who have the luxury of reading the whole book. you sense was to mentioned, which is the members ofen congress, especially in the senate, but the house as well, they thought they werehe there forever and they didn't feel the need to compromise with the president and key things. the last point i'd make about this as you read stu spoke, it feels as if ted kennedy really was perfectly happy to see a failed presidency in a president ronald reagan and stubbornness that comes through in the book about kennedy on not as a little

shocking for a fellow like me who doesn't agree that part of all of this. so ie think between now and election day, democrats have a real challenge, which is, do they recognize the value of someone with a political position in personality, or do they go all the way last of. they are worried about whether they go far left. >> we have enough in have enough for an hour to her questions. you better ask good questions. soan get ready. one that you listed in experience and interparty warfare is one i want to focus on and that is a mix periods. congress was the problem, but i serve nine times as a new democrat in congress. it wasn't pretty every moment

and i was saying from both sides, but i took that as a badge of honor. part of the problem with congress. and his assistant for congress from georgia who do not have it granted or congress. yet the vice president. but he didn't use those people. he is mostly an inexperienced georgia team and he didn't spend a lot of time that i noticed anyway one was robert byrd who called me. i have worked for california senator who sat next on the senate judiciary committee at the horseshoe and drudging i together jimmy carter couldn't

personally signed his letters. my question to you, reflect and on what was said is any experience with carter's help. into david ignatius. >> yes. i certainly don't spare criticism of congress. but let me take your question and be very direct and blunt about it. december 9th, 1976, during the transition for the inauguration without any consultation, do make f two fundamental decision. the first is to attack popular water projects which were boondoggles butee ended up diverting our attention and training support for more important things than he announces he's going to have a comprehensive energy plan within 90 days of his inauguration.

absolutely almost impossible. as a result, we had to scramble. would it not economic data for impacts while we did get the energy bill passed, it took 18 months to get that done. and so, that was one of the inexperienced. number two, he made a decision of not having chief of staff, horrific decision. then why, because we are running against watergate. the problem wasn't that nixon had achieved its path. the chief of staff is a crook. and so, we had no traffic cop. we have nobody to create priorities. in the first month from heathrow to major energy bill. tax reform. download the, all sortsnd of things plus trained to deal with the middle east and the winds we

got d in on the chief of staff r dick cheney who became his chief of staff later when he realized hehi had to have one, he had adopted the spokes of the wheel. that is the president of the center and six surveys have equal access with no one like a chief of staff in between. after the going away party to get them mounted bicycle wheel with broken spurs and he left it in the office saying don't adopt

you need a chief of staff. there weren't a lot of good advice coming, but this is certainly one ofof them. we caught up with it, but initial images are very hard to reverse. >> okay, 30 minute, folks. raise your hand. there are microphones. even if i know you, everyone doesn't know you. right there., microphone. probably betterve to stand up. how do the panelists reconcile president carter's legendary attention to detail with his apparent lack for insufficient detail --

[inaudible] pincer mentions such as equipment, logistics, personnel in the navy. >> everyone doesn't need to rent every question. >> i think the way the whole thing was put together was there was a special working group and came up with some pretty bizarre ideas from time to time. one was they were going to seize an airfield outsideat of tehran, which was only a few miles from aes major city and for two or three days and still keep secrecy and not let people come and go. you know, he also had a lot of respect for the military. a lot of respect. and therefore, there wasn't a

big book of a plan. it wasn't likere that. that's not the way the pentagon puts together these work plan. i think it was very difficult for him to even do that. >> your question is very important and it's one that i deal with in the book. i think it resulted from several teams at number one, as david said, this is one of his in which he felt look, they are the military expert and they are the ones where the military experts. number two, at a critical meeting, he asked the military. yes people including dave jones, head of the joint chiefs of staff, do we have enough helicopters. and they said, we do. we have one in redundant the end he ordered another one.

there are actually 816 with a minimum. he built that in. third, his advance was dubious from the start. thee has been secretary of army in the kennedy johnson administration in turn often times during this and then said, mr. president, the military will never say they can't do something. i saw in vietnam they will never say they can't do some things. ii think he relied on the detais for the military. he didn't want to micromanage and the one place he did was to add another helicopter. >> can i add one word to this? i was in the middle east but i didn't know about the rescue missions. i think there are at least two problems.

