they had been attacked in the night. the woman who is running and now is that their generation refugee, and she was telling me that, we were just attacked last night. they had been up since midnight because that is when they came in. it was about 9:00 in the morning. dollars the attack? dollars the israelis came in and took four people out and they fired -- i ask it said woke them up? and she just laughed. but anyway. when i asked, how often does that happen? just three or four times a month now. last month it was happening every day. .

also -- are you going to talk about going to berlin? >> we will have questions. >> ok. two other things i want to tell you because one place i went was the international center in bethlehem and the man who runs -- i think he's a lutheran pastor -- and he said he always pastor -- and he said he always hears bad bank so we're going to tell you good things today and he had 15 young people there and he called it training, well, he said i'm just training awe new generation of leaders and had young people working, some with children, some with the elderly, developing leadership in bethlehem and that area of palestine. and one other thing was in the bethlehem area is a man who is well known, mustafa, whatever his name is has these centers all over the west bank where he's mainstreaming people with

disabilities into the children -- into the schools. and they had people from all over palestine, mothers and fathers with some of their children with disabilities, some with mental health problems and one had m.s., and they were -- and they all told stories about how they had not been getting help and as they were getting help it was really emotional for me to see. so i'll stop talking so we can answer questions. [laughter] [applause] >> well, thank you very much. it's interesting we have a number of questions but we also have a large number of questions from the website for the first time which is great. the first question to both of you is, what is your favorite memory since starting the carter

center? >> i think my favorite memory is the visit to a small village just outside the capital of ghana. this village had about 500 people which is about the size of plains, and two-thirds of the population had guinea worm coming out of their bodies and about 20 of them couldn't come out into the square where i was because they couldn't drag their bodies out of the huts. and i visited some of them. and i noticed the beautiful young woman standing there that i thought was holding a newborn baby. and when i walked over to her i saw that she was holding her right breast in her arm and a guinea worm was coming out of the nipple of her breast and later after we left they found

that 11 other guinea worms were coming out of that same woman's body. that's not my favorite memory. my favorite memory is going back a year later, zero guinea worm. and that village has never seen another guinea worm since then and that's the case with about 70,000 villagers there. republicathere. [applause] >> well, i can't tell my favorite story because i have told it so many times that jimmy doesn't want to hear it again. it's about building latrines, and people clean up their yards, but i will tell you about it, in this area of ethiopia, we started in 2004 towards the end thinking that we -- we teach them. we sent one person, i think it was a tropical disease center in london, but he taught them how to build a latrine and we thought that there might be 10,000 before the end of that

year. they did 89,000 before the end of that year because the women got excited and we teach them also to wash their faces which they've never thought about. and now in this area of ethiopia we have -- they have, they do it themselves. we teach them how and they do it. they have built over half a million latrines. >> 375,000. that's not the largest figure but it's still close. >> i was just saying what you said the last time i listened to you. [laughter] >> we built more than half a million in africa but in ethiopia alone 375,000. >> ok, well, i thought it was in the same area. >> and they're still building. they're still building. >> still building. [laughter] >> are you through? [laughter] we are still

building. but what i started to say is that to teach them to wash their face, we asked this one little girl to show jimmy how she washed her face and she had sticks tied around gourds and she pulled it out and washed her face and now the teachers in this area of ethiopia check the children's faces every day to be sure they've washed them and that's a really, really good thing that the carter center has done. >> great. do you see an end to the israeli occupation of the west bank during the obama administration? >> if we are ever going to have peace in the middle east, israelis will have to drawl from the west bank -- withdrawal from the west bank. that's a key question. so the question could be, are we going to have peace during the obama administration. when i was administration i was

promised they would not build any more settlements in the west bank until all the peace processes were over. so there is an opportunity for the palestinians and the israelis to negotiate to leave some of the israeli seltzers in palestine where -- settlers where they are and in just 2% of the land in palestine just right adjacent to jerusalem basically, about half of the total israeli settlers live there, and if i were in charge, which i'm not, i would advocate leaving the 2% there and giving 2% of the land that israel owns to the palestinians and with that 2% of the land swapped you could build a corridor to connect gaza with the west bank, which is a distance of about 27 miles. and then the palestinians could have a railroad and a highway

