A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (28 page)

As a symbolic gesture, I installed thirty-six solar panels at the White House, but they were removed by President Reagan. We have acquired one to be displayed in our presidential museum, and on a recent visit to the largest panel manufacturer in China, I found one displayed in their factory entrance.

Our only major failures resulted from the political necessity to leave options for future administrations to ease the efficiency standards in some important areas, and the oil and automobile industries have been successful in approving the continued production of gas-guzzling trucks and cars and encouraging unlimited use of fossil fuels.

Since then, some countries, but not the United States, have made notable progress in increasing the portion of electricity produced by nonfossil energy: Canada, 64 percent; Spain, 42 percent; Germany and Mexico, 25 percent; China, 18 percent; France and the United Kingdom, 15 percent; the United States, 10 percent. Most of our new energy conservation laws, however, have remained intact, including requirements for home insulation, efficiency of motors and large household appliances, and some government-sponsored efforts to find new sources of energy in the United States that have resulted in a major increase in production and use of natural gas.

I decided that 95 percent of the offshore areas in Alaska would be open for oil exploration, but we left intact a prohibition against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, I failed to include the area in the permanently protected system of national parks or wilderness areas, never dreaming that Reagan and other Republican presidents would make all-out efforts to persuade Congress to reverse my decision. On several occasions during the past thirty years I have worked with environmental groups to convince key members of the House and Senate to prevent this action. The threat to open this pristine area to oil drilling still exists.

Shortly before being inaugurated, I was given a detailed briefing (and for the first time I included the vice president) on what I had to understand concerning a nuclear threat and possible responses. Most Soviet long-range missiles were located in silos, and we had the ability to detect their launch almost immediately. Their flight to Washington would take less than thirty minutes and could not be intercepted, and that was all the time I would have to decide how to respond. Our arsenal was equally formidable, with missiles that could be launched from silos, airplanes, or submarines. The multiple warheads from one submarine could destroy every Soviet city with a population of 100,000 or more. Each side had more than fifteen thousand nuclear weapons in its arsenal, and we both knew that nuclear war would be a global catastrophe. This was a scenario that was constantly on my mind. I wanted to maintain peace and to reduce the world’s nuclear weaponry as near to zero as possible.

During these confrontational times, I was always acutely sensitive to the attitude of Soviet leaders and tried to understand them as well as possible. Zbig Brzezinski made a droll comment that under Lenin the Soviet Union was like a religious revival, under Stalin like a prison, under Khrushchev like a circus, and under Brezhnev like the U.S. Post Office Department. We knew that even our bureaucratic postal officials sometimes
made bad decisions. I would often sit by the globe in the Oval Office, turn it to Moscow, and try to imagine myself in President Brezhnev’s shoes. I knew that he sometimes felt isolated, under duress, and may have been paranoid, and I was careful never to do or say anything that might precipitate a resort to nuclear weapons.

With the threat of a nuclear exchange ever-present, I had to develop plans for my own status during this possible brief period of destruction, and to decide how best to preserve what would be left of America. Working closely and privately with the vice president, national security adviser, and secretary of defense, I decided that I would continue my duties as president and the vice president and a small group of other officials would go quickly to a safer place, from which communications and command could be exercised after the disaster. This would probably be in an airplane already specially equipped for this purpose, and we conducted drills several times to practice this procedure. A substantial portion of the nuclear arsenals survive today, unfortunately and unnecessarily still in a state of readiness for launching.

One of the most frequent questions I’ve had to answer has been, What was the greatest conflict between my religious beliefs and my public duties? The answer has always been “Abortion.” I took an oath to uphold the laws of the United States, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. The
Roe
v. Wade
ruling of 1973 was that during the first trimester of a pregnancy the decision to abort must be left to the mother and her physician. As a Christian, I have never believed that Jesus Christ would approve abortions unless the life of the mother was endangered or the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. As president, I had to uphold the law, but I still did everything possible to minimize the number of abortions.

Studies show clearly that fewer abortions result after family planning education or a prospective mother’s assurance that she and the baby will be economically viable, or that a beneficial adoption will be possible.
I encouraged the availability of sex education and contraceptives and initiated special financial and food assistance for indigent women and their babies, which is known as the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program. We tried to make the procedure for adoption as convenient and natural as possible, with minimum embarrassment for the birth and foster mothers.

In the United States in 2011 there were 13.9 abortions per 1,000 women aged fifteen to forty-four. In some Latin American nations all abortions are legally outlawed and little financial assistance is available. The Latin American and Caribbean region has the highest regional rate of unsafe abortions in the world, at 31 per 1,000 women.

