Transcripts For CSPAN2 The 20240704

Speaks about her life and growing up koreanamerican in u dpeen eugene, oregon. And find a full schedule on your Program Guide or watch online anytime at book tv. Org. A Professor Emeritus of history at Mississippi State university. The author of two volumes of history of jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, the first georgia years, 1924 through 1974 and now, jimmy and Rosalynn Carter power and human rights. As i say, he was professor of emeritus at Mississippi State, hes the author of three other books, Ellen Glasgow and the woman within, Christopher Gadson and the american revolution, and confederate colonel and cherokee chief, the life of William Holland thomas. But its the biographies of jimmy and Rosalynn Carter that brings us here tonight and ng theres probably no better person to be in conversation with stanly than steve. He helped research and edit carters bookkeeping faith and really had a hand in every other book that carter has written or projects or classes at emory university. So, sit back, enjoy, its time to learn a lot about president and mrs. Carter. Steve, stanly. Thank you, tony. Thank you, tony, and it is really quite an honor for me to be invited to come here and i appreciate it. I especially appreciate it because i dont know what percentage of my life ive spent in the Research Room here, but i would say pretty close to 30 . [laughter] well, lets start out back in 1987. Thats when the Research Room opened at the Jimmy Carter Library. You werent here for that occasion, but that was the year, i believe, when you decided to work on the carters. What made you decide to take that topic up . Summer of 1987 i was involved in a similar article, religion and politics in western society. I just finished a book and i was just looking around for another topic. Writing a president ial biography was beyond my imagination, but that summer i happened to pick up the newspaper and saw where jimmy carter had attended a writers fair in nashville, tennessee and i wondered what jimmy carter would be doing attending there. And i looked him up and discovered how much he had written and so i thought, well, while im trying to decide what to do next with my life, i will write a little essay about jimmy carter as a writer. So my interest in carter interesting was carter as a writer, not carter as a president. In fact, for the whole 32 years i worked on it, my interest in him remains to a large degree, carter as a writer and he didnt disappoint me because in 1987 he hadnt written very much, but eventually of course, he wrote a lot of stuff. Well, publishing a book on jimmy carter isnt so unusual today, but your decision to write a joint biography of jimmy carter and Rosalyn Carter was and is exceptional. When and why did you make that decision . Well, when i i had a sabbatical beginning august 1990 and thats when i came over to the library because i was already interested in carter as a writer and so i just started looking to see what was available in the library and of course, there was a huge treasure trove of untouched primary materials and i started reading a little bit more about him and i didnt get very far into it before everything i read rosalynn was involved in it. So it occurred to me you cannot write about jimmy carter without writing about rosalynn and also, now, i know all of these years later, you cant write about rosalynn without writing about jimmy carter. Theirs was a unique partnership and almost everything we know today all of these years later and magnificent accomplishments, its a result of that partnership. It was just an unusual partnership. And people asked me, and there was a newspaper review recently, that talks about the influence rosalynn had on jimmy and i dont like the word she had much more than an influence on him, she was involved. She was, so, and i realized that and i thought, well, why not give it a shot. So, thats what i did. Well, thats great. Well, as you say, started coming here to the Jimmy Carter Library in 1990. And i know you came back many times. In fact, id like to see the statistics on this. I believe that he was in the Research Room more than any other researcher. [laughter] ever. Well, tell us how you researched. The two books, the two volumes, not only at the Carter Center, but at other president ial libraries and with interviews of other people, too. First ill talk about my experience at the Carter Library because those were obviously some of the happiest times in my life. I knew nothing about president ial library. I had written several books. I had been in university libraries, i had been library of congress, in other libraries where you just walked in as a researcher and you said, i want to see what you have on thomas, but you cant walk into a president ial library specifically for jimmy carter and say i want to see what you have on jimmy carter. So theres an Orientation Program which i never have forgotten. There werent that many people doing research on him so they pulled out their top gun, second, second top gun interviewed me because they teach you how to use the president ial library so martin was explaining things to me. He was explaining all different kinds of records, executive records, different collections of records and this went on for about an hour. And they usually do this in 10 or 15 minutes, but i was and went on for about an hour and then martin looks up at me and i must have had a blank look on my face and he said, i have no idea what you were going to do when you walked through those doors. And you know, he was remarkably perceptive because i had no idea what i was doing when i walked through those