that goes from one part of their territory, that is gaza, into the west bank. so i would say that unless israel is willing to withdrawal almost completely from the west bank with that small exception i've made, we will never see peace between israel and its neighbors. i might add one other thing, about 60% of all israeli citizens for the last 30 years have said they are in favor of withdrawing from the settlements in the west bank in exchange for peace, but there's a hard core of israelis who doesn't want to do it and so far they have not done it. i hope they will. >> have you had any further contact with the regime in zimbabwe? what do you see as the future for zimbabwe? >> well, one of the things that happened when i was president in those ancient times, was in 1980 we formed the democracy in

zimbabwe to replace the totalitarian apartheid regime of rodasia and i was very excited back in those days when mugabe was elected in an honest and free election. after a dozen years he turned out to be a horrible oppressor of his people and terribly corrupt. we went down there just this past year and he wouldn't let us into zimbabwe but the key people came out to meet with us. and since then they have formed a coalition government with his major political opponent who actually won the election last may and they're now trying to put together a fragile government that has made some progress on controlling inflation and maybe will open up some hope for the future. the future's best prospect is to have an honest election for a change and to let mugabe step down and either live in exile or stay in his own country with

some honest leader guarding the people of zimbabwe. this is a country that has tremendous potential. it was known back in the early days of the carter center when we had a major agriculture program there as kind of the breadbasket of that part of africa, but under mugabe's regime the production of food has dropped down precipitously and now they have to import food rather than export it. so i think that the future of zimbabwe could be bright if we could get rid of mugabe. >> mrs. carter, what impact has your journalism fellowship program had in overcoming mental health stigma and how do you measure that? >> i don't know how to measure it, and that's something we've been working on for a long time, for the last couple of years. at the carter center everything is measured, i think one of the

reasons is that bill fas can gan who had been at the centers for disease control, was one of the early directors and so everybody has to measure outcomes of what they do in all our programs except we got away with it for a long time. [laughter] because how do you measure stigma? and so we've had two sessions with national and international experts on stigma and we're trying to come up now with guidelines on how to measure stigma. i believe that stigma is lifting a little bit. we have a long way to go. but i think that young people, in fact in our meeting yesterday we had a poster and she said that people are more willing now to go to mental health professionals they have found than in the past and that's a good sign.

but she said also that people now more than in the past associate mental illness with violence. and that's a really, really terrible thing that's happened. but i do think that -- of course, mental health is covered a lot more now than in the past, but we still have a long way to go, but measuring it is very difficult and we really are working to try to come up with some guidelines. i think that we're getting close. >> right. it's slow, but progress -- progress is being made. >> i think progress is being made in overcoming the stigma and i think that our fellows have something to do with that. >> right, we think so. both of you look terrific.

[laughter] [applause] what is your secret for this? and will you share your diet and exercise tips with all of us in your next book? [laughter] >> i would say that the secret is low expectations. [laughter] people look up and see people already in their 80's and walking in by themselves and they say, well, you look terrific. so there's not much expectation there. but we do, rose is an expert on diet and she makes sure that every day's meals that we have in our house are perfectly balanced with carbohydrates and proteins and so forth and we take a lot of exercise. we have a swimming pool outside our house now that we've had for five or six years, and i swim every day. and rose swims on the days that

she doesn't have to go out and fix her hair and on that day she exercises on some kind of machine and we ride bikes a lot. so we stay in good condition and we've just been blessed with i'd say good companionship that lets both of us get along when we have some trials. we have a good life, mainly thanks to what the carter center has done to restimulate us and to give us a gratifying experience. >> and we stay busy. >> very busy. [applause] >> do you think that health care reform is possible in our country? and, if so, what solutions do you recommend? >> yes, i think that it's possible and i don't think that there's any doubt that this year president obama and the congress will pass some kind of health

