'We Need to Heal'

At 80, former president Jimmy Carter remains an active humanitarian--and a prolific writer. His Revolutionary War novel, "The Hornet's Nest" (Simon & Schuster) was released in paperback last month; his 19th book, a recollection of relaxing times spent with friends and family called "The Things that Matter Most" (Simon & Schuster) will be out next month. At the same time, he remains a keen political analyst. He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Eleanor Clift about the lessons of war and how politics have changed in the three decades since he won the presidency. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What are the lessons you drew from writing about the American Revolution?

Jimmy Carter: A couple. One is [that] from that time forward, based on the advice of George Washington and others, the United States looked on war as an absolutely last resort, that we wouldn't get involved in a war gratuitously--but only if our country was in danger, that its existence was threatened or sometimes expansion was threatened as we moved out to the West Coast. But I've been concerned lately, since I wrote the book, [about] an entirely new philosophy that George Bush has put forward, that preemptive war is an acceptable foreign policy--to go to war even though our country is not directly threatened in order to accomplish another goal, like deposing an obnoxious foreign leader. The second thing [I've learned is] the urgent need for alliances. We would never have won the [American Revolution] without the strong alliance with the French that Benjamin Franklin and others negotiated.

A third thing is the horror of war. The Revolutionary war was the most vituperative of all--filled with absolute and total uncontrollable anger. In many battles in the South no quarter was given. The soldiers knew that if they surrendered on the battlefield they would not be taken prisoner, but be executed.

You talk about the loss of life. I'm reminded of this recent research [by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University] that 100,000 Iraqis might have been killed in the course of their liberation.

I don't doubt that because for months and months we bombed indiscriminately, and we don't have any way to know [how many died]. I was the one who, with my Defense Secretary Harold Brown, a Nobel-quality physicist, shaped the basics of smart bombs. But even in the best of circumstances now with the updating of those so-called intelligent weapons, you still have an error rate of at least 5 percent.

The administration says this is the most careful war and they have worked hard to avoid the loss of civilian life.

I don't think it's a high priority for them.

In 1976 you ran on the statement that you would never lie to the American people, and you defeated an incumbent president. Do you see any analogies between that election and this one?

I hope there will be one strong analogy, and that is that the challenger defeated the incumbent. But there are so many more differences. When I ran against Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, we never referred to each other as anything other than my distinguished opponent. We would not have dreamed of running a personal and vituperative commercial that would cast aspersions on the integrity of our opponent. That would have been suicidal....

And of course I didn't have any money. We had an awful time just qualifying to get matching funds, which only required $2,000 per state. I sent my family out to beg for money. One time Rosalynn called somebody and they said, "How much should I give?" And Rosalynn said: "Is two too much?" So the guy sent us two dollars. Nowadays you can't hope to get the final endorsement of your party, Democrat or Republican, unless you can prove you can raise $100 million dollars or something like that. So I think the differences are more vivid than the parallels.

Except trust is a central issue--trust to lead us in war, trust to tell us the truth. That's right--and I think that's why I won. But I was really running against the legacy of Richard Nixon and not against the integrity of Gerald Ford. I never insinuated that Ford was anything other than an honorable and truthful person. What do you make of the reports of voter intimidation?

A lot of them are self-admitted. I think the Republicans have made it clear they are going to challenge minorities who are registered voters and newly registered voters in a number of precincts and voting places. What they claim is that they're trying to fight corruption, but it's obviously intimidating.

Does this remind you of an earlier time in our history?

I don't remember any time in my lifetime when there was this much antagonism and as sharp a division between the political parties or the supporters of the two candidates as there is now. I don't [think] it's ever been this way. And I don't think there's ever been this sharp a partisan division in the Congress, although obviously during slavery times, the abolitionists and those from the pro-slave states were filled with vituperation. But it didn't carry over to all the ancillary bills on which they were voting. Now almost everything that comes up in Washington, there's a direct and sharp and sometimes antagonistic partisan division. That's a new development, and I think it carries over from the negative advertising that has now become a standard ploy in getting elected--a very effective ploy I might add.

You embarked on writing "The Hornet's Nest" because some of your relatives were involved. Tell me how you got interested in this.

I wanted to write a novel for a good while and I decided the Revolutionary War was the most sadly neglected war. As a history buff, I knew that the history of the Revolutionary War was sadly distorted--written more or less by Northeastern authors and historians. You might recall from your history teacher that we had a few skirmishes up towards Canada and around Boston, and Paul Revere rode a horse in the middle of the night and George Washington crossed the Delaware in a snowstorm. As a matter of fact, almost all the battles that shaped the Revolutionary War were fought in the South beginning in St. Augustine, Fla., where the British had a strong base, and up through Savannah and then south to North Carolina and southern Virginia where Cornwall was finally defeated. That's the historical part I wanted to tell. My ancestors came over to this country in the early 1600s, settled mostly around Pennsylvania and New Jersey and moved south from there--some to Virginia, some to North Carolina--and I wrote about the ones in North Carolina as fictional characters. And then they moved from there down to northeast Georgia, where they became Quakers. So that's my secret ancestor--I didn't identify him in the book. I enjoyed the research and the writing.