The 1980 election was dominated by the hostages in Iran. During the primaries I remained at the White House whenever possible but went into key states as much as necessary to meet the Democratic challenge from Senator Kennedy. My popularity seemed to vary according to the latest news about the hostages, but eventually I carried thirty-six states and Kennedy, ten, with the other states sending unpledged delegates to the convention. On the stage, when I became the Democratic nominee, Kennedy ostentatiously refused to grasp my hand, and his high level of bitterness prevailed between then and the general election. Ronald Reagan was nominated by the Republicans, defeating George H. W. Bush in forty-four of the forty-eight states that had pledged delegates. I gave my kickoff speech at Warm Springs in Georgia, where Franklin Roosevelt had been treated for polio and died in 1945. I was somewhat disconcerted when Reagan made his introductory speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was well known as the place where three civil rights workers were murdered by Ku Klux Klan members and buried in a dam. His key statement, at least to Southerners, was “I believe in states’ rights.” Although I had swept the region in 1976, Georgia was the only Southern state I won in 1980, along with just five other states. Once again my poll results
fluctuated with the likelihood of American hostages being released, and they dropped during the last week before Election Day. The ultimate irony was that this was the anniversary of the hostages having been taken. Reagan received 50.8 percent of the votes, I got 41 percent, and the independent candidate John Anderson received 6.6 percent, including a substantial number from Democrats who were Kennedy supporters. I accepted the disappointing results with relative equanimity, but Rosalynn was especially grieved and angry. My own feelings were helped by trying to think of some positive things with which to reassure her.

I had wonderful legislative successes during my “lame duck” months before leaving office, getting final congressional approval for the Alaska Lands legislation, major components of my energy package, and the Superfund bill, which prescribed cleanup procedures and funding for toxic waste sites.

One of the happiest moments of my life came just after I was no longer president, when I was informed by my military aide that the plane carrying all our hostages had taken off from the Tehran airport after sitting there loaded and ready since early that morning. Although books have been written about the question, I have never known what caused the Ayatollah to delay granting their freedom until I was out of office.

My time as president was very gratifying to me and my family, and I learned a lot about our country, including its strengths and weaknesses, its aspirations and achievements, and the threats to realizing its inherent greatness. I tried to honor one of my campaign pledges, to make our government “as good and honest and competent as the American people,” and to understand this challenge I paused on occasion to read the U.S. Constitution, and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a simpler but more complete description of the goals to which we were committed.

My two basic objectives were to protect our nation’s security and interests
peacefully and to enhance human rights here and abroad, and these goals were achieved. I faced some unanticipated challenges, especially the Iranian revolution, the taking of our hostages, the Iran-Iraq war, which caused the price of petroleum and worldwide inflation to skyrocket, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. With very few exceptions, I was able to maintain good relations with other peoples around the world. Many of these relationships have deteriorated in recent years.

I was fortunate not to have to ask for special favors from individual supporters or organizations, so I was not bound when elected to appoint particular people to judgeships or diplomatic posts. Headed by Florida’s former governor Reubin Askew, a blue-ribbon committee screened aspirants for each post and gave me a list of five whom they considered to be most qualified. I customarily made my choice from these.

There were many political disputes, some caused by my willingness to enter them voluntarily and others because of mistakes I made. I decided to resolve the long-pending problems of allocating large areas of land in Alaska, concluding a Panama Canal treaty, normalizing diplomatic relations with China, developing a comprehensive energy policy, promoting democracy in Latin America, deregulating major industries, and bringing peace between Israel and Egypt. All of these were controversial. I had gratifying success in working with the Congress but was not able to deal harmoniously with the news media. A serious political mistake was not being more attentive to the Democratic Party, both in preparing it for the 1980 election and in avoiding the schism between my supporters and those of Senator Ted Kennedy. I should have made a better effort to maintain the cooperation that he and I enjoyed during my early months in the White House.

Being governor and president were life-changing experiences. Rosalynn and I had to expand our involvement in the lives of many people, and we developed knowledge and personal relationships that provided a foundation for the many gratifying and enjoyable projects of The Carter Center during the next thirty-five years.

O
ur agricultural supply business and farms were flourishing when I was elected president, and I placed them in a blind trust while I was in office, not permitting my trustee even to give me annual reports. When I was preparing to leave the White House I learned that, because of inept management and three years of severe drought, we had accumulated a very large debt, with no business assets to be used for payment. I was afraid we might lose our farmland and even endanger ownership of our home, but fortunately Archer Daniels Midland Company decided to enter the peanut business and bought Carter’s Warehouse for almost as much as we owed. We retained the farmland on which peanuts, cotton, soybeans, grain, and pine trees still grow. I phased out my duties as an active farmer and have relied on partners or renters who have modern equipment for planting, cultivating, and harvesting the fields. We still enjoy caring for the timberland, while consulting with an expert forester.

One decision I made before leaving Washington was to write a memoir of my presidential years. I examined the voluminous diary notes I had dictated in the Oval Office and found that they comprised twenty-one volumes and more than a million words. I spent my first year reading them and writing about the most significant events. The resulting book,
Keeping Faith,
was a best seller.

When we came home I had no idea what I would do with the rest of my life. I was fifty-six years old, one of the younger survivors of the White House. After we unloaded our belongings in the garage, our first task was to add more storage space in our home. Rosalynn and I decided to put a floor in our large attic, which proved to be quite a challenge because the roof trusses and joists were made of rough lumber and had to be smoothed and leveled as a preliminary step. This kept us busy for the first few weeks, before I bought a word processor and began to write my presidential memoir. It was a far cry from modern computers, but better than my small portable typewriter.

Home in Plains, Christmas
, oil on canvas, painted September 2011.