Jimmy Carter Quotes

Just a few minutes ago, I signed a proclamation of emergency in Indiana so that we can provide help. And last night, I did one for Ohio. This will permit the legal use of military forces, National Guard, and others, to alleviate the traffic conditions and to reach stranded motorists and others. Well, we're trying to approach the energy question on a comprehensive basis, and it's a very complicated and difficult and politically divisive issue. The first natural gas deregulation bill that was vetoed, I think, was by Harry Truman, 27, 28 years ago, so that this is not something new. But I think for the first time the Congress has made tremendous progress in trying to resolve these major differences. I just finished having lunch with Senator Talmadge, who's on the Finance Committee of the Senate, who's also chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and we discussed farms and energy primarily. I think that we're flexible enough in the executive branch to deal with almost any reasonable solution that the House and Senate conferees can evolve. There are only three prerequisites as far as I'm concerned. One is to have an increase in conservation, an increase in production, be fair to consumers and, at the same time, not break the Federal budget. So, within those bounds, which are quite general, I'm flexible. There are some deeply felt opinions on both sides of this issue, based on 20 or 30 years of voting record, and it's hard to get people to accommodate those differences. They've never been able to in the past. So, I think we have a good chance to have a comprehensive energy bill this year that will at least let the American people know where we are going. I think the uncertainty is one of the crucial problems that we have.

We've now finished a year as the administration in the White House and have learned a lot. I think I have a much better and easier and understanding relationship with the Congress, with my Cabinet-which I consider to be superb-and we've defined issues very carefully. We're trying to carry out our campaign commitments. There's a growing understanding among the American people of what we are trying to do. We're addressing some difficult questions that have been long unaddressed, or at least unsolved. We don't have any magic answers, but I think there's a growing comprehension around the world that we reestablished a true and accurate sense in foreign policy of what the American people stand for and what we want to have as a characteristic of our own Nation and our own Government. We're trying to guarantee peaceful resolution of any differences or competition with the Soviet Union. We're trying to add our good will and our good offices in the Middle East when the discussions lag or when there is a problem there in communication among the leaders. I think we are trusted, in general, by all of them who are seeking peace. We are strengthening our relationship and our involvement and interest in Africa. We've had a good response in Latin America, particularly as a result of successful negotiations with the Panama Canal treaties, which are now being considered by the Senate, as you know. As I pointed out in the State of the Union message, we had a very successful economic year in our country in 1977. But we still have some chronic problems, particularly unemployment among minority groups and young people and a general uncertainty about the economic future because of a lack of resolution of the energy question, that need to be addressed. We have gone through, now, one complete budget cycle. And I've put an enormous amount of time in, personally, in the evolution of the fiscal year '79 budget, more than I will for the 1980 or 1981 budgets, because I had to learn about the different, specific programs that are buried deep within the large number of Federal agencies. I think we have a good prospect of holding the budget basically where it is. It's a tight, conservative budget, but it meets the needs of our people adequately. We'll have an urban policy evolved early in the spring, and we have enough flexibility, I think, to accommodate the specific financial needs there.

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.

I want to stress again that human rights are not peripheral to the foreign policy of the United States. Our pursuit of human rights is part of a broad effort to use our great power and our tremendous influence in the service of creating a better world, a world in which human beings can live in peace, in freedom, and with their basic needs adequately met.

We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth —one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented.

We believe in the right of every country to be free from interference in its own internal affairs by another country. And we believe that world peace can come — which we both devoutly hope to see — through mutual respect, even among those who have some differences between us. Our goals are also the same, to have a just system of economics and politics, to let the people of the world share in growth, in peace, in personal freedom, and in the benefits to be derived from the proper utilization of natural resources. We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people.

The reason for raising this is that the Israeli position in the past was that they would withdraw from the West Bank, and I believe that Prime Minister Begin left the Cabinet over this issue.

