Political Science Quarterly
Issue 114, No. 1 (Spring 1999)

The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House
by Douglas Brinkley. New York, Viking, 1998.
Reviewed by Erwin C. Hargrove

 

Historian Douglas Brinkley has written the final volume of a planned three-volume biography of Jimmy Carter, but the first two volumes have not been written. Readers of volume three, who know little about Carter, will ask themselves about the origins and character of this man who presents himself to the world as an irresistible force, even if the objects of his action appear immovable. How do you know they are immovable, he might ask, if you don’t try to move them?

This was the question Carter asked as president when he was advised that a Panama Canal treaty was a second-term issue. But, Carter asked: What if I don’t have a second term? Carter met Manachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David with ambitions that far outstripped his White House and State department advisers. Politicians play to their strengths, and the Camp David success reinforced Carter’s understanding of himself and his strengths. 

Brinkley does not give us a separate, coherent analysis of Carter’s political personality, but such a profile is apparent across a large number of narratives. Carter combines moral drive and religious optimism; with God as his guide, all things are possible. This self-confidence is reinforced by his pride in his intellect and persuasive skills. He does his own homework and is better prepared than anyone in the room, and then he turns on the charm and intellectual power. Add to this mix a disdain for conventional politicians and diplomats, and you get Jimmy Carter.

According to Brinkley, Carter sees his work at the Carter Center as a direct extension of his purposes in the White House. The center was initially established to permit Carter to replicate the work he had done as peacemaker at Camp David. A few conferences were tried, but they proved to be less important than the solo excursions of Carter into diplomatic tangles. The institutional work of the Carter Center was devoted to projects like freeing central Africa of the guinea worm and mobilizing the poor of Atlanta to face their social problems. 

Public perception of Carter’s post-presidential career was perhaps only of his work as a carpenter with the Habitat for Humanity. Carter as a public figure gradually surfaced as he directed the monitoring of a number of elections around the world — in Panama, the West Bank of Palestine, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. During Bill Clinton’s first term, Carter deliberately interjected himself into a number of thorny diplomatic situations with great, even brazen confidence. His first opportunity came in 1990, when he went beyond his responsibilities of monitoring the presidential election in Nicaragua to persuade Daniel Ortega to accept defeat. Carter then began to inject himself into foreign troubles by a combination of homework and direct contact with the foreign principals involved. Thus his mission to North Korea followed considerable private contacts on which he could build and in which he could present himself as mediator at a moment of American diplomatic stalemate. Over and over again he out-maneuvered the White House and the State department to get himself sent to the West Bank of Palestine, Haiti, and Bosnia. In each case, official diplomats saw him as a loose cannon who would damage conventional avenues of diplomacy. President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher held their breath and hoped for the best. Carter did succeed in North Korea and Haiti, but he failed in the West Bank and Bosnia, because in both cases he permitted himself to be used by Yasir Arafat and the Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic. In all cases, Carter used exaggerated language to paint tinpot despots as men of peace. This was a tactic of appealing to the best in others, but it could also be very naive.

Carter overstepped the line and tried to play president in these situations. But this was in character. He was freed from the constraints of conventional politics. As a former president he had an immediate entree to any leader in the world, and he used it. He never let politicians and bureaucrats stop him when he was president. Why should he be different now? He even offered to mediate the baseball strike. These diplomatic forays, successful or not, suggest that ex-presidents may do good things but must also realize that they are no longer president.

Brinkley’s book is too long and diffuse and will thus discourage readers, but the individual narratives are rich. 

Erwin C. Hargrove
Vanderbilt University