President Carter: The White House Years

by Stuart E. Eizenstat

The definitive history of the Carter Administration from the man who participated in its surprising number of accomplishments―drawing on his extensive and never-before-seen notes.

Stuart Eizenstat was at Jimmy Carter’s side from his political rise in Georgia through four years in the White House, where he served as Chief Domestic Policy Adviser. He was directly involved in all domestic and economic decisions as well as in many foreign policy ones. Famous for the legal pads he took to every meeting, he draws on more than 7500 pages of notes and 350 interviews of all the major figures of the time, to write the comprehensive history of an underappreciated president―and to give an intimate view on how the presidency works.

Eizenstat reveals the grueling negotiations behind Carter’s peace between Israel and Egypt, what led to the return of the Panama Canal, and how Carter made human rights a presidential imperative. He follows Carter’s passing of America’s first comprehensive energy policy, and his deregulation of the oil, gas, transportation, and communications industries. And he details the creation of the modern vice-presidency.

Eizenstat also details Carter’s many missteps, including the Iranian Hostage Crisis, because Carter’s desire to do the right thing, not the political thing, often hurt him and alienated Congress. His willingness to tackle intractable problems, however, led to major, long-lasting accomplishments.

This major work of history shows first-hand where Carter succeeded, where he failed, and how he set up many successes of later presidents.

Genres: Biography, History, Presidents, Nonfiction, Politics, American History, Us Presidents

999 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2018

About the author

Stuart E. "Stu" Eizenstat is an American diplomat and attorney. He served as the United States Ambassador to the European Union from 1993 to 1996 and as the United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001.

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just completed reading “When the Center Held” by Donald Rumsfeld about the presidency of Gerald Ford. I chose to follow the book by the newest biography of Jimmy Carter “President Carter: The White House Years” by Stuart E. Eizenstat. I chose to read these two books to attempt to understand how the country attempted to heal after the Presidency of Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal. I think the country will need to heal and re-unite itself after the Trump presidency.

The book is well written and meticulously researched. Eizenstat utilized a lot of his own materials from his time in the Carter White House. The author also accessed the National Archives as well as the President Carter’s presidential papers, and he also interviewed Carter. The book is large at 999 pages or 37 1/2 hours via audio format. The book is well documented and indexed. I do not believe this book is totally unbiased. The author did attempt to portray and analyze in an unbiased matter, but it may not have been successful enough for my scales. Eizenstat stated Carter was to liberal for the conservatives and to conservative for the liberals. After my readings I have come to consider that Ford and Carter were extremely honest men with the right personalities that were needed by the country at the time. I was surprised to learn Carter set aside more lands for parks and public use than any other president. I enjoyed this book that re-evaluates the presidency of Carter allowing for the passage of thirty-seven years. I learned a lot from this book and would recommend it my fellow readers.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Brian Troxell does a good job narrating this long book. I also enjoyed Madeleine Albright’s forward which she read herself. Troxell is an actor and audiobook narrator.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

First and foremost, a large thank you to NetGalley, Stuart E. Eizenstat, St. Martin’s Press, and Thomas Dunne Books for providing me with a copy of this publication, which allows me to provide you with an unbiased review.

The presidency of James Earl (Jimmy) Carter has been seen by many as a flop, or so it would seem as I entered reading this book. Many would point to a few key items, namely Iran’s Revolution and the dire energy crisis, pushing Carter to the realm of lame-duck for most of his time in office. While many will remember the Camp David Accord, that seems to have been overshadowed by many of the negatives. Stuart E. Eizenstat, Carter’s Domestic Policy Chief, seeks to inject a new analysis, commenting from ‘within the tent’ to offer new insights, good and bad, about the Carter presidency and those who played key roles in the Administration. This comprehensive political biography sheds some light on Carter’s presidency in three distinct categories worthy of exploration below: domestic policy, foreign policy, and humanitarian efforts. By allowing Eizenstat to guide the reader through these categories, a new perspective may come to the surface, as historians are about ready to turn the microscope on the four years Carter spent in the Oval Office. Presidential history buffs and those who may have lived through the era may enjoy this piece, though it is quite dense in its factual presentation and by no means a swift read.

Before delving into this debate, it might serve the reader well to understand that Carter was a Washington outsider, having never served on the national level and with few friends. While he did have some strong Democratic support in Congress, Carter did not speak the language and even his closest advisors (Cabinet and otherwise) were forced to learn the intricacies of how things worked in Washington. What might have been easy to do as Georgia’s governor or running a peanut farm would not work here, where blood was shed without anyone blinking an eye. Carter would soon learn the game, or stumble trying, in an effort to create domestic policy that he could stomach and Congress would pass. This would come to be central in his single-term as president and shaped some of the major decisions that led to his defeat to Reagan in 1980, a few of which I will espouse below but many Eizenstat dissects in detail.

Jimmy Carter’s presidency saw both significant successes and resounding defeats when examining his domestic policy. The Administration will likely be forever haunted with the photos of serpentine lines at gas pumps during an energy crisis that plagued America after the OPEC fallout, as well as the president urging Americans to turn down the thermostat to save on energy. Eizenstat does not shy away from these gaffes, which turned the Carter Administration on its head and forced the POTUS to make numerous televised addresses to ‘rally the troops’. Within the White House, there were many drawn-out arguments about this and how the electorate would react, forced to pinch pennies at a time when things were already tough. Carter wanted nothing more than to provide for his people, but the numbers just did not add up. Eizenstat also explores Carter’s attempts to wrestle with the airline and transportation unions, creating a more consumer-friendly America, without the need to line the pockets of those in positions of power. As Eizenstat repeats throughout the tome, Carter had a great deal of difficulty thinking like the liberal much of the Democratic Party and its members wanted him to be. He turned his backs on unions in favour of trying to limit spending, surely not music to his Democratic backers. While energy was a major stumbling block for him, environmental issues were topics that Carter could handle with ease. Coming from rural Georgia, Carter knew the importance of nature and natural resources, including water and green space. Armed with this knowledge, Carter pushed forward to ensure that those in Congress who wanted such items in their districts could count on his support, though he was by no means blind to the need for some leveraging (even though Eizenstat explains he was not a good negotiator). Carter felt it more than simply an added bonus, more a quintessential part of the process, to have natural beauty in a country that had been forced to suffer through scandal for so long. Beauty may have been in the eye of the beholder, but Carter wanted to offer that opportunity to Americans for generations. Within the borders of the fifty states, Carter was able to offer some positive outlooks, though did stumble quite effectively when it came to domestic policy.

Carter also saw many successes and significant shortfalls when it came to the foreign policies he led throughout his time in office. Two immediately come to mind—the Camp David Accords and the Iran Revolution—which show the reader just how difficult such policies can be to enact. Carter worked to create a set of policies that would help other countries with what resources he had on offer, but also tried to remove the tarnish that had been left with the abject failure of Vietnam. America was still seething with that military disaster and needed a new image, combined with Carter’s desire to be a player on the world stage and help where he could. Eizenstat explores Carter’s ongoing efforts to shape the Cold War and push the Soviets off their perch as a superpower. Carter’s policy to stop shipments of grain to the Soviets after they invaded Afghanistan proved to be a policy that led to an international boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Carter has been seen to make a knee-jerk reaction by doing so, as Eizenstat argues effectively, but the effort to stand up to this and refuse to turn away shows that Carter had a larger agenda in mind, to push for sanctions of some sort against a country that was trying to expand its sphere in a significant and yet completely unnecessary way. One must remember that the spheres of influence at the time were created by playing international chess, with the USSR and USA being the two significant players. From a lighter perspective, Carter tried to renegotiate the Panama Canal Treaty, presenting this structure to its people and thereby removing an iron fist that Teddy Roosevelt created early in the 20th century through efforts to bait and switch with the Panamanians. Carter pushed to turn control of the Canal over to the locals, though he did receive much pushback from within Congress, who could not see the need to hand over such an essential piece of property that had done so much to aid with international trade. Eizenstat effectively argues that Carter and his administration took a hard approach and would not accept anything but complete success, creating a softer and more open-minded America when it came to its neighbours in the international community. This, in turn, may have curried some favour at a time when America was in dire need of some positive and non-aggressive outlooks with its foreign policy decisions. There were, however, times when Carter’s attempts at good foreign policy turned sour, if only because he had gone to the well too many times before. While some of the groundwork was made by the likes of Nixon and Kissinger, Carter engaged in a set of discussions to solidify a SALT II treaty, scaling back the number and type of nuclear weapons each side would possess, thereby seeking to rid the world of the potential of nuclear war. Carter found himself in the precarious position of pushing this sort of argument at a time when the USSR was on its way down, early stages of teetering before the knockout punch that would come at the hands of Reagan and Bush 41. Carter would not stand down and simply let the Soviets see his passive side, wanting a world free of such weapons, while also ensuring that the United States was not left vulnerable. This may look to be a positive decision made by the administration and the reader would be correct, but the eventual passage of such a treaty failed when Congress—specifically the US Senate—would not support the treaty. It would seem that Carter had arm-twisted too many times and called in all his favours, thereby leaving him no political capital with which to bargain. While one cannot entirely lay this failure at his feet, it does stand to reason that, as mentioned above, Carter’s lack of knowledge of the Washington game might have knocked him down to the point of not being able to push forward at an essential time, leaving the riches for Reagan to collect into the 1980s, where history can paint a much more vivid picture of the 40th POTUS. Carter’s mishandling of the diplomatic hostages in Iran is likely the largest stain left on his presidency and one that will forever be remembered in the history books. While Eizenstat does present a strong argument that Iran and its revolution does not rest on the backs of America, supporting the Shah and pushing to keep him as Iran’s rightful leader did prove to be a yoke that Carter could not toss off, leaving him in a horrible situation once Ayatollah Khomeini took control and used his significant influence to punish Carter personally until the moment he was no longer POTUS, thereby embarrassing him to no end. It goes without saying that US Foreign Policy was significantly shaped by Carter in his single term as president, though one can hope that it is the humanitarian agenda that is remembered for decades, rather than the necessary aggressive stances from 1977-1980.

