1 00:00:31,498 --> 00:00:37,737 JIMMY CARTER: I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you, 2 00:00:37,737 --> 00:00:40,807 so I can't stand here tonight and say it doesn't hurt. 3 00:00:42,342 --> 00:00:46,212 About an hour ago, I called Governor Reagan in California 4 00:00:46,212 --> 00:00:48,648 and I congratulated him for a fine victory. 5 00:00:48,648 --> 00:00:50,750 I look forward to working closely with him... 6 00:00:50,750 --> 00:00:54,921 DAN CARTER: All his life he believed that if you worked hard enough at it, 7 00:00:54,921 --> 00:00:58,425 understood the issues, mastered information, 8 00:00:58,425 --> 00:01:00,593 then you would come out first. 9 00:01:00,593 --> 00:01:03,129 I said to him, "It must have been hard 10 00:01:03,129 --> 00:01:06,332 to turn over the keys to Ronald Reagan," 11 00:01:06,332 --> 00:01:08,802 and he said, "You don't know how hard it was." 12 00:01:11,037 --> 00:01:17,477 NARRATOR: On January 20, 1981, after one of the most humiliating defeats 13 00:01:17,477 --> 00:01:20,246 in American political history, 14 00:01:20,246 --> 00:01:24,250 President Jimmy Carter returned home to Plains, Georgia, 15 00:01:24,250 --> 00:01:29,923 to what he called, "An altogether new, unwanted 16 00:01:29,923 --> 00:01:32,092 and potentially empty life." 17 00:01:33,593 --> 00:01:36,463 ROSALYNN CARTER: He really was better than I was 18 00:01:36,463 --> 00:01:40,100 when we came home because, um, I was so depressed about it 19 00:01:40,100 --> 00:01:43,770 that he was always trying to prop me up. 20 00:01:43,770 --> 00:01:46,706 (crowd cheering, applauding) 21 00:01:46,706 --> 00:01:50,343 NARRATOR: Four years before, he had stunned the nation. 22 00:01:50,343 --> 00:01:51,578 (cheering) 23 00:01:51,578 --> 00:01:53,346 PATRICK CADDELL: Going from total anonymity 24 00:01:53,346 --> 00:01:55,582 to being president of the United States 25 00:01:55,582 --> 00:01:56,883 in less than 12 months 26 00:01:56,883 --> 00:01:59,018 is unprecedented in American history. 27 00:01:59,018 --> 00:02:01,688 If it weren't for the country looking for something in '76, 28 00:02:01,688 --> 00:02:03,556 Carter could never have gotten elected. 29 00:02:05,892 --> 00:02:10,463 DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: He offered a biography of what we wanted to hear-- 30 00:02:10,463 --> 00:02:13,700 a farmer, Main Street values, Plains-- 31 00:02:13,700 --> 00:02:15,502 and he carried that message through. 32 00:02:15,502 --> 00:02:17,737 It was the right message at the right time. 33 00:02:17,737 --> 00:02:23,243 CARTER: Our commitment to human rights must be absolute. 34 00:02:23,243 --> 00:02:25,979 NARRATOR: He had promised a new beginning, 35 00:02:25,979 --> 00:02:30,316 to heal the wounds of Watergate and Vietnam-- 36 00:02:30,316 --> 00:02:34,154 a government as good and decent and compassionate 37 00:02:34,154 --> 00:02:36,022 as the American people. 38 00:02:36,022 --> 00:02:37,857 (crowd chanting) 39 00:02:37,857 --> 00:02:45,465 But events would overwhelm him-- an energy crisis, inflation, 40 00:02:45,465 --> 00:02:54,908 an Islamic revolution, and 53 Americans held hostage 444 days. 41 00:02:54,908 --> 00:02:59,445 Carter came to be regarded as a good and decent man 42 00:02:59,445 --> 00:03:01,748 who was in over his head. 43 00:03:01,748 --> 00:03:06,619 ELIZABETH DREW: He's a very, very smart man and very well-intentioned, 44 00:03:06,619 --> 00:03:10,256 but feel... feel is very, very important in politics, 45 00:03:10,256 --> 00:03:12,058 especially in a president, 46 00:03:12,058 --> 00:03:15,228 and Carter just didn't have very much of it. 47 00:03:15,228 --> 00:03:17,664 What he had was a moral ideology 48 00:03:17,664 --> 00:03:20,934 and the issues where he proved successful-- 49 00:03:20,934 --> 00:03:23,770 the Panama Canal treaties, the human rights crusades, 50 00:03:23,770 --> 00:03:25,205 peace in the Middle East-- 51 00:03:25,205 --> 00:03:29,175 those were issues where his moral ideology guided him. 52 00:03:29,175 --> 00:03:32,879 In a nation that was proud of hard work... 53 00:03:32,879 --> 00:03:35,281 NARRATOR: "Carter was one of the more exasperating men 54 00:03:35,281 --> 00:03:39,485 ever to claim the White House," one journalist said. 55 00:03:39,485 --> 00:03:43,122 "His tenacity, so admirable, could shift to stubbornness, 56 00:03:43,122 --> 00:03:47,227 "his religious faith to self-righteousness. 