this year president obama and congress will pass some kind of health reform legislation. this is a longtime effort. in 1979, i had a complete comprehensive health-care bill approved and financed that would have started in phases. it was very interesting. first of all, we recovery -- would cover every instance of catastrophic health care there was. if you had a catastrophic disease that cost more than a certain percentage of income, the government would pay the difference. secondly, we include every person. at that time, there were only 15 million who were not covered, and we extended coverage to all 50 million. the third thing we did save an awful lot of money. that is that we covered every woman who was in a prenatal state, and we covered the baby's health coverage and the mother's

health coverage for one year. that is all we could do. natal and for the birth and for the mother, and just one year, and our plan was to extend it from then. and it would have passed except at that time we had the full approval of all the committee chairman in the house and senate who publicly endorsed it with me in a press conference, except the key senator and that was senator kennedy. who at that moment had decided to run against me for president and he didn't want to see us have a success so he killed the bill. and so i think that it's still there to be resurrected and i think that there's got to be a lot of squabble back and forth on exactly what you can do to cut down on the insurance companies' independence and make them cover people adequately and we'll extend the coverage to the other 30 million or 40 million people that are not covered but exactly the details on it, i think still has got to be worked

out but i feel sure we'll have some kind of comprehensive health coverage at the end of this year perhaps, if not, the next year. >> didn't your health care reform have catastrophic coverage for everybody? >> that's what i said. it had catastrophic coverage for everybody and everybody was covered but we couldn't get complete comprehensive coverage for everyone except the 1 year olds and the mothers. we had all the money in the bank to do that, the billion, and we were going to add years on as the years went by so if we had just started then in 1979, by now those children would be, what, 30 years older. so, anyway, that was what we had a dream of, but there were a lot of politics back in those days as i'm sure there's not any politics involved now. [laughter] but even with politics -- i would advocate and i've urged

obama through emails to just depend on the democrats and get bills passed and forget about the republicans. i don't think that he's going to get any republican vote. [applause] >> what role should the united states play in advancing universal human rights? >> well, we ought to be in the forefront of human rights advancement. leading the entire world and setting the example that would make all other democracies jealous and encourage the ones who violated human rights to correct their ways. and i think that in addition to that we should use the full resources and influence of the united states to punish the oppressors who take human rights away from their own people. that's what we did back when i was in office and i don't think that anybody doubted that we were playing that role. this was a transforming thing.

i think that it had a lot to do with the downfall of the soviet union but it also had a lot to do with transforming south america. if you would remember that far back, i don't know how many old many of you are, but way over half of the countries in latin america when i became president were dictatorships, chile and argentina and peru and ecuador and paraguay, i could just go down the list, all of them had military dictatorships and now every one of those is a democracy and the reason is they adopted human rights as a prime commitment and built on that to build their own government. before that the democratic and republican presidents were in bed with the dictators because of economic benefits. for instance, if you had a country that produced a lot of tin, like bolivia, or a lot of bananas or grapefruit or pineapple, the corporations in

america would form a partnership and even own the banana groves and so forth so our government would form a partnership with the military dictators to make sure that the corporate profits poured into our country and the ones that contested that were those indigenous people that were deprived of an equal status in their own country and they demanded basic rights and they were stigmatized as communists under the influence of cuba. and it even happened in the catholic church, where liberal theologists were stigmatized by rome because they insisted on the basic rights of the poor people that attended the catholic church. so it was a difficult thing to do, but i think that now that bush has gone out of office and he's quit the deliberate violation of human rights in our country, now we'll see president obama and the congress and the u.s. courts move back toward a

complete commitment so once again the united states, our country, can raise a banner of human rights as an inspiration to every other nation on earth. that's what we need to do. [applause] >> what are your thoughts regarding the recent outburst by representative joe wilson of south carolina during president obama's recent address to the joint session of congress? do you recall a similar event in your political career? >> i'm going to be frank with you all. i think that it's based on racism. there's an inherent -- [applause] there's an inherent feeling in many people in this country that an african american ought not to be president and ought not to be give the same respect as if he

were white. and this has permeated politics ever since i've been involved in it back in the 1960s. not only in the south but also in many places throughout the nation. and the outburst that we see at this, the sign that i saw on television last night, we should bury obama with kennedy, for instance, and obama is a nazi, and obama's picture with hitler's mustache on it, those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate over whether we should have a national program in health care or not, it's deeper than that. and i had a long discussion about this today with brian williams. and i think that's what's