Carter is best-known for his humanitarian efforts, mostly after he left office, some of which were very positive, though there were also some limitations that left him coming up short. Perhaps closely tied to his foreign policy objectives, Carter wanted nothing more than to promote human rights around the world, but more specifically to his Latin American neighbours. In an era when Nixon and Ford had done little to help push for true human rights, Eizenstat argues that Carter sought to look past the desire to rid the region of communism and focus on their rights of the people. Dictatorships (albeit not Communist) in Argentina and Peru had horrible human rights records and Carter could not abide by this. Rather than going in with guns blazing or CIA operatives ready to kill for peaceful results, Carter and his emissaries sought to turn favour by promoting a softer approach and using carrots over sticks to show just how effective it could be. This was a key approach that the reader can see developing throughout the book, as Carter was sandwiched between two significant administrations—Nixon/Ford and Reagan—who were less than interested in human rights and more for the push to annihilate leftist regimes in the region. While there were surely some less than admirable results, Carter and his administration did not stop their efforts to shape the region as one where human rights could be promoted, ushering in a more peaceful world by the time he left office. One could argue that Carter’s humanitarian efforts in the Middle East were not entirely successful, on a larger scale. Eizenstat spends much time focussing on the lead-up to the Camp David Accords by showing the Israeli and Egyptian delegations trying to forge a peace that would last, especially for the Palestinian peoples. The attentive reader will realise that while Carter tried to create a lasting peace, it did not work effectively, nor did peace with other regional players, but there has not been a significant war in the region since 1973, pitting Israel against its Arab foes, which is something. Humanitarian efforts are much harder to push, as it does not always encapsulate the American agenda in a lasting manner. Carter tried to step away from the norm and offer his own flavour, pushing for openness and the rights for all—likely influences by his Christian values—while many other politicians pushed for hard-line results, no matter the cost. Still, Carter’s humanitarian efforts are likely some of the greatest positives that historians will take away from his presidency and life, when that, too, comes to an end.

Looking back through the entire journey of this tome, the reader can see that Eizenstat not only encapsulates an effective exploration of the Carter presidency, but is able to dispel many of the myths that history has left as footnotes in its texts. Carter was not a failed president who was incapable of keeping gas in the pumps or bringing home the American hostages from Iran, he was a man with strong convictions who tried to play the Washington game without fully knowing the rules. Elected at a time when America was healing, they turned to a man without the taint of Vietnam, Watergate, or civil rights abuses and wanted to create a new beginning for themselves. Even the Democratic Party, particularly its congressional members, had to look at the president in a new light, using his compassionate side with fiscal conservatism to help build up the coffers after much expense. Might this have helped Reagan when he came in to show a new dawn to America? Yes, it is possible, but Eizenstat argues that without Carter, America would possibly have continued down its rabbit hole and been a sour country that could not shed itself of a corrupt image. Carter’s presidency was a sense of new life that was needed, if only to jumpstart things and help see that there could be hope and positive outcomes, given enough time and effort. That single term in office did much for the country and reset its vision, even if Carter was not given the chance to guide America into the 1980s. Jimmy Carter might not have been the Washington politician that many had come to expect, but he did offer a perspective that differed from many, brining his understanding of the South to the world stage and surrounding himself with strong-minded individuals. Eizenstat does not and cannot take that away from anyone, though the theme of a unique approach resonances throughout this piece. The 39th President of the United States will likely receive new recognition in this piece, and rightly so, for he did do much for the country in its time of need, even if it was not the medicine Americans thought they needed at the time.

Looking at Eizenstat’s book, it is clear that there was much to analyse and develop, even over a four-year time in office. The amount of work that went into laying out all the information and developing key themes cannot be lost on the attentive reader. Eizenstat parsed through not only his own recollections, but those of many other players to create this well-balanced tome, which offers as much praise as it does criticism. To have someone on the inside of the administration is likely a double-edged sword. Some will feel that it offers an unbalanced approach and pushes a more laudatory narrative for the reader to enjoy, though I feel it helped enrich the overall presentation. Knowing who to talk to about what did nothing but offer the reader something special and the piece worked well offering significant amounts of detail on which to chew. Eizenstat surveys much of the Carter Administration’s efforts and seeks to categorise them in a succinct manner—not always winning with brevity—to provide the reader with key themes to judge on their own. The attention to detail and backstory is without question one of Eizenstat’s key attributes throughout. I was able to take away not only the political arguments from the book, but also find interesting historical approaches to key events that I would not otherwise have known without needing to explore countless sources. Jimmy Carter has always been an elusive figure for me, sandwiched between the bumbling Ford and powerhouse Reagan. Eizenstat offers a more comprehensive and well-developed perspective of the man and his thoughts, as well as some of the influences that led to his key decisions. Carter may not have been an excellent president—as Eizenstat argues—but he was a good one and worked well with the tools he had at his disposal. Many who have sat or will one day take a place in the Oval Office could learn from him, or at least admire what he did and how he fought to make America great for all its citizens.

Kudos, Mr. Eizenstat, for your dedication to this powerful book. I did learn so very much and can see a few areas I want to explore more, thanks to some of the ideas you presented in this lengthy piece.

Like/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

[Bryan Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book questions the notion that Carter was a complete failure as a president, and it is one of the best treatments of Carter's presidency. It's well-written with first-hand accounts, but also, thoughtful analysis. This book is between a memoir and a "life and times" book. Readers get a more balanced view of Carter's relations with staffers, cabinet members, Congressional, and foreign leaders. They learn more about how Carter approached a problem and his views on them, and readers get a larger sense of context.

For me, one of the biggest takeaways from this book is that Carter was in-between political time. The country was moving away from the usual New Deal/Great Society to a more conservative country. Carter was a bridge, but it makes it very difficult position to govern. People and politicians expected something else. The author correctly puts some blame on Carter for what many people say was a mediocre presidency, but I can appreciate the political battles and his sense of morality. Highly recommend.

[Randal White · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's well past time to give President Carter his due. This book sets out to do just that. Eizenstat has had an up close and personal relationship with Carter for decades. One would think that this would mean that he would only see the "good" in the President, but he also points out the flaws.
While Carter has been stuck with the "aw-shucks" depiction of his personality by the media, the truth is that he is a decent human being who cares deeply about the country. His fault was in taking on too much. Nobody can ever be the most informed and knowledgeable person about so many subjects. But he tried, mightily. Perhaps if he had not bitten off more than he could chew, and learned to delegate more, he would be considered one of the greatest Presidents. He certainly tried!
Given the state of the White House today, I long for a return to having an intelligent human being occupying the Oval Office. One who reads and thinks before he acts impulsively. A return to an adult running the show!
This is a LONG book. There is so much information in it, you would almost think Carter wrote it himself. I found it fascinating. You should read it, if for no other reason than to get the true story of the "killer rabbit"!

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

''When Roosevelt left office in 1909, he had protected 230 million acres of public land. When Carter left office in 1981, he had more than doubled the total amount of public land from Roosevelt and every president since''

This book is an inside account of the Carter's years analyzed by his top domestic adviser, Stuart Eizenstat (who also worked in the LBJ, Clinton and Obama's administrations).

I found the read sometimes challenging regarding chapters about energy policies, stagflation and the oil crisis. Strangely enough, even tough the author's area of expertise was domestic policies, the best parts were the accounts of the Camp David Agreement and the Iranian Revolution of 78-79'.

The book is richly detailed about Carter's modus operandi. We follow him navigating crisis after crisis (without any chief of staff before 79') as he does his best to lead the nation in the tumultuous end of the 70's.

As I see it, his best quality was his will to work as hard as he could and to know as much as possible about any topic (he was usually at work at 7:00 am). But his lack of political skills (or his utter disgust to play politics with Congressmen) was probably one of his biggest problem.

Essential read to understand the 39th president.

[Teri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jimmy Carter's Chief Domestic Policy Advisor, Stuart Eizenstat, details the President's journey into politics and his four years in the White House. Eizenstat was with Carter every step of the way, through the energy crisis and the fight for a new energy policy, the crumbling economy, peace negotiations in the Middle East, cabinet shakeups, the Iran hostage crisis, and his downfall as a one-term president. Carter accomplished a lot during his tenure in the White House that has been mostly overlooked due to his, at times, own stubbornness to do things his way, his unflinching convictions, his fight for human rights over other matters of political importance, and his bad timing for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Carter did what no other president has done before or after, he negotiated peace in the Middle East. Since his time in the White House, he and Rosalyn have worked tirelessly for human rights in countries around the world. His accomplishments earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. So why did he end up being a one-term president? Eizenstat draws on countless pages of notes that he took through the 4 years he worked with Carter, as well as many interviews with the important players in Carter's career that takes the reader on an intimate tour of Carter's presidency.

