A conversation with the 39th President of the United States.

Question: Why has America led the world in innovation for so many decades?

Jimmy Carter: Well America has always been a country of innovation and dynamism, entrepreneurship. And I think that one of the things that has made our country great too is its heterogeneous population where people come here from all over the world. And quite often, the people who do leave their own nation and come to an unknown destination, like the United States, are inherently adventurous, so we’ve had that adventurous spirit that has embedded itself collectively in the American consciousness.

I think all of those factors combined have made it possible for us to be in the forefront of change, social change as we had to accommodate people from different societies and different religions and so forth, and also changes that have taken place in innovative science because America has had the best university system in the world for a long time. And so we have been innovators, not only in the discoveries as proven by Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics and that sort of thing, but we’ve been able to put that into practical application with new gadgets that people admire.

Question: Is America falling behind?

Jimmy Carter: We’ve had a serious problem in our country in recent, I’d say few decades, in becoming more inclined toward consumption and gratification on how much we own, rather than having a spirit of innovation and dynamism and producing new products. It was in the 1970s that our nation first became a consumer nation, that is, we bought from foreigners more than we sold to foreigners. And increasingly, that has been a blight on our economic system—increasingly every year. And now we have an enormous trade deficit, that is we buy from foreign nations, particularly China and others, a lot more than we sell them. And it means that they are producing the products that we use. And we used to be the main producer of goods to be sold to our competitive nations that were fairly well off, in particular to the countries that were very poor. That’s changed now.

So I think we’ve lost the competitive edge that we had a number of years ago.

Question: Has America failed to adequately address the problems you laid out in your 1979 "crisis of confidence" speech? —Asked by Aaron Parr

Jimmy Carter: The main subject of my talk was oil, and while I was in office we passed a massive legislation that reversed that trend, we reduced all imports from 8.5 million barrels a day to less than half that in just five years, but now we almost doubled what we had to begin with. So we’re still heavily dependent on other nations for not only goods, but also money. Now every time we spend a dollar that we don’t have, we have to borrow 40 cents of it, for instance, from the Chinese, to balance our budget just by going deeper and deeper in debt.

We’ve become increasingly addicted to consumption of goods that we don’t produce ourselves, and a lot of the manufacturing has gone overseas. And this is... in the last few years it’s been not just handwork products like shirts and shoes and clothing, but it’s become the advanced, cutting-edge technological products.

For instance, when I was in office, we had the pre-eminent position in the production of alternative sources of energy—windmills, and photovoltaic cells, things of that kind. Now that ascendancy has moved to China. China's the number one producer of new kinds of advanced photovoltaic cells, for instanced. And they are the number one producers of advanced windmills to utilize the power from the sun and directed through the wind. So we’ve lost that edge that we used to have in scientific innovation applications to goods to be sold. In many ways, that is also changing in the electronic field. Almost all of the materials that we use now are of advanced technology, I have an iPad and also an iPod, both of which are made in China. Although we have designed them here with Apple, for instance, they are manufactured overseas.

Question: Is the country ready for a gay President?

Jimmy Carter: Well I think the entire population of America has come tremendous strides forward in dealing with the issue of gays. And I would say that the answer is yes. I don’t know about the next election, but I think in the near future. Because step-by-step we have realized that this issue of homosexuality has the same adverse and progressive elements as when we dealt with the race issue 50 years ago... or 40 years ago. So I would say that the country is getting acclimated to a President who might be female, who might obviously, now be black and who might be as well, a gay person. Yes, I would say the answer is, yes.

Question: What was your biggest failure as a President, and what did you learn from it?

Jimmy Carter: I guess my biggest failure was not getting re-elected. And I learned two things; one is that you ought not to ever let American hostages be held for 444 days in a foreign country without extracting them. I did the best I could, but I failed.

