Gaby Wood: Getting Jimmy Carter
[Wood interviewed Carter just before he ridiculed the Bush administration as the worst in history.]
... Is Carter a valiant truth-teller, or a dangerous loose cannon? Conservatives this past week have been happy to embrace the latter view. The New Republic's editor-in-chief, Marty Peretz, said when Carter's Palestine book was published in the US late last year that the former president, who famously brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s, would 'go down in history as a Jew-hater'. Last week he added that 'besides his other sins Carter is a downright liar'. Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, said that 'worst in history' was 'a title for which [Carter] has himself been actively contending since 1976'. Thus, an unlikely side-effect of Carter's comments was that Peretz and Hitchens, sworn enemies for a quarter of a century, were suddenly united. 'Carter brought together [Egyptian president Anwar] Sadat and [Israeli prime mister Menachem] Begin,' Carter's former speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg told me, speaking of the Camp David Accords of 1978, 'and now he's brought together Hitchens and Peretz - you can't say he didn't deserve his Nobel Peace Prize.'
To his supporters, the only surprise was that in a television interview the following Monday, Carter attempted to retract some of his statement, appearing to regret breaking an unspoken rule - that past presidents do not insult current incumbents. 'I thought he was holding back,' Carter's former communications director Jerry Rafshoon told me later. 'Just foreign policy? How about domestic policy? How about everything? There's a misconception that ex-presidents aren't supposed to talk about a current administration. But he's been out of office almost 30 years, and he thinks the country is being hurt by this president: why should he hold back? I mean, what is the statute of limitations on keeping your mouth shut?'
Contrary to what his opponents would have us believe, Carter did not seem when I met him like a man who was losing his marbles. He was wry, precise, quick to smile, candid and easy in his demeanour. Indeed, a story has been going round the Carter Centre about his phenomenally good health. A recent intern was told that Carter would answer questions during his morning jog. The intern was not a runner, but calculating that she could hardly fail to keep up with an 82- year-old, met him at the appointed time. Carter dashed off. The breathless intern was still struggling to catch up when a secret service detail rolled up behind and grunted: 'Just get in the car!'
At times he can come across as perhaps intentionally innocent. There are echoes of the method used by the great TV detective Columbo in Carter's account of his first meeting with Yasser Arafat in 1990, when he asks Arafat what are the 'purposes' of the PLO, and Arafat, dumbfounded, hands Carter a pamphlet. Hertzberg describes this effect as 'creatively naive', and recalls that Carter often asked this kind of 'back-to-first-principles question'. 'Early in his administration he asked why we had so many nuclear weapons. You know: "Why do we need more than a couple of hundred? Isn't that enough to totally destroy the Soviet Union and everyone else?" It was a very good question.'...
Read entire article at Observer
... Is Carter a valiant truth-teller, or a dangerous loose cannon? Conservatives this past week have been happy to embrace the latter view. The New Republic's editor-in-chief, Marty Peretz, said when Carter's Palestine book was published in the US late last year that the former president, who famously brokered a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s, would 'go down in history as a Jew-hater'. Last week he added that 'besides his other sins Carter is a downright liar'. Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, said that 'worst in history' was 'a title for which [Carter] has himself been actively contending since 1976'. Thus, an unlikely side-effect of Carter's comments was that Peretz and Hitchens, sworn enemies for a quarter of a century, were suddenly united. 'Carter brought together [Egyptian president Anwar] Sadat and [Israeli prime mister Menachem] Begin,' Carter's former speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg told me, speaking of the Camp David Accords of 1978, 'and now he's brought together Hitchens and Peretz - you can't say he didn't deserve his Nobel Peace Prize.'
To his supporters, the only surprise was that in a television interview the following Monday, Carter attempted to retract some of his statement, appearing to regret breaking an unspoken rule - that past presidents do not insult current incumbents. 'I thought he was holding back,' Carter's former communications director Jerry Rafshoon told me later. 'Just foreign policy? How about domestic policy? How about everything? There's a misconception that ex-presidents aren't supposed to talk about a current administration. But he's been out of office almost 30 years, and he thinks the country is being hurt by this president: why should he hold back? I mean, what is the statute of limitations on keeping your mouth shut?'
Contrary to what his opponents would have us believe, Carter did not seem when I met him like a man who was losing his marbles. He was wry, precise, quick to smile, candid and easy in his demeanour. Indeed, a story has been going round the Carter Centre about his phenomenally good health. A recent intern was told that Carter would answer questions during his morning jog. The intern was not a runner, but calculating that she could hardly fail to keep up with an 82- year-old, met him at the appointed time. Carter dashed off. The breathless intern was still struggling to catch up when a secret service detail rolled up behind and grunted: 'Just get in the car!'
At times he can come across as perhaps intentionally innocent. There are echoes of the method used by the great TV detective Columbo in Carter's account of his first meeting with Yasser Arafat in 1990, when he asks Arafat what are the 'purposes' of the PLO, and Arafat, dumbfounded, hands Carter a pamphlet. Hertzberg describes this effect as 'creatively naive', and recalls that Carter often asked this kind of 'back-to-first-principles question'. 'Early in his administration he asked why we had so many nuclear weapons. You know: "Why do we need more than a couple of hundred? Isn't that enough to totally destroy the Soviet Union and everyone else?" It was a very good question.'...