doors. And jody powell, he was close to carter and let me start by looking at the jody powell side and i didnt want to tell martin that i want today see everything they had available for jimmy carter and i did see a lot of it, thats why i was here so much. One time at the end of the year i was looking only had any statistics and i had spent 221 days out of the 365 in atlanta and jeanie used to say that when i used the word home, i wasnt referring to the house we lived in in mississippi. I was talking about the Carter Library. The people were wonderful. So few of them are still out there. So wonderful to see old friends. They were friendly, they were helpful, they became friends, then they became family and then they became support group. I mean, this book probably wouldnt be here had it not been for some of the Staff Members who are so kind and helpful. And i have to mention another researcher. There was one other researcher here on a regular basis when i was, it was carl, who was a professor of economics at georgia tech. And so he and i became fast friends. We referred to the library as our library, because so many times there would be nobody else here. And we corresponded and it was a good situation. I reached a point when it was time for me to come back to the library, wasnt work, you know . I was excited about it, i was ready to get back here. When the first volume was published i was giving a speech and somebody wanted to know what did i enjoy most about the Carter Library. That was one of the easiest questions anybodys ever asked me. I said lunch with the staff. [laughter] we had some very good lunches. And sometimes i would be invited to go along. You would be invited to go along. I was over on the Carter Center side so i wasnt at the Jimmy Carter Library every day, but im glad that i got to know stanly during those early years. Oh, well, we had a mutual friend, i think, here in atlanta. Linda mathews. Oh, yes. And then some others from my ph. D. Days, phil chase and visit and so we had lots of things in common right after that. And you gave a lot of help, too, a little bit later. Steve was the one, he was carters assistant and when i reached the point i wanted to get an interview with carter, of course, you have to go through the proper channels and youve got to get secret Service Clearance and all of that. But steve is the one who really did all of the leg work that made that interview possible, which was in october of 1994. And it included interviews. And ill just mention briefly about other libraries. I learned how president ial libraries work from the here. So when i went to other president ial libraries, and since those were not specifically about jimmy carter, i didnt have to spend years there. The one was the ford library in ann arbor, michigan, most of the records 1976 election were not open here and they were open at the ford library. So, those folks were very good and all of that. The Kennedy Library, they werent very friendly and in fact, the carters and the kennedys didnt get along very well. And jeanie and i went downstairs, you had to check downstairs when you went in an elevator to the Research Room and i told them i was working on a biography of jimmy carter and i really thought they were going to turn me away, but they finally decided, you know, that i was a legitimate person, researcher, so they let us go in and it wasnt terribly long after Jackie Kennedy had died, Jackie Kennedy onassis, and so they finally decided they had a collection of local newspapers on the occasion when carter, carter as president dedicated the Kennedy Library and so they let me see the local newspapers. They were it was a good source because the local newspapers did have information this them that wasnt elsewhere. The bush library, i went several times, george h. W. Bush library. The first time they wouldnt they let me see a bit of stuff, but a lot of the stuff was closed because george w. Bush was governor and then later most of the stuff i wanted to see the bush library did not open until obama became president and im sure there were political reasons, there were political reasons for that. The last time i went to the bush library was as i was wrapping up, to research the socalled october surprise, the idea that the reagan camp had cut a deal with the ayatollah to hold the hostages until after the election and i was told in no Uncertain Terms i would find nothing about that in the bush library. They kept me under surveillance the whole time i was there and i found a lot of information i could use anyway. The last one ill mention is the reagan library, when it first opened, it didnt have much information about carter, but for some reason that i know not what, someone convinced nancy reagan to open the papers on the 1980 election, the election when carter was defeated by reagan and supposedly where the outcome. I dont know that nancy reagan knew what was in the papers someone fooled her because there was a vast collection of papers and most of them were not complimentary of ronnie. So theres a lot of evidencen that election, the reagan people had not been totally honest, but jeanie went with me, and she often did and we had friends in dallas, had lived there and friend would sometimes travel together. One was an attorney and another was a medical doctor, who knew a lot about research. And ill never forget it, the archivist on duty was a young woman named mandy, dont remember the rest of her name and when she saw all the helpers i brought, some of them coming from texas, she teased me for the rest of the time we were there for bringing a posse with me. It was Good Research and they didnt try to hide anything and a lot of