If you are interested in politics and/or Jimmy Carter at all, this book will be a great resource on his time in the White House. Eizenstat is obviously a fan of Carter's, but he does not whitewash his time as Commander in Chief. He shows us the good and the bad, blemishes and all. What is missing and perhaps this is not the book for it, is the details of Jimmy Carter outside of the political realm. We get a few chapters at the beginning that covers Carter's rise into politics, including his time in the Navy. I don't feel that I got to know Carter, the man. This book is about his politics and the issues that the President dealt with while in office. The better sections, I thought, were the ones that covered the Camp David Accords, where Carter painstakingly worked for peace between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.

Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter are such wonderful humanitarians that have left quite a legacy during those four years. It would have been interesting to have seen what he could have accomplished had he been able to serve another four years.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://bestpresidentialbios.com/2018...

Stuart Eizenstat’s “President Carter: The White House Years” was published four months ago. Eizenstat is an attorney, a former diplomat and was Jimmy Carter’s Chief Domestic Policy Adviser for four years. He previously worked as a junior aide to President Johnson and as a research director for the Humphrey presidential campaign. He later served as President Clinton’s Ambassador to the European Union and as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.

Eizenstat’s hefty 898-page biography provides a penetrating, frequently fascinating and sometimes tediously detailed look at Carter’s life through his one-term presidency. Supported by 350 interviews, declassified documents and more than seven-thousand pages of notes he took while working in the White House, this book is composed of two distinct pieces: a relatively brief but exquisitely-written biography of Carter’s pre-presidency and a topically-structured and extremely thorough exploration of his presidency.

Skeptics might worry that Eizenstat’s admiration for his subject could tarnish the book’s probity. But while the author openly admits his fondness for Carter and argues for a reassessment of his presidency this is no hagiography. Eizenstat is often sharply critical of Carter and usually identifies his flaws with a dispassionate perspective. But make no mistake…Eizenstat clearly believes his former boss did a far better job than is widely accepted and works diligently to convince the reader.

The first 150-200 pages (through the early narrative of Carter’s presidency) is exceptional – almost as good as “efficient” biographical coverage can be. The primary focus of this book is on Carter’s years in the White House, but his childhood, early political career and campaign for the presidency are masterfully reviewed. And the book’s “Introduction” is worth reading at least twice.

Throughout the text Eizenstat is careful to introduce new topics with clever observations, one-liners or theses. And nearly every sentence – particularly in the early chapters – seems to exude insight and intensity. The discussions relating to life on the campaign trail and presidential transition planning are compelling and chapters relating to Mondale’s vice presidency, Rosalynn’s role as First Lady and the Panama Canal are notable as well.

The backbone of the book consists of seven topic-focused sections comprising twenty-two chapters (and about seven-hundred pages) aimed at Carter’s presidency. Here Eizenstat analyzes the Carter administration’s activities and efforts relating to energy policy, the environment, the economy and foreign affairs (mainly the Middle East, the Soviet Union and Iran).

Each of the sections proves well-organized, coherent and extremely detailed. But many of these dive far too deeply into the weeds for a general audience and, in the aggregate, require an inordinate investment of time for relatively little biographical gain. The book could have been as much as 200-300 pages shorter without losing appreciable perspective on Carter himself.

Given Eizenstat’s penchant for penetrating insight, the discussion of Carter’s cabinet choices is surprisingly perfunctory. It is also surprising that several conspicuous typos survived the editing process, suggesting a last-minute dash for the printing press. But perhaps most disappointing is that this biography ends with Carter’s presidency – leaving his remarkable retirement to be covered elsewhere.

Overall, "President Carter: The White House Years" is an excellent - but not flawless - biography of a widely unappreciated president. Readers seeking a comprehensive review of Carter's life should look elsewhere, but for those seeking unique access, insight and perspective into his presidency, Eizenstat's book will hit the spot.

Overall rating: 4 stars

[Helga Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

President Carter: The White House Years is a definitive well-written account of President Carter’s four years in the White House. Eizenstat explains how Carter has been viewed by many as a failure as a president. Eizenstat does an excellent job in tracing these years from the energy crisis and a new energy policy, the economic crisis with rising inflation and interest rates-stagflation, and the Chrysler and New York bailout from bankruptcy, the peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt and the Iran hostage crisis which helped doom his presidency. He also explains how Carter tackles human rights and Russia and Afghanistan, the Panama Canal Treaty and environmental policies protecting and creating national parks like the Alaska wildlife refuge and then we see the problems with his cabinet causing resignations.

Carter came into the presidency after the Nixon Watergate scandal and had to attempt to heal the country and reunite it. Much happened during his four years in office and in actuality Carter did a lot for the country during this time. This book helps bring forth these events and to give him the credit he deserves. Carter was a very informed knowledgeable and decent man. His main fault was to take on too much and maybe too fast. He accomplished a lot during these four years. The most memorable was the Camp David Accord with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin for the peace agreement. Much of what he accomplished and put in place resulted in policies still in place today. While in office, he also elevated the roles of the first lady and vice president.

Eizenstat does an excellent and very comprehensive job with first-hand accounts and materials from his time in the Carter White House as his Chief Domestic Policy Adviser. He explained the faults of the presidency in an unbiased manner. This is a highly recommended book to understand our 39th president.

[Cristie Underwood]

I admit that before reading this book, most of the knowledge I had about President Carter was about his time after being President and having to do with his humanitarian work. This book laid out not only Carter’s wins and losses as President, but as Chief Domestic Policy Advisor. President Carter made some notoriously bad decisions, such as during the Iranian Hostage Crisis when Carter wanted to do the right and humane thing vs the political thing, which isolated him from Congress. I also had no idea that President Carter took such detailed notes during meetings and utilized those notes when he was making major decisions or of the impact President Carter had in defining the role of Vice President. So many people know nothing of Carter’s time served in the White House under titles other than President and how impactful his presidency was despite little being written about accomplishments he made. I think that it is important for everyone to read this book and learn about a President that had such an impact on our Country.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dec. 29, 2024:

Just learned of President Carter's death today, almost two years after he entered hospice. What a contrast to what we have become. Never has a better man served the nation.

Feb. 2023:

Jimmy Carter entered hospice a couple of days ago. Perhaps not since Harry Truman have we had a president who was as personally and morally centered as Carter. I doubt we may ever have one again. His legacy will likely be reexamined by future historians (if the U.S. still has freedom to learn history and speak truthfully about it by then) and, like John Quincy Adams, it may take more than a century-and-a-half to understand how governing would be fundamentally different had he not had personal and situational limitations unique in our history. I regret that it took me decades to make that assessment. As we teeter on the edge of choosing between having a democratic-republic and a kinder, gentler fascism, it's worth trying to get to know how Jimmy Carter approached the presidency, not as a personal achievement, but as one of service to his nation. How rare that is today?

Original Review

“[Jimmy Carter] really is a decent person, and I think that decency was probably too strong.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski

Few people had as close a view of any presidency than Stuart Eizenstat, Jimmy Carter’s chief domestic policy advisor from the campaign through the end of his term. His biography of Carter and occasional personal memoir reveals an ambitious, substantive administration that often stepped on its own successes because of an aversion for raw politics and public relations. Given U.S. history in the past four years, Carter’s time in office seems surreal, especially since he was willing to lose reelection if it meant doing the right thing, as he saw it, for all Americans. He was defined by commitment, hard-work, compassion, idealism; one who, in his own mind, separated governing from politics. He embodied an odd mixture of genuine humility and an inner intellectual confidence bordering on arrogance, that he could master every detail of policy, as he did with foreign relations. Carter was most responsible for inserting human rights into foreign policy objectives because it “add[ed] a moral element…consistent with American values.” With notable practical exceptions, this remained a guiding principle for subsequent administrations until the occupant of the White from 2017-21 did his best to destroy it. But when things got ugly in the political arena, Carter had the “resilience…and determination to keep trying until he found answers. When he found it, he was reviled for it.” Or, as a frustrated Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed to the author, “Stu, you know the problem with your boss? He’s conservative on domestic policy and liberal on foreign policy, and he should be the other way around!”

When Carter took office in January 1977, the nation was reeling from the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam, living in fear of nuclear war between with the Soviet Union, and mired in the doldrums of stagflation, a predicament that did not conform to the known economic laws of inflation, unemployment and Keynesian spending. All these issues were connected by energy policy, which would dominate much of his presidency. Carter “put his prestige behind meeting a politically unpopular challenge” to convince Americans to limit “consuming energy in gas-guzzling cars, and overheated, poorly insulated offices, factories and homes”, calling the collective effort needed “the moral equivalent of war” and “uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.” But,

One of the most difficult tasks for any president is calling the nation to arms against a long-term challenge when they could not see the storm clouds on the horizon to which he is so ominously pointed, and enjoyed the lowest energy prices in the Western world.

Eizenstat’s meticulous recounting of the story behind the making of energy policy would fit nicely into any undergraduate course on the American legislative process or political behavior. Although he never got credit, combined with his administration’s substantive achievements in consumer policy, the results reached deeply into the American electric grid, oil imports, strategic fuel reserves, and military energy consumption, which costs taxpayers billions of dollars per year. Closer to home, results included simply understood energy usage information for things like light bulbs, insulation, and electronics. Automobile fuel mileage standards became commonplace.