57 00:03:47,227 --> 00:03:54,133 His brilliant mind could be bound up by intricate details." 58 00:03:54,133 --> 00:03:55,635 Many times the one argument 59 00:03:55,635 --> 00:03:58,037 that I would find would ruin a person's case 60 00:03:58,037 --> 00:04:01,007 is when you'd say, "This is good for you, politically." 61 00:04:01,007 --> 00:04:02,575 He didn't want to hear that. 62 00:04:02,575 --> 00:04:04,344 He didn't want to think that way 63 00:04:04,344 --> 00:04:06,946 and he didn't want his staff to think that way. 64 00:04:06,946 --> 00:04:08,581 He wanted to know what's right. 65 00:04:09,849 --> 00:04:12,218 BRINKLEY: This is one of the most highly ambitious people 66 00:04:12,218 --> 00:04:13,319 you'll ever meet. 67 00:04:13,319 --> 00:04:16,189 I mean, you don't make it from Plains, Georgia, 68 00:04:16,189 --> 00:04:19,125 to the White House just on charm. 69 00:04:19,125 --> 00:04:20,627 But what makes him complex 70 00:04:20,627 --> 00:04:23,229 is he's got that kind of hubris and arrogance 71 00:04:23,229 --> 00:04:27,400 and also this Christian humbleness, 72 00:04:27,400 --> 00:04:30,036 and that's the battle he's constantly finding himself in. 73 00:04:46,853 --> 00:04:49,022 NARRATOR: "As a child, my greatest ambition 74 00:04:49,022 --> 00:04:53,359 was to be valuable around the farm and to please my father," 75 00:04:53,359 --> 00:04:58,097 Jimmy Carter wrote of his boyhood in rural Georgia. 76 00:04:58,097 --> 00:05:01,934 "He was the center of my life and the focus of my admiration." 77 00:05:04,404 --> 00:05:06,973 DAN CARTER: I can't believe that Jimmy Carter 78 00:05:06,973 --> 00:05:11,044 ever felt lost, in the sense that he didn't know 79 00:05:11,044 --> 00:05:14,213 where his place was in the world. 80 00:05:14,213 --> 00:05:16,783 And a lot of that comes from his father, 81 00:05:16,783 --> 00:05:21,220 who not only was a well-respected, powerful figure 82 00:05:21,220 --> 00:05:26,693 in the community, but I think had a real sense of who he was. 83 00:05:26,693 --> 00:05:30,063 And that certitude and self-confidence 84 00:05:30,063 --> 00:05:35,401 was something that his son, I think, absorbed unconsciously. 85 00:05:37,403 --> 00:05:40,473 NARRATOR: By the standards of southwest Georgia, 86 00:05:40,473 --> 00:05:44,010 Earl Carter presided over a small empire. 87 00:05:44,010 --> 00:05:48,681 A staunch segregationist, he owned some 350 acres of land 88 00:05:48,681 --> 00:05:52,151 where he planted corn, cotton and peanuts, 89 00:05:52,151 --> 00:05:57,423 employing more than 200 workers at harvest time. 90 00:05:57,423 --> 00:05:59,559 Five sharecropper families, 91 00:05:59,559 --> 00:06:02,161 who depended on him for their survival, 92 00:06:02,161 --> 00:06:06,032 lived year-round at his farm in Archery. 93 00:06:06,032 --> 00:06:12,472 Carter's mother, Lillian, was an avid reader, loved traveling 94 00:06:12,472 --> 00:06:15,575 and was known to enjoy a sip of bourbon. 95 00:06:15,575 --> 00:06:20,513 She put in long hours as a nurse at a nearby hospital 96 00:06:20,513 --> 00:06:27,954 and devoted much of her free time to helping sick neighbors. 97 00:06:27,954 --> 00:06:29,822 She got paid in chickens and vegetables 98 00:06:29,822 --> 00:06:32,225 and that kind of things because she really helped 99 00:06:32,225 --> 00:06:34,794 and felt called to help those that had less than her, 100 00:06:34,794 --> 00:06:38,231 and I think she instilled that in all of her children. 101 00:06:38,231 --> 00:06:39,999 ROSALYNN CARTER: She was the only person in Plains 102 00:06:39,999 --> 00:06:41,601 who would take up for Abraham Lincoln 103 00:06:41,601 --> 00:06:43,169 if he was ever brought up. 104 00:06:43,169 --> 00:06:45,571 Today it's unbelievable to think about that, 105 00:06:45,571 --> 00:06:47,740 but back then it was just a way of life, 106 00:06:47,740 --> 00:06:49,575 and we never thought anything... 107 00:06:49,575 --> 00:06:51,611 we never thought it was really wrong. 108 00:06:53,513 --> 00:06:57,984 NARRATOR: Lillian set for Jimmy the example of service to others. 109 00:06:57,984 --> 00:07:01,554 Earl put the steel in his character. 110 00:07:01,554 --> 00:07:04,924 BETTY GLAD: He was very demanding. 