papers related to casey, and meese, and the socalled truth squad of that election were available and thats where i got a lot of evidence that i later used to say, as a professional historian, im ready to take the stand the october surprise did take place, even though theres still some things that we would like to know about so ive gone all over the country for president ial libraries. Well, lets talk about some of the themes of the book and the most important one is the relationship between jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and how did it change over the years from your first volume into your second volume and did you see much change while you were writing the second volume . Well, the first volume just goes through his governorship. They both grew up in plains, and as they said. So they had the similar backgrounds except the carters were a prominent family, the smiths were not. And they hardly knew each other because jimmy was older and went off to college and the Naval Academy and all of that. They got married when he had seen her before, but he saw her on the church steps and his sister ruth set up a date and he announced that night to his mother that he was going to marry her. The carters didnt think of course, was good enough to marry jimmy, but anyway, they had the and interesting story about rosalynn, they were out at sea and came back and rosalynn is quiet, shy, but also brilliant and when they took over the peanut business, she was the business manager, and if you really analyzed how that business went from not much income to actually it was a multimillion dollar business by the 1976. So much of it was because of rosalynns work as a business manager. And when he decided to run for the senate in 1962, rosalynn pitched in as well and became an expert campaigner. But in the first book, through the governors time, rosalynn was always very much there, but she wasnt nearly as much in the limelight as when he ran for president and actually when he became president. She was aggressive. She intended to be the first lady. If somebody was going to take her if joan mondale, for example, was standing at the podium. Rosalynn withstand beside her, but pretty soon you would know who was the first lady and who wasnt. Very smart, very aggressive, and of course, the media picked up on that. The media couldnt believe Rosalynn Carter. They couldnt believe this petite woman, very pretty, very soft spoken, they cant believe that she was so smart, that she was so tough, and she was aggressive. She had to be aggressive in the first place because of miss lillian. Because she had to stand up to jimmys mother because shes very powerful and jimmy, of course, helped her do that. But she stood up to jimmy, too. And she didnt really care if the tv cameras were going if she wanted to disagree with him. So she was a very strong person. Very important in the campaign. She had her own issues, mental health, but then other things as well and carter also told the press and others that she was an equal partner. I dont think many people believed it, but once i got into the research, i discovered very quickly that she really was an equal partner and once the presidency was over and they established the Carter Center, they made it their cochairs of the Carter Center. Hes the chairman and she cochairs. They have equal status in the Carter Center. So, she becomes more and more popular, better known. I think this is a place that id like to comment about carters relationship, not in his heart, but in a positive way and with the use of women in his governing and especially in diplomacy. Of course, what was it, six months or less into the presidency went on a solo trip to latin america, and she had the authority of the president. Anything she said had the same authority as if the president himself had said it. But and so carter realized her value and her ability, but if you look at the camp david accord, for example camp david accords took place, and it was her suggestion to do it, but when carter invited them to come do camp david he specifically wanted them to bring their wives. He wanted the wives to be involved. Because that would be a mirror of the way he did the way he did things, but also, he now how hard it was to get any kind of agreement and he believed in personal diplomacy and he thought it would be much better if the wives were there, too. And everything that is written about camp david, god only knows how much has been written about camp david and one of the hardest part of my research, how much to believe, how much not to believe and how much to look at because i only had one lifetime, but when i started looking at the involvement of the women and i stumbled across sadats autobiography about egypt and i promise you nobody can understand the camp david accords if they dont read her autobiography and so we know what went on. He called and said im coming home and she said shall no, carter has been good to you, why dont you stay a while, stay a while longer. And another point i think im talking too long another point, the photographs as we were talking earlier in this huge book, 100 photographs in chronological order, they were chosen very carefully to suit the theme of the book and if you cant bear to think about reading all of those pages, you can always look at the pictures and get a pretty good idea of what the book is call about. And the camp david photographs, one that was published before, but shows Rosalynn Carter and Alicia Biegun at camp david and theres no coincidence that that photograph is in the book because beigun was the hardest person to deal with and his wife was even harder to deal with and rosalynn spent