The Camp David Accords were his most lasting, important foreign policy achievement. It was the first peace treaty between Israel and Arab state, Egypt, and embodied Carter’s ideal that “fairness, and not force, should lie at the heart of our dealings with the nations of the world.” It holds until this day. Carter understood Israeli-Arab relations as being integral in the Cold War superpower struggle for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world. He “envisioned a foreign policy grounded in human rights as an instrument in the raging Cold War to compete more effectively with the Soviet Union for support in the developing world, and a guiding philosophy reflecting the best ideals of the United States and its Western allies agains the soft Soviet underbelly.” But it wasn’t easy. In dealing with Israel’s obstinate prime minister, Menachem Begin, Carter effectively reminded him of his past, his family, and his legacy rather than try to fight on the narrow political calculations of the next elections. On the other hand, he also began “the trajectory of increased U.S. military spending”, something every president since has increased and, combined with irresponsible tax cuts imposed by every Republican administration since (excepting George H.W. Bush) has destabilized federal spending priorities.

Despite his many political missteps, his political downfall can be directly traced to the prolonged Iranian hostage crisis in the last year-plus of his administration. Militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini took American diplomats hostage after the ousted Shah of Iran was admitted to the U.S. to treat his cancer. Unlike every other president before or since, Carter “demonstrated his determination to what he felt was right over what was politically advantageous” by valuing the lives of the hostages more than any national symbolism or his political career. A militarily-led rescue attempt that ended in chaos and death in the Iranian desert staging area even before they could reach the hostages seemed to solidify his public image as well-intentioned but bumbling, however unfair it was.

Interestingly, even with his accomplishments in energy policy, which still resonate today, and the Camp David Accords, he and his legislative ally Rep. Jack Brooks considered the establishment of the Department of Education to have been his signature achievement. While Reagan campaigned on eliminating it (much like the Idiot's ridiculous promos to kill the Affordable Care Act), he couldn’t succeed. And the establishment of the department was not, as is wrongly interpreted, a payoff of teachers unions. It was part of his philosophy of making government more efficient and effective. There were more than 200 education programs spread throughout federal departments and agencies and the department consolidated them and elevated education as a national priority.

While many politicians on the American political right today claim to be religious, they are little more than opportunistic, Elmer Gantry-esque, craven charlatans cashing in on ignorance, racism, and resentments. On the other hand, Carter’s deep convictions were “rooted in his won Christianity, which emphasizes Jesus’ concerns for the poor and downtrodden.” He had a “determination to do what he felt was right over what was politically advantageous.” During his four years in the White House, his administration addressed the most pressing issues of his and future times. Carter was much more than a caricature of a peanut farmer who ascended to the presidency, the popularly perceived failure of a president. What goodwill and popularity he has today is mostly rooted in the life he has led in his post-presidency, which has given us a tantalizing look of what he might have been if only he were more politically astute and calculating. Seen only through a political spectrum, one could conclude his victories were Pyrrhic because he was defeated in 1980. Given the history of next 40 years, it is clear that Carter’s presidency has, by and large, substantively reverberated through American history, whether people realize it or not.

[As a personal aside, I worked as a U.S. Senate staffer in the early 1990s. A major part of my responsibilities was to meet with constituents and others in my issue areas. One morning I was scheduled to meet with Stuart Eizenstat, quite an intimidating prospect for a young staffer. Usually those meetings included the senator, but he was not available until the end of the meeting. To be honest, I don’t remember the issue, I’m assuming it was a banking or communications issue since those fell under my purview. The one abiding memory I have is how Eizenstat treated me. He was gracious, respectful, took the time to explain the issue in detail, answered my questions directly, he was not talking down to me or ever gave me the feeling this meeting with a green staffer was beneath him. I learned a lot of important lessons that day on how to remain grounded. I could see that man and hear his voice as I read this book.]

[Aaron Million · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jimmy Carter's presidency is receiving a long-overdue look as enough years have now passed to allow time to examine his actions and policies, seeing if they have stood the test of time. Stuart Eizenstat was Carter's chief domestic policy aide, one of the few people who had a direct line and almost continuous access to Carter. Part memoir, part Carter biography, and part history, Eizenstat manages to weave Carter's story into the context of the mid and late 1970s and explain what attracted the American people to Carter and then subsequently repelled them from him four years later.

One of the themes running throughout the book is that Carter always attempted to do "the right thing" as opposed to the politically prudent thing. Oftentimes this caused him significant loss of political standing with one group or another, and collectively all of these times added up to his failing to be re-elected, the first president to befall that fate since Herbert Hoover (since Carter's predecessor Gerald Ford was never actually elected to that office, he does not count here). Eizenstat begins the book by doing a brief review of Carter's youth and time as Georgia Governor. He then launches into the 1976 presidential campaign, focusing on how Carter (accurately) portrayed himself as a Washington outsider who did not deal in politics as usual. With the country still reeling from the ignominious end to the Vietnam War followed immediately by the Watergate scandal, Carter's down-home and easy-going manner appealed to many who felt that new blood needed to take over the Oval Office.

Yet Carter barely squeaked by Ford in the election, despite Ford being chained to his pardon of Richard Nixon and despite an economy stricken by stagflation, which Ford and his team could not seem to solve (nor did Carter, at least not in time to help him be re-elected). Looking at this now, it seems reasonable to conclude that the country was pretty well divided between those who saw Carter as the injection of real life into Washington versus those who either thought Ford was a safer choice or who did not buy into Carter's brand of populism.

Eizenstat segments the book by topic. This is done in many presidential biographies and histories. No doubt it makes it easier for the author to focus on one area at a time instead of constantly having to juggle telling multiple stories. And it can make things easier for the reader as well since everything is compartmentalized. However, I don't really care for this approach. Structuring things this way makes events seem like they are happening inside of a vacuum. An early section focuses solely on energy, which was a major objective (and achievement) of Carter's as he wanted to help launch a new department (which he did), make America less energy-dependent on other nations (which eventually happened), and focus on cleaner, renewable sources of energy (which remains a huge concern today). But Carter worked hard on this for over half of his presidency, and he had any number of competing priorities that he had to address at the same time. So spending one-hundred pages just reading about energy does not give a real sense of how much time this one issue took away from Carter's time on other major issues, such as the Panama Canal Treaty or SALT II. Since Carter didn't just work solely on energy for a period of time, I would rather not read about it as if he had done so.

In a book this big, you would expect that most everything was covered, and covered well, that occurred under Carter's watch. Despite Eizenstat being on the domestic policy side, he was involved with many foreign policy issues as well, and even ones that he had little involvement in he manages to write about them thoroughly. Much attention, as expected, is given to the Camp David Accords in 1978. A spectacular success for Carter, and more importantly, for the entire Middle East, it left me wondering just how many other presidents could have pulled that off. Theodore Roosevelt and Bill Clinton come to mind, but that is about it. Carter went all-out to bring two enemies together and create a peace that, incredibly, still holds today. Eizenstat is Jewish and makes sure to mention that frequently throughout the book. While he did a good job in showing the difficulties posed by both Egypt and Israel, and the flaws of Anwar el Sadat and Menachem Begin, he seemed biased, naturally, towards Israel. Not enough to get in the way of his writing, but it was noticeable.

Despite history looking unfavorably upon Carter as a failed president, Eizenstat builds a strong case that Carter was actually quite successful. Energy legislation, the Panama Canal Treaty (Carter used up a ton of political capital on this one and it most assuredly factored into his 1980 defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan and also those of many Senators who voted for it), the Alaska Lands Act (doubling the number of acres of national parks), the Camp David Accords, deregulation of some major industries such as trucking airlines, and bailing out New York City. Strangely missing is Carter's decision to establish diplomatic relations with China. Eizenstat devotes all of two and a half pages to this huge event, something that I think was probably worthy of its own chapter or at least a significant part of a chapter.

Despite all of these lofty achievements, Carter refused to play the political games in D.C., and remained a remote, aloof figure to many (including some in his administration). Even though the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Carter struggled with them. Why? Because Carter was not your traditional tax-and-spend Democrat. He was a somewhat conservative Democrat from the South, who happened to be liberal on civil rights and other progressive causes (like the environment). But when it came to balancing the budget, and controlling the deficit, Carter seemed much more in line with the (then, not now) Republican Party. This eventually helped lead to a major rift within the Democratic Party when liberal Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy challenged Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination. It was an embarrassment for Carter to be openly challenged within his own party, and while Kennedy did not succeed in his efforts, he seriously damaged Carter, leaving him in a weakened state going into the general election against Reagan.

Much of the last chunk of the book covers the unfortunate Iran hostage situation, Carter's missteps in it, and the disastrous aborted rescue attempt. While Carter did not create the crisis, he was blamed (fairly or not) for not being able to solve it. As Eizenstat does in other parts of the book, he points out where Carter made mistakes, and also where Carter's hands were tied and he was forced into making a least-worse decision instead of a good decision. Carter is to be commended for working tirelessly up until the moment that Reagan was inaugurated in an attempt to free the hostages. Although some of his staff, including Eizenstat, seemed more concerned with how this crisis would affect Carter's re-election prospects than with the lives of the hostages. Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan's initial reaction was that this might mean war, followed immediately by "What will this do to the campaign?" (pages 767-68)

For the most part, Eizenstat is able to keep from being overly opinionated. At times though I thought he did let his own feelings get in the way of the story that he was trying to tell. On page 79 he complains of Carter's attempts to tone down the fluff and pageantry of the presidency, saying that Carter's decision to cease with the traditional "Hail to the Chief" and "Ruffles and Flourishes" each time he entered a room by saying that "...it was hardly worth being president without being announced by these symbols of the power of the greatest elected office on earth."

