- We ask our government to do things
that other folks don't wanna do,
because you can't make money at it,
because it's not profitable.
And so we want government to help make sure
that kids get opportunity.
- Sure. - And they have to reach
the toughest-to-reach kids,
the kids that the private schools generally screen out.
We wanna make sure that we are serving our veterans,
including the oldest, poorest veterans.
- [Jon] Mm-hmm.
- There's not a lotta money in doing that.
And so a lotta times, people will say,
"Well, why isn't this happening as quick, as fast?"
- [Jon] Right.
- If we're under-resourcing our government,
and not staffing it the way it needs to be
to do everything that's done,
then we shouldn't be surprised
that there are gonna be gaps.
When I came into office,
my measure was, can we make stuff a lot better
than it has been?
And it is a lot better. - Don't let perfect
be the enemy of good.
- You know, well, part of the problem is,
I think that, you know, we have a tendency to,
I'll give you an example.
When there was that problem with the IRS,
everybody jumped, including you.
- What happened with the IRS?
- Look, look. (audience laughs)
You got this back office
and they're going after the Tea Party.
Well, it turned out, no,
Congress had passed a crummy law
that didn't give people guidance
in terms of what it was they were trying to do.
They did it poorly and stupidly.
But that becomes.
(audience laughs)
But, but, but-
- You really do have only a year left.
- But, I know- - That's unbelievable.
(audience laughs) - But-
- You're throwin' it out there.
- No, no, but hold on, Jon, this is important.
But the truth of the matter is,
is that there was not some big conspiracy there.
They were trying to sort out these conflicting demands.
You don't want all this money
pouring through not-for-profits,
but you also wanna make sure
that everybody's being treated fairly.
- Right. - Now, the real scandal
around the IRS right now is,
is that it has been so poorly funded
that they can't go after these-
- But that's recent as well. - They cannot go after
these folks who are deliberately avoiding tax payments.
And the real scandal is a tax code
where multinationals can pay zero taxes,
making massive profits.
So we tend to get distracted by the fact
that there are going to be elements,
because government is a human enterprise,
where somebody somewhere is screwing up at any given time,
because it's a huge system.
Overall, it works really well to help a lotta people.
What is scandalous is the fact
that we are not making as much progress as we should
on the basic things that we know government should be doing.
Rebuilding our infrastructure.
- [Jon] Right.
- Rebuilding our roads, rebuilding our ports,
setting up a smarter system for distributing energy.
- Right. - Making sure that
we're investing in early childhood education.
And so you're absolutely right that part of my job
for the last seven years,
and part of my job over these last,
this last year coming up,
is to continually improve and make sure the government
is functioning as well as it could.
But you can't use that as an excuse
for the big structural problems
that we're facing right now that are not being addressed.
Typically, those have to do with the fact
that the political system is broken
as opposed to because that government-
That's- - Can't work properly.
- See, that's what I want to get to
is that vision of what 21st century government looks like,
outside of the politicization of it.
How do you govern, and do the services
that you're talking about,
whilst being in that situation?
And if it's four guys in a T-shirt,
isn't there an executive action
that can cut through- - There is,
so here's what we did.
- Yes, you're the commander-in-chief.
- After the Healthcare.gov fiasco,
we brought in an entire team of guys,
basically volunteering their own time,
from Google, Facebook.
- [Jon] Right.
- Guys in T-shirts.
(audience laughs)
They're not wearing T-shirts now.
They are dressing up a little bit,
(audience laughs)
although not that well.
(audience laughs)
- [Jon] Understood.
- And we have created what we're calling
the U.S. Digital Services,
and we're basically getting guys
to rotate in for a year or two years,
and we're just putting them on
a whole bunch of these problems,
whether it's how do we make an an SBA loan easier to get,
how do we make sure that, you know,
this agency is more customer friendly,
how do we make sure that people can go to one website
instead of 16 to find out the information they need?
So these guys are spreading out throughout the government,
and they are in fact,
systematically chipping away at a lot of these problems.