hours and hours and hours with alicia trying to help the agreements finally work. And one last the use of women when in 1994, i guess, when there was a military coup in haiti and carter bill clinton was president and carter goes down there with then colin powell to try to negotiate, try to get the military coup to leave before clinton sent in the troops, and he succeeded in doing that. But what falling through the cracks of history was the role of his wife. Carter wasnt going to go and she called him and she called him and carter said and then carter agreed to go and the rest is history. Can i tell you one little anecdote, when i was in that living room i dont know if im going to time this right, but anyway, an interview you helped to set up, it was in the living room in plains in october much 1994, and ill tell you more details about that later. But i was sitting there, you know, and i sit on the couch. Rosalynn was sitting next to me, carter is about where you are and every once in a while, the telephone would ring and carter would excuse himself and go to the telephone and then he would come back and when he came back, he was red in the face and coughing a little bit and i didnt know what that meant. And then it dawned on me what i was witnessing was an example of the famous carter he had a temper. Hed be angry what he heard on the telephone and he did this several times and rosalynn, being the good wife she was, as well as all the other things she was, had to cover for him and so she just said, the white house has just messed up. And then i realized what was going on. Carter negotiated with the white house, with most of the state department to get the move from haiti to panama, the u. S. Government was suppose today do that and something had gone awry and the move had not taken place and thats what they were dealing with at that time. And being that i had, dawned on me sitting in carters living room, listening to his end of the conversation and perhaps others in the world that know his conversation, but now they will, because i took good notes on it. Thats good. [laughter] well, ill ask you what surprised you during your account, as you researched, what did you learn that surprised you, that you didnt expect it coming . Okay. Thats are tough questions, but the the one word answer to that is virtually everything because i read about that project innocently because any preconceived notions or political opinions, and any i had i got rid of those because i wanted to look the at primary sources first, the elaborate filing system where the filing system first and last. And im an oldfashioned historian. My idea of the best primary source is a written one at the time the event happened. And carter was very helpful for that, he wrote all over the memos and that. And so i wanted to read to those things and come to a conclusion about it other than anything else. And the long answer to your question, even though i lived through the carter era, i think about them, what it happening and what was really going on behind the scenes. And i actually didnt know anything about his partnership with rosalynn, but that jumped out pretty fast and then two other things that i learned that were kind of surprising, i avoided pop psychology, even though i was writing about history, i tried to avoid it, but one thing is took me, i think it was bill that said 10 years to get carter. I was a slow lerner, took me 20, and 12 more to work on it. But one thing that really jumped out was his relationship with his father, mr. Earl. It was all over the place and everything i picked up that he made some reference to his father in almost all of his writings and throughout the rest of his life and then it occurred to me that the real formative parent in his life was not miss lillian, we all new miss lillian. Rosalynn, of course, you cant underestimate her importance, but the model he had and the person he became like is mr. Earl. The turning point in carters life 1953 when mr. Earl died. He leaves the navy comes back home and discovering the things about his father he didnt know. And recalling his earlier year and moves forward from there. And its an extremely important story, and main themes of my book because take the journey and i have to tell you one story about it. He was a highly successful businessman. And he was fairly welltodo, but he was a tough one, his father had, i believe, been murdered and he grew up fatherless and he had a hands on attitude towards rearing his own children, especially his older son, jimmy, whom he nicknamed hot shot. Mr. Earl required hard work, perfection, if you delivered it you just did what you were supposed to do. You werent going to get any reward for it, you just did what you were supposed to do and carter grew up that way because when carter becomes grown, he does that, too. He requires hard work, he requires perfection and thats why you survive because you were perfectly fit to be his assistant, im sure. He requires perfection and if you did it, thats fine, but he wasnt going to pat you on the back. Later in his life he kind of mellowed a little bit, but thats what you were going to do and i love the story that jody powell told. Jody powell was his press secretary and jody powell had a great sense of humor. Jody powell got by with things with carter that other people did not and jody powell once told the story that when he was working in the white house, accomplishing something significant there was like wetting your pants when you were wearing a dark colored suit that you might feel all warm and comfortable, but nobody would ever notice. [laughter] and another one of carters programs here, im sure you owned it, it