number one, instead of assigning all the military wanted to get engaged, but the only thing happening in the administration of that of assigning it to a service, you do it with other things. second, when i find out what had been done was a pretty idea from the beginning. >> one other radical thinker lists a number of helicopters and a lack of practice. why did they miss harold brown told me they were afraid if they did so in california that the press would learn about it. you hadn four different military services, none of whom worked together on any project like this. >> can add one thing? >> no, no, because we are going to get to questions. >> i want to -- >> pbs is doing a major

documentary -- [inaudible] >> this question is for ambassador eizenstat. .. . i think the answer is no. we did not focus on the shah enough at early stage. he was focused on camp david. the erosion was not pointed out to him. stan turner, the cia director, said, we, cia let him down. we didn't tell him.

the question is, what wore could be done? we couldn't intervene militarily. we were giving him all sorts of other support. i don't think there could be more to blame him, anymore than the fact eisen hour could be blamed because castro overtook cuba. >> microphone. >> an economic question, as you know i wrote a book which basically gives carter a huge amount of credit for deregulating the economy, for opening up the competition. ipe don't call it deregulation. i think that is really what broke the back of inflation and i wonder why you give so much credit to volcker? i wouldn't give nearly that much to volcker? >> first of all, paul, i do give, i havell a very large chapter on deregulation and competition. and the fact that, with trucking, for example, you had a

back haul rule that did not allow a truck that dropped off a whole cargo at point a, to return, loaded, back to home base. i mean it was crazy stuff like that. so the deregulation absolutely injected more competition, lower prices, lower fares for airlines, and so forth. i give full credit. thatne only materialized again muchch later but second, i do believe, paul, that even with that we wouldn't have broken the inflation psychology had volcker not totally transformed monetary policy. psychological impact of wage and price spiral was so built in at that point starting with nixon and one last thing that people don't understand and i stress it, we surely did not do a great job of dealing with inflation but it was 8% at the time of the

iranian revolution. when the iranian revolution before the hostages were taken occurred, we lost five million barrels a day b of oil productin in the world. and the spot market went crazy. in a 12-month period from february of '79 to february of 80 the price of crude oil doubled. thatri is what sent inflation io double-digit range and created gas lines. nixon had the same thing after the first oil shock, after the yom kippur war. exactly the same. how did he deal with it? he d put wage and price controls knowing that would get him through the next election. when he released it, inflation would come through. >> that is fabulous answer. over there, right there. >> peter --

>> hi, peter. >> classmate and partner. during a week which we have leaders of france and germany in town seems appropriate to ask about relations with nato and carter, you haven't said very much about that. perhaps you could say a little bit what is in the book. >> sure, we have a nato ambassador. >> davidid and certainly bob to respond to that. what carter did with nato was transformational in several respects, number one, if this soundsal familiar, and it shoul, he got them to pledge to increase defense spending 3% a year. number one. number two, in a real blow to the soviet union, brezhnev said later this is what broke our back, he got hello mitt schmidt to accept for the first time to accept intermediate nuclear

weapons in europe. europe sat behind our long-range capabilities and submarine capabilities but they never had those military forces in. he got schmidt to agree to it t was an absolutely critical thing. third, the bonn summit, which involved the g7 countries with gem any, france, so forth, bob putnam at harvard, the single most successful g7 summit ever. it will, resulted in the deregulation of our crude oil in return for their agreeing to stimulate their economies with tax cuts and finishing the tokyo round. i have to finish one humorous story. bob was there. paul isax here for five years, straus, with carter's backing broke the back of it. and at the g7 summit straus, who was not one to hide his

backpacking on himself, was bragging about it. desststang thought he had role ity, straus said, famous pitcher, dizzy dean once said, if you done it, it ain't bragging. sogh gestard, called over the military aide, only one in the room, who is this dizzy dean? every one is going around. jim callahan, everybody should know dizzy dean was a pitcher for the st. louis cardinals in 1934. and straus is right, if you've done it, you ain't bragging. >> that's good. anymore comments on nato? >> carter took the alliance seriously at a time when the soviet union was ramping up its