happened, unfortunately, in our country. i believe that it's going to be self-correcting and today as you -- i watched the news this evening, and in the u.s. house of representatives today they condemned joe wilson for having made that kind of a remark to the president of the united states. [applause] we have to remember, we have to remember that this kind of thing goes on in great britain in the debates in the parliament, i've been there and i've seen it. it's very disturbing sometimes, but that's different. you wouldn't hear one of those members of the british parliament saying that about the queen of england who is the head of state. in our country it's different, the president is not only head of the government, but also the head of state, and no matter who he is or how much you disagree with his policies, he ought to be treated with respect in an

official forum like a joint session of the u.s. congress. i think that was a dasteredly thing to do and i believe that it's so bad that it will be corrected by the overwhelming majority of democrats and republicans in the weeks ahead. [applause] >> regarding the center's public health projects, could you explain about how you approach villagers who have a different concept of illness than we do in the united states, in other words, getting sick from spirit loss, versus our biomedical concept of disease? >> there's a lot of distrust. in many villages in africa, for instance, where we have worked so hard for the last 20 years on guinea worm and other diseases, unfortunately, these people have never known success.

rarely in their own lives, and certainly, not brought about by the kindness or the generosity or the honesty of foreign aid workers and when we went into many of the small villages, with don ho hopkins, particularly, ty didn't believe us when we told them the origin of guinea worm. we would tell them that it came from their water hole, they didn't have any other source of water. and they would -- or they would think that it was a sacrilegious thing to say because the carter center representatives were declaring that their sacred water hole was filthy and the source of disease, and they said if it hadn't been for our water hole our ancestors wouldn't have lived, i wouldn't be alive, our village wouldn't exist.

so it's a condemnation of our faith to say that the disease comes out of the water hole. another problem we had was with witch doctors, so-called, who made their living treating guinea worm cases. you can't cure guinea worm once it starts and when the worm comes out of your body it takes about 30 days to do so. and in the past it's been to wrap that worm around a stick or something and put tension on it, not enough to break it, and you might cut that 30 days down to 20 days and, well, they got paid for that, for treating that disease and it was going to take away the source of income. in my best experience they had never seen another case of guinea worm and they've probably forgotten all about guinea worm. so those are the kind of things that you run into. one of the biggest setbacks, for instance, on polio eradication which is now in a stalemate, they're not making any progress

now on polio eradication. the reason is that in one northern part of nigeria, a muslim leader, he was a governor, said that the treatment of polio with the vaccine was a white folk's effort to sterilize the children and to keep the people from having their own religious faith, so they stopped all treatment of polio and now they've tracked polio cases in india by genetic means directly back to that place in nigeria where the polio started all over again. so you run into those kind of ethnic and social and religious problems and what you have to do and what the carter center has been so successful in doing is to build up their confidence in us so they know that if don hopkins says this is the problem that you have and this is what we can do about it with your help and put the responsibility

on them, that they will do it. sometimes we don't do that. the usid program in the last 30 years has changed from workers doing something in a village, in a country, to contracting with american corporations who set up to receive funds and then they provide the services. and you can imagine what small percentage of that actually gets to the people. well, that builds up distrust. and so when a lot of money flows into a country that builds up corruption, those are the things that you have to watch out for and one reason that the carter center has been so successful is that we've adequately understood the life and the ambitions and the hopes and fears and dreams of the people with whom we work in africa and other places. >> and also i think it's because of jimmy's human rights politics when he was in the white house because people think that he cares about them.