And I think we will be, by the time I leave here,
we're gonna be able to say
that government is working much better-
- [Jon] Right.
- Much more efficiently, much more customer-friendly
than when I came into office-
- It's interesting though. - But-
It frustrates you, 'cause I can tell.
- Yes.
- We're talking, you're having a nice time.
- Yeah. - You're talking about
the Iran deal.
When we talk about things
that don't work- - It's frustrating.
- I think it's frustrating to you.
- Of course.
- Because you feel like it's,
we're amplifying things out of proportion.
And I might agree with that-
- And that is true- - On certain issues.
- And that is absolutely true,
that we are. - Yes.
- Because-
- Well, the VA though, I would-
- Well, no, no, no, no- - Take an exception to.
- Well, look, the- - Yeah.
- The issue with the VA is every single,
if there's one veteran
who's not getting the services they need-
- [Jon] Right.
- Then we're failing that veteran,
and that's absolutely critical.
But let's take something
like homelessness among veterans.
So we've cut that by a third. - No question.
- Now I've still got two-thirds of these folks
that we've gotta make sure have proper housing
because if they fought for us,
they should be able to find a home here in
the United States of America. - Sure.
(audience cheers)
- And, but this goes to-
- Yeah.
- But, this goes to the larger point.
You asked me how I'm doing
and how am I feeling and senioritis and, you know,
am I feeling pretty good right now?
One of the things I'm proud of,
and this is not just me, this is our entire team.
- [Jon] Right.
- Is we have looked at a whole slew of problems
when we came into office, and we've said,
where can we advance the ball down the field
each and every time in, across the board?
And we don't score a touchdown every time,
but we move the ball forward.
- Do you feel like you've hit the metrics
that you wanted to hit, even within-
- You're always gonna fall short
because if you're hitting your marks,
that means you didn't- - Right.
- Set 'em high enough, right?
So on healthcare-
- Am I being unreasonable to you?
Am I being unfair, in suggesting that,
in this one instance-
- Yeah.
- Government failed to address a problem
in an appropriate timeframe, failed to do it-
- I think you are being entirely fair,
that the VA has not done what it needs to do
in terms of our veterans.
- Okay.
- That is something that built up over 50 years.
And the question then becomes-
- [Jon] Whose fault is it? (laughs)
- No, I don't, no, no, no, no, no.
(audience laughs) - I thought that
was the question. - No, the question is,
how do we set the right benchmarks
so that we know we're making progress
and we're moving in the right direction?
(lively upbeat music)
- My guest tonight, the 39th President of the United States,
who is also a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
His latest book is called "Our Endangered Values,
America's Moral Crisis."
Please welcome to the program,
President Jimmy Carter, sir?
(rousing house band music) (audience cheers)
- Thank you, sir.
Nice to see you.
How are you?
- Great.
- Nice to see you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you for being with us.
- It's my pleasure. - Thank you!
- The book is called "Our Endangered Values."
It is your 20th book.
- Absolutely.
- You have been traveling the world,
monitoring international elections,
doing wonderful missionary work, building homes.
Sir, I ask you this.
Why are you busier, why do you work harder
than our actual president?
(audience cheers) (audience members applauding)
- Well, one reason is that although
I have been governor of Georgia,
I have been president of the United States,
I have won a Nobel Peace Prize,
I have 11 grandchildren,
and they don't think I'll be a success in life
until I've been on "The Daily Show,"
and if I was president,
(audience cheers)
and if I was president, I couldn't be here.
- I understand, sir, and that's what this show is for.
(audience laughs)
To give kids like you a break.
(audience laughs) - (laughs) Thank you.
- We're here to help you out.
- All right, thank you for that.
- How did a Southern Baptist,
conservative really person become the nemesis
of the right in this country?
You, there's a certain segment of the country
that demonizes Jimmy Carter.
- It's a very small segment.
- A very small segment. (audience laughs)
- Well, I told the truth,
and this book has now been out about six weeks.
Nobody's found anything wrong with it.
It points out, I think in very vivid terms,
it's still on sale.