As you know, President Eisenhower also had a chief of staff, Sherman Adams, who ran things almost like a secondary President. But I've substituted for that an unprecedented use of the Vice President. He and I are close, personal friends. We have a harmonious partnership. I've grown to respect and like him more every day I've known him. And he has authority and responsibility in foreign and domestic affairs and also in helping to manage the White House staff that no Vice President has ever dreamed of having. And it takes a great deal of the burden off my shoulders. Formerly, Vice Presidents were over in the Executive Office Building across the street. I asked Fritz specifically to move over and occupy an office right down the hall from me. And so, in effect, he is the one who coordinates the staff work in the White House. He's thoroughly familiar with the Congress. He's been there for 12 years himself. He was on the Finance Committee and also the Budget Committee. So he's familiar with that. When I have budget hearings 2 1/2, 3 hours here in the afternoon--3 1/2 hours yesterday on defense--Fritz is there at my side. And I've incorporated him in this strategic military chain of command. No other Vice President has ever occupied those positions. And if something should happen to me, he would be thoroughly familiar with all the controversies, all of the foreign affairs considerations, all of the defense considerations, and be ready to act in a proper way. So, there are some different ways of management that I have brought into the White House that quite often have not been understood, but which I've very carefully evolved and of which I'm quite proud.

At first, we had a shaky start in just knowing how to deal with the Congress. We were eager to do the best Ave could. I've consulted with Congress, perhaps more than any President who has ever served in this office. And I've consulted with the Joint Chiefs more than they've ever seen the President. I had lunch with the Joint Chiefs last week, and I said, "How do I compare in negotiating with you and getting help and advice from you, compared to previous Presidents? I met with you at the Blair House before I was President. I met with you about 6 or 8 or 10 times since I've been President." We had long discussions about Korea and about China and about Taiwan, and about the Middle East and about SALT and everything else. And they said, "Mr. President, we saw you more than we had ever seen any President that first meeting at Blair House before you ever came into office." [Laughter] So, I've learned and I've benefited from it. I want to thank you again. I got to go, but I want to thank you again for letting me have this chance to meet with you. This is an enormous job. It's one that taxes any individual human being to encompass the challenges and solutions to problems. The ones that arrive at my desk are obviously the ones that can't be solved in a home or in a city hall or at a State Governor's office, and they come to me. But I've really enjoyed it. It's been a reassuring thing to have a superb Cabinet. There's not a single weak person on it. I've really been pleasantly surprised with them. And the Congress has given me strong and good support. The differences that have arisen between me and the Congress have been that the much more easy job of my preparing a proposal and drafting legislation, than the Congress debating it and passing it. There's an inherent delay in the congressional process which I think is very good and very healthy. And as you know, I've never served in Washington before at all. I've got a good, sound White House staff. I use my Cabinet more than previous Presidents have. We have a full-scale, at least 2-hour session here every Monday morning, with the full Cabinet sitting around this table. Most of the time, we have a 100-percent attendance. And it's a lively discussion, and the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Secretary of HUD have a chance to listen to an explanation of what Cy Vance is doing, what Bob Strauss is doing, what the Secretary of Treasury is doing. So, there's a good interchange and good team spirit. I don't have the same need for a chief of staff or a strong, powerful, autocratic White House staff that President Nixon felt. There will never be an Ehrlichman or a Haldeman in my White House staff that gives orders and commands to the Cabinet members who are trying to run the major agencies of Government. This is not the way I ran the Governor's office. in Georgia. It's not the way I am going to run it here. And some of the local press have deplored the fact that I don't have a similar set-up as was the case when President Nixon was in office. It's just not my way of running things.

Well, Scotty Reston asked me that the other day. Always, I think, in your life--and mine as a farmer and mine as a naval officer and mine as a candidate, if I knew everything then that I know now, I would have done some things differently. I made some mistakes in judgment that weren't fatal. I underestimated, first of all, the quality of the Congress, the intense concentration that individual Members of Congress put on a specific issue, sometimes for 25 or 30 or 40 years. They become experts in that issue. And the quality of their staff work is equivalent completely to the quality of my own staff work here in the White House. This was something that I had not experienced in the Georgia State Legislature, when they only meet for 40 days and then go home. There's no continuity of the legislative process in my State. And I was pleasantly surprised and underestimated the competence of Congress. I think it's a very. good thing that no longer do you have a dominant White House as sometimes existed--I don't say the country suffered when, say, Franklin Roosevelt was here and he could send up bills to the Congress and almost immediately they would be voted on without thorough analysis. I overestimated the Congress in its ability to deal with complicated subjects expeditiously. This is particularly the case with the Senate, where every Member of the Senate is autonomous and prides himself on being independent, has the ability if he chooses to delay action on any bill no matter how important it is to the country; a constant threat sometimes realized, some not exercised, of a filibuster. Even when you have enough votes to override a filibuster, it takes 5 or 6 days to go through the legislative procedures to do that. And I think you've noticed that the burden of work we've put on the Congress has just been more than they could handle in the time allotted, so I've had to delay the implementation of some of the programs that I wanted to put forward much earlier. I had anticipated having a comprehensive tax proposal to the Congress by September. And now, of course, we are ready to go with it as far as the executive branch is concerned, but I don't want to send up a comprehensive tax proposal until I see what the impact on the tax structure might be from social security and, say, energy. And as soon as I get those answers, we'll have the package ready to go. But I don't know of any serious mistakes we've made; probably expecting a little too much from the Congress on expeditious passage, underestimating their competence on the other hand.