What advice would you give to whoever emerges the victor of this year's presidential election?

I would hope that the first and sustained effort would be an element of healing within our country--reaching out to the other side quite openly and in a generous way that might antagonize some of one's own supporters. On an international basis, I would like to see the successful candidate--whether it is Bush or Kerry--begin to make moves toward the international community to join us in dealing with terrorism. We've pretty well abandoned the terrorist fight in order to concentrate our efforts in Iraq, which is kind of a quagmire now. We've got to be generous in sharing authority and responsibility in Iraq. I don't mean just offering people a right to send in troops, which is a hopeless offer, but to share with them the political and economic and the military future of Iraq. That's almost an unacceptable thing to say if you start including oil--[that] we're going to share the rights to controlling Iraqi oil with other nations. Are we going to share the right to shape Iraq's political identity or character with other nations? That has to be done in my opinion.

But shouldn't the Iraqi oil belong to the Iraqi people?

Sure, but control of it is what I'm talking about: the drilling for it, the marketing of it, those kind of things should be shared and not exclusively [be] a United States possession, which it is now--and which may have been one of the purposes of the invasion.

You were the last Democrat to sweep the South. Kerry's not expected to win a single state in the South except maybe Florida, which isn't really the South anymore. What did the Democrats do wrong?

It's a hard thing for me to say frankly. There's always a racist connotation and has been since the time of Goldwater, [who] I might hasten to add was not a racist. But the Republicans have latched on to [what some see as] the superiority of the white male citizens, and they have milked that for all it's worth. In some cases, that has permeated also the religious communities ... The religious community throughout the country is heavily oriented toward Bush--at least the evangelicals--and they have elevated the issue of homosexuality or homophobia, whatever you want to call it, to a position of extreme importance ... All those things are intertwined, and I think they have permeated the Southern constituency.

What does the defection of Zell Miller to the Republicans without changing his party label say to voters in swing states, where he's campaigning with the president.

I don't how to explain it. Zell has been not just an acquaintance, but a friend of mine, since 1962. We were in the Georgia Senate together the four years I went there ... When Zell ran for governor, his first term, he was a very moderate governor on matters concerning environment, matters concerning the race issue and social issues of all kinds ... When he got back into office, his second term was just like black and white. He moved more strongly to the conservative side on almost every issue, including getting passed "two strikes and you're out," abolishing athletic opportunities for prisoners, and changing the environmental laws and things of that kind. I'm not saying this in a critical or derogatory fashion but in an analytical fashion. What his motivations are I don't know. I hope that in the future, personally at least, Zell and I can be reconciled.

The country has grown more overtly religious since you ran for office, and so have our politics. Is that good for democracy?

No, I don't think so. I tried the best I could all the way through [my] campaign and when I was in office--although I am a religious person--never [to make] it into a ploy. In fact, I objected to that very strongly. I was brought up believing in a very rigid separation of church [and state], but now there's been a melding of an extraordinary degree between the Republican Party and the more conservative Christians. And this is not only an anomaly, but I think is contrary to the best interests of our democratic principles.

The peace that you negotiated between Israel and Egypt endures today. Do you have any advice for the next president in dealing with that part of the world?

My advice is to reverse completely the present Washington policy. Every president since Israel was founded as a nation--since Harry Truman--has tried to work out a rapprochement between Israel and her neighbors, whichever one was most threatening to Israel and most antagonistic. When I was president, the only [military] threat to Israel was Egypt, so I negotiated the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. And George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton tried to negotiate some rational accommodation between the two sides. Until George Bush Jr. came into office: he has completely abandoned that and now there is no vestige of effort being made at all to reach an accommodation between Israel and her neighbors as far as I know. I think that's a tragedy. So my advice, no matter who is president next term, is to rejuvenate the American position of being an honest broker, protecting the safety, honesty and integrity of Israel, but also protecting the rights and justice for Israel's neighbors.

Election Day is tomorrow. Are you optimistic as you look ahead to the next four years?

I'm not optimistic yet! I was in Mexico all last week. Rosalynn and I devote one week a year to building houses [there].

You have an enviable amount of energy not only for your age, but for a person of any age.

I was kind of tired when I got back. It was a very challenging thing. Veracruz is on the coast and is very hot and humid, and we had some problems with persons who got overly heated. Two as a matter of fact fell off a roof and got pretty severely hurt, but they're both going to survive ... I don't get on the roofs--sometimes it can be the hottest place, and it's easy to get dizzy and just lose control and end up on the ground.

Well if that's the only concession you've made to age, you're doing pretty good.

It's the only one I've made so far that I will admit.