(Jon laughs) (audience laughs)
That-
- Yes, it is, and by the way,
a lovely Christmas gift this would make.
(audience laughs) - Absolutely.
And there have been dramatic
and unprecedented basic changes in America's policies
that are deeply concerning to me.
It's not Democratic versus Republican.
It's not liberal versus conservative.
These are radical changes compared to what was done
in all previous administrations,
including George Bush Senior and Dwight Eisenhower
and Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan,
and all the Democratic presidents as well.
These are radical changes,
and that's what I thought I'd devote my time here.
It's my first book that's been about political issues.
- A lot of the changes you pegged
to the rise of fundamentalism,
not just in this country- - Yeah.
- But around the world over the past-
- That's true. - 30 years,
beginning with the hostage crisis in Iran.
- That's true, in religion and in politics.
And lately what's been of great concern,
in addition to what I've already said,
is the merger of the two,
the merger of religion and politics,
because I happen to be a Christian,
and I think that my religion teaches me
that you should render under Caesar
the things that are Caesar's,
unto God the things that are God.
And Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers,
said that we should build a wall
between the church and state.
That wall is being deliberately and ostentatiously,
not secretly, broken down.
So there's been an increasing merger in this country
of fundamentalism on the religious side,
fundamentalism on the political side,
and the two have come together.
- Do you have a sense in your mind,
why that hasn't been stopped by the electoral process?
'Cause there is, I see it everywhere,
concern over that type of extremism
infiltrating itself into the government or these things.
But every election cycle that comes around
doesn't seem to reflect that dissatisfaction.
- Well, as a matter of fact, in the year 2000,
I think the Democrats won.
(Jon laughs) (audience cheers)
- So it did, so it did reflect that.
- Yeah, and in 2004, the results of election
were predictably distorted,
because about nine or 10% of the American people
will tell you today
that they vote for the incumbent president,
even if they don't agree with him or his policies,
as long as he is the commander-in-chief
of our young men and women overseas
with their lives in danger.
So there's a tremendous effect
of patriotism in this country,
and I think that patriotic incarnation
was strongly savaged,
but also very greatly utilized
by the Republican side.
- And that changes the politics of it.
(rousing uptempo music)
Along with obviously the global initiatives,
there's also your role as Batman.
(audience laughs)
Recently you flew to North Korea,
and basically went behind enemy lines
to retrieve two journalists.
How did that come about?
And I think we have a still of, they have.
(audience laughs)
Your, the look.
(audience laughs)
But here's what's so great about that is,
it's almost as though in your mind
you were thinking to yourself like,
the look on your face,
"I can't believe I'm sitting next to this guy.
This guy is," what was going on?
What are the negotiations like with a Kim Jong Il,
with someone who is,
I don't want to say insane, but,
(audience laughs)
a crazy person?
(audience laughs)
How do you-
- Well, actually, if you go back to that picture-
- [Jon] Yeah.
(audience laughs)
- [Bill] You guys, you remember
the second "James Bond" movie starring Pierce Brosnan?
- [Jon] Sure. (audience laughs)
- [Bill] Where the bad guy was a North Korean
who had plastic surgery
and looks just like an English lord?
Well, I was auditioning for a sequel there.
(Jon laughs) (audience laughs)
It looks like,
I looked like I'm in the government.
Actually, here was the deal.
I undertook a humanitarian mission
at the request of the family
after the North Koreans said
that they would like to receive me.
I had no authority to negotiate for the government,
but I knew what my government's positions were
and I'd done a whole lotta work on North Korea,
so I was honored to go.
The trick was, to do it in a dignified way
that was not in any way insulting to the North Koreans,
but that didn't look like this was a walk in the park
where everything's hunky dory and it was just fine
that these young women got sentenced to 12 years
for stepping across a river.
- And your face was purposeful,
your expressions were purposeful.
- Yes, what I was trying to do is not smile and not scowl.
(audience laughs)
I was, I was sorta trying to look like an empty suit.
- I wanted, I'll tell you what I wanted.