Well, Asad has not been here; I met him in Geneva. But I have met with all of them. I don't anticipate any need for me to go to Geneva or to go to the Mideast to bring about a negotiated settlement. My commitment to that is very strong and permanent. If it takes the full time I'm in office to bring about a complete, comprehensive, permanent peace in the Middle East, I'll devote my fullest resources to it, both in convincing the public of this country and the public of the world that it's necessary and in assuaging hurt feelings, trying to bring together leaders who may have been separated by one circumstance or another. One of the reasons that I wanted Cy Vance to go over is because Asad and Sadat are not presently on very good terms, and I wanted Cy Vance to meet both of them and see what bounds could be reestablished to pull them back together. But obviously, if I felt sometime in the future--and I don't anticipate this, Saul--but if I felt sometime in the future that my personal presence was the difference between success or failure, obviously I would go, because I consider this to be a very important thing not only for the Middle East but for the world. If you analyze the quantity of oil that we have to get from the Middle East, it's enormous. But if you look at our allies and friends, Japan, Germany, Italy, and others, they are almost completely dependent on the Middle Eastern oil. And so I don't know of any area that concerns me more. There's nothing in foreign affairs that has equaled the time and effort I've spent both studying long-past history of the Middle Eastern problem and also analyzing possible solutions in the future. So, I would do almost anything within reason if I thought it was necessary to bring permanent peace to the Middle East.

Amy and I planned the treehouse, and we built it together. We go to Camp David whenever we can. We find that that's the most pleasant place for us to go. In fact I'll be leaving for Camp David this afternoon. Amy and Rosalynn can't come until tomorrow morning. This is the first time I've gone without them. But I've invited, as my guest, Senator Humphrey. When I brought him back from Milwaukee [Minneapolis] a few weeks ago, he commented to me that he had never seen Camp David. His wife is temporarily in the hospital, so he and I are going to go up together this afternoon and have a chance to sit in front of the fire and talk about both history and the future. And in the warm season of the year, I play tennis about three times a week. Amy and I and Rosalynn have bowled twice this week. We have a little---one bowling alley in the White House that was put there by Harry Truman. We go swimming at Camp David and do a lot of hiking, bike riding. I get a good bit of exercise. I keep my weight exactly the same as it was 10, 15 years ago. I weigh about 155. And although some people say I've aged--the people that say I've aged, I've noticed they've aged, too. But to summarize, I enjoy it. I'm in good shape, physically, and I get a thorough examination quite often. I have a fulltime doctor that stays with me all the time and have a dentist that comes in about every 6 weeks to check my teeth and make sure I'm in good shape. But I've enjoyed it and get a lot of exercise and don't overwork. This is a new editor, by the way. Saul [Saul Kohler, Newhouse News Service] is going to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to be an editor there. He has been on the White House professional reporting staff.

Okay, I'd be glad to. I have a permanent call-in to the Secret Service at 6 o'clock. If I don't call them the night before, they always wake me up at 6:00. On Monday mornings, I have to get up at 5:00, because in addition to my regular work, I have a 2-hour Cabinet meeting and I need to prepare myself for the Cabinet meeting. I also have my weekly senior staff meeting Monday morning immediately before the Cabinet meeting. I would say about three mornings a week I get up at 5: 00 or 5: 30. I've always done that. It's not a handicap for me; it's not a sacrifice or an extraordinary thing for me to do. I prefer to work early in the morning rather than staying up late. Most nights I go to bed by 11 o'clock, and so does my wife. And I always set aside some time to go home in the afternoon, 5:30 or 6 o'clock, to be with my daughter and to listen to her play the violin and to brag on her and to go over some of her school studies.