On pages 492-93, Eizenstat writes about one of Carter's political liaison's Mark Siegel, resigning over a significant policy dispute. It is clear that Eizenstat comes down firmly against someone actually putting their own principles ahead of service to the president: "Siegel's resignation raises the issue of whether it is appropriate for a senior adviser to a president to resign over a policy difference. My view is that you have to be prepared that many decisions will not go your way.... It is important to stay to fight the next battle.... I always reminded myself that it was not me but Jimmy Carter who was elected president by the people of the United States." So, I guess you can't resign no matter how strong you feel about something? Eizenstat called Siegel disloyal for leaving. This seems an overreach to me.

One final thing that irritated me was that, throughout the book, Eizenstat would make references to Donald Trump and his administration (this was published during the first half of Trump's presidency). I did not think that these mentions were necessary. Trump had nothing to do with Carter's presidency. Other than acknowledging that Carter's pollster, Pat Caddell, later performed the same work for Trump, these references only serve to date when the book was written. Nonetheless, this is a wonderful history of the Carter administration, from an insider's perspective who chose to show not just the parts that he personally was involved in, but the entire scope of Carter's busy term. Carter, while not as successful as Eizenstat seems to think he was, definitely deserves this reappraisal.

Grade: B+

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 5 out of 5]

After I recently read Kai Bird’s somewhat disappointing bio of Jimmy Carter, I saw other reviewers of it mention Jonathan Alter’s bio as better. Well, I’ve not read that, but my library had this book, and so I checked it out.

And, it is better indeed.

This book is at its best on two issues: The “malaise” speech and the Iranian hostages. I’ll give the basics of both without full-on detailed spoilers.

On the speech, he first notes Pat Caddell’s Rasputin-like hold over both the Carters. And, yes, he uses the word “Rasputin.” Then he describes where the “malaise” came from, since Carter never used the word. It was in Caddell’s notes and talking points, that eventually got to Elizabeth Drew at the NYT.

As for its effect? Eizenstat says Carter initially boomed UPward in public polling. 17 percentage points. What happened? Carter’s Cabinet firings and how they were done undercut this.

(All probably needed to go, but only Schlesinger out in the cold. Michael Blumenthal? Find another economics position for him … assistant head of the Fed? Califano? Move him inside the Oval as a White House counsel; in some way, clutch the scorpion closer.

On the hostages? He notes that the biggest failure, after they were taken, was Carter making an ironclad “no harm” commitment to their families, closely followed by too personalizing their situations. Both became lead anchors on his political future.

On how this happened? Ignoring both Ambassador Sullivan and George Ball, who I did not know before had been involved with analyzing the situation before Khomenei solidified control. Before the Shah vamoosed, even, Ball, like Sullivan, recommended reaching out, and QUICKLY, to non-theocratic opposition and cutting a deal.

After the hostages had been taken? Eizenstat says their continued holding wasn't so much an FU to the US as it was pro-Khomenei Islamic Republic types wanting to get the upper hand over the quasi-secular, theoretically official government. He notes US efforts to negotiate with government officials went nowhere, even when seeming to go somewhere, because none of them had Khomenei's sign-off, an issue that continues with Iran's dual government today.

This relates to the taking of the hostages, Eizenstat says. He says that from what we can tell, Khomenei did not order this, but knew it in advance. Although Eizenstat doesn't use the US presidential phrase of "plausible deniability," it seems this is exactly what was at stake.

On domestic stuff? Eizenstat is right on Carter’s legacy on energy, and the difficulty in getting his energy policy bill passed. He’s right on not wanting national health care without cost controls, still an issue today. He’s right on Ted Kennedy refusing to compromise with Carter any more than he had with Nixon, and being wrong there.

He also praises to the point of overpraising on airline and truck/railroad dereg. On the former, dereg is not the only reason airline costs dropped. On the latter, some things should have been retained; don’t just blame Reagan and others later than Carter.

The chapter on how Andy Young, and his promoted deputy, influenced the 1980 Dem primary is interesting. Had Kennedy not won New York, he would have dropped out, but the US supporting an Arab resolution at the UN, falling through several cracks, backfired.

The book is also good overall on Carter’s personality and his political personality and the probjems it caused.

Although five-star overall, it misses addressing two of those problems from the previous paragraph. One is that Carter’s engineering micromanagement personality, not just wanting to be the anti-Nixon, is why he refused to have a chief of staff for two years. Related? Despite being warned about it, he hired both Vance and Brzezinski because, IMO, he thought he could engineering-manage both of them. If we could half-star, I'd cut to 4.5 because of not going deeper into just how self-injurious Carter really was.

==

Oh, Alter's bio, overall, is worse than Kai Bird's and definitely worse than this.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, by an important insider in the Carter White House, is by far the most authoritative account of the Carter presidency to date. Unlike other books (including my own) which focus on one part of the story, Stu Eizenstat gives an amazing picture of everything that was going on at the same time, from the Panama Canal Treaty to immigration rule changes to save Jewish and other Iranian minorities during and after the revolution, from military policy to human rights, this book captures the complexity of governing as seen from the highest level. Eizenstat does not sugar coat it. When Carter failed or when it appeared he got it wrong, the details are described, sometimes in painful detail. But the arc of the book is an exhaustive documentation and easily accessible account of how things were done under a one-term president. Carter accomplished far more than he usually gets credit for, including issues such as energy independence and expansive public lands that are part of our everyday lives today. Carter left under a cloud, largely because of the Iranian hostage crisis (where I confess to not helping him as much as I would have liked). But like some other presidents who were unpopular in their time but who came to be appreciated over time, it is time to take another look at the Carter legacy. It is particularly appropriate at this time when those norms that he cherished and defended -- rule of law, service above politics, respect for his fellow citizens, a deep belief in human rights for all -- are at great risk. Stuart Eizenstat goes a long way towards a more nuanced and accurate appraisal of the Carter presidency than any we have had to date. This is a work of enduring importance.

[David Allen Hines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am now 47, and Jimmy Carter was the first president I really remember. With the passage of over 40 years, his term can now be considered in historical context, and this book, by one of his chief domestic policy advisors, is frank and balanced.

My view of President Carter has always been a man who did many good things, particularly in the areas of education, the environment, human rights, and energy policy, but who faltered badly on the economy, Democratic Party leadership, and dealing with the revolution in Iran, and this book reinforced my views.

History has shown that Mr. Carter was almost visionary on his views of federal policy on energy, public education, the environment and human rights. In each area he accomplished great things, but the way he did it politically left him with little credit and beseiged with hard feelings. In many cases he bravely took on the status quo and made significant and positive changes but then failed miserably in talking about and selling his accomplishments. His failure to appoint a Chief of Staff led to his cabinet members constantly working for their own agendas rather than his and was a major error.

Carter also took on the challenge of improving Middle East relations between Arab nations and Israel. At his Camp David Accords he achieved a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that has worked now for more than 4 decades, but he ended up with the lowest level of American Jewish support of any modern American President despite the accomplishment. Part of this was due to the despicable Israeli leader, Begin, who was later run out of office over his disastrous invasion of Lebanon, but part was also due to Carter and how he failed to convince American Jews of the great accomplishment, which has held to this day.

Carter had the misfortune of presiding over a time of the collapse of Democratic Party traditional liberalism and in many ways his fellow Democrats failed to see that the times had changed and the public supported less government spending and lower taxes and less welfare. In this he was visionary and presaged the accomplishment of Bill Clinton, but while some of his intra-party foes like Ted Kennedy and Russell Long were fighting him and holding onto their old ways, Carter was also to blame, because he was a loner who failed to outreach to members of Congress on social and personal basis.

I was stunned in this book to read that Vice President Mondale considered resignation due to Carter's poor political leadership, something I had not heard before. The author incorrectly says such a thing never happened before but he is wrong as Andrew Jackson's Vice President resigned over a political disagreement related to states' rights and slavery.

Carter's innovative polices led the federal government to create new departments of Education and Energy which have led to today's energy independence and strong federal education rights policies. But at the time, his complex and varied energy policies just confused people and did little to alleviate the energy shortages of the 1970s including gasoline lines and energy inflation.

On the economy, Carter seemed as hapless as Ford and Nixon before him to control inflation, but his austerity budgets and late appointment of Paul Voelker as Federal Reserve Chair set the conditions that led inflation to be curbed though Reagan, not Carter, got the credit. Carter also, not Reagan, reversed the decreasing Federal defense budgets of the post Vietnam era, but once again, Reagan got the credit.

On the environment, Carter established the Superfund to clean up large toxic sites, expanded national preserves, and in his final days in office signed legislation to protect vast tracts in Alaska but sadly he gets little credit for his environmental accomplishments.

In foreign policy, Carter deserves huge credit for moving human rights to the forefront as an issue, and it is his greatest and most positive legacy. But his refusal to project American military strength was as equal a weakness. While Carter gets credit for returning the Panama Canal to Panama through treaty, in reading this book I got the idea it was more because he feared confronting protests. But Carter's great failing was Iran. His CIA failed to properly analyze the Iranian Revolution. When the embassy was stormed and diplomats taken hostage in violation of international law, Carter failed to see this as the act of war it was. He tried for 444 days to negotiate rather than project strength, and in the process destroyed his presidency and weakened America. Because of how he acted in 1979, today, 40 years later, Iran remains a hostile threat. Nothing in this book changed the way I have always thought about the Iranian hostage crisis. Ibn the end, the hostages were not released because of Carter's negotiations but because Iran feared the resolve of Ronald Reagan.