[applause] >> the next question is from a 12-year-old. do you have any pets? i have three dogs, a yellow lab and a jack russell and a wheaton terrier. >> first of all, i sympathize with you. [laughter] we don't have any pets now, although in the past we have had a lot of pets, including amy still has five cats in her house, but we don't have any in our house. the reason is we're gone so much. if we could stay home so we could feed a puppy cat and a puppy dog, we probably would. before i went to the white house, ever since i was back home from the navy, i always had two or three trained bird dogs and we generally had a cat to keep down the mice around the house. but when i finally went to the white house i gave away my last

bird dog, i had to put down one, i wrote a poem about it, the best poem in my boom, b book, be way, which is still on sale, but at this point we don't have pets because we're not home enough to take care of them, right? >> yeah. when we got home from the white house we had them. >> amy had cats after we got home from the white house for quite a while and we did too for a while. >> we had dogs. >> then the carter center started taking us away. >> what, if any, reform is occurring related to u.s. elections and will the carter center monitor u.s. elections? [laughter] [applause] >> well, as i've said we have monitored 76 elections around the world. the united states doesn't qualify to have someone at the

carter center monitor the election. we wouldn't dream going to a nation that had laws like america and try to conduct an election. first of all we demandedded there be a central election commission that is basically trusted by all political parties who have full control of the conduct of the election and the counting of the votes afterwards. we have for all practical purposes about 4,000 election commissions in our country because every county has pretty much control over the local voting procedures and so forth. secondly, we don't go into a country unless all the major candidates have about the same access to public news media. and in almost every country in the world it's free. our television and radio organizations, nbc, abc, all of them, they make a lot of money election year by charging candidates and so one of the main reasons we have to raise so

much money is to pay for the right of american candidates who qualify to present their platform to the american people. so there's a lot of things we wouldn't do. after the 2000 debacle in florida where al gore won the election nationwide and also in florida but the supreme court ruled the other way, there was an election commission set up that i headed in partnership with gerald ford. and we made about 85 recommendations and for the first time in american history the u.s. congress interceded in the election process. in the past they have said this is a state's rights. and they passed a major bill called hava, help america vote act, and it transformed a lot of the voting procedures in america. and one of the most memorable is the touch screens of electronic voting and a lot of other things as well, like registration.

and we had many problems in 2004 and president ford was not able to serve but jim baker took his place representing the republicans and i served again. this is a program that was orchestrated by american university as a staff and we made 85 recommendations on that case. one of the recommendations, for instance, is to have a touch screen and a backup paper ballot. so everybody will know when they vote, they can look at the paper ballot and say this is the way i voted and put it in the box and you can count it later. a lot of countries in the world do that, venezuela has done that for five elections but so far they have not touched america's very foul election procedures on a national basis. i would say though that many states, now, i can't give you a number, have adopted the recommendations that jim baker and i made with about 50 other people and they're putting it into effect state-by-state, so there's been substantial

improvements but as far as reforming the american electoral system, no, and it really needs to be done. i'm inclined to overanswer questions and i know that you realized that before you came tonight so i'm not going to apologize. [laughter] >> what is the relationship of the carter center to the center for disease control and when -- when it comes to the eradication of diseases? >> well, the carter center started, you might say, in partnership with ember university on the one hand and the centers for disease control on the other. for a long time i was the head of the carter center, the only one. but then we got a full-time director, it was dr. william fagay who had been the director for the centers for disease control, and so with his dual knowledge and the tie between the two we became very dependent, increasingly dependent on the centers for disease control.

so some of our key people who had become involved, particularly in the health care part of the carter center work, came from the centers for disease control. some of them even served at the carter center and gone back to the c.d.c. and the most notable example of that, in addition to bill fagay, has been don ho hopkins. don hopkins was the expert in the centers for disease control, not only for guinea worm, but also for smallpox. he helped bill fagay to eradicate smallpox and then he had guinea worm, so when the carter center adopted guinea worm as a project, he came over. so it's a good working relationship on an equal basis between these two wonderful organizations. >> that was 1986, 1987, when don hopkins came and he's the head of all of our health programs

now. >> don had been deputy director for the center for disease control before coming to the carter center. so we had strong leadership. i know that you visited bolivia and spoke with president moralees in may of this year. those of us that work in and for bolivia were very hopeful this might lead to an improved diplomatic situation between bolivia and the united states. where are we in that process, and do you see an exchange of ambassadors in the future? >> well, i do see an exchange of a.m ambassadors in the future. this grieves me much that we don't have good working relationships with bolivia. there's no doubt in my mind that when morales was elected, with a clear majority, by the way, one of the first times in history that bolivia has seen that, he came from nowhere, he was the