Well, in the first place, as I mentioned briefly in passing, I think we've got a very good farm bill that was passed this year, that will be in effect for the next 5 years. We've had some increase in farm prices since I came into office. Corn prices are up about 38 cents--the last time I checked the market. Wheat prices are up about 60 cents a bushel compared to when I came into office. I certainly don't attribute that to the fact that I'm here. But we have got a Secretary of Agriculture who's a dirt farmer who understands the special problems of farmers. And with the exception of the time I've served in the Federal (and State) 2 Government, all of my income all my life has come from the farm. And I have a sense, too, of what agriculture does need. I think we've had a very good step forward in having grow, in the Department of Agriculture, a special concern about consumers. We don't have enough farm-supported Members of Congress to prevail in a showdown vote. But the more we can let the average American consumer who comes from, perhaps, the urban areas know how valuable a resource we have in our land and in our food and fiber production, the better off we'll be in prevailing and treating the farmers fairly. We've got a very good price support, target prices, that approach the cost of production, at least in the areas where the efficiency is high. I think we've got this Printed in the White House press release. past year, up to the 1st of October, the highest farm export level we've ever had in history--$24 billion worth of American farm products were sold overseas. We've never done that before. We are even emphasizing that effort much more in the future. We'd like to open up permanent sales possibilities in countries that don't presently buy food from us. My first stop on my trip will be Poland. We want to maintain our sales of agricultural products grown in this country to the so-called Eastern European countries, to the Soviet Union, to the People's Republic of China, as well as to our natural allies and friends in this hemisphere and others. In the energy package--we've tried to put it together in such a way that it would not only protect the farmers and the agricultural communities but also open the way for increased use of, as you refer to it, biomass, and also forestry products. I spent about 4 1/2 hours this morning--I got up at about 5 o'clock and came over here early to work on it--and I will be spending 2 1/2 hours immediately after this meeting, in this room, working on the budget for the Department of Energy next year. And I'll be analyzing and making final decisions, pending congressional approval next year, on how much research and development money to put into things like the use of biomass, wood products, forestry products, shale, and other energy supplies. But I think the fact that I do know agriculture, do know farm families' needs, and have an Agriculture Secretary the same way, gives me a sense of judgment that maybe I wouldn't have if I had a different background. So we've got, I think, a good thrust now to resolve some of the longstanding problems. I disagreed very strongly with some of the policies that Secretary Butz had when he was in office. There are not any easy answers. I would say that Bob Bergland has one of the most difficult jobs in Washington. It's a tough proposition.

I'm trying to approach the Government as a business manager and also as a small businessman who knows the defects in the Government. Our family has been brought very close together. We've had substantial success in the developing nations of the world in being reaccepted as a part of the world community who had some concern about them and who treated them with equality and mutual respect. I believe we've had a blessing in that we've not had a serious military threat. This, obviously, is something that I hope to maintain throughout my term in office. I hope that we've taken at least a small step forward in restoring the confidence of the American people in the integrity of the Government and the competence of Government. This is going to be a slow process. It's something that can't come in a year, or even 2 years, because with the horrible shocks of Vietnam and Watergate and the CIA revelations, the American people had lost confidence that there was something here in Washington that they could trust and admire. I think the most pleasant surprise to me has been the worldwide impact of our reemphasis on human rights. I really felt when I came into .office that something needed to be done just to raise a banner for the American people to admire and of which they could be proud again. I think that the emphasis on human personal freedom and democratic principles is very important for us to espouse. And although a year ago, I think, very few national leaders anywhere in the world paid much attention to human rights, I don't believe there's a single one out of the roughly 150 that now doesn't consider, "Before we take action, what is the world going to think about me, the way I'm dealing with political prisoners or out-migration or the reunification of families or the persecution of human beings?" I think the human rights issue has been a great escalation. We've also made a major move toward nonproliferation of nuclear explosives. And again, I think a year ago there was great despair in the world about whether anybody could ever put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. I think there's a reconfirmation now of effort on the part of even countries that have sold reprocessing plants, like Germany and France, all the rest of us, to try to stop the spread of nuclear explosives and not let it go into nations that haven't had them in the past. Those are a few things that come to mind.