A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (19 page)

The artists who performed at the White House during my time in office included Beverly Sills, Isaac Stern, André Previn, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, George Shearing, Shirley Verrett, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Frank Sinatra, Leontyne Price, Tom T. Hall, Sarah Caldwell,
the Romeros, André Watts, the Guarneri String Quartet, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Andrés Segovia, the Boston Pops, Willie Nelson, John Denver, Mstislav Rostropovich, Bill Monroe, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Vladimir Horowitz, Dolly Parton, Eubie Blake, and many others. We also had concerts on the South Lawn of the White House and special performances inside. I especially enjoyed recitations by twenty-one of our nation’s most notable poets. Andre Kostelanetz led a full orchestra of military bands in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, with its grand finale of cannons and fireworks.

Whenever appropriate, we joined in the performances, often dancing together and especially enjoying the practice sessions before the formal events. I sang “Salt Peanuts” with Dizzy Gillespie and joined Willie Nelson in either “Georgia on My Mind” or “Amazing Grace.” (He turned the microphone as much as possible toward himself.) I remember during a practice session that Baryshnikov leaped high enough to hit one of the chandeliers in the East Room, and we had to find a lower stage and move it to a different place. Our most memorable event was when Horowitz came to play, fifty years after he first performed at the White House, for Herbert Hoover. He was concerned about harsh reverberations, even after we closed all the curtains, and insisted that nearby carpets be brought in to cover part of the polished wood floor. He was still not pleased, and two of our sons went up to the third floor and brought all three Oriental rugs from the hall to the East Room before he was satisfied. When Rosalynn came in, she saw Horowitz and me on our hands and knees, unrolling the rugs and adjusting them around the piano. The White House photographer missed a notable picture.

We were delighted in 1978 to participate in the initiation of the Kennedy Center Honors program, which has continued since that time. I commented then that the five people chosen would receive recognition but, more important, “come here to honor us and all the people of the world.” The artists named during our three years were Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers, and Arthur Rubinstein in 1978, Aaron Copland, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Fonda, Martha Graham, and Tennessee Williams in 1979, and Leonard Bernstein, James
Cagney, Agnes de Mille, Lynn Fontanne, and Leontyne Price in 1980. Andrés Segovia became a special friend, and when we visited a nightclub in Spain on a later trip, he made a surprise appearance, performing for us and other patrons. Later he gave us a special casting of his hands as they played the classical guitar.

These many events occupied a lot of Rosalynn’s time, but the lives of our family and many others were brightened by knowing these talented people and enjoying their performances.

My religious faith had become a minor issue during the campaign, when I responded “yes” to a reporter’s question, “Are you a born-again Christian?” Some reporters implied that I was having visions or thought I received daily instructions from heaven. My traditional Baptist belief was that there should be strict separation between church and state. I ended the long-standing practice of inviting Billy Graham and other prominent pastors to have services in the White House, and our family assumed the role of normal worshipers in a church of our choice. When I became governor, Rosalynn and I decided to join the Baptist congregation nearest our new home, and this same decision brought us into membership in First Baptist Church, just a few blocks from the White House. Our Sunday school teacher, Fred Gregg, asked me to teach a Bible lesson on occasion, and I decided to do so a few times each year if it could be done without prior notice or publicity. Here is a March 20, 1977, excerpt from my diary:

“I taught Sunday school and broached the idea to the Sunday school . . . class that Baptists and other evangelical groups ought to adopt the same policy that the Mormon Church has: to send large numbers of young men and women volunteers around the world for a year or two of service to the church, working with missionaries. I have an inclination to pursue this more in the future when I have time to put my thoughts together.”

Later, I proposed this to Jimmy Allen, president of the Southern
Baptist Convention, and the idea was adopted in 1978 as Bold Mission Thrust. Unfortunately, it was never fully implemented after the convention became divided over a struggle for power and control between traditional and more conservative leaders.