was the history conference that ken craft, i believe, who worked alt the Carter Campaign had heard that story and hes staying in the same cheap motel that we were staying, and the one were staying in now, and he just laughed and he said, he liked the story and said, you know the apple did not fall far from the tree. Okay. Here is a twopart question, its a tough one. How do you sum up and assess the carters, but also, what do you hope your readers will take away from this volume . Okay. I would sum then up by saying that theirs was truly an unusual partnership. It was an equal partnership and that all of the many things they accomplished as president and in their long postpresidency resulted from that partnership. That many of those things probably would not would not have happened and i would like for the readers the theme of the book to take that away, too. The subtitle of the book is power and human rights. If you look at what carter did as president and postpresident , the focus of everything he did had to do with human rights. Human rights is the umbrella of us under which everything came and carter as president had lots of opportunities to get us into a war. The hostage situation, many other occasions, cold war going up, there were lots of chances he cough gotten us into a war, he did not. And he put the National Security of the nation ahead of human rights. Hed never get the National Security of the nation, but managed to have the skill and patience to work through all of those things in his four years without the u. S. Going to war. Anybody in the position of power at that time would have used the military in a warlike fashion and the tragedy of that is that thats one of the reason hes not a Great American hero. The heroes are the ones who go to war, who lead the nation in war, but he should be a greater american hero, in my opinion, because he did not get the nation into war. And that would be, you know, the main thing id hope that wed take away from it. Before i turn to the audience, you did have a story about an interview or interviews that you wanted to sell. Yeah, ive located the story about the interview with them. There are others, too. And theyre not here for that im sure people out there, i assume so that could get by with it. Took me four years to get the interview and i wanted the interview i asked for the logistics of it part. I wanted to interview the two of them together in their home in plains because i was writing a dual biography, so i wanted to see them together and the place in plains and the south and their lives there from start to finish, so, it finally got set up. I was told when to arrive, when to leave, and i showed up at the gate to the combine compound. My farm background keeps coming up. To the compound and this voice comes on and asks me my name and i told him my name, and so the gate opened. Didnt see anybody, i just drove in. And what it was, that was the secret code for that time. If id done it early or later, it wouldnt have worked and i was slightly early. So i drove in and started walking up to the front door, didnt see anybody and all of a sudden, this guy appears beside me who of course was the secret Service Agent demanding identification making sure i was who i said i was. And i knocked on the door. This very large africanamerican woman opens up the door, turns out that was Mary Fitzpatrick who had been amys nurse and nanny and sat down and jimmy carter showed up. He didnt speak to me. He said, youre early. And of course, i was terrified because i had always heard that if theres an appointment, hes not going to waste his time on you. And i didnt know what would happen if you were early. So i told him, i apologized and told him id be glad to wait until, you know, and he kind of laughed. He was kind of he sat down and then the conversation was going very nicely. And rosalynn showed up about 15 minutes late and of course, we had to i was asking, i had worked out my questions and it was one of the easiest interviews ive ever had because pretty soon i was a lot more at ease than i am now and i was calling him jimmy and rosalynn and they were answering the questions. He liked my questions because i was interested in carter the writer and that was right before he published his and got in on the ground level with the discussion of it and he hadnt been cleared up team upteen dozen times about it. And the hour was up and im getting to read and carter said you dont have to go, you can stay longer because i had to go to the phone. And i had spent days researching the questions, i didnt want to ask him things that people had asked him. I didnt want to waste the time on something i already knew. I wanted to be original and i planned for an hour. And the hour is up and he said you could stay so i started asking more questions except i could tell you i didnt ask the questions carter took the sheet of questions from my hand and read them and started answering them as he went down the list. And didnt want to waste times for me to ask the questions. The beginning of the interview, he wanted to give her a copy of the questions, and go in the other room and answer the questions so that wouldnt waste time. And i said, please, i want you together. And rosalynn started talking about ted kennedy, and i think she loathed and telling me about ted kennedy that jimmy didnt want her to tell and jimmy gives her a stern look, rosalynn, he only has an hour and rosalynn gave him a stern look back and proceed today tell the story. Boy, that was informative about the kind of stuff i was trying to learn. I could give other stories, too, but were way short of time, but anyway, i would get into the second hour and