Some Insights into a Remarkable Presidential Couple from Working at the Carter Center

The San Diego Union-Tribune published this piece of mine today.

Between 1993 and 1998, the Carter Center, led by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, granted me one of the most formative experiences of my career. I worked at the Carter Center as director of development. It connected me, through them and the center, to moral, political, and humanitarian values and actions benefiting, with no exaggeration, millions of lives across the world.

I want to extoll Mrs. Carter’s life first, since Jimmy Carter would have achieved far less with a less-committed, less-capable spouse. Mrs. Carter largely subordinated her life to her husband’s career and then found herself, as other American first ladies have, placed in the often-thankless role of president’s wife, targeted by the demands of others insisting on judging her by their and not her criteria. I observed her quiet modesty, her tenacious advocacy for mental health, and an ability to evaluate character clearly superior to her husband’s. She did not share his love of praise. I know her place in the marriage took a toll on her at times, and yet she carved out a remarkable destiny for herself, through struggle.

The greatest strengths I saw in both were consummate professionalism and a remarkable level of integrity. Beyond basic honesty, their integrity encompassed wholeness and soundness, and I have never met anyone else in public life so consistent — integral — in tying together ambition, striving, personal capacity, right moral choices, and concern for the welfare of America and the world. They did not hide their religious beliefs and values, but neither did they flaunt them for political advantage. However, I believe there was a profound, guiding continuity between their Christian values and everything else, which sometimes drew mockery from part of the public, worsened by our national bias against small-town white Southerners.

They refrained from building fortunes on their fame. When President Carter earned an appearance fee, always modest by today’s standards, he turned it over to the center to support its work.

They performed their public roles with virtuosity, extraordinarily capable of meshing with staff to help them get the job done. I regularly prepped them for meetings, events, and special tasks, with succinct memoranda providing context and suggesting words and actions. When the time came, they stepped into the role and brought my guidance to life to a T, with poise and vitality.

They respected the American people for honoring them with a term in the White House and assumed the special obligations of their status, when they could have chosen a reclusive retirement. For example, when flying commercially — seated in business class surrounded by his Secret Service detail — President Carter would walk back alone into the economy section to shake hands with every startled passenger, saying to each, “Hi, I’m Jimmy Carter.”

If Eleanor Roosevelt established an influential new model for the first lady’s role, the Carters founded a tradition, replicated by their successors, by creating and developing the Carter Center beyond the previous pattern of presidential museum and archival repository. The center blossomed quickly into an activist powerhouse promoting peace, human rights, and disease eradication and control, with annual expenditures now exceeding $100 million.

When I worked there, it received support from five of the biggest U.S. charitable foundations in addition to foreign government and other foundation grants, planned gifts, gifts of goods and services, and annual support in the form of thousands of large and small private gifts.

They were practical people. At one point in my tenure, the idea arose of giving a small version of an Africa-themed statue on the center grounds to a particularly generous donor couple. I suggested that President Carter, an accomplished woodworker, make a base for the artwork.?I acquired a plank of African hardwood and had it shipped from Atlanta to Plains, where he turned out a handsome piece that he signed underneath. He then surprised the unsuspecting couple with the gift at an intimate lunch at their home.

American journalism excels at producing thoughtful accounts of the lives of leading public figures when they pass away. Although the Carters have long been unfairly stigmatized with the label “failed presidency,” we now see rich, balanced descriptions doing justice to a distinguished man, and a distinguished woman, who distilled in so many ways what is best about the United States of America.