At Camp David there was no chapel at the time, and worship services were held in a small room normally used for motion pictures. I invited the chaplains at nearby army bases to lead our Sunday services, and they sometimes brought tape recordings of their choirs to augment our voices in singing hymns. We used the same room, rapidly modified, for worship services on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to accommodate the Muslims, Jews, and Christians who were assembled for the Middle East peace talks. A small chapel was built with donated funds while George H. W. Bush was president.

Several of the leaders I met as president were interested in my Christian faith. Except for a summit meeting in London, my first foreign visit in 1977 was to Warsaw, Poland, which was then dominated by the Soviet Union. We were received graciously by First Secretary Edward Gierek, who served as the national leader under his masters in Moscow. After several hours of discussing official issues in the presence of our staffs, he asked if he could speak to me in his private office. He said that he espoused atheism as a Communist, but that his mother was a Christian and had recently visited the Vatican. Then, somewhat ill at ease, he asked me if I could explain the foundations of my Christian faith. He listened as I responded, and then I asked him if he would consider accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior. I had done this hundreds of times as a deacon and in my lay mission work. He replied that he would like to remove this distance with his mother, but he was prohibited from making any public profession of faith. Polish Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła was elected as Pope John Paul II in 1978, and the following year he requested permission to visit Poland. Gierek was warned by Soviet President Brezhnev “not to do something he would regret.” The Pope’s request was granted in June 1979, and Gierek was removed from power. I never knew what his decision was about becoming a Christian before his death in 2001.

Later we went to South Korea, where I first visited a U.S. military base
for discussions with our military leaders and took an early morning run with our troops. After we proceeded to Seoul, I had meetings with some of the most notable human rights heroes in the country and worshiped in one of the world’s largest Baptist churches. I spent the next two days with the head of state, General Park Chung-hee, congratulating him on the economic progress being realized, and then arguing for hours about several other contentious issues, including his avoidance of responsibility for his nation’s military defense and his gross abuse of human rights. These were probably the most unpleasant discussions I ever had with one of our supposed allies, but the atmosphere was somewhat brightened by the presence of his young daughter, Park Geun-hye, who was acting as first lady after her mother had been killed by a North Korean assassin.

When we concluded our official discussions, General Park asked for a private meeting with me and, as had First Secretary Gierek, he wanted to talk about my Christian faith. He said that his wife and some of his children were believers (not all Christian) and had urged him to talk to me. After I made a brief presentation and answered his questions, he requested that I ask one of my Baptist friends to come to the Blue House to explore how he might become a Christian. I did this before leaving South Korea, and I was later informed that the requested meeting occurred. General Park was assassinated the following year. (In February 2013, Ms. Park Geun-hye became president of South Korea.)

I initiated the most significant exchange I had concerning Christianity with a foreign leader. When I normalized diplomatic relations with China, I invited Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping to visit me in January 1979. We and our officials had intense negotiations on dozens of controversial issues that had accumulated during three decades of estrangement between our two nations, and many of the new agreements had to be approved by Deng and me personally. At the end of our official state banquet, the Chinese leader said, “President Carter, you have been very helpful to the Chinese people, and I wonder if there is anything special that we may do for you.” I thought for a few moments and then responded, “Well, when I was a little boy my supreme heroes were Baptist missionaries who served in China, and I used to give five cents a week to help build hospitals and
schools for Chinese children. Since 1949, missionaries, Bibles, and worship have been prohibited in your country, and my request is that these three things be permitted.” Deng seemed to be taken aback by my request and said he would have to wait to make a decision. The next morning, he told me that he could never permit Western missionaries to return to China because they had been critical of native culture and lived in a superior way. However, he would grant my other two wishes.