i was running out of questions and he was still letting me visit. And i just want to ask my office and graduate student in the office, and i said, kim, what would you like me to ask jimmy, just joking. And why dont you ask him if willy nelson really smoked dope on the white house roof and i have nothing else to ask him tap. Did willy nelson really smoke on the white house roof and i dont remember what jimmy said, he didnt deny it, but rosalynn spoke up immediately and he said, oh, his wife wrote me a letter apologizing for that. She didnt want that to become a part of the Public Record because passage of times it is wellknown. And just published a book on helping yourself help others, and she was going down to her office when she was on main street, and so she told me i could come down there and get a copy of the book so i did. I had to pay for it, laughter and sat there at the Kitchen Table and just chatting with her. Carters told me i could send him a few more questions if i wanted to, that i could write, some written questions and he said two or three. I sent him 15, and he answered 14 of them and i knew that he remembered. And i didnt want to let the audience ask questions, i could respond to some of that myself. And now, im going to open up to questions, but you have to wait for the microphone to come to you. So anybody in the audience want to ask a question . Or should i ask more . This is your chance. Yes, right up here. What became of politically during the irancontra hearings, i remembering them talking about october surprise and george bushs role in that. Can you Say Something more about what validates the october surprise. Thank you for that question because thats one of the things i researched and researched and put in the book. Its still controversial and controversy generates discussion and question. What happened, ill see if i can sum it up quickly. The iranians still were holding 52 american hostages and carter was trying desperately to get them out without using military force and said he would do it if i had to. And nothing seemed to be working. The republicans were afraid that the democrats would pull an october surprise by getting the hostages out right before the election which would mean that carter would have been reelected. And statistically carter in the polls, carter and reagan were neck and neck. Carter occasionally a little bit ahead. And this is one of the things i know that in great detail in the reagan library, what all they were doing to make certain that carter did not get the hostages out because if he had, reagan the good chance at that reagan would not have would not have won the election. The october surprise very the book from the carter said, but theres lots and lots and lots of other evidence. Theres a recent biography of reagan that hits at it, i think well see it fullblown in reagan biographies after enough time. What they did is they said the republican campaign, william casey, ed meese, they said they went to paris to meet with representatives of the ayatollah to the deal was, if the ayatollah would hold the hostages until after the election and let reagan get elected, then reagan, of course, was going to give him all the money that they wanted, that they needed in their war against iran against iraq. Thats a bit simplistic because there was going on, too. So we know that casey was there. I think that the witnesses that george h. W. Bush, who was then candidate for vicepresident to reagan, was also there. The secret Service Record of where he was on that day is missing. You know, and weve seen some recent examples of how secret Service Records can be missing. And all the proof he and his friends come up to prove that he was not there, it didnt work. The proof that he was there is still not set in concrete. I think credited witnesses that i was hoping for a death bed confession from him and i doubt if he did, that he didnt make it. The only other living present from the american side who was probably there was robert gates. He had a low, low level provision in the cia at the time and he came close to admitting it when he was vetted for whatever, secretary of defense, i guess. But theres lots of evidence that took place and we know now that casey had a meeting in madrid with another representatives of ayatollah. Casey the pages of caseys diary and journal from those days so far is missing. And if we ever find that, i believe, we will because i mean, ive researched so much history, you claim youre never going to find anything, but if somebody keeps looking long enough and its still in existence. Okay, that was and what i didnt put in the book because i didnt want to write a whole book on this subject is some of the low, really low level people in the campaign, one of whom was, whats his name, paul manafort, and his friend were very involved in it and they were involved at a level i cant understand it had to do with foreign money and all of that, they were extremely involved in it and when it was all over, reagan offered those men any position they wanted in his administration. This was published in an article in the Atlantic Monthly and they turned him down because they said oh, they had would make a lot more money doing other things. Refer to the irancontra scandal, the truth of the matter is, thats when it really began and thats when it really began. Because when the bush was trying to get well when reagan was president and the actually the way it was, the scandal came out that was hostages which was illegal, and then they went back to the early part of reagans presidency. Really explained it when George Hw Bush was up for reelection and what he said from 1989 to 93, he didnt