(calming music) - Coming up next on this special edition of "Arizona Horizon", in memory of former President Jimmy Carter, we'll replay, in its entirety, an interview we conducted with President Carter when he last visited the Arizona PBS studios in 2015.

Our look back at President Jimmy Carter next on the special edition of "Arizona Horizon".

- [Announcer] This hour of local news is made possible by contributions from the friends of PBS, members of your PBS station.

Thank you.

- Good evening, and welcome to this special edition of "Arizona Horizon".

I'm Ted Simons.

Tonight's show was a look back at an interview we conducted with former President Jimmy Carter when he stopped by the Arizona PBS studios and agreed to talk to us about himself, his career, and his new book, which was titled "A Full Life: Reflections at 90".

Here now in its entirety is our conversation with the late former president.

Welcome to "Arizona Horizon".

- Well, it's good to be with you and people all around Arizona right here.

- Oh, it's great to have you.

Speaking of Arizona, thoughts, memories, experiences in Arizona?

- Well, just a beautiful state and I campaigned here and in 49 other states as a matter of fact, and I had fairly good support here during the primary.

In the general election, I would say that President Ford carried most of the states west of the Mississippi, and I carried almost all of them east of the Mississippi, and I came out a little bit ahead.

- Yeah, you did.

As far as the book is concerned, now, you've written a lot of books, you've written a number of them, and much of what's in this book has been touched on in some way, shape, or form in the previous efforts.

How does this book differ from the others?

- Well, this is my 29th book, and I covered things in this book that I haven't really done before, why I decided to run for president, for instance, my life in the Navy, the relationship that I had with former presidents, and ones that served after me, the things that I was able to accomplish and resolve fully when I was president, and things that I had to postpone for others to address, those kind of things, my relationships with my wife early on, some of the major lessons I've learned in life in sometimes the hard way, which may be helpful to other people that read the book, so a lot of things in there that I've never written before.

- And indeed, in "Reflections at 90" memories, what memories do you find, at this stage, do you find that you enjoy most?

- The most enjoyable part of my life has been since I left the White House.

Of course, it was great to be president of the greatest country in the world, and to have that authority and that power and influence and knowledge of internal affairs and that sort of thing, but I've had a much better life, I would say during the 35 or so years since we left the White House.

We have programs in 70 different countries in the world, and we deal with the most intricate matters that the other governments don't wanna fool with.

We go to Myanmar, we go to meet with all the Palestinian groups.

We go to North Korea, we go to Cuba, we go to Sudan and so forth.

We go to Nepal and meet with the Moist, so we meet with people that cause problems in the world that we can help resolve, and we also started the program of bringing people democracy and freedom.

We just finished our 100th troubled election in May, and this year we'll treat about 71 million people, so they won't go blind or have some other horrible disease that is no longer known in the even halfway developed world, but is afflicting hundreds of millions of people in the very poor countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America.

- Getting so much done now after leaving the White House.

Why do you think it's working better, and the best memories sound like they're the most recent ones for you.

Why do you think that is?

- Because I was president first.

I wouldn't be able to do the things that I know how to do now if I hadn't been president of a great country first, and I wouldn't have the direct access to any leader on earth, any King or President or Prime Minister that I want to meet, I just call him, and he's very eager to meet me, and then I tell him what we wanna do in his country, or her country, and they generally agree, and cooperate with us, and if I go to a pharmaceutical company and ask them for hundreds of millions of doses of medicine, primarily because I have been president of a country, and they respect me, they give this medicine to us, and we go into the jungle areas, to the poor little cities and towns and jungles, and also in the desert areas, and give the medicine to people, and I couldn't orchestrate honest and fair election processes in troubled countries and actually go in with some associates and conduct an honest and fair election if it hadn't been for my experience in the White House.

My wife and also, every year for one week, we go and build habitat houses for poor people in need.

We've done that now for 32 years, and later on this year, we'll be in Nepal where Mount Everest is.

We'll build 100 houses there in one week with other volunteers who join us.

Those are the kind of things we're able to do primarily because I was president.

- My goodness.

I asked the memories that you enjoy the most.

What memories for you are the hardest?

- Well, the White House years were the most troubling, and of course the last year I was in office when the hostages were being held in Iran was the most troubling of all.

I prayed more about it, I was in more concerned about it, but we eventually brought every hostage home safe and free, and I protected the interest of my country, but that was a very trying time, and then we had some very intense negotiations to formalize relations with People's Republic of China, for instance, to start ending apartheid in Africa, in countries, and to go to Panama and resolve the issue of the Panama Canal treaties, and then to go to the Holy Land and bring peace between Israel and Egypt.

Those were some of the things that were challenging to me.

- Did you enjoy, you said it was great to be president.

- [Jimmy Carter] It was.

- Did you enjoy being president?