opposition to american presence in europe but he did it not just the way we've heard which i think is put very well but also working on arms control and got the "salt" agreement and incidentally he had to bargain between his advisors, brzezinski who hated russians and vance who diplomacy. there is item, which stu uses in the book, which carter would give a major speech on the soviet union, vance sent in a draft, brzezinski set in a draft, i seen them both, itell, as old speechwriter he stapled them together in alternative paragraphs. they were more coherent than they would have been. think about experience. we had a thing called the

neutron bomb be. i won't go through all the details t was an accident. it wasn't a carter's failure. the failure was on the part of schmidt because carter said i won't build it if you won't deploy it. schmidt said i will only deploy it iff the dutch will. will the dutch deploy it, no, therefore i won't build it. schmidt was a straight thug from hamburg, went out and played carter. carter didn't tell us the truth on that. that gave us the experience when we got to the euro missile crisis to know how to do it accurately and adequately so that the soviet union understood that they president of the unitd states was going to be firm in his support of the nato alliance while at same time he was doing things that eventually led to detente and the end of the cold war. >> peter, we should remember, there was euro communism floating in western europe, particularly in italy and carter

definitely as ambassador put that down. >> second row, right here, green jacket. microphone. >> hi, i'm ann howard. i served in the commerce department in congressional relations and also in international trade. my questionin is a more personal one. i would like to know what you believed jimmy carter's relationship was with hubert humphrey? it evolved during his presidency. as you recall, hh had run in '76 until he found out he had bladder cancer. it ends of course with the humphrey fellowship program. >> i'm so glad you answered that question because i have a very touching description of this. humphrey was a interest diggal liberal yet became one of carter's great supporters and his death left a void. here is a beautiful story. carter rescheduled the times of

our weekly democratic leadership conference, breakfastss which by the way are not held before or even during obama. he rescheduled the time so hubert could get his nih cancer treatments. number two, he took him in the oval office and sat him behind a chair, hubert, you belonged here. and number three, remarkably, helicoptered him up to camp david, spent the day with him at camp david and humphrey told me, believe it, first time i ever have been to camp david even though i was vice president for four years. he had a wonderful relationship. hubert's loss, lost us liberal support. i really think that if hubert had lived, it would have been much more difficult for kennedy to mount what was very divisive challenge. >> very, very interesting. ira, did you have a question? ira shapiro, the one and only. >> thanks.

it is actually more of a comment unsurprisingly. six years ago i wrote a book about the senate, last great senate, coincidentally, those years were the carter years. and i was surprised to find that the relationship between carter and congress, which started out rather badly, actually changed in the three years, the last three years. so that carter, carter didn't like congress. he thought of them like the georgia legislature coming in. but he grew to understand that wasn't the case. at the same time he had members of congress, and particularly theha senate who were capable of stepping up to important domestic and foreign policy issues. so briefly 40 years ago, in 1978, if you look at one year, there were more accomplishments in domestic and foreign policy,

one after another, that stand the test of time, from the panama canal treaty to saving new york, to the energy package. and the other thing about congress in, which was a little unusual, people like scoop jackson, jackson didn't like carter. in fact he hated him in a lot of ways, and he fought him on the "salt" treatly but he worked with him on energy, every day for threehe years. >> yes, ire remarks your book is a great book. i will disagree frankly with burt a little bit. burt is falling into the old notion somehow we really didn't get along with congress. at the beginning we didn't. after that as you say we did. a number of things that passed which were so difficult, energy, deregulation, and panama, were remarkable, absolutely remarkable, and i want to tell you something in terms of the spirit of the era. why did we win the panama canal

vote? you can't believe how difficult it was to get 2/3 of the senate to support something when the american people thought we were giving away something we owned to panama. and itt was hand-to-hand combat, ham jordan had a war room. he contacted every single one of the 100 senators. i told you the story, but what i didn't tell you wouldn't happen today. we won that because byrd, supported i, majority leader, a man very important in stature but a great man in terms of his accomplishments, howard baker. howard baker, was the minority leader, the republican minority leader in the senate. he supported the panama canal treaty knowing it would undo his run for the presidency in the future. he did it because he thought it was right for the country. wewe would never have won withot howard baker.