While Carter was politically damaged in 1979 to 1980 he had weathered a lot and learned a lot. Ted Kennedy never had a chance of beating Carter and the liberalism Ted Kennedy stood for was obsolete by 1980 and would never have won a national election. Kennedy did nothing but contribute mightily to Carter's loss to Reagan and in the end Reagan undid much of the liberalism that Kennedy stood for which a second Carter Administration would never have done. Kennedy harmed his party and his liberal legacy with his ill-conceived 1980 challenge to Carter.

But in the end, Kennedy did not cause Carter's defeat, nor did Reagan. Carter beat himself through his inability to take credit for accomplishments, his inability to lead his own party in Congress, and his inability to recognize sometimes military force must be used not negotiations.

This book is an outstanding review of the Carter Presidency. Highly recommended.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stuart E. Eizenstat does a phenomenal job of painting a picture of the presidency of an unlikely president. Jimmy Carter was as politically maladroit as he was morally incorruptible. There were as many moments when I felt proud of his accomplishments as I was embarrassed by his blunders. However, Carter was, in four-years in office, an incredibly important executive. He elevated the role of the vice president; elevated the role of the first lady; brilliantly attacked stagflation (even though this was not a well-understood phenomena); passed revolutionary energy legislation; set aside the Alaska wildlife refuge (doubled the size of the national parks); was the greatest consumer advocate since TR; saved NY and Chrysler from bankruptcy; negotiated a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt; gave the canal back to Panama and opened up diplomatic relations with Central and South America; began to out-maneuver the Soviet Union with SALT, SALT II, and opposition to the Afghanistan invasion; and was a staunch advocate for human rights world-wide.

[Judy Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

1976, American's bicentennial year, marked the first time that I voted. The choices were unusual: Gerald Ford, a Michigan representative turned un-elected Vice-President charged with the task of sweeping up after Watergate and Jimmy Carter, a one-term governor and peanut farmer from the state of Georgia, both men described as decent human beings. While it is doubtful that any Republican could have won at this time in history, Carter seems the unlikely choice, being a fiscally conservative Democrat and definitely out of mainstream politics. He managed to piece together an patchwork of a voter base: special interest groups and some disenfranchised voting blocks that gave him enough votes to be elected. Ironcally, each of these groups eventually turned on him, and not having the support of the more liberal party base, was essentially hung out to dry in 1980! Carter had a difficult four years and perhaps has been judged harshly based on outcome, but Stuart Eizenstat's book, President Carter, the White House Years, provides an in-depth analysis of what Carter did right, what he did wrong, and how what happened colored our view of Carter's presidency.
Eizenstat joined Carter when he began his bid for the presidency in Georgia and eventually became his domestic policy advisor and writes transparently from first-hand experience, balancing Carter's foibles with his strengths. I did find the book a bit dry to read. He really only covered Carter's bid for the presidency and the White House years, so 890 pages written by a domestic policy advisor and not an author, I found I had to slog through the first half of the book. When I got to the point when I actually thought about shelving the book, I decided to put my head down and barrel through it, skimming as I went. It actually improved at that point! If you are looking for Jimmy Carter's years after he left the White House (during which he continued internationally as a statesman), you won't find that here. And having finally finished this book, I wasn't prepared to invest reading another 500 pages. The one real criticism that I had is that the book was written by topic, rather than chronologically. Eisenstat covered a myriad of themes, but it was difficult to connect them to time or to each other. I should have kept a timeline as I was reading to see how it all fit together, but I was well into the book when I finally realized it.
I was finishing college, getting married, moving to the Midwest, and starting my first real job as the events of Jimmy Carter's presidency were rolling out. Not being particularly politically awake, I was not at the time aware of all of the ins and outs of what was going on, but was definitely feeling the effects of it. Carter was another in the line of recent presidents who had to deal with stagflation (high inflation, high unemployment, and stagnant demand on the economy), the political equivalent to a smog inversion! Middle East issues were causing a doubling of gasoline prices, and long lines at the pumps continued. And there there were the American hostages held capture for more than a year in Iran. All of these (and more) eventually lead to his demise.
What can be said of Jimmy Carter is that he made decisions based on what he thought was morally right and not just politically adventageous. He coined the phrase, Moral Equivalent of War, which the liberal left news reporters deprecatingly shortened to MEOW!) He promoted human rights in his foreign policy (emboldening Soviet dissidents and eventually creating the cracks in the foundation that lead to Reagan being able to say, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall".) He advocated and successfully transferred the Panama Canal back to the Panamanians. He promoted energy conservation at a time when Americans used non-renewable sources of energy at an alarming rate (because the US Government was subsidizing fuel to make it cheaper instead of letting the natural supply and demand curb the excesses like Europe was doing!) He stood up to the Soviets when they entered Afghanistan, though it was interesting to note everything that had to be considered in establishing the grain embargo, since it actually would hurt us more than Russia. Yes, we the people subsidized all of the loses that the farmers would experience, not sending their feed grains to Russia. He sponsored the first ever peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
However, Jimmy Carter's biggest issue was his lack of experience. Yes, he was governor of George, but politically that is a big fish in a little pond. In Georgia, he could be deeply involved in every aspect of his responsibility, having to delegate little. When he entered the White House, he tried to manage things as he had in Georgia. He was his own head of staff , in addition to being president. He brought with him his staff (the Georgia Mafia), instead of surrounding himself with people who knew Washington and how it work (like Reagan). He stumbled with major decisions, usually choosing the wrong one. He addressed the nation with the "malaise" speech (which was actually an uplifting "return to foundations" speech) that nearly tripled his credit rating (which matched Nixon's during Watergate) only to destroy it all in a week by firing his entire cabinet to rehire some back, instead of just firing those he really wanted to get rid of. The American public was not used to such a whole sale sweep, and it undermined confidence. He had great domestic policy ideas (health care, for example) that he could not make happen because he had not learned to play the give and take that are the warp and woof of Washington politics, and he had so many grandiose ideas of change, that he had already spend what little political capital he had on other bills. He did not follow his own instincts but instead opened the doors to let in the Shah of Iran, which lead to hostage taking, and then neutralized his negotiating ability by saying from the outset that there would be no military response. Carter was a well-intentioned man, but clearly out of his depth.
Eisenstat's book really would be a must-read manual for every outsider who gets elected as President. Every once in a while, the American public tires of the same old thing: partisan, pork-barrel, scandalous politics, and they yearn for a breath of fresh air, seeking to elect someone out of the mainstream to change the status quo: Andrew Jackson, Jimmy Carter, Donald Trump. But what the American public fails to understand is while they are out of the mainstream, they really don't get the mainstream and end up swimming against the tide, struggling to be understood and make things happen. So Eisenstat's book would serve as a primer, a how-to successfully make things happen as an outsider (by not doing what Jimmy Carter did!)
Eisenstat did talk about the Killer Rabbit and brother Billy (how could in nearly 900 pages covering the four White House years could he have not mentioned them), but I really feel that Eisenstat might have benefited from assistance in his writing. It was very analytical, but often times, not very interesting.

[Tom Rowe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book really focuses in on the nitty gritty of the policy side of the Carter presidency. It was not very exciting, but it is a necessary book to have been written. I found the sections on the Panama Canal and the Iranian hostages to be the most interesting sections. For the most part, Carter seems to get in the way of getting things done. I used to think that he was in an unwinnable situation, but this book showed me how he made it even more unwinnable if that was possible. I still have a lot of respect for most of Carter's post presidency, but I can see more clearly why his presidency was not stellar.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the better presidential biographies out there, because it combines in-depth research and extensive interviews along with the writer's own experience inside the administration. Stuart Eizenstat was a Harvard Law graduate and occasional Democratic party aide working in Atlanta when a friend told him he should meet a former two-term, little-known state senator who was running for governor in 1970. Jimmy Carter told Eizenstat that he "did not intend to lose" the governors race, and he didn't. Eizenstat was somewhat smitten by Carter's plain-spoken ways, his detailed command of policy, and his eagerness to win. As Eizenstat points out, as Governor and as President Carter would be rigorous, probably too rigorous, in separating policy from politics, but in campaign mode he could be ruthless. He was not afraid of wriggling into the Democratic National Committee with the help of Chair Robert Strauss before the 1976 campaign to prepare his own run for President, and he was tireless in attacking President Ford to cement his own victory.

Carter's list of accomplishments as President are long, and, as the head of the Domestic Policy Council in the White House, Eizenstat participated in just about all of them. Of course, the Panama Canal Treaty and the Camp David Agreements were the most substantive and long-lasting (Eizenstat, despite his title, was intimately involved in those foreign affairs). But in domestic policy Carter also passed the most comprehensive energy reforms in a generation in 1978, preserved hundreds of millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness, and helped deregulate major industries like airlines and trucking. In the national memory, these accomplishments are overshadowed by the tragedy of the Iran hostage negotiations, the persistence of both unemployment and inflation, gas lines and oil crisis, and the constant examples of internal infighting and turnover in his administration. Eizensat does a fair job balancing these pluses and minuses, claiming "he was not a great president, but he was a good and productive one," which seems like a fair assessment.