111 00:07:04,924 --> 00:07:07,894 He expected his children to be the very best, 112 00:07:07,894 --> 00:07:11,531 and, um, in some ways they all had that built into them. 113 00:07:13,499 --> 00:07:16,569 NARRATOR: "I never remember him saying 'good job' 114 00:07:16,569 --> 00:07:21,974 when I did my best to fulfill his orders," Jimmy later said. 115 00:07:21,974 --> 00:07:26,512 "The punishments he administered remain vivid in my memory." 116 00:07:28,080 --> 00:07:30,450 (train whistle blows) 117 00:07:32,819 --> 00:07:35,988 A short distance from the Carter farm 118 00:07:35,988 --> 00:07:41,027 was Plains, Georgia-- population 600-- 119 00:07:41,027 --> 00:07:45,565 the only place for miles to get a cup of coffee, 120 00:07:45,565 --> 00:07:48,968 a haircut, buy or sell goods. 121 00:07:53,606 --> 00:07:58,344 It is the place Jimmy Carter always called home, 122 00:07:58,344 --> 00:08:00,313 where as a child he went 123 00:08:00,313 --> 00:08:03,683 to the all-white Baptist church on Sundays 124 00:08:03,683 --> 00:08:07,753 and where he attended the all-white public school. 125 00:08:07,753 --> 00:08:10,523 DAN CARTER: Everybody knew that he was special. 126 00:08:10,523 --> 00:08:13,226 He was somebody different, smarter than, 127 00:08:13,226 --> 00:08:15,394 worked harder than, did more than, 128 00:08:15,394 --> 00:08:19,899 ceaselessly working at improving himself, even as a child. 129 00:08:21,100 --> 00:08:23,369 NARRATOR: Jimmy made all "A"s. 130 00:08:23,369 --> 00:08:27,440 He played basketball and joined the book lover's club, 131 00:08:27,440 --> 00:08:29,742 read Shakespeare's King Lear, 132 00:08:29,742 --> 00:08:34,347 Ben-Hur, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 133 00:08:34,347 --> 00:08:37,016 He dreamed of joining the Navy. 134 00:08:37,016 --> 00:08:41,487 His uncle Tom Gordy had excited his imagination 135 00:08:41,487 --> 00:08:43,689 with tales of adventures, 136 00:08:43,689 --> 00:08:46,993 and postcards and gifts from exotic, faraway places. 137 00:08:49,729 --> 00:08:56,903 In June 1943, at age 18, the farm boy from Plains 138 00:08:56,903 --> 00:09:00,172 was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis-- 139 00:09:00,172 --> 00:09:03,709 the first Carter ever to leave Georgia 140 00:09:03,709 --> 00:09:06,445 to pursue a higher education. 141 00:09:14,220 --> 00:09:16,455 ROSALYNN CARTER: Jimmy's sister Ruth was my best friend 142 00:09:16,455 --> 00:09:19,125 and she had a picture of him on the wall in her bedroom. 143 00:09:21,160 --> 00:09:22,762 I just thought he was 144 00:09:22,762 --> 00:09:26,132 the most handsome young man I had ever seen. 145 00:09:26,132 --> 00:09:28,401 One day I confessed to her 146 00:09:28,401 --> 00:09:31,103 that I wished she would let me take that photograph home, 147 00:09:31,103 --> 00:09:33,139 because I just thought I had fallen in love 148 00:09:33,139 --> 00:09:34,373 with Jimmy Carter. 149 00:09:36,175 --> 00:09:40,246 NARRATOR: Rosalynn Smith was shy, a dedicated student, 150 00:09:40,246 --> 00:09:44,216 read the Bible daily and went to church on Sundays. 151 00:09:44,216 --> 00:09:47,119 Her mother once described her 152 00:09:47,119 --> 00:09:50,456 as a girl who could wear a white dress all day 153 00:09:50,456 --> 00:09:53,492 and keep it clean. 154 00:09:53,492 --> 00:09:55,161 E. STANLY GODBOLD: She was very bright. 155 00:09:55,161 --> 00:09:56,329 She was a reader. 156 00:09:56,329 --> 00:09:58,164 She liked to look at maps. 157 00:09:58,164 --> 00:10:01,000 She was always interested in seeing the world 158 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:03,402 and, uh, she always wanted to get away. 159 00:10:05,905 --> 00:10:08,774 ROSALYNN CARTER: I went to a meeting at the church 160 00:10:08,774 --> 00:10:10,343 and I was standing outside 161 00:10:10,343 --> 00:10:13,579 and Jimmy drove up with Ruth and her boyfriend, 162 00:10:13,579 --> 00:10:16,882 got out of the car and came up and asked me to go to the movie. 163 00:10:16,882 --> 00:10:18,217 He kissed me good-bye. 164 00:10:18,217 --> 00:10:21,487 I was thrilled to death, and then we started corresponding 165 00:10:21,487 --> 00:10:27,593 and, uh, by the time Christmas came, I was swept off my feet. 166 00:10:31,530 --> 00:10:35,801 NARRATOR: One month after his graduation from Annapolis, 167 00:10:35,801 --> 00:10:38,337 Jimmy and Rosalynn were married. 168 00:10:38,337 --> 00:10:42,208 She was 18, he was 21.