- I did, yes.

There were some trying times, and I would say the overwhelming, joyous and productive and exciting and challenging and unpredictable and adventurous times have been since I left the White House because of the diversity of things we do, and the direct personal contact that we make.

We actually go into individual villages, assess their problems in healthcare, and then we actually administer medicines if it's needed, or teach them how to resolve an ancient problem that people may have suffered for 20,000 years, and that's very gratifying to us.

- It's interesting.

You talk about all the things you're doing and the Carter Center is doing, and moderating elections, monitoring elections, and getting healthcare to people that need, such an active public service kind of a life, and yet there you are in rural Georgia as a kid marrying the girl, you literally married the girl next door, didn't you?

- I did.

As a matter of fact, my mother was a nurse, and the first day that Rosalynn was alive, I went over and looked through the cradle at my future wife, my mother tells me, so we've known each other, and we still live in the same little town, about 650 people, Plains, Georgia.

- And when you were young, I know that you write that most of your friends were African American.

- [Jimmy Carter] Almost all of them it.

- And it didn't really, when did racial inequities, just the racial divide, the racial question, when did that hit you?

At what age?

- Well, when I was younger, I didn't have any friends except black boys and girls and my mother was a registered nurse.

She was gone a lot, and so African American women kind of took care of me and raised me and taught me about the proper attitude toward life, toward God, toward my fellow human beings, and taught me the names of trees and birds and that things, so I was raised in a black culture, and then, I would say, when I was about 14-years-old, I wrote a poem about this lady called "The Pasture Gate".

Two African American friends and I were coming out of the field to the barn and went through a gate, and when we got to the gate, they opened it and then stepped back to let me go first, and I thought there was a trip wire there or something that I would fall down, and I finally realized later that that was a time in their life and mind when the parents probably told them, "It's time for you to start treating Jimmy as a white person, and not as a complete equal with you anymore."

And as I said at the end of the poem, that was drawing a line between friends and friends, race and race, but it was was later that I realized that that's probably what happened, and then I was in the submarine force, I was a submarine officer when Harry Truman ordained as Commander in Chief as President, that all the racial discrimination should be over in all the armed services, and also the civil service of our government, and that was kind of a turning point in my life.

- Yeah, the Pasture Gate incident in the book is fascinating because you can tell just the way you write it that it really did impact you.

- Well it did.

- It was something that you weren't aware of, and now all of a sudden, here's the world.

- And I realized later that, when we finally got the Civil Rights Act passed, and when Martin Luther King Jr. and Andy Young and Rosa Parks were successful, that we had removed a millstone from around the neck of both black and white people, and I think really the last few months with the tragedy in South Carolina and with the abuse by police of black people, that we are beginning to see that we still have a long way to go, that we kind of breathe the sigh relief and said, "It's all over now, no more discrimination, all equality from now on, no more white supremacy," but that's not true yet.

- [Ted Simons] Still have a ways to go.

- We still have a ways to go.

- Your father, you write, "Showed fairness and respect for all," but he was a man of his time and place, wasn't he?

- He was, and everybody else was too, and as was the Supreme Court, as was the US Congress, as was all the churches, as were all the American Bar Association members.

There was no question in those days of the 30s and 40s that racial discrimination was wrong and should be corrected.

- You write quite a bit about your naval experience.

How did the Navy shape your life?

- Yeah, I would say the preeminent factor at the Naval Academy was, "Do not lie."

If a midshipman there told the slightest falsehood, he was out, that was the end of his naval career.

If you stepped on the grass and somebody saw you, and then you later said, "I didn't step on the grass."

You were gone.

And so I think to tell the truth was a preeminent mandate of all the midshipman and I kind of carried that over, and later it became kind of a motif for me when I was running for president.

I would say, "If I tell a lie, don't vote for me," and so forth, and it was at a time in history that we had had too many lies told by our government, and too many devastating blows, the Watergate crisis and the Vietnam War misrepresentations, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King's Jr., and the Kennedy Brothers, and the revelation by Frank Church Committee that the President and the CIA had committed crimes against, you might say enemy leaders overseas.

Those kind of things were all revealed, and I came along at the right time.

- You came along at the right time, but you came along at a time when addressing these issues and doing it as a bit of an outsider.

You were considered an outsider.

- [Jimmy Carter] I was.

- Yeah, didn't make you many friends, did it?

- No, but I didn't need many friends.

All of 'em.

I had about 12 opponents, all more famous than I was and either big states or in the US Senate or something like that, and by the time I got recognized as a legitimate candidate, all of the, you might say the semi-professional politicians around different states had already aligned themselves with a more favored candidate, so I had to take what was left over, young people and newcomers to politics, and I didn't have any money.

We didn't have money at all, and we didn't ever stay in a hotel room.