Eizenstat spends a good deal of the book talking about energy, which indeed was one of Carter's main focuses when he entered the presidency and which defined much of it. The problem was Carter seemed constitutionally incapable of negotiating with Congress to get the things he wanted on energy, or of understanding how to trade favors in one sphere for favors in another. His administration created a "hit list" of 19 water and dam projects, which leaked, and took no consideration of how those would affect their overall energy vote. Carter then allowed many of those projects to pass without a veto in his first year in office, sabotaging those congressmen who had supported him in fighting them. Later, he reneged on a campaign pledge to de-control natural gas prices when he thought such de-control unnecessary for his energy program, then reneged again when it looked politically useful to pass the bill. The bill that finally did pass in 1978 was a milestone in many ways, in opening up competition for alternative energies, in decontrolling natural gas prices, and so on, but the Carter presidency wasted two years and much political capital on what could have been an easy win.

There are lot's of great details and revelations here about life inside the White House, and how that life can shape the country. Whatever the collective memories of Jimmy Carter, Eizenstat shows that he was someone who did his best for the country and left it with some legitimate accomplishments.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a treat to have such an in-depth look at a recent and often overlooked president. Certainly eye-opening and at times thrilling, as in the Camp David Accords and the Iran hostage crisis. Fascinating to see how Carter’s deeply principled character, steeped in his Christian faith, helped and hurt his ability to lead and inspire.

I’ve found that good presidential biographies show how Democratic presidents were less liberal and Republicans less conservative than their enduring myths. President Carter had many of the qualities that Conservatives still say they want in a president. He was a genuine outsider who held Washington in contempt. A former military man and farmer, he was “tight as gnat’s” ass on fiscal matters and cold toward unions. He was obsessive on balancing budgets, fought for deregulation, and increased military spending. Eizenstat argues that Carter paid the price for unpopular but necessary initiatives that Reagan was to reap the benefit of.

Carter’s presidency is an object lesson that, though “politician” is a dirty word, we need leaders skilled in politics just as we need skilled doctors, teachers, and engineers. Carter, a polar opposite to his Democratic predecessor Lyndon Johnson, disdained the political horse trading by which a nation with so many competing interests is governed. It’s as if, Eizenstat says, Carter thought he would state what the nation needed most and then Congress and the American people would just line up behind him. They didn’t. History will remember the patently immoral but legislatively brilliant LBJ as accomplishing far more for the poor and needy.

Though Eizenstat greatly admires his former boss, he doesn’t pull punches on Carter’s missteps—and there were many. But it is a mistake to characterize him as a hapless president. The book succeeds in showing the enormous complexity of the challenges Carter faced. Of course, the American public doesn’t do complex very well, which Reagan understood, and they were happy to exchange Carter’s prophetic admonitions for Reagan’s soothing reassurance.

[Peter Ackerman]

The author of President Carter: The White House Years, Stuart Eizenstat, had a front row seat to the rise to power for Jimmy Carter. Having linked up with the former President when he ran for Govenor of Georgia, Eizenstat continued to work for Carter through his presidency. Thus this non-fiction work provides an inside look at the White House as run in the one Carter Administration.

The book is well worth reading for various readers, fans of Presidential politics, history, or general biography. The author presents his subject in a manner that is both respectful, but when appropriate critical. This allows the reader to really have a sense of the period and place of the Carter White House. Though trifle on the long side, it is worth sticking through for the wealth of information provided.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything you want to know about the Carter presidency and probably more....way more! This is a very comprehensive book covering every event and policy decision ever made during the Carter years and is really more detail than I care to read about but is probably of interest to those that are politically inclined. There is a lot of information I was unfamiliar with which I found interesting (to be honest the only things I remember from his presidency are long gas lines and the hostage crisis). The writing was excellent so it made the 900 plus pages not so daunting.

[Rhonda Lomazow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stuart Eizenstat was a witness to the Carter administration.He gives us a historical look at this time in our history from efforts at Middle East peace& other major decisions of Carter& his teams decision.These books that show us history being lived help us understand our past& the world we live in today due to their decisions,Thanks to NetGalley & St. Martins press for advance Galley,

[Chris Carson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read and an important update if the role President Carter played in the aftermath of Watergate and a bridge to the 80’s and President Reagan. A lot more was accomplished than popular retelling and Carter deserves credit - in the age of the Liar in Chief tRump - of having integrity and never lying to the American people.

[Nate Horning · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry at times, but frankly this book teaches you an awful lot about what it means to serve in the White House and why Jimmy Carter, while a very decent and caring person, was probably not the person best suited for the position.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of minutiae in this book. Even too much for me, a politics junkie.

[Clem · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Carter really is a decent person, and I think that decency was perhaps too strong” – Zbigniew Brzezinski

“That little son-of-a-bitch can’t handle a two-bit ayatollah. I’ll take my chances on Reagan” – 1980 voter

“I am not a great communicator” – Jimmy Carter

Since I write lengthy reviews of all the books I read, I sometimes begin to formulate my review in my head while I’m still reading the book. Such was the case here. There was so much I wanted to say about this book while reading, and sadly, a lot of it wasn’t good. I will say that this book did get better as it went on, but some of the negative elements managed to persist throughout.

First (and this is not a ‘negative’), note that this book is not a biography. This book focuses on President Jimmy Carter’s one four-year term as President of the United States from 1976-1980. There is a small bit of background on his upbringing, and even less on his post-presidency. There’s 900 pages of material here. That’s an awful lot of pages for covering only four years. This element WAS a negative. There’s simply too much here. This book is written by insider Stuart E. Eizenstat who served as Carter’s Domestic Affairs Advisor throughout Carter’s term. So it’s good that we get an insider’s unbiased view, but Eizenstat should have been a bit more frugal when he fleshed out his material. Being the Domestic Affairs Advisor, it probably isn’t too surprising that he places a heavy focus on the domestic issues (Energy, Environment, Economy, etc.) but these are the topics that should be discussed sparingly. It’s just not interesting material. I notated this when I reviewed Robert Dallek’s excellent bio of JFK. Dallek knew what stuff captivated a reader, and he limited exposing his audience to all the mind-numbing stuff. Eizenstat does no such thing. We read in malodourous detail every single tedious nuance of things like Carter’s energy initiatives along with every single step in the process of who supported the initiative, who didn’t, the tradeoffs in the Halls of Congress and on and on and on. I’ve read instruction manuals for garbage disposals that were more compelling. Once Eizenstat shifts gears and talks about The Middle East, The Panama Canal, the Ayatollah, and Afghanistan, the book does become much more interesting, but it still manages to get a bit bogged down even in these chapters.

Which leads me to my second gripe. The story here of Carter’s presidency is not told sequentially. I don’t think I’ve ever read a historical account when the author didn’t tell the story of his/her subject chronologically. This was a much bigger deterrent than I would have expected. For example, when the book begins its chapter on ‘Energy’ on page 137, the author basically goes through all of the events during the four years of Carter’s presidency related to Energy. This became too confusing as you often forgot the time frame you were actually reading about at the time. The author would consistently state things like “Carter met with his advisors again in April and……” and I wanted to scream “APRIL OF WHAT YEAR?” This peculiarity also made it incredibly difficult to view any sort of progression of the administration. Telling a story of a presidency in the order it occurred allows the reader to see a person mature into the role (Kennedy) or deteriorate into deception (Nixon). It was hard to grasp when the ups and downs actually occurred since the whole book was such a mish-mash. To be fair though, there were very little ‘ups’ in Jimmy Carter’s presidency. More on that later.

My next gripe is the author goes back and forth between telling the story in ‘third person’ and ‘first person’. Yes, the author was there in the middle all of this, but I found it incredibly distracting when he would ‘stop’ the story and pontificate on what HE thought and what HE was going through and how HE knew Carter was right/wrong, etc. This was too much of a disruption. I think the author should have kept the “I’s” out of the story and told this entire retrospective in third-person. It would have been perfectly acceptable to keep himself in the story. I just would have rather seen him as a character as opposed to a narrator.

Then we come to the overall thesis of the story. Stu Eizenstat is trying very hard to ‘set the record straight’ on Jimmy Carter. Throughout the whole book, he constantly serves as an apologist for Carter no matter how many maladroit gaffes the president makes. And he makes tons of them. To be fair, Eizenstat doesn’t try to hide Carter’s mistakes, he just tries to excuse the majority of them for one reason or the other. There were many times when I literally roared out loud with laughter when I would read of one of Carter’s blunders, yet there were other times when I simply wanted to crawl under the table and disappear because I felt so sorry for the man. At times Eizenstat sounded like one of those helicopter-soccer moms who admits that her child is the worst player on the team, but then states that her child really should be awarded the most valuable player on the team because ‘he really does have a big heart’. It became quite ridiculous at times.

This is not to say that I, personally, think badly of Jimmy Carter as a person. No, I think he’s quite a wonderful human being, and his post presidency years has proved this. It’s just that history shows us time and time again that being a great human being doesn’t necessarily equip you to be the leader of the free world. It seems as though Carter’s biggest problem was that once he became President, he didn’t want to play the ‘politics’ game anymore. This was a grave mistake. Instead of hob-knobbing with influential congressional leaders over drinks after hours, Carter instead locks himself in his office and proceeds to do things such as study the history of Argentina until 3 a.m. He simply didn’t know how the game in Washington worked. He ended up alienating far too many people in the inner circles in Washington including many in his own party. We read about how Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neil, and even Walter Mondale couldn’t stand him. At one point, Mondale seriously ponders handing in his resignation. A Vice-President wanting to resign. Has that ever happened before?