head of the cocoa producers organization. and he had about 3% in the public opinion polls the first time i went to boliva. i spoke to the congress there. he was a member of the congress, and i had a chance to meet him, and i liked him. and then in the next election he was running for president and the u.s. ambassador went to morales' home district and condemned him and his public opinion jumped up from 3% to 23%. [laughter] and he was almost elected then and in the next election he got the majority. i like morales very much, he's a down-to-earth farmer type, indigenous indian, he knows about peanuts, he's been to my peanut farm. i'm just giving you his highest credentials now. and i think that he's tried to elevate the status of the

formerly deprived people in bolivia, as is going on in many countries around latin america, including el salvador and including, you might say venezuela, and including ecuador, where formerly excluded people have pushed forward and taken over political power. and the power structure, some of them very wonderful people, of being challenged for the first time and the united states government in the past has basically been in bed with the power structure for our own economic and political benefits. and these upstarts are not very popular quite often in the state department. so i hope that morales will be less militant. when we were there last trip we met with him and all of his people and we then went down to the southern part, or kind of the eastern part of bolivia, and met with the five governors who are his major opponents and they represent the power structure

and we spent time with them. they're going to have an election in december, basically between morales who is likely to win but with his opponents having an equal chance to prevail with members in the parliament and so forth, and the biggest problem now is can they get an electronics voting system and voter registration system based on fingerprints in time? the carter center is deeply involved in this. and so i hope and expect that the future will see maybe after the elections full and normal and friendly relationships develop between our two countries it would be to the benefit of bolivia and also our nation. >> and he came to plains and went into the peanut fields and now he's demanding -- not demanding, but he's just insisting that jimmy go to his cocoa fields when he goes back. i don't know how you're going to get away without going. >> well, if my wife can chew cocoa, then i can go to cocoa fields.

[laughter] right? >> of course as president carter visits candidates' fields then he has to visit every candidates' fields, so that could be a very busy trip. [laughter] many countries in africa are still struggling with good governance issues. we hear about the carter center health programs in africa, but what are specifically doing to help the other issues in africa? >> one thing we do is to obviously help with elections. we've held two or three elections in mozambique and two or three in zambia and four elections in ghana and elections in nigeria which were not good at all. and we've done the same in liberia three or four times and been in ethiopia and held legs. so -- elections. and so we have done this in a number of countries to make sure they have democracy and know what democracy means.

for our benevolent programs for health care and agriculture, we work closely with the governments and we have a mechanism that i have explained to you already tonight that we don't send money in and contribute to the potential corruption and i think that we have kind of set an example for them of the proper relationship between the leaders of a nation, quite often who came out of the revolutionary background, they were the ones that overthrew the colonial powers from europe or either the second generation of doing that. and they have no experience really in how to conduct a department or how to collect taxes and account for them. or how to have comprehensive health program, things of this kind. so as we work with them and help them in their stature, there's no doubt that we contribute indirectly, i don't want to exaggerate it, to the evolution of a better system of delivery

and proper services to people under the sometimes despotic leaders. >> and we have access to information. >> i forgot that, it's very important. we have access to information where we encourage countries in africa and to latin america and to china even, to have laws passed that guarantee the citizens access to information that in the past have been kept secret and this has a dramatic impact on reducing the temptation for and the actual adoption of corrupt practices. in the past, for instance, they would just hand out contracts to build roads and highways and schools and airports to their friends and now they have to account and in many increasingly number of countries in our leadership to make this information available to the public, which cuts down on corruption. >> now i was handed a question

that said this is very important from an emory student and is, what do you think that the u.s. position on climate change should be? and how do you feel about the bill that is pending in the senate? >> well, i think that we should go much further and have a director for production. and i think that all of the experts and scientists agree that that's the only way to be efficient in controlling the eruption of carbon and other products of that kind into the atmosphere. the so-called cap and trade system which is working i would say partially in europe, the latest cost is about $20 per ton. in other words, if you reduce your production one ton, then you get paid $20. if and you your power company produces an extra ton, then you

