Ever working for the world
At 83, former President Jimmy Carter remains a tireless activist and author.
By Colette Bancroft, Times Book Editor
Published October 21, 2007
In Beyond the White House, former President Jimmy Carter recounts some of his more hair-raising missions in conflict resolution: leaving a military headquarters in Haiti in an armored vehicle to avoid a rebellious mob, being the first to walk across the no-man's-land between South and North Korea, donning a flak jacket as his plane left Sarajevo because he knew the previous flight had taken fire.
Carter turned 83 on Oct. 1. Doesn't his family ever ask him to just stay home for a while and take it easy?
Carter's hearty laugh comes over the phone line. "The only family member who could make me stay home is his wife Rosalynn, and she was with me in North Korea, in Bosnia. She was sitting right next to me putting on her flak jacket.
"She's part of an adventurous team."
Beyond the White House is Carter's 24th book, most of them written since he left office after one term in 1981. He has written several memoirs, a novel, poetry and a children's story as well as books on politics, religion and ethics.
This book is a history of the Carter Center, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization the Carters founded in Atlanta in 1982. Its international work in diplomacy, election oversight, human rights and public health helped Carter win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
The center's broad range of efforts was not part of the original plan, he says. "We meant the Carter Center to be a kind of miniature Camp David, negotiating peace agreements, that kind of thing."
But as they pursued that, it became clear that conflicts didn't exist in isolation, apart from a nation's other problems. "People would say to us, 'Our country is really in trouble. We don't know how to hold elections, we have these terrible diseases, we don't know how to grow enough food to feed our people.' They asked for help with all these things."
So the center's staff widened its scope. "Now we have to be careful not to get stretched too thin."
Practicing diplomacy independently, instead of as president, means "very few constraints," Carter says. "Certainly I have more freedom."
He does, though, have "self-imposed constraints. I don't inject myself into sensitive areas of the world without the approval of the White House."
His work with the Carter Center and his writing have sometimes provoked controversy. His last book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, drew accusations of anti-Israeli bias, and he has been outspoken in his criticism of the current administration.
Asked what he would put on a to-do list for the next president, Carter says, "Let me answer that another way. My only hope is that the next president is a Democrat. If whoever it is asked my advice about their inaugural address, I would say they could change the attitude of the world toward America in one 30-minute speech."
Carter's five bullet points: declare that America will never again torture prisoners; that it will observe all nuclear nonproliferation treaties and work to reduce nuclear arsenals; that it will abandon the policy of pre-emptive war and go to war only if attacked; that it will be in the forefront of seeking peace between Israel and Palestine and throughout the Middle East. "And that we will once again raise high the banner of human rights."
Given his busy schedule and frequent travel, when does Carter find time to write? "Sometimes I write on the road," he says. "But overwhelmingly I write when we're at home in Plains, which isn't often enough."
Carter says he rises at about 5 a.m. and spends an hour reading newspapers and answering his e-mail. "At 6 I start writing."
He usually writes rapidly, he says, averaging about a book a year. Some take longer: five years for Always a Reckoning, a book of poetry, and seven for The Hornet's Nest, a historical novel about the American Revolution (the first work of fiction by an American president, at least officially). But Carter says he was always working on other books in the meantime.
"I've already finished my 25th book," about his mother, "Miss Lillian" Carter. A nurse whose social consciousness was formed during the Great Depression and a fearlessly outspoken woman, she was one of Carter's biggest inspirations. "The broadest definition of human rights - that's where her heart was."
That book will be published in the spring, not long before Mother's Day. In the meantime, Carter is happily promoting Beyond the White House, signing for and speaking to warm crowds.
"I hope people see the book as a blueprint," Carter says, "for all those positive things happening instead of the negative, despairing things we hear about in every news cycle.
"People around the world are dedicated and hard-working; they want to improve their lives. We need to reach out a hand to them."
Colette Bancroft can be reached at (727) 893-8435 orbancroft@sptimes.com.
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Beyond the White House
By Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $26