All Quotes

"All of this demands a vision. It demands looking at government and the economy as they exist and not as words on paper, but as institutions guided by our will and knowledge toward growth, restraint and effective action. When Mr. Carter first took office, he had sufficient budget flexibility to achieve these goals. But he threw away the opportunity to generate new economic growth and to strengthen national security. Now the damage done to the economy by his misguided policies will make the achievement of these crucial objectives far more difficult. Nevertheless, this nation cannot afford to back away from any of these goals. We cannot allow tax burdens to continue to rise inordinately, inflation to take a stronger hold, or allow our defenses to deteriorate further - without severe consequences. This task is going to be difficult but our goals are optimistic - as they should be. Success is going to take time, as well as work. There is only one phrase to describe the last three years and eight months. It has been an American tragedy. It isn't only that Mr. Carter has increased Federal spending by 58 percent in four years, or that taxes in his 1981 budget are double what they were in 1976, the equivalent of a tax increase on an average family of four of more than $5,000. The tragedy lies as much in what Mr. Carter has failed to do as in what he has done. He has failed to lead. Mr. Carter had a chance to govern effectively. He had a sound economic base with an inflation rate of 4.8 percent when he took office. But he has failed. His failure was rooted in his view of government, in his view of the American people. Yet he wants this dismal view to prevail for four more years. The time has come for the American people to reclaim their dream. Things don't have to be this way. We can change them. We must change them. Mr. Carter's American tragedy must and can be transcended by the spirit of the American people, working together."

"If you feel that Mr. Carter has faithfully served America with the kind of competence and distinction which deserve four more years in office, then you should vote for him. If he has given you the kind of leadership you are looking for, if he instills in you pride for our country and a sense of optimism about our future, then he should be reelected. But consider these questions as well when you finally make your decision: Are you more confident that our economy will create productive work for our society or are you less confident? Do you feel you can keep the job you have or gain a job if you don't have one? Are you satisfied that inflation as the highest rates in 33 years were the best that we could do? Are interest rates at 14 ½ percent something you are prepared to live with? Are you pleased with the ability of young people to buy a home; of the elderly to live their remaining years in happiness; of our youngsters to take pride in the world we have build for them? Is our nation stronger and more capable of leading the world toward peace and freedom or is it weaker? Is there more stability in the world or less? Are you convinced that we have earned the respect of the world and our allies, or has America's position across the globe diminished? Are you personally more secure in your life? Is your family more secure? Is America safer in the world? And, most importantly--quite simply--the basic question of our lives: are you happier today than when Mr. Carter became President of the United States? I cannot answer those questions for you. Only you can."

"Since Carter left office in 1980, the too-easy, misleading, canned analysis of his life was that he was a mediocre president who became an exceptional ex-president, leading for decades by virtue of his service and lived values. It is commonplace to suggest that his presidency was a footnote to history, one perhaps most notable because it ushered in the “greatness” of the Reagan Era. Because of the optics of the Iran hostage crisis that dominated his last year in office, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Carter was maligned as a “weak” foreign policy president who fortunately was succeeded by the disconnected, often-befuddled Reagan’s "strong" leadership as he allegedly went eyeball-to-eyeball with the Soviet Union and practically brought down the Berlin Wall with a single speech and a sparkling Hollywood smile. As happens so often, in this case, the conventional wisdom is exactly wrong. Carter was in virtually every respect superior to Reagan, especially in areas like foreign policy and the restoration of American leadership. Indeed, even out of office, Carter proved both more visionary and far more principled and courageous on world affairs than most of his successors were."

"It was impossible not to like Jimmy Carter. He was a deeply committed Christian and a man of obvious sincerity. He was also a man of marked intellectual ability with a grasp, rare among politicians, of science and the scientific method."

"Remi was just like a little boy. Somewhere in his past, in his lonely schooldays in France, they’d taken everything from him; his stepparents just stuck him in schools and left him there; he was browbeaten and thrown out of one school after another; he walked the French roads at night devising curses out of his innocent stock of words. He was out to get back everything he’d lost; there was no end to his loss; this thing would drag on forever."

"It was Carter who turned the initial outreach that Nixon and Kissinger made to China into normalized relations and diplomatic recognition, a vitally important development in what would become the most important bilateral relationship in the world. The Carter administration also deserves credit and recognition for overseeing the smooth handover of the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama, an important landmark in U.S. relations with Latin America. Reagan is often seen as the president who initiated the tough policies that brought down the Soviet Union. As noted earlier, the policies of containment and strong defense against the Russians date back much earlier. But it was Carter, with the notable advice of his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan increased pressure on the Russians and reversed the reduction in tensions associated with the détente of the Nixon-Kissinger era."

"Carter’s presidency was imperfect, but its contributions were clear and far more significant than he was given credit for while in office. Later, as he began his famed and rightly hailed "post-presidency" it became clearer and clearer—as a consequence of his actions in service of the country and the world—what an extraordinary leader he has been. Also during that period, Carter regularly braved contrary winds of public opinion to speak out against what he saw as wrongs that needed addressing. Nowhere is this more clear than his championing the rights of Palestinians and his having the courage to call out Israel as an apartheid state. When he first did that, it was so contrary to prevailing U.S. attitudes that I (like many others) condemned Carter. However, as years have passed, it has become clearer and clearer that he saw the truth and had the courage to articulate it regardless of the impact it might have on his popularity. That’s a demonstration of the kind of character we need but seldom see in our leaders. It is a repudiation of politicians who let polls determine their positions and of others who have no values at all other than the promotion of their narrow self-interests. We have seen far too many of both types of defective leaders in the years since Jimmy Carter served as our president. We have also seen presidents, like Reagan, hailed for accomplishments that were not theirs, for values they neither lived nor understood very well. And in contrast to them all, we have this Naval Academy graduate, former submarine officer, former farmer, former governor, and former president who has lived every minute of his life in the expectation that he will ultimately answer to a higher authority than donors or pundits or the ebb and flow of public opinion. As a consequence, he has remained constant even as we have changed."

"There was something discomforting about Carter going back 30 years plus to hear him blame Kennedy for his own administration's failure. Of course, in fairness, Kennedy -- while now revered as a saint -- was not the most sympathetic and beloved figure back in the day. Chappaquiddick aside, he was widely seen as a man with many pleasures, most of which had to do more with himself than the Senate. From the moment Carter was inaugurated in 1977, he was always seen as plotting against him; at least that was the view of many in the Carter White House. It wasn't until after his challenge to Carter's nomination in 1980 failed and after he realized that the presidency was not in the cards for him did he become a true giant of the Senate. But Carter has always been one not to forget slights. And while it's always dangerous to dabble in psycho-babble, I'm sure he had to resent the widespread view among many in the party that he only won the nomination in 1976 because Kennedy stayed out of the race, and that the nomination in 1980 was Kennedy's for the asking were the Massachusetts senator to run -- many in Congress had said that out loud, including House Speaker Tip O'Neill. That had to grate on the president. Carter, in fact, told a group of congressmen in 1979 that if Kennedy were to challenge him, "I'll whip his ass." And he did."

"As former president Jimmy Carter has said, unlimited money in politics "violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now, it's just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and Congress members. So now we've just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election's over.""

"What has been lost in the mists of history is that Carter remained a relatively popular president during his first year in office with his approval rating in the Gallup Poll never dropping below 50 percent. Trump’s approval numbers, in contrast, are best examined by a submarine. After two months in office, according to Gallup, Trump was roughly half as popular (39 percent) as Carter (75 percent) at a similar juncture. But presidents are not judged by approval ratings alone. Inheriting a recessionary economy, Carter passed, in the spring of 1977, a stimulus package that included tax cuts and funding for an eventual 725,000 public service jobs. Partly as a result, the unemployment rate dropped to below 6 percent at the end of 1978. It is ironic that the stimulus was attacked at the time by liberals and labor unions for being too timid. In reality, it proved to be the last New Deal-style job-creation program in American history. As a former aide to Labor Secretary Ray Marshall, I still believe that these liberal aspects of the Carter administration get far too little historical credit."

"Almost all the problems that now define Carter as a failed president only emerged in 1979, his third year in the White House. An oil crisis produced gasoline lines across the country and the inflation rate — which had also bedeviled the prior three presidents — approached 10 percent annually. Carter responded in July 1979 by delivering what is remembered as the “malaise” speech, even though that word was never uttered as the president talked about the "crisis of confidence" afflicting America. But what is forgotten — amid the ridicule surrounding Carter’s legacy — was that the speech itself was popular with the voters. I didn’t work on the speech, but I did write some of Carter’s follow-up addresses. As a result, I read dozens of emotional letters that ordinary citizens sent to the president, responding to his call for national unity in the face of the energy crisis. What upended Carter was not the speech, but his subsequent decision to fire four Cabinet members in a self-inflicted government shake-up. As for the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, it was partly triggered by the president agreeing to admit the exiled Shah to America for medical treatment. In making this fateful decision, Carter was swayed against his own instincts by appeals from Henry Kissinger and banker David Rockefeller. Once again, Carter was victimized by his hunger for establishment approval."

"Carter despised Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for his tenacious defense of Jewish rights and unwillingness to bow to U.S. pressure. He always blamed Begin for somehow deceiving him about Israel’s intention to defend the right of Jews to settle in Judea and Samaria, which the president wanted to end. But that was not true since, if anything, Carter deceived himself about what Begin’s promise of limited autonomy for Palestinian Arabs in the territories really meant. Carter’s hostility to Israel was no secret, and it played a part in the failure of his bid for re-election in 1980. Reagan achieved a modern record of 40% of the Jewish vote not so much because of his appeal but because of Carter’s unpopularity—something that Republicans have failed to remember as they’ve sought in vain to replicate that feat. Carter blamed the Jews for his defeat; it colored his post-presidency as he began a decades-long effort to promote Palestinian statehood and to smear Israel. He was not the only person to be wrong about the necessity for a two-state solution, but few matched the virulence with which he assailed Israel, and especially its American supporters, for their refusal to listen to his bad advice. That culminated in the publication of his 2006 book—Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid, which in no small measure began the effort, at least in the United States, to mainstream the big lie that the Middle East’s only democracy was in some ways morally equivalent to apartheid-era South Africa. For all of the applause he has received for his life as an ex-president, Carter’s animus against the Jewish state and willingness to use his moral standing and influence to besmirch it and aid the efforts of antisemitic hate-mongers and terrorists to undermine its existence is also part of his legacy."

"So, when assessing his life, how do we weigh that against the many good things that can be said for Jimmy Carter as an individual? There is no calculus by which these competing arguments can be measured exactly. Like everyone, his life was a mixture of good and bad. It is entirely possible to acknowledge his outstanding personal qualities and even his undoubted positive intentions, but to also judge his presidency to be a disaster and his post-presidential efforts to have also done as much harm as good. We should all wish him and his family well and, whenever it does happen, his passing should be acknowledged with the solemnity and respect due to a former president of the United States. But we should not let that desire to think well of a historic figure color the verdict of contemporary public opinion or history. Jimmy Carter may have been a very decent man in many respects, but he was still a bad president and someone whose unfair attacks on the Jewish state deserve to be held against him."

"The parallels between Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are hauntingly familiar. And if the eventual Republican nominee employs the right strategy against President Obama, America's 44th president will suffer the same fate as America's 39th president."

"From the beginning of his race for the presidency, Carter—who recently entered hospice care at the age of 98—came across as a refreshingly different candidate. The public took note of the fact that he carried his own suitcase, engaged in honest, humble, and direct conversations with voters on the campaign trail, and was never shy about acknowledging his Christian faith, though not in a pompous, holier-than-thou manner. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, were a breath of fresh air in the White House. After a few successful years, his presidency was done in by domestic and foreign policy crises that he did not create and which proved beyond his ability to control. When he left office, “pundits” were in agreement that he had failed and would be forgotten. That was not to be the case. On leaving the White House, one of the first things Carter did was to become closely identified with a nonprofit volunteer project, Habitat for Humanity. During its initial two decades, owing in large measure to Carter’s sponsorship, Habitat became a household name in communities across the US, building over 100,000 low-cost homes for over half a million people in the US and in 60 countries around the world. Well into their 70s, Jimmy and Rosalynn were still spending one week each year volunteering with Habitat. He became so identified with the group that when thinking of him, more Americans probably called to mind Carter in denim with a hammer in his hand than Carter in a suit in the White House. In 1982, just two years after leaving office, Carter further burnished his credentials as a great leader when he created the Carter Center, which described its role as “waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope.” Many of the Center’s initiatives were led by Carter himself, including monitoring elections in dozens of countries; negotiating peaceful resolutions to conflicts in Africa, Asia, and the Americas; undertaking programs to help eradicate dreaded diseases that plagued parts of Africa and Asia; and assisting farmers in Africa to increase their yield and improve their lives. Working tirelessly to address these global concerns, Carter established his legacy as the greatest of our former presidents."

"When I finally met Jimmy Carter, years later, I told him about both my exclusion from the White House meeting and the Camp David flight. He was offended by and apologized about the former, and about the latter he said, "That was you! I wondered who did that. It was a great reminder." I met with Carter on a number of other occasions in the next few decades. I had the honor of serving under his leadership as an election monitor in Palestine in 1996. His very presence was an inspiration to Palestinians, especially as he fought to ensure that Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem would be able to vote. In 2016, we appeared on a panel together at the Carter Center before a group of Palestinian clergy to discuss the challenges to religious freedom imposed by the Israeli occupation. My flight was delayed by bad weather, so I arrived after the session had begun. In an act of characteristic Carter humility, he stopped his remarks as I entered the back of the room, and said, "Oh good, Jim Zogby has arrived. Let’s wait until he can be seated up here on stage." Most memorable, though, was a lengthy discussion I had with Carter in early 2001, where we discussed a number of hot-button Middle East topics. He expressed his frustration that he hadn’t been able to do more to secure Palestinian rights and noted the pushback he received both domestically and in Israel for his efforts. And he told me of his dismay that, in the years after Camp David, despite what he felt were Israeli commitments to him, Israel continued to deepen the occupation with settlements while successive US administrations “looked the other way” and allowed it to impede the prospects for peace. While acknowledging that Saddam Hussein was a "callous dictator," Carter was deeply critical of the US-led sanctions against Iraq, which he noted were "counterproductive," had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, and played into the hands of the Iraqi regime. He also took time to single out for commendation the leader of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed, for his role in building his country and for providing extraordinary assistance to many important health care projects across Africa. With all this in mind, I took personal note of the news of Jimmy Carter’s decision to enter hospice and was reminded of a quote from a talk he gave to his church in 2019: "I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death." This is the legacy of Jimmy Carter: a great former president who taught us how to live a life for others, and, as he approaches his end, is teaching us how to die with grace."

"They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!""

"Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love."

"Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me."

"And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which bop has come to represent for all of us, I thought of my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing-about."

"He was a real red-nose young drunk of thirty and would have bored me ordinarily, except that my senses were sharp for any kind of human friendship."

"There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon — they were coming home from high school — but I had no time now for thoughts like that and promised myself a ball in Denver. Carlo Marx was already in Denver; Dean was there; Chad King and Tim Gray were there, it was their hometown; Marylou was there; and there was mention of a mighty gang including Ray Rawlins and his beautiful blond sister Babe Rawlins; two waitresses Dean knew, the Bettencourt sisters; and even Roland Major, my old college writing buddy, was there. I looked forward to all of them with joy and anticipation. So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines."

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future."

"Just ahead, over the rolling wheatfields all golden beneath the distant snows of Estes, I'd be seeing old Denver at last. I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was "Wow!""

"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream."

"They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining."

"The stars bent over the little roof; smoke poked from the stovepipe chimney. I smelled mashed beans and chili. The old man growled. The brothers kept right on yodeling. The mother was silent. Johnny and the kids were giggling in the bedroom. A California home; I hid in the grapevines, digging it all. I felt like a million dollars; I was adventuring in the crazy American night."

"We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time."

"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child, believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome, grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life."

"Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"

"Everything is fine, God exists, we know time."

"Something, someone, some spirit was pursuing all of us across the desert of life and was bound to catch us before we reached heaven. Naturally, now that I look back on it, this is only death: death will overtake us before heaven. The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death."

"Among my first proposals as President was one to stimulate the overall economy and especially to provide jobs for teenagers in the inner cities. We've now established a program to provide 1.1 million jobs, summer jobs, for youth more than ever in history. We proposed, in addition, a youth employment program with 1.5 million jobs for unemployed youth. We've doubled the size of the Peace Corps, the Job Corps, and we've more than doubled the public service jobs for the unemployed--from 310,000 to 725,000, nearly half of these for the long-term unemployed. Soon, before August 5, we'll be sending to the Congress our proposal for basic welfare reform. Jobs will be the thrust behind this reform program for those who are able to work and self-respect and adequate living conditions for those who are not able to work. Our goal is for all those who want to work to be able to find work so that they can be independent and so they can be proud and they can be self-sufficient. And I'd like to point out that an emphasis on jobs and work for those who are able is not discriminatory, it's not moving backwards, and it's not a deprivation of basic rights. What we want is for people who are able not to be permanently dependent on government, but able to stand on their own feet, support their own family, and have a constructive attitude toward our society. In this welfare proposal, there will be an additional 1 million job opportunities. Our goal is to make sure that every single family has a member of it with a guaranteed job, by government if necessary, and this is a goal that we intend to reach."

"We're concerned about young people's health. We propose an $18.9 million program to immunize 5 1/2 million poor children from preventable diseases over the next 30 months, and we'll raise the number of poor children screened for medical purposes from less than 2 million last year to 9.8 million before I go out of office. I said during the campaign that the tax system was a disgrace, that it was most unfair to people with low and average incomes. We've been working now for 6 months on a tax proposal that will be simpler and fairer and will reduce the burden on the average American. But in the meantime, we have already gotten Congress to agree--the bill has been signed, it's been passed into law--to reduce taxes $4 billion with the primary emphasis on the low- and middle-income families, which means that a family that makes about $10,000 a year on a permanent basis would have a 30-percent reduction in their income tax payments. That's already been done."

"We've made a major expansion in what is called countercyclical revenue sharing to focus into the most deprived urban ghetto, unemployed areas, to be administered by Patricia Harris. And I've already signed into law a $4 billion public works bill. Under a new urban program that we are proposing, the Secretary of HUD, Patricia Harris, will have the authority to target large amounts of this money, in her judgment, on areas that are the most needy. For a long time in the past whenever a Federal program was approved by the Congress and the Republican Presidents, a large portion of that money went to areas where the need was least, in the suburban areas for housing and jobs went to areas with already low unemployment. We have reversed that now, and we're going to send the Federal money where it's needed most. Another of my first tasks has been to reorganize the Federal Government and to handle discrimination complaints faster and more effectively than we have in the past. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission now has a backlog of 130,000 cases. Many of these cases aren't considered for 3 years. There are seven different Federal agencies that are supposed to be taking care of these needs, these discriminatory practices. That's not been done yet. Because these cases have dragged on so long, quite often the witnesses have disappeared and the victims have given up. This is one of our top priorities--to reorganize the structure. It's not an easy or quick thing that can be done, and the person in charge of it is Eleanor Holmes Norton."

"Now, I've mentioned a lot of figures to you. I've talked a lot about programs that we've already passed, about a lot of money that's already been appropriated. And then you might say, "Well, he's talking about a lot of money and a lot of help. But I haven't seen that money in my Community yet." But the point I'm making to you is it takes time to change the trends of history and to reverse the bureaucratic mechanism to one of support and compassion and concern and enthusiasm from what was formerly reluctance or lack of enthusiasm. We have, obviously, a long way to go. So, when I talk about these figures, it's not with a sense of final accomplishments. It's with a sense of dedication to the future to perform as President of our great country in such a way as to make you proud and to let you feel that there is in the White House and there is in the Democratic Congress and there is within the Cabinet members of my administration a partner with the Urban League, eager to work in the private and governmental sectors toward common goals. I'm talking about real money, real programs to help real people in real need of help. And I'm not talking about just abstract figures--although a billion dollars is a lot of money--or meaningless statistics about percentages of reduction of unemployment. I'm talking about a flood of new programs that will be coming into your own community in the weeks and months ahead. I'm talking about my administration living up to its commitments to the poor and to the hungry and to the timid and to the weak and to the unemployed. I need your partnership and you need my partnership. And I believe that that partnership is available to us and it can have a profound impact so that you and I and my Cabinet and the Congress together can make this a better place in which to live, particularly those who haven't yet realized the guarantees expressed 200 years ago by our Founding Fathers, of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We've made great strides in this country already. We still have a long way to go. And you've got my pledge to respond well to counsel, to advice, to caution, and to criticism. And I believe that this can be very constructive. And together we can put smiles on the faces instead of tears, and we can have a support of our system of government instead of a lashing out because deprived and unemployed people feel alienated from the structure of society that's been so good to all of us here. Those are my hopes and my dreams and my prayers. You're partners with me and Vernon and all of you. I'm proud of that partnership and what it can mean to us in this greatest of all nations on Earth."

"We were successful yesterday in reaching an agreement with the Soviet Union and Great Britain to go to the detailed negotiations of an agreement on the comprehensive test ban. Our own desire is that we prohibit the testing of nuclear explosives completely, and we are making some progress in that direction. So far, the Soviets still would like to reserve the right to conduct some peaceful nuclear explosives. But we've opened up new concepts of actual reductions in atomic weapons for the first time since they've been invented, to restrain military development in the Indian Ocean, to work with the Soviets on comprehensive SALT discussions, a prohibition against the destruction of observation satellites, prior notification of firing of test missiles, and so forth. So we've a lot of things going on with the Soviet Union, which I think, potentially, are going to be very constructive. We have found them in their private attitudes toward us to be very forthcoming and cooperative. And these are difficult matters which have been ignored or postponed for decades, and we're trying to address them as forthrightly as possible."

"Some devout Christians are among the most fervent advocates of the death penalty, contradicting Jesus Christ and justifying their belief on an erroneous interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," their most likely response, overlooks the fact that this was promulgated by Moses as a limitation- a prohibition against taking both eyes or all of an offender's teeth in retribution."

"Well, I believe that, obvious]y, the Cuban-Americans here have complete freedom. We are not committed to the destruction by military force of the present Cuban Government; our hope and aspiration is that maximum freedom for people who live in Cuba can be achieved. But I think at the time of the Bay of Pigs, our country gave up the thought that we might do it by military attack. We've proceeded very cautiously in our dealings with the Castro government. I've spelled out publicly on many occasions my own attitude toward this procedure. We have signed now with the Soviets-I mean with the Cubans--a fishers agreement and a maritime agreement. And we are continuing in practical application the anti-hijacking agreement which has not been renewed. We have also opened up the possibility, which will be realized very quickly, of diplomatic officials to be stationed in Washington and in Havana in the embassies of other nations. I don't see any possibility soon of normalizing relationships with Cuba. Castro's position has been that a prerequisite to this must be the removal of the trade embargo before negotiations can even commence. As I've said on numerous occasions, my concerns about Cuba are that they still have large numbers of political prisoners incarcerated that ought to be released. They have large numbers of troops in Angola and other places in Africa which ought to be returned. And they still maintain an attitude of unwarranted intrusion into the internal affairs of some of the other nations or places in the Western Hemisphere. So, I think all those factors tie together. But I assume from the tone of your question you were talking about a military overthrow of the Castro government. That is not part of our national purpose."

"Yes. But I think it's accurate to point out that the major impediment-one of the major impediments to increased drilling on the Atlantic seaboard has been the oil companies themselves. They don't like the legitimate constraints that are placed on them by the Department of Interior and the Federal energy agency and others. As Governor of Georgia, though, I worked with the Governors of our two neighboring States to the north---North and South Carolina--to provide, along with the oil companies, I might say, some assessment of what we ought to do. And we identified five places along the coast where we would like to see oil brought ashore, five places near this seacoast where we would like to see oil refineries built. And I would hope that all the States north of us on the eastern seaboard would do the same. This new drill rig, one of the most modern in the world, I think, has greatly enhanced safety devices and oil spill control devices that were not extant when the Santa Barbara spills took place and were not applicable or installed in the North Sea spill. So, I don't think that we need fear, to the extent we did in the past, environmental consequences of offshore oil exploration and production. So, to answer your question in a nutshell, I do favor a rapid increase in oil exploration and production on the eastern seaboard, and I hope that they find oil near the Georgia coast, first of all."

"The public is not paying attention. That's correct. And this has resulted in an enormous increase in the waste of fuel and also an increase in imports, which seriously unbalances our trade relationships with foreign countries. I just spent some time right before lunch going over the reasons for it. There may be some indication that stockpiling is taking place in anticipation of the wellhead tax being imposed and because of the uncertainty of future price increases by the OPEC nations. But that's a relatively minor factor, although it is a factor. I hope that the Congress will act expeditiously and not weaken the energy legislation, one of its primary purposes being to impose strict conservation measures. But I would say that at this point, the public has not responded well; that the absence of visibility to the impending oil shortage removes the incentive for the public to be concerned. And I'm afraid that a series of crises are going to be a prerequisite to a sincere desire on the part of the American people to quit wasting so much fuel. We've seen this now on two or three occasions already, as a precursor. One, obvious]y, was the natural gas shortage this past winter; another one was the embargo in 1973, the rapid escalation in prices, and now the very severe trade imbalance. I think these are just predictions of what is to come. I'm concerned that the public has not responded well. And I think voluntary compliance is probably not adequate at all. We will take what the Congress does this year and continue to build on it in subsequent years. I'm determined to have a complete and comprehensive energy package on the books before I go out of office. And what we don't get this year, we'll get in subsequent years."

"I haven't given up on that hope yet. Of course, a lot of those agencies, as we all know well, are minor commissions and boards and so forth that have been established by statute and you know can be eliminated when the need for them is no longer there. But I have not been unpleasantly surprised, Billy. I had a good bit of experience, as you know, as Governor of Georgia and was familiar with at least a State bureaucracy. And I had heard such horrible stories about the Federal Government that I didn't expect to find a smooth-running, well organized mechanism here in place. So, I wasn't very greatly surprised. I have been pleasantly surprised at the quality of my Cabinet; that there is not a weak person on it, and not a single one that I would want to change if I had the whole choice to do over again. They've worked well together. We have, for the first time in years--I don't know how long--we've got a weekly Cabinet meeting. And any defects that are carrying over in the governmental structure are partially overcome by the close-knit working relationship between the White House staff and the members of the Cabinet. We have established now--almost completed the Department of Energy, which is to some degree a replacement for about 40 other Federal agencies. And our plan for reorganizing the entire structure of the Government is well in place. I've been through this before, for 4 years in Georgia, and I think there's a good parallel there to serve as a guide for me. So to answer your question, I'm not disappointed nor unpleasantly surprised. And what defects are here, we are overcoming them by close relationship among the officials involved."

"I wanted to mention tonight especially those two among many subjects that fall on my shoulders--agriculture and energy. The tests of political strength are severe; the responsibilities are great; the complexities are very difficult; the questions are hard to answer. But what gives me a sense of assurance and confidence is the degree with which I am close to you. When I base my opinion and my decision and my efforts on what I know you feel and what I know that you want, to that degree I feel that I represent you and our Nation well. I have a feeling that we are making good progress in correcting some of the deep concerns that we felt a year, 2 years, 3 years ago. The spirit of our country had been damaged severely by the Vietnam war. It had been damaged severely by the Watergate revelations, by the CIA investigations. There was a sense of concern about what our Nation stood for."

"We obviously didn't cause the problem; it's an inherited problem that's been built up for long years. I think in the past there's been too much of an emphasis on major Federal programs when billions of dollars have been spent on helping people that didn't need the help very badly. I'm from the Sun Belt States. I think there's been too much of a channeling of Federal moneys into Sun Belt areas. I think between the downtown ghetto areas on crime control, housing development, and so forth, the funds have quite often been channeled off into the suburbs because of more highly educated people, better organized people, more able to speak loudly and who understood the complexities of Federal programs. We're trying to change that and focus the attention of the Government, whatever it is, on the downtown, urban, deteriorating neighborhoods. Another thing that we're trying to do is to concentrate on the rehabilitation of homes. I've seen this happen in Baltimore. I've seen it happen in Savannah, Georgia, and other places around the country, where with a small effort on the part of a chamber of commerce or the local officials, the banks, working with the Federal Government--that instead of seeing a neighborhood deteriorate, that existing structures can be rebuilt or renovated to make very attractive homes near the core area for executive and professional work without abandoning the central cities and moving out into the suburbs. We're trying to do that, too, with our general HUD programs."