have to pay $20, and that money is transferred back and forth. so it rewards people for cutting down on pollution. when the united states congress in the house passed that bill they reduced the value of a ton of carbon, guess what, zero. so that's the cap and trade system that we now have. it might have some slight benefit, but in general it was kind of abandoned as a a meaningful legislation to control global warming and other pollution in the future. i hope that that will change in the months ahead when we get health care out of the way and so forth and really concentrate on a carbon controlled mechanism that would be meaningful. so the theory is known, it's just a

the theory is known. it is just a matter of oil companies and automobile manufacturers and power companies. they do not want to see any restraint placed on the amount of carbon they produce. >> can you tell us more about situations like the indonesian elections were dozens of people were standing for one seat, and scores of candidates for the presidency. what kind of problems did that impose? >> we were indicted in strangely by a man who became the vice president of indonesia, which is an enormous country, by far the largest muslim country on earth. he had been to visit us in our home, and he had stepped down when the dictator was put in -- put under arrest.

the vice-president moved up and invited the carter center to come in and martyr the election. it was the first in -- first democratic election that indonesia had ever attempted. they had only elected 500 members of parliament. there were 48 different political parties, i remember. it turned out to be a very honest and fair election. and in those 500 members of the parliament had added on to them 200 more people that didn't have an adequate chance to be elected, members of the armed forces and youth groups and womens groups and things of that kind. so it added up to a total of 700 members of the parliament and those 700 voted for the president. five years later, it was very successful though they had to change presidents in between because of various reasons, it takes too long to explain, but then five years later they had another election and the carter center was back there and this time it was a direct election by

the people of their president. and then, as you know, that president has now been re-elected. so i would say that indonesia is well on the way to being a permanent and dependable democracy. it still has some very serious problems with isolated terrorism in some of the islands, for instance, there's a very serious problem of struggle between muslims and christians and persecution, but i feel very good about the future of indonesia, politically and also economically they've come back well. and so that's been one of the -- that's the biggest leg i electin which we've participated and i would say overall the most meaningful to more people. >> well, i want to thank all of you for great questions, unfortunately, we don't have time to cover all of them, but we will take one final question and i'm very interested in the answer. and the question is, what new

initiatives do you and mrs. carter envision for the future? >> well, we're going to continue doing what you tell us in the carter center, of course, and i mentioned earl earlier, i wouldy even in the health field as we have for final achievements by eradicating guinea worm, then the international task force on disease eradication will open up opportunities for us to decide whether or not we should take on another disease as a project for eradication. and measles might be one of those, i won't go into detail about this. so the carter center will keep us involved. i'm going to continue my effort in the middle east trying to work for peace there, for israel and israel's neighbors. we have -- i have taken on an additional task two years ago and then as a member of the

so-called elders, this is about a dozen, you might say, political has beens who have graduated from the political arena but have served in a very responsible way. and that includes nelson mandela and his wife and bishop tutu and kofi annan and me and the former president of brazil, cardoso, and the former president of ireland, mayor robertson, who was the high commissioner on human rights, the former prime minister of norway who headed up the world health organization. that's a group of us who work on things and i'll continue to do that on kind of a part-time basis. and the other thing that rose and i will continue to do as long as we're physically able, it's much more taxing for us physically, and that is to build houses for habitat for humanity. this year we'll go overseas again, we go back and forth

domestic and overseas and i believe that this will be our 26th year and we work a full one week and along with a wide range of volunteers all the way from 3,000 volunteers to 11,000 volunteers, we build from maybe 50 houses to 200 -- i think that the highest number is 293 houses in five days. this year we're going to the meechan river delta area in vietnam and laos and thailand and we're going to go across the border into the shandu area of china where they had the heart horrible earthquake to build a few houses and we will continue do that. and the most challenging opportunity in the future is to raise our family and we now have 11 grandchildren and two great grandsons and this year, including maybe later this week, we'll have three

great-granddaughters born and these are the first girls born in our family in 22 years so we'll have our hands full as you can see in a lot of ways raising three brand-new great-granddaughters all whom i'm sure will compete with each other for the most beautiful clothes and the most attention from their grandparents, at least i hope so, so those are some of the things that we have in the future. [applause] >> well, the mental health program has a primary care initiative that we are launchi g trying to train doctors in the east how to recognize mental illness and when they recognize them who to refer them to. and we're beginning a mental health program in liberia. as for me today, yesterday, i got my book that i've been writing for three years to the

copy editor. i've finished it and so i'm going to relax for a while. i don't have a new personal agenda. i'm kind of through for a little while. [laughter] >> so rose is available for some more -- [laughter] >> thank you so much, we're so grateful to you. >> thank you. [applause] thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> tomorrow, the president of the czech republic talks about

freedom and prosperity in central and eastern europe, 20 years after the fall of the berlin wall. see that live starting at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. the chairman of the federal communications commission announces new rules to bar on so-called net neutrality. his proposals would prevent internet providers from blocking are slowing certain internet traffic. also at that event, the president of skype and the vice- president of horizon. that is tomorrow, starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. next monday night, using the internet to provide health care resources. health central ceo chris schroeder on connecting consumers with information and support. "the communicators" on c-span2. c-span supreme court week is just two weeks away. >> this is the highest court in the land.

the framers created it after studying the great lawgivers in history. and taking a look at what they thought worldwide was important for the judicial branch to do. >> supreme court week, starting october 4 on c-span. go online now for a virtual tour of the court, historic photos, and links or other supreme court sites. >> this morning, president obama appeared on five talk shows, including abc's "this week," and "me depressed." he discussed help -- "meet the press." here is a portion from two of those interviews. >> i think that race is such a volatile issue in this society. always has been.

it becomes hard for people to separate out race being part of the backdrop of american society versus race being a predominant factor in any given debate. when i have said during the campaign, there are some people -- are there some people who do not like me because of my race? i am sure there are. are there some people who vote for me only because of my race? i believe there are some of those two. the overwhelming part of the population is following this debate and trying to figure out, is this going to help me? is this health care going to be better off? there are some who, setting aside the issue of race, actually are more passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right. i think that is probably the biggest driver of some of the

vitriol. it goes beyond taxes. what we are seeing right now is part of their running debate that we saw during fdr, we saw during ronald reagan. anytime there is a president who is proposing the changes that seem to indicate the size of government, that gets everybody's juices flowing. i have said that it is very important that we take into account the concerns of doctors and nurses, who support our efforts, and that is something that does not get noticed much. the people who are most involved in health care system know that it has got to be reform. we have to take into account their concerns about medical malpractice. that is not popular in my party. it never has been. but i have talked to enough doctors to know that even though

it is not the end all and be all of driving down health-care costs, it is important to make sure that costs are going down. there are going to be a whole series of republican ideas, ideas for my opponents during the campaign, that we have inc. and adopted. one of the things i have always said, if this had been easy, it would have been taken care of by teddy roosevelt. >> your not saying to the left that they have to accept malpractice reform or caps on jury awards. you do not even think that contributes to the escalating cost of health care. what are you doing to say to the left, you may not like this, but you have to get on board and we have to do this. >> that you have not been paying attention to what both the left and right have been saying about my speech to congress. i lay down some pretty clear parameters. i said we are going to take down -- we are going to take ideas from both sides.

the bottom line is, the american people cannot afford to stay on the current path. we know that. both sides are going to have to give some. we would not have gotten this far if we had not been pretty insistent, including to folks in my own party, that we have to get past some of these are ideological arguments and make something happen. >> what is the moment in the last eight months were you took a step back and said i am going to have to step up my game? >> it is an interesting question. i do not need to be immodest year, but i do not think i have had that moment with a world leader where i said we have to really tighten things up. i think there have been times where i have said i am going to step up my game in terms of talking to the american people about issues like health care. during this whole health care

debate, there have been times where i have said -- >> you lost control? >> not lost control, but i said to myself, somehow i am not breaking through. that is not so much it. this has been a sufficiently tough, complicated issue, with so many moving parts, that no matter how much i have tried to keep a digestible, it is very hard for people to get their whole arms around. that has been a case where i have been humbled, and i just keep on trying harder, because i really think it is the right thing to do for the country. >> thanks very much for talking with us. >> this is c-span, public affairs