We just got people to let us stay in their house if we could beg them too, or either we slept in an automobile, and that was all my staff.

So when I ran finally against Gerald Ford, who was an incumbent president, he and I raised zero money.

We didn't raise a single dollar of contribution from anybody that might want something back after we were elected.

And the same thing happened, by the way, four years later when I ran against Ronald Reagan.

We didn't raise any money.

We just took a $1 per person check off that some taxpayers volunteered to give.

- When you see what happens in this day and age regarding money and politics, I think you write that you consider it legal bribery.

- It is legal bribery.

Well, there's no doubt now you can't possibly hope to be the Democratic or Republican nominee for president if you can't raise two or $300 million, and I won't condemn those people that give, but some of the people that give want something back after the election is over, either from an incumbent president, or congressman or US Senator or governor, or something like that, so it's made it completely legal to give unlimited amounts of money and get something in return, so that's one of the main reasons we've seen such a dramatic change in the relationship between very rich people who are getting richer and richer, and the average working people in this country that are not.

- The campaign against President Ford was different as well in the sense you were both respectful, - We were.

- of each other, and that respect lasted really after you both left the White House.

- Yeah, well, the historians said publicly and in writing that the two former presidents in the United States that had the closest personal friendship was Gerald Ford and I, and I was very proud of that.

And his wife was a friend of my wife, and children were friends of each other, so we had a very intimate and and gratifying relationship.

- As far as being in the White House, you write that you had problems with the media, and I think almost every president says they have problems with the media, but you thought maybe they couldn't accept a Southerner, that that was a factor at play.

Talk to us about that.

- Well, when I was elected, I was the first person from the deep South that was chosen to be president in about 150 years.

It just wasn't thing done, and I think a lot of the media from the north in particular, and they controlled the media pretty much, felt that there was somehow behind in my background, an inclination to a racism still that I was Southern, and still was committed to racial distinctions, and that was right after the Watergate revelations, and some investigatory reporters had gotten famous because they revealed what went on with Richard Nixon.

I think they felt, a lot of them, that they were gonna find something wrong with me that would be gratifying for their own career, so there was a scholarly analysis done and I was in office 48 months and 46 months, I had negative news coverage.

- I thought that signing a photograph with Menachem Begin, I thought that was a fascinating story.

- Well, we had failed at the end of 12 days, we were there 13, and we were getting ready to go back to Washington, and announce that we had not been successful, and go home and Begin was very angry with me, because I had made some demands on Israel that he didn't think he could accept, and so he asked me for a signed photograph of me and him in Sadat together just as a souvenir, and my secretary called Israel and got the name of his eight grandchildren, so instead of putting Best Wishes, Jimmy Carter, I put, With Love and Best Wishes To, and I put the name of each grandchild, and then signed it, And I took it over to his cabin to give him the photographs to him, and he was very cool toward me.

He said, "Thank you, Mr.

President."

He reached out and took the photographs, and he turned around and walked away, kind of.

I stood there and he looked at the photographs, and he began to read the names of his grandchildren one by one, and when he got to about the third name, he had tears coming down his cheeks and his voice was kind of choked up.

I was too.

And he finally said, "Mr. President, why don't we make one more effort?"

- But you did have a healthcare plan, and you had ideas there, but Teddy Kennedy, of all people, seemed to get in the way.

What happened there?

- Well, Ted Kennedy wanted to be president, and for the last two years I was in office, he was my full-time candidate against me, and he didn't want me to experience any major successes, which I can certainly comprehend having been in politics myself, but we worked on this comprehensive health plan for every human being.

It was basically to extend Medicare to everybody, and we had money to pay for it phased in.

And we had all six committees in the House and Senate aligned up to help us, including Ted Kennedy's committee, and then the last week when we were getting ready to reveal it, he changed his mind, and he decided to oppose it, and he was powerful enough in the Senate to block its passage, and there's no doubt that we would've had comprehensive healthcare for all Americans 30 years earlier if Kennedy had maintained his commitment to the program that he had helped me develop.

- Last year in office, we gotta get there, and you write that it was the most stressful and unpleasant of your life.

- [Jimmy Carter] It was.

- As far as the hostages obviously, the failed rescue mission.

Was that the right decision?

And regardless of 20/20 hindsight, 'cause your Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance did not think it was a good decision.

- [Jimmy Carter] He was the only one that didn't.

- And he wound up resigning, but do you think it was still the right decision?

- It was, it was.

We had to have six helicopters to bring out all the hostages and the rescue team.

We couldn't have left them behind because they would very likely have been killed by the Iranians, and the military told me we need to have at least six helicopters to come out.

So I decided we'd have seven and then eight, and we had two helicopters go down.

One turned back unexpectedly to the aircraft carrier.

I don't know why yet.

The other one went down in the sandstorm, which left us with six, and then we were in desert one getting ready to go in, and rescued the hostages.