"And on crime, I think the major cause of crime in those downtown areas is unemployment, and we're trying to focus on this question. We've got now about 1.1 million jobs allotted during the summertime for young people, much more than ever has been before. We are putting into realization at this moment 20,000 public service jobs per week, even a greater rate than Franklin Roosevelt put people in the CCC camps when you had the Army to de. it and when the Nation was devastated by depression. We are now approving 1,000 public works projects every week, with at least 10 percent of that allocation money being guaranteed to minority business people. And in addition to that, we have taken the CETA jobs, the comprehensive education and training jobs, and have multiplied them by more than a hundred percent, more than 200 percent. We hope to increase those by 400,000 jobs between now and a year from now. None of these programs have yet been felt. Last week was the first week we ever were able to get a public works project approved. This week the Congress has completed passing additional legislation on youth employment, above and beyond what I've just described to you. And I think by the time we feel the beneficial effect of all these programs, we'll be able to observe some improvements."

"Obviously, we've got a long way to go in law enforcement. I think, to a substantial degree, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration funds have been wasted in years gone by. We are trying to bring a more narrow focusing on them to prevent crime and to get out of the waste of buying very expensive and fancy machines and so forth and actually concentrate in the areas where the crime rate is highest. I think I've seen statistics lately from the FBI and others that show that there's a general reduction in the crime rate. I think there's a better tone in the country, a little bit more trust in the Government. This was certainly subverted by the evidence in New York earlier this month. But I think, in general, throughout the country there's more of a respect being built up for public officials--not because of anything I've done, but just because we've recovered partially from the embarrassment of Watergate and the CIA and the Vietnam war and so forth. But I think we ought not to give up on our urban cities and our downtown deteriorating neighborhoods. And my whole administration is focusing on this, and I feel hopeful about it."

"In the first place, I have not decided on any specifics of a tax reform package at all. I've certainly not decided on eliminating credits for interest paid on homes or property taxes paid for homes. During the political campaign, I promised that there would not be a reduction in the stimulus for American families to own their own homes, and if there should be any change it would be compatible with that commitment of mine. Now, I have some doubt about whether this same level of interest rate deduction should be applicable to a $500,000 home or a second or third or fourth home for very wealthy families, as contrasted with the average American working family who's trying to pay for one home in which they live. Also, you have to remember that if the credit is on a percentage basis, then a family that has a $15,000 income, if given a certain amount of credit for interest, only gets, say, 20 percent of that interest payment credited on their tax. But if you're in the 70-percent bracket, you get 70 percent of any interest that you pay on your home. So, equalizing those homeownership credit incentives is part of the package. But it will not hurt the average family in trying to purchase or pay for their own dwelling place."

"I think my own statement, and the statement of all the leaders of our country, that whatever Puerto Rico's people want to do is acceptable to me. If the Puerto Rican people want to be a commonwealth, I will support it. If the Puerto Rican people want to be a State, I will support it. If the Puerto Rican people want to be an independent nation, I would support it."

"I don't think the U.N. has any jurisdiction. And particularly when this question is raised by Cuba, a government that has no respect for individual freedom or individual liberty and permits no vote of any kind in their own country, to accuse us of trying to subjugate the people of Puerto Rico, to me, is absolutely and patently ridiculous."

"Well, one of the major Considerations in evolving the tax reform package is obviously to provide adequate incentive for business expansion. And I believe that when the tax reform package is made public, that there will be a sigh of relief and also a removal of the inevitable uncertainty about what the terms of the tax proposal might encompass. Also, of course, through long weeks of House and Senate hearings, any possible improvements on the tax reform package would be explored. We have met with many leaders--I have personally--representing small businesses, large businesses, the professions, labor, consumers, tax experts, in trying to evolve a good package. And I think it will be good. We hope that there will be equity. We hope that there will be a reduction in tax rates. We hope that there will be simplicity, and we hope that we can provide an adequate assurance of improved venture capital in the future. And we hope that there will be substantial tax reductions. Those are about five factors that I hope will be in the tax reform package and which I can predict to you with great assurance will be in the tax package."