get reelected but when he was up for reelection that is when it really exploded because people really dug in to see what had happened and actually, in this book, the chapter is called a surprise in october, really two chapters, the first chapter is part of the 1980 election in the next chapter is part of the 1993 when it really exploded. Also a lot of good information in the footnotes, the back notes. I was so anxious to prove it because i am sure some people take issue with it but i was so anxious to prove it so i wrote a long footnote citing sources and the validity of them and that sort of thing but supposedly the hostages were held when he was no longer president. Theres a story behind the story on that too but you need to have something in the book. There was actually at that moment, someplace in turkey, with the leopards the reagan people had promised. You have a question. Yes. Since you got to know president and mrs. Carter and all their work i am curious, could a 1976 jimmy carter when election to the presidency in 2,024 politics . No. I dont think he would have a chance. American politics has changed so much. Carter, what is interesting about carter is there is only one carter. There is not a new carter or auld carter or new you carter. The times have changed, but carter has not changed and i believe, given the current status of the democratic party, carter would have a really hard time. He would probably be perceived as too liberal. I doubt that he could i doubt that he could. I wish he could. I wish we were young enough and able enough. Question here . And for the mike. Such a good question i dont know if i can follow that. Steve was asking you, over time as you were searching, what changes do you see, it was at least a 32 year process, maybe longer. What changes did you see in your self as a historian and a person . That is a big block of time. She got married and had kids. And of course in 32 years, i had a job, a family, the things that people do, the changes in carter was the partnership, became more solid. You know, over and over. So as a historian, probably only fashioned for that and i think you have seen the wall of filing cabinets and categories, power sources, secondary sources, topics. All of that. I was still collecting lots and lots of material. I didnt know what i was going to do with it but i thought i was going to have it. I didnt know many a lot of determination to detach and based upon what was going on, what the media was going to say. I got discouraged and took time and had my support group at the library, i went to a lot of inspiration for jimmy carter. Sometimes i would think i cant possibly go through all the stuff and write this and then i would tell myself, you know, if jimmy could be president. The time you needed to write the book, but still, questions you wish you could still answer, what question should be left for other scholars to answer . I think i have a lot of stuff. As a historian, what looks like this, this history for the correlation of anybody else, i want people to read it and find topics. One topic i came up with, conversation recently is in the book but if you look at four important women in the story, carter Rosalyn Carter and look at the empress of iran. If you look at those four women and start comparing them, the first thing you will notice is how much they are alike. How much they are alike, with similar interests. Rosalyn had the entrance to the white house. What they were doing and two countries to holdback progress in education and what happens to her . That would be just a magnificent story. But i would say the post presidency, i have 8 chapters of it, the post presidency, there is so much to learn. In the post presidency, at the Carter Center you have the institute for caregivers and those are items to study. It is a huge topic. Lots of space for carter scholarship. I will take prerogative and ask you one final question. If president and mrs. Carter had been able to join us here tonight, what would you say to them . Glad you asked that question. I have a handwritten note and the reason i did that, i really wish they had been here. It would be unlikely they would be physically able. I told them i wish they could be here because we would have somebody in the audience who knew answers to the questions. But i would simply say thank you. I think not only this country but the world owes them a huge debt and will for many generations to come. 1975 jimmy and Rosalynn Carter power and human rights, 19752020, there are copies of both books for sale in the lobby. Stanley will be signing those and a great opportunity to get those especially with the holidays coming up. I think we have all learned a lot more about president and missus carter in the last hour. Lets thank stanley and stephen. [applause] join us in the lobby, thank you all very much. American history tv, saturdays on cspan2, exploring the people in the events that tell the american story. At 6 p. M. Eastern, librarian of Congress Carla Hayden hosts a conversation marking president trumans exec in order 9981 prohibiting just, nation in the us military. Also, President Biden touts a former president s executive order and accomplishments for minorities in the military, up to trumans civil rights symposium. At 9 30 p. M. Eastern, on the presidency, historian hw browns looked at gerald ford in the context of the 1970s, when he served as House Minority leader, Vice President , and then president. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv saturdays on cspan2. And find full schedule on your Program Guide, or watch online anytime, cspan. Org history. 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