Rosalynn and I were able to visit China about six months after we left the White House and were delighted to witness the rebirth of Christianity there. We worshiped in a church in Shanghai that had five Anglican priests and learned from them that Bibles were being distributed freely. On one occasion there had been a shortage of the special thin paper normally used in Bibles, and the government had helped to provide their needs. There was established a “three-self” system for Christian churches, meaning self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. The National People’s Congress officially guaranteed freedom of worship with no limit on the location or number of congregations, but each new church is supposed to register with the government. Over the years hundreds of congregations have refused to comply with this ruling, but most of them are ignored by officials unless their pastors or members make public claims or comments that are provocative. I have worshiped in both “three-self” and unregistered “house” churches on my many visits to China, but my multiple requests to Chinese leaders to remove this registration rule have not been honored. The result of Deng Xiaoping’s decision is that China is now the fastest-growing Christian nation, with an unofficial estimate of more than 50 million worshipers, and there are more than a dozen seminaries in the country where new pastors are trained. The basic doctrine of the two types of Chinese churches is the same as in our churches in Plains: a belief in the Trinity; Christ being both human and God; Jesus’ virgin birth, death, and resurrection; and the second coming.

From the start of my presidency I was determined to give access to members of the Congress and leaders in the news media. During my first two years in office, I held forty-one press conferences for the national press corps. Frequently, I had special groups of newspaper editors and publishers, as well as news directors and owners of regional television and radio stations, come to the White House for extended luncheon discussions with me. In May 1978, I added Jerry Rafshoon to my staff and at his suggestion began holding intimate dinners with leading national media figures and, sometimes, their spouses. Rosalynn and I enjoyed these sessions with news media stars, including Walter Cronkite, Carl Rowan, Katharine Graham, and James “Scotty” Reston. Off the record, I would answer all their questions.

My efforts to woo the news media were not successful. A scholarly analysis of presidential news coverage revealed that, overall, I had negative coverage in forty-six of the forty-eight months that I served—the only exception being the first two months, including when my family and I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue. This was a problem we could never understand or resolve but we just decided to accommodate what we couldn’t correct. Some of the most influential analysts never anticipated my election, and others could not accept having a governor from the Deep South in office. There was a running debate about whether I was a liberal or a conservative, with the conclusion that I was being devious about my basic philosophy. Also, a negative attitude toward the presidency carried over from the Watergate revelations about President Nixon, with perhaps a suspicion that we too had something unsavory to hide. We remember most vividly that
The Washington Post
had a full page of derisive cartoons showing me, my mother, and other members of our family with straw coming out of our ears, frequenting outdoor privies, and associating with pigs. At the end of my term, one of the most prominent columnists wrote that finally the Reagans would “restore grace to the White House.” One of my top advisers, Charles Kirbo, referred to my pledge never to lie as throwing down a red flag. He said, “We just lost the liar vote.”

Throughout my term we arranged private meetings with all Democratic and Republican congressional members and individually with senior members of the key committees. During the first two years I had broad congressional support among Democrats, and Senator Ted Kennedy was especially helpful. This changed dramatically late in 1978, when he decided to run for president. He became one of my most persistent opponents, seemingly determined to minimize my achievements. Kennedy recruited a number of the more liberal Democrats to support him.

The most memorable occasion of Kennedy’s opposition to my proposals came in 1979, concerning our national health plan, which was the result of months of work by my cabinet officers, economic advisers, White House staff, and congressional leaders. Except for Kennedy, we had full support from chairmen of the six key committees in the House and Senate, and all six had been involved in its preparation. Our plan protected all Americans from catastrophic illness costs; extended comprehensive health coverage to all low-income citizens; gave total coverage to all mothers and babies for prenatal, delivery, postnatal, and infant care; promoted competition and cost containment; and provided a clear framework for phasing in a universal, comprehensive national health plan. Its total startup costs were included in my annual budget proposal, and it was to be fully implemented over a period of four years, with funding assured. Senator Kennedy had his own preferred plan, which was so expensive that there was no prospect of congressional support, but his committee members participated with us until the week of announcement, when he decided to oppose the legislation. Kennedy’s opposition to our plan proved fatal; his was a powerful voice, and he and his supporters were able to block its passage. We lost a good chance to provide comprehensive national health care, and another thirty years would pass before such an opportunity came again, with just partial implementation.