Q&A: Carter talks Middle East, Carter Center

By Christopher Quinn

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

President Jimmy Carter had few plans after his election loss in the 1980 presidential vote.

He was 56 years old and figured he had another 25 years to live as he and wife Rosalynn returned to Georgia in defeat. Many contemporary historians grade his presidency as mediocre to poor.

The Carters founded the Carter Center after an actual dream in 1982 by the former president, with an idea of helping mediate international conflicts. The idea grew from there.

Their work brought the Carters second lives and global fame, helping President Carter win the Nobel Prize in 2002. Some historians have called his ex-presidency, now 29 years long, the nation’s most successful.

Carter will celebrate his 85th birthday and the reopening of the renovated Carter Library and Museum on Thursday.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution talked with Carter, looking back at the changing work of the Carter Center and what he still wants to accomplish. His answers have been edited for length and by subject.

Q: Where did the idea and vision for the Carter Center and its work come from?

A: I had a lot planned for my second term that didn’t materialize, and I had an obligation to build a presidential library that all former presidents have to assume. And so it was that combination that shaped my thoughts. ...

I decided that I would have a replication here on a smaller scale of Camp David, since I had some experiences in ending the 25-year war between Israel and Egypt. ...

I had even planned to have several cabins in the site of the Carter Center and a library where visitors could come who had a potential or ongoing civil war in their country, and I would mediate between them. And that’s the way it started, and we still do some of that. ...

Later I decided with my wife on some basic principles. One of them was to fill vacuums, that is to not compete with others when they were attacking an issue ... so that had led us over a period of years into helping with troubled elections, and we just finished our 76th election, I believe, in Lebanon in April.

And [that] also opened up an opportunity for us being adjacent to [the Centers for Disease Control] to address diseases that afflict the poorest and most destitute people on earth. Diseases that we know can be eliminated or eradicated ... because we don’t have them anymore in the United States or Europe or Japan or wealthy countries. So that is what has evolved for the Carter Center in the last 25 years. About three-fourths of our total budget is devoted to diseases [elephantiasis, Guinea worm, malaria, river blindness, snail fever and trachoma] that are no longer known in [wealthy countries].

Q: If you had a second term, would you have founded the Carter Center?

A: That’s hard to say, because I would have been 60 years old instead of 56 and would have felt that I had achieved some of my dreamed-up goals. ... I just don’t know what would have happened had I been in there another four years, but I think it would have been doubtful that the Carter Center as we know it today would have existed.

Q: Has your life after the White House and with the Carter Center been better than a second term?

A: Well, my wife and I have some difference about that. I think yes. You know, she feels that we and the world would be better off if I had had the second term. I might be just rationalizing, but I’ve always felt since the Carter Center became established that we might be doing more productive work at the Carter Center than I would have had I had a second term.

Q: Is there a goal of the Carter Center you are hoping especially to see accomplished in your time?

A: The one which we’ve worked on for about 20 years is to eradicate Guinea worm [a parasitic disease in which worms erupt from the skin] from the face of the earth, and when we succeed, it will be the second disease eliminated from all countries. The only other one is smallpox, and that was almost 30 years ago. ...

And we are on the verge of accomplishing that goal now. When we started, we had 3.6 million cases of Guinea worm. We are down now to less than 5,000, and they are concentrated almost exclusively in the southern part of Sudan.

Q: Do you think you have changed the idea of what former presidents should or can do once out of office?

A: Well, I think so, but every president is just as different from each other as any five persons you meet on the street would be different from each other. Different ones have different ideas of what they want to do. So others have made different choices.

Q: What has been your biggest disappointment?

A: The most frustrating to me and disappointing so far is [the failure] to bring peace to the Middle East. When I left the White House, I was convinced that we would have a permanent peace for Israel and peace for Israel’s neighbors. That has not materialized, as you know.

Q: Have you set up the Carter Center so that your work will continue after your death?

A: We have. We have a full-time partnership with Emory University ... and we have a fairly large endowment that will tide us over when I am not here to raise money myself. And we have relationships with other leaders around the world. ... I think 50 or 100 years from now we will still have the Carter Center as an independent entity, I hope still doing the kinds of things we have done so far. Obviously they’ll change as time goes on. That’s inevitable.