In 1962 you entered the Georgia State Senate, what made you decide to suddenly go into politics?
At that time I was Chairman of a local school board, some-county school board
and the politicians in Georgia were very conservative and they were saying 'No not one'
which meant that if a black child entered a white classroom
that they would shut down the entire public school system
So in a very naive way I decided that I would run for senate to try to protect the local
school, the public school system.
In 1966 Jimmy Carter lost his first race to become Governor of Georgia.
However in the next election he was victorious and entered the Governor's mansion in Atlanta
on January 12, 1971
On December 12, 1974 Jimmy Carter announced he would run for President with a promise
of truth in government in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
After a two year hard fought campaign he defeated Gerald Ford
AND on November the 2, 1976
this onetime rural farmer from Plains, Georgia was elected the 39th President of the United
States.
As the 39th President of the United States, what do you feel were your greatest successes?
Well I kept our country at peace, which has happened very rarely since the second world
war
And I tried to work for peace between other people who were not directly related to the
United States
like between Egypt and Israel
I normalised diplomatic relations with China.
And I implemented a very strong human rights commitment that brought about a change throughout
Latin America for instance
from totalitarian military dictatorships to democracies
So I would say the promotion of peace and human rights were the two things
that er, which I'm most proud.
And we had a very wonderful environmental record at that time.
We kind of foresaw, may be 30 or 40 years before it became a crisis
that we needed to conserve energy and have alternate sources of energy,
cut down on our waste of carbon and other fuels of that kind to protect the
environment. So those are the 3 things that I think of right off hand
It was in 1978 that President Carter brought together Prime Minister Menachem Begin of
Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt
to Camp David to put an end to three decades of war
Despite days of hard negotiations brokered by President Carter the peace deal seemed
set for failure.
I believe you saved the peace agreement at Camp David when you went to Prime Minister
Begin quarters and gave him signed photographs for his grandchildren...
The peace agreement that I was trying to negotiate had broken down.
We were in our 13th day at Camp David and I decided that it was over because
Prime Minister Begin was so adamant about not removing his Israeli settlements from
Egyptian territory.
And so, I had given up, my wife had gone back to Washington to prepare for our return to
Washington in, in defeat, or failure.
And I, Begin asked me for a signed photograph of me and him and Sadat to each one of his
8 grandchildren.
So instead of just saying best wishes Jimmy Carter, I got my secretary to get their names
and I put 'with love and best wishes to'
and I put his names of his grandchildren.
And when he got the photographs, he was quite angry with me at the time
he just said 'thank you Mr President' and turned around and he began to read,
and he called out the name of his first grandchild,
and then he called out the name of his second grandchild
and he had tears running down his cheeks and and so did I
and then he said in effect why don't we try one more time
and so we tried one more time and we were successful.