And I think another lesson I learned is, I should have paid more attention to the organization of the Democratic Party. I was not only the leader of our nation, but I was also the leader of the Democratic Party. And I think I failed in that respect to keep the party united. It was divided in my reelection campaign between me and the people who were loyal to Ted Kennedy and then that cost me a lot of votes. So those were the two things that I believe could have been done better.

Question: What could President Obama learn from your presidency?

Jimmy Carter: Well I would say quickly, that in a midterm election I had great success. We wound up after the election in 1978 with a majority of 19 in the Senate and a majority of 100 in the House. So we had a very good success with that. But I think that what is likely to happen in the next two years, I hope, is for President Obama to be much more firm in letting his specific views be known and then adhering to his commitments through thick or thin. I think in his last two years, he’s been faced with a totally irresponsible Republican Party that have given him on major issues sometimes zero votes in the House and in the U.S. Senate. And I think he’s tried maybe too much to maybe get a few of those Republican votes, which have now proved to be impossible.

In the days when I was President, I had superb support from the Republican Party in the House and Senate and that gave me a chance to have a very good success in my batting average with the Congress.

So, just stick to his guns, be firm and let the American people know what he wants quite without equivocation and without doubt and don’t back down. I’m sure those are the things he’s going to do in the next two years.

Question: Given that you brokered some of the most successful Mideast peace agreements, do you have any suggestions for resolving the Israel and Palestine situation once and for all? —Asked by Sarah Wildman

Jimmy Carter: Well, when I left office, we had an agreement, a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, not a word of which has been violated. And we had an agreement with the Israelis to withdraw from their occupied territories in the West Bank and also later, the idea was for them to withdraw from Syria and also from Lebanon. Unfortunately, in the last 25 years, no progress has been made on those issues that depend upon Israel’s willingness to withdraw from occupied territories. And I don’t think peace is possible until that comes. Of course, the other aspect of that is to make sure that the Israelis know that if they do withdraw from the West Bank, from East Jerusalem, from Syria and from Lebanon, that their security and their integrity as a nation will be preserved with safety.

So that’s been the quandary in which we have wallowed in a way for the last 25 years, and my hope is that we will make some progress in the near future.

Question: What role will China play in the 21st century?

Jimmy Carter: Well China changed in many ways because of a decision I made to normalize diplomatic relations between the United States and China after 35 years of estrangement, yet at the same time China announced on December 15, 1978, they also announced they would have a complete reform within China and in China’s relationship with the outside world. And so since that date, January 1, 1979, China has expanded its freedom within its country and also has been very aggressive in their foreign policy.

So now no matter where you go in the world in any country in Africa or Latin America and other place, you will find that China is very deeply involved in the affairs of that country. So China, I think, is now destined to be one of the great powers, not only in trade and commerce, they have now exceeded Japan in that respect, but also a great power in international affairs. And I don’t believe that China, in my lifetime or maybe my children’s lifetime, be equal to the United States militarily speaking, but they are very careful to avoid any engagement in war, they are basically a peaceful country, which gives them another advantage over the United States when we are much more inclined to go to war for various reasons.

So, China is going to be a competitor in the future, I hope it will be a friendly relationship between the United States and China.

Question: What does it take to be a good husband?

Jimmy Carter: Well, I think a good husband for one thing has to depend on having a good wife and I was lucky enough to choose the right woman and we were married more than 64 years ago. Rosalynn and I have run into a few things, first of all, we give each other plenty of space. We don’t try to encroach on the private affairs of each other. Rosalynn has her own major commitments outside of home and so do I. We cooperate whenever we can, we share delightful aspects of life like fly-fishing and bird watching and things of that kind. And also we made a commitment a large number of years ago not ever to go to sleep at night estranged. If we do have some arguments during the day, we have almost a commitment before God that we will resolve that argument before we go to sleep. So I think those are the reasons we’ve been able to enjoy each other’s company all this time.

Recorded November 30, 2010
Interviewed by Andrea Useem