- Hayward, Steven F. The Real Jimmy
Carter. Washington: Regnery Publishing,
2004. ISBN 0-89526-090-5.
- In the acknowledgements at the end, the author says one of
his motivations for writing this book was to acquaint younger readers
and older folks who've managed to forget with the reality of Jimmy
Carter's presidency. Indeed, unless one lived through it, it's hard
to appreciate how Carter's formidable intellect allowed him to quickly
grasp the essentials of a situation, absorb vast amounts of detailed
information, and then immediately, intuitively leap to the absolutely
worst conceivable course of action. It's all here: his race-baiting
1970 campaign for governor of Georgia; the Playboy
interview; “ethnic purity”; “I'll never lie to you”; the 111 page list
of campaign promises; alienating the Democratic controlled House and
Senate before inaugural week was over; stagflation; gas lines; the
Moral Equivalent of War (MEOW); turning down the thermostat; spending
Christmas with the Shah of Iran, “an island of stability in one of he
more troubled areas of the world”; Nicaragua; Afghanistan; “malaise”
(which he actually never said, but will be forever associated with
his presidency); the cabinet massacre; kissing Brezhnev; “Carter held
Hostage”, and more. There is a side-splitting account of the “killer
rabbit” episode on page 155. I'd have tried to work in Billy Beer,
but I guess you gotta stop somewhere. Carter's post-presidential
career, hobnobbing with dictators, loose-cannon freelance diplomacy,
and connections with shady middle-east financiers including BCCI,
are covered along with his admirable humanitarian work with Habitat
for Humanity. That this sanctimonious mountebank who The New
Republic, hardly a right wing mouthpiece, called “a vain,
meddling, amoral American fool” in 1995 after he expressed sympathy
for Serbian ethnic cleanser Radovan Karadzic, managed to win the Nobel
Peace Prize, only bears out the assessment of Carter made decades
earlier by notorious bank robber Willie Sutton, “I've never seen a
bigger confidence man in my life, and I've been around some of the
best in the business.”
October 2004 