and, in this era of supreme polarization, howard baker stands to me as one of john kennedy's profiles in courage. >> got to remember -- >> wait, wait. wait for a microphone. we'll wait one second for a microphone. >> jane, can i just ad this? >> yes. >> great hyakawa. why should we give back the canal, after all we stole it fair and. square. >> exactly. >> howard baker said, mr. president, you only get one of these. >> that's right. he wanted him on "salt." he said, mr. president i've already gone to the well once. >> jim. >> two quick points. in congressional liaison we had the great dan tate heed our team in the senate. dan had been in the united states senate as a staffer longer than a lot of senators. so we had a lot of experience there. howard baker is the epitome of a republican.

obviously went on to serve later to be chief of staff to ronald reagan. i think history never comes back tohi that profile in courage, wn he got in his car, comes to the capitol building to the oval office, to tell the democratic presidente you're right, amazin. think about it in today's terms. >> think about the idea of putting the country first, think about both parties. just thought i would say that. in the back, get to a few more questions. >> i get, i get -- >> very pushy panel. >> i get to mildly -- >> yes, burt. >> there is no question that carter had, everybody is surprised to see what a successful legislative record he had. one of these reasons is, that while we did have a reasonably successful legislative program, we had very little level of political support. i never forget going out to give a speech in 1979 i think in

detroit, and detroit at that time i got a bunch of suburban newspapers. after i gave the speech i went with a drink for a reporters from five or six suburban newspapers. i said how we doing? you guys suck. how do you know that? bill ford, john engle many come back and tell us you suck. we knows productive, as 1980, most productive lame-duck session in american history where we passed a lot of great things, like alaska lands bill. example of piece of legislation a democratically controlled congress would not give jimmy carter in the middle of his re-election. while i completely agree that we had a successful legislative program, we did not have a politically-successful relationship withh the congress. >> question. >> john, from the u.s. naval

academy. if in ham jordan's memoirs he recounts the argument in october of '79 over whether to admit the shah to the u.s. and in his account he has carter, he has jimmy carter predicting what is going to happen. could you cast a little light on that? of course into carter's thought process that he foresaw what was going to happen, yet he went ahead and took the decision anyway. >> absolutely. my deputy, david rubenstein jokingly said i should call the book, only if he had listened to me. that is not true. on inflation, carter, before anyone else, april of 77, gave first o anti-inflation speech. let's take your questions very important. the shah wanted to be admitted for medical treatment. finally disclosing he had cancer. all of his advisors, including

mondale, said, you can't turn your back on an ally of 30 years. outside henry kissinger and david y rockefeller organized, organized a real pr effort to put pressure on carter to do so. carter sat there, he was the last holdout, he said to them, to every one, i think that if i let him in, that they will take over our embassy. what do we do then? in the end he finally conceded. by the way it turned out he could have been treated by doctors inut houston, in mexico, the same way he would have been treated there. so, he was the last holdout. he instinctively understood what would happen. and there is also one other thing. t you know when reagan came in and there was a bombing in beirut, we lost 240 troops. >> right.

>> reggie bartholomew, our ambassador's office was bombed. reagan pulled everybody out, no embassy left. why didn't carter do that when the ayatollah took over? i tell you why. because in february much '79 there was an effort to take over the embassy, the secular government, although appointed by khomeni, had the police immediately take them back. so carter thought, well, they will do it again. but again, he did prove if i sigh this would happen and he was right. >> i know there are more questions, but i>> think the pal will want a few more minutes. and here's the question i would put to the panel ending with stu, aside from iran because we've had a very thorough conversation about iran if there is one issue in the carter presidency that you think has been misunderstood, you think

has been reframed this morning or we didn't get there, what is that one issue? how would you like it to be seen now with the benefit hindsight? let's take douglas, because you're the historian and let's start with david. >> i think his, i think his entire record in foreign policy is miss understood and overshadowed by iran which is why i talked about it most. but the fact of the matter is as stu pointed out, panama, china, strategic arms agreement, camp david, human rights, afghanistan invasion, all of this in only four years. this iss an extraordinary recor. of course when you tell this about the domestic record, i was not fully cognizant of, i think

yourur book is really going to e very, very, very helpful. i thought it was a brilliant, not was, is, because i'm still, as you can see, looking, reading through it, but, i think his foreign policy record was outstanding and not rivaled by anybody since. >> bert? >> well, i think overwhelming domestic achievement of the carter presidency was to help this country get over the nixon, before that, johnson, i mean -- >> vietnam. >> we might have been transitional figures. i think, i think his commitment to cabinet government that needs to be studied more. all i would think, we really had cabinet government where cabinet officers ran their departments. where white house staff couldn't