We knew where everyone was and so forth.

That particular helicopter had a fuel leak, and it swerved sideways and hit one of the airplanes there, and we had to abort the mission, so I think if we'd had one more helicopter, we would've got hostages out.

I would've had a second term, and history might have been a little bit better, but I don't think that my life would've been much more pleasant.

(both laugh) - You refrain from using the military against Iran?

Why?

- Well, I tried to promote two basic ideals of mine as a Christian, one was to keep the peace.

We worship the Prince of Peace and to promote human rights in all their aspects, and so I did the best I could, not only to keep peace for my own country, but to bring peace to others, including Egypt and Israel and so forth, I've already mentioned, and so I would say most of my advisors, even including my wife, proposed that I should attack Iran militarily, which we could have destroyed Iran, and I just decided to try to use peaceful means.

And so I was fortunate in not only protecting my country's interest, but we never dropped a bomb.

We never launched a missile, we never fired a bullet while I was in office, and a lot of it was good fortune.

A lot of it was a commitment on my part.

- And yet those hostages were not released until after the election.

There's been a lot written about this, and a lot speculated about.

I wanna ask you, do you think there was some sort of deal?

Do you think that that was by design?

- You know, that's a question I never have been willing to answer because I've deliberately avoided getting involved in any sort of research to prove it.

There have been books written about it that say that there was a deal between the White House and the Ayatollah, I don't know.

The only thing I know is that I stayed up three days and nights.

I never went to bed even the last three days I was in office at night, and I negotiated between Iran and 12 other countries to get the hostages free, and at 9:00 that morning of Inauguration Day, when I was going out of office, all the hostages were in an airplane at the end of a runway ready to take off, and I was waiting for them to take off.

And the Ayatollah didn't let 'em do so until five minutes after I was no longer in office.

Why?

I don't know.

(laughs) - [Ted Simons] Do you wanna know?

- Not really.

- That incident, I know that Kennedy and Reagan at the time, they called you an ineffective leader.

They called you weak on that, your emphasis on human rights, that was seen at the time as weakness.

Did that surprise?

How did you respond to that?

Because this was used against you and it worked.

You did not win that reelection.

- Well, I didn't use it wisely.

I think had I, I said in the book here that one of the things I didn't do was to keep the Democratic party vital and alive and loyal to me, and I let Kennedy move in and he took over a good portion of the Democratic party, the more ultra liberal members of the Democratic party.

I had to depend on Republicans to help me get my legislation passed, which I mean, I got as much support from Republicans as I did Democrats while I was in the White House, and had a very good batting average, but I think that the human rights issue was one of the strongest and politically demanding things that I did because we brought freedom and peace to a lot of people on earth that never had known it before.

I can, if you have time, I'll give you one quick example.

- [Ted Simons] Please.

- In Latin America, when I became president, we were in bed with every dictator in Latin America, in South America, and in Central America and in the Caribbean, and whenever one of our dictator friends was challenged by Native Americans or Native People or Indigenous People, or poor people, we would send troops down, either Marines or army troops, to defend our military friend, who not only probably had graduated from West Point and his kids went to American colleges, but who also would provide us with very beneficial contracts for pineapple and for bananas and for bauxite, and for iron ore and for those kinds of things, so we had a lot of money flowing into us because we supported them.

I put an end to that, and within seven years, every country in South America had become a democracy, when before that, almost every one of them was a dictatorship, so I think that showed that human rights paid off.

- Well, we're about to run outta time.

I could talk to you forever.

(laughs) We're about to run outta time.

You have mentioned that these are the best, and I think at the end of your book you write that the life you have now is the best of all, and you have been talked about and people refer to you as the best former president we've ever had.

Is that a little bittersweet to hear?

- To my wife, it is.

(both laugh) It really doesn't bother me.

I did the best I could.

As Prince Mondale said, "We told the truth, we kept the law, and we kept the peace."

And I say we protected human rights, so we did the best we could.

- [Ted Simons] Well, it's been an absolute pleasure having you here.

The book is very interesting.

I gotta tell you, I was around back then as well, and it brings back a lot of memories, and congratulations on a life well lived.

Do you ever just press the snooze button and say, "I feel like sleeping in?"

You're a busy man.

- Well, we do.

We stay busy, but we also enjoy life very much.

We have 38 in our family now.

We have 22 grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

I met with some of in Los Angeles when I was there recently, and so we have a good quiet life, my wife and I do in Plains, but we still have the 80 countries around the world that we visit whenever we can.

(laughs) - [Ted Simons] My goodness.

President Carter, it's great to have you here.

Thank you so much.

- I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thank you.

Good questions.

- And that is it for now.

I'm Ted Simons.

Thank you so much for joining us on this special edition of "Arizona Horizon".

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