I wanted you to go in there like Liam Neeson in "Taken,"
and just jump in there
and start just body count, just everywhere.
(audience laughs)
Just you in North Korea just grabbing people,
just would've been such an awesome scene.
- Yeah.
- You also recently had lunch with Barack Obama.
- I did. - You guys sat down,
and I assume he wanted to talk healthcare a little bit.
He wanted to maybe,
what's that type of meeting like now,
and what's the expression
that you have to put on your face
for that meeting? (audience laughs)
- Well, you know, we only have one president at a time,
so I put on whatever expression he thinks I should.
(Jon laughs) (audience laughs)
I take it.
(audience applauds) And besides, you know,
given Hillary's job,
I think you should always suck up to the boss.
(audience laughs)
And the younger you,
to heck with this Ben Cannon business.
Suck up to the boss.
- Yes.
- No, actually, I was first, honored that he called
and wanted to have lunch.
And he was down on Wall Street,
so we ate down there.
We ate at Il Mulino, had a wonderful meeting, and-
- [Jon] Who paid?
- We split it.
I didn't know we split it.
I intended to treat,
but I read in a paper that we split it
and the press is never wrong,
so I'm sure that's right. (audience laughs)
But I did my best to be helpful to him, and-
- Was it hard not to, to give a little poke,
give a little thing, because Obama now, he says,
"Well, in health insurance,
maybe there should be an individual mandate."
It was something that Hillary had said during the campaign.
He had come out against that.
Now he's saying it's a good thing.
You sit at lunch and lean in, you go,
"Yeah, that individual mandate,
eh, looking good now, ain't it?
(audience laughs)
Yeah, lookin' good, ain't it?"
- I, no, you know, I don't.
I ran in too many elections
to know that you do, you get in these elections
and you have to highlight the differences,
and minimize the commonality.
Otherwise, how will people make a choice?
- [Jon] Right.
- And what you have to do when you're running,
so you can feel good about yourself,
is to at least believe in the differences
that you highlight.
But then after an election,
there are always circumstances,
particularly if you become president,
where circumstances take over,
and then the job becomes a constant contest
between doing what you pledged to do when you ran,
without which you will feel
like you let the American people,
and especially people who voted for you down,
and responding to incoming fire.
- You think he's got a shot with healthcare?
You think it's something
he will be able to accomplish?
- I have always believed from the night of the election,
before the election,
that he would pass healthcare.
I also believe that the circumstances today
are just what they were 15 years ago,
except all the indicators are worse.
That is, we spend now 50% more than any other country,
yet we're the only wealthy country
that doesn't insure everybody,
and we don't have better health outcomes
than most upper income countries.
Some of it- - Our economic situation now
is seemingly much more dire.
- Yes.
- Which is a complicating factor.
- It complicates it.
The only thing that's harder for him than me
is that his, this economy's even worse,
and people saw me trying to bring the deficit down
and go into a balanced budget,
and they think, "Gosh, we already got this problem-"
- Right.
- "What's the deal?"
But keep in mind,
we can save money if we do healthcare right.
- [Jon] Right.
- We can save money.
We're already spending 16% of our income on healthcare.
No one else is spending more than 10-and-a-half.
That's Canada.
That's eight or $900 billion we're spending
that we wouldn't be spending
if we had any other country's system,
and yet we don't get better health outcomes for it
and we don't cover everyone.
So what we have to do is find a way to cover everyone,
to make everybody who already has health insurance
have secure insurance, and to cut the outside costs.
'Cause what happens is, if,
let's say one of these young people out here
doesn't have health insurance,
they'll still get healthcare,
but it'll be too late, too expensive in the emergency room,
and then their costs will be passed along to everybody else,
which is why young people
have supported President Obama's call,
even though they'll be subject
to the individual mandate more than anybody else.
- Right.
- The important thing is to keep stumbling
in the right direction.
Will he prevail this time?
I think so.
It's time, we gotta do it.
(audience cheers) Thank you.
- President Bill Clinton.
(rousing uptempo music)