give cabinet officers orders. it worked or didn't work, but to the degreewo it worked it worked largely because of personality of one stuart eizenstat who was absolutely respected and trusted by these people. they felt he was an honest broker. if stuart hadn't been there with his own s unique, taking everybody's notes down on those yellow legal pads, paying attention to them, putting hours and hours on what was often foolishness, if that hadn't happened it would be a completely different administration. >> bob. >> i, a small, a detailed thing and a larger thing. the detailed thing is that carter created basis for the end of the cold war which was later done, in fact, i believe that reagan delayed the end of the cold war with his, with his

certain activities he did that carter was setet to do it, if it happened earlier. a larger thing which i already mentioned, to demonstrate the intersection of american values, especially human rights, and american interests as a blend, absolutely necessary to secure america's place in the world, and, to secure american support for our being involved in the world. >> doug? >> when you win you can't do anything, you didn't do anything wrong. when you lose you did everything wrong. and so i think winning the election would have made a big difference t was y a close election, until the end. there were decisions made about debates. debate in the last two weeks was, a giant mistake. i think if i was pushing something we ought to credit carter for, which every one has already done foreign, i say inflation. he put in place volcker but as the book describes, it is not

just hiring volcker. there were a series of other decisions. reagan gets credit for sticking with volcker. someone haddi to put volcker in there in the first place. so i think one argument here that would be nice to win is that the fight against inflation started under jimmy carter. he put everything in place. and, the rest is history. history doesn't get written that way. >> before stu close this is, i put one other issue on the table because it has been a important part of my life since, it wasn't aa focus, i don't think of the carter press did not sy but the foreign intelligence surveillance act passed during carter's presidency, based on recommendations of the church commissions to correct abuses of nix on administration by using our intelligence assets improperly. not only set up a legal framework which survives, but it also set up the intelligence committees in the house and senate. one of the huge tragedies in the last month is the demise of the house intelligence committee

where i spent eight years, including its ranking member. i was adam schiff before he was adam schiff. but at any rate, it's a very important piece of our history and it was passed on a large bipartisan vote in the house and the senate and many people don't remember it. so to close this fabulous conversation thecl author. the wilson scholar, stu eizenstat. >> thank you, jane, for putting together a fascinating discussion. three quickge points. one is the totality of the accomplishments are really overwhelming on domestic and foreign policy and they need to be recognized. numberol two, is the degree to which we, on inflation and i'm glad doug mentioned it, robert samuelson, a terrific reporter and columnist for the post, he said, well, carter may have appointed him but reagan stuck with him. what do you mean stuck with him?

he had a long term. and, not only that, reagan wasn't running for re-election at the time. we did itn at the time we were n the middle of an election cycle and knew we were bearing the brunt.rd third, i'm'm staggered at testimony of the democratic party, we lost to kennedy our entire base. we lost labor after we raised the minimum wage for the first time in years. fought for labor law reform. saved hundreds of thousands of union jobs with chrysler and doug fraser, ends up endorsing kennedy? women'snn groups. we extended the time of the era. record numbers of appointments. bella be a suggest and others felt he was not liberal enough for them. jewish community, my community, he brings the first peace to israel from arab neighbor. he signs the anti-arab boycott

bill. he is the father of the holocaust museum. he saved sharanski's live and embraces soviet jewish movement. yet we got lowest percentage of support from the jewish community than any democratic president in modern times. these things simply lost context. what i hope the book will do, reframe this, not ignoring problems, credibility of this book rests on being honest and candid. rests on being on the spot and citing what happened and what was said at all times. but it also has to lead to a broader reassessment of putting these into context, looking at the remarkable record of accomplishment, along with the mistakes and problems that were made. when you do on net-net basis, as i said, maybe it is not a base on mount rushmore but for sure it's a place in the foothills of

mount rushmore. >> so, stu, in the tradition of the wilson center you have produced a second book that is a candid assessment of a hugely important piece of history. and on a personal note, as your longest-standing friend in this room, i think that is fair, but rememberr i'm younger, i just want to express my affection and admiration. and to the whole panel, thank you for coming. >> thank you. [applause] >> i think you can find books outside. >> did every one hear that? there are books outside to buy.

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