Something I learned in this book was that Carters infamous ‘Malaise’ speech was actually quite well received the day after it was delivered. Again, though, Carter manages to take a ‘good thing’ and blow it. Only a couple of days after the speech, Carter decides to clean house and sack a huge chunk of his cabinet. This, again, puts the country in yet another sour mood, and since this event happened so soon after the ‘Malaise’ speech, a retrospective analysis now looks at this speech as one of his biggest blunders. The guy just couldn’t catch a break.

So sadly, upon conclusion, my opinion of Jimmy Carter wasn’t swayed in the direction that the author intended. There was just too much turmoil, uncertainty, and lack of leadership for me to be convinced otherwise. I must restate that Carter is an incredible humanitarian, and he did set many things into motion as President that seemed quite far-fetched at the time (human rights, conservation of the environment, energy saving initiatives), so we can now look back at a lot of what he accomplished with fondness and new admiration.

Overall, this book was great for about 600 pages. It’s just a shame that one had to weed through 900 pages to discover them. If you’re a person, however, that enjoys reading a 77-page chapter on stagflation, it is possible that you might disagree with my conclusion and enjoy this book a tad better than I did.

[Gulo · Rating 3 out of 5]

1,020 pages of political non-fiction is far from a paltry undertaking and, were it not available in audio form, I never would’ve attempted it. Thankfully, I did and, thankfully, it's over haha.

Over the past year I’ve primarily been binge-reading books about US - Middle Eastern policy (1910 - present) and more modern high-level political histories (1960s - present). Of course, Carter falls directly in line with both of those topics, hence my attempt to tackle such a behemoth of a book. I feel that I had a very solid base of understanding coming into this one and, yet, also feel that I did not get nearly enough out of the book considering its depth. There were simply too many vastly different areas of focus (political minutiae, 70s international/domestic energy policy overlapped with international/domestic economics and politics, social scuffles, etc.) and too many players for which I had very little context.

This is all to say that this book is not for the layman; it seems to be almost entirely for historians. The book was not light in any sense or in most any way “enjoyable” - at least in a more common sense of the word.

As a historical work, it is quite valuable because (if for no other reason) the author has a direct and apparently incredibly close connection to Jimmy Carter from his early political days through to his position on the Carter administration. With that in mind, and understanding my lack of in-depth knowledge about the details of this specific area within this period, the author seems to attempt to pose as objective a perspective as is possible for someone with his inherent biases. The attempt seems quite genuine. If we were to stumble upon a long-lost >1000 page autobiography with the same accuracy as this one on any historical figure, academics would be partying in the streets. His public service aside, what Mr. Eizenstat has done with this book alone is simply incredible.

I could write up a neat little summary of this book (as I usually do) but, seeing as though President Carter’s life and presidency is covered extensively everywhere from Wikipedia to Youtube to ___, I’ll focus only on what the author attempts to say about the man. Also, after so much information, I’m somewhat fearful that an attempt to summarize would itself be quite extensive.

Primarily, Eizenstat repeatedly argues that Carter was singularly brilliant and possessed a terrific aptitude for focus and detail. He claims that Carter almost without exception desired the best outcome for all human beings and attempted that ends in almost every presidential action (the only exceptions that come to mind are when Eizenstat laments Carter’s newfound priority on public opinion in upcoming election polls - an event which consumes every US president and likely every democratically-elected politician). Also, Eizenstat is clear that he thinks the Carter administration has received an unfairly negative public opinion in the immediate decades after; many people’s immediate recollection of moments in that presidency are meme-like moments that were seized upon by opponents either maliciously or otherwise.

For instance, an immediate recollection of most people regarding the Carter administration was the 1979 events in the middle east to include the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, storming of the US embassy, and the subsequent hostage crisis. Eizenstat claims that the media was uncommonly brutal on Carter with its nightly update on the number of days that the hostages were held and, while the events leading up to and following were in many ways, a buffet line of horrific political mishaps, the administration probably did not deserve all of the negative spin that it received. Additionally, many US voters did/do not seem to understand what was (as often is the case) quite a complex situation with Iran and the hostage crisis; among other things, there are no indications that Khomeini directed the student seizure of the embassy - rather, he capitalized off of the chaos in the aftermath and happily used the political/social energy that it brought to the country to seize more power. In short, the position that Carter was the victim of a negative skew seems fair enough but it should also be admitted that more forceful actions could’ve/should’ve been taken. Sadly for Carter, in presidential administrations since, his lack of direct action is used as an example of what not to do. If I recall correctly, every US president since Carter has called for direct strikes in the Middle East… though that is indicative of other changes in policy/government, it is at least in part due to the perceived inaction of Carter and the effect that it had on elections and negotiations.

Moving past the importance of voter perception in a democracy:

President Carter’s tendency to micromanage was probably his clearest point of failure in his administration - and this was repeated in other sources I’ve read that mention his time in the office (Rumsfeld’s Known and Unknown and is the only one that immediately comes to mind however I specifically recall an insider speaking about how Carter completely overhauled the NSC lines of communication after Ford only for them to be reinstated during Reagan… but I won’t get into the specifics because I can’t find the source and tend not to trust my memory for specifics like that - my main reason for disliking audiobooks).

Overall, this book was extensive and an abridged version would have been happily accepted. Nonetheless, I learned so much about Carter, his administration, and feel that I have much better context for that political period. Would I recommend the book to someone? I currently don’t know anyone else who would put themselves through such pain and am looking for fellow masochists who do. Hit me up if you want to discuss books like this in the future haha.

My one takeaway quote:
“Jimmy Carter did not have the grace of John Kennedy, the congressional wizardry Lyndon Johnston, the strategic vision of Richard Nixon, the charm and clarity of purpose of Ronald Regan, the foreign policy experience of George H. W. Bush, the supreme political skills of Bill Clinton, the toughness of George W. Bush, or the eloquence of Barack Obama. But he brought to the oval office his own unique intellect, inquisitiveness, self discipline, political courage, and resilience in the face of setbacks. He disregarded the political costs of trying to make the nation and the world a better place in ways that transcended his presidency and often did not come to fruition until he left office. It is precisely because of his qualities that he was determined to confront so many difficult challenges and accomplished so much as he pressed ahead.”
-Eizenstat

[Frank Duke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is NOT a biography of President Carter. It is a densely written, detailed account of the Carter presidency written by the President's Domestic Policy Advisor. Organized topically, rather than chronologically, it is a bit of a disservice to Carter by not making clear the number of issues he was required to deal with simultaneously. Despite this, it is a valuable account from an insider's perspective of what occurred during the Carter Presidency.

It is probably inevitable that there will be mistakes in a book of nearly 1,000 pages. As someone with advanced degrees in history and political science, though, I was frustrated by the author making several egregious errors:

(1) He describes Alexander Haig as President Reagan's Chief of Staff when Haig made the announcement that he (Haig) was in charge following the assassination attempt on the President. Haig was actually Secretary of State; he was Chief of Staff under Nixon.
(2) He describes Mississippi as the "Palmetto State." As a Georgian, he should have known that neighboring South Carolina is the Palmetto State; Mississippi is the Magnolia State.
(3) He states that Mo Udall was a Republican Congressman from Arizona. Udall was a staunch Democrat who was one of Carter's leading competitors for the 1976 Democratic nomination. As the senior policy advisor for the Carter campaign in 1976, Eizenstat had to be aware of his boss's competition for the nomination.
(4) He claims that Carter imposed sanctions on the Soviet Union in 1980 because "the Soviet Union invaded the Soviet Union." That is a logical impossibility. Sanctions were imposed because the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
(5) He attributes the rise of the Moral Majority to the approval by referendum of a gay rights ordinance in Miami and Dade County, Florida. That, in fact, is the opposite of what happened. Anita Bryant's Save Our Children campaign in 1977 led to the overturning of a gay rights ordinance in a referendum, which did, in fact, contribute to the rise of the Moral Majority.

If you are going to write a book purporting to be an accurate account of the administration in which you served, you have an obligation to ensure that it is factually correct. A good editor (or fact checker) should have caught these errors that diminish the value of this book.

[Christopher Litsinger · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was written by someone too close to the President with too Naked of an agenda. I hit "The speech contained virtually nothing on foreign policy and national security aside from a brief promise to “protect the integrity of Israel” that I slipped in. " and I rolled my eyes. I hit " I helped temper his unrealistic goal in early drafts of a worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons, by adding as an “ultimate goal.”" and I shut the book and found a different biography of Carter to read.
Eizenstat was a member of Carter's campaign and cabinet -- he had the access needed to create a great book. Instead he created this massive book that he can't keep himself out of. When I got to the end of the Foreward and got to the Preface of this 900+ page book, I started getting worried. Then I decided he was just getting out the things that he personally needed to include about himself, but I was wrong.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite interesting in parts, but not very well written. The book is based on Eizenstat's diary and notes he took during the administration but since he is not a writer by trade, the prose is often rather pedestrian, it would have been better if he had hired a co-writer. I can't even count the number of times he says "never before had any